real design of his poem was to increase the veneration of the people for a
master, whoever he might be, and to encourage like Homer the great system
of military depredation.

Lucan is the only republican among the ancient epic poets. But the action
of his rambling tho majestic poem is so badly arranged as to destroy, in
a poetical sense, the life and interest of the great national subject on
which it is founded; at the same time that it abounds in the most exalted
sentiments and original views of manners, highly favorable to the love of
justice and the detestation of war. If a mind, formed like that of Lucan,
as to its moral and political cast, and endowed with the creative energy
of Homer, had sung to the early Greeks the fall of Troy or the labors
of Hercules, his work (taking the place which those of Homer have
unfortunately occupied) as a splendid model for all succeeding ages, would
have given a very different turn to the pursuits of heroes and the policy
of nations. Ambition might then have become a useful passion, instead of a
destructive disease.

In the poem here presented to the public the objects, as in other works of
the kind, are two, the fictitious object of the action and the real object
of the poem. The first of these is to sooth and satisfy the desponding
mind of Columbus; to show him that his labors, tho ill rewarded by his
cotemporaries, had not been performed in vain; that he had opened the way
to the most extensive career of civilization and public happiness; and that
he would one day be recognised as the author of the greatest benefits to
the human race. This object is steadily kept in view; and the actions,
images and sentiments are so disposed as probably to attain the end. But
the real object of the poem embraces a larger scope; it is to inculcate the
love of rational liberty, and to discountenance the deleterious passion for
violence and war; to show that on the basis of the republican principle all