the passions and prejudices of their age and nation. To these
imaginary poets must be ascribed some blunders which are so
obvious that is unnecessary to point them out. The real blunder
would have been to represent these old poets as deeply versed in
general history, and studious of chronological accuracy. To them
must also be attributed the illiberal sneers at the Greeks, the
furious party spirit, the contempt for the arts of peace, the
love of war for its own sake, the ungenerous exultation over the
vanquished, which the reader will sometimes observe. To portray a
Roman of the age of Camillus or Curius as superior to national
antipathies, as mourning over the devastation and slaughter by
which empire and triumphs were to be won, as looking on human
suffering with the sympathy of Howard, or as treating conquered
enemies with the delicacy of the Black Prince, would be to
violate all dramatic propriety. The old Romans had some great
virtues, fortitude, temperance, veracity, spirit to resist
oppression, respect for legitimate authority, fidelity in the
observing of contracts, disinterestedness, ardent patriotism; but
Christian charity and chivalrous generosity were alike unknown to
them.

It would have been obviously improper to mimic the manner of any
particular age or country. Something has been borrowed, however,
from our own old ballads, and more from Sir Walter Scott, the
great restorer of our ballad-poetry. To the Iliad still greater
obligations are due; and those obligations have been contracted
with the less hesitation, because there is reason to believe that
some of the old Latin minstrels really had recourse to that
inexhaustible store of poetical images.