Education > Essays on rhetoric

no THE TELEMACHUS OF FENELON.
implores the aid of Christ and the Virgin; and, in
return to this prayer, Venus appears, and dis¬
covering the storm to be the work of Bacchus, com¬
plains to Jupiter, and procures the winds to be
hushed. All this is most preposterous; but to¬
wards the end the poet makes an apology for his
mythology. His apology, however, is not satis¬
factory. For his salvo is, that the goddess Thetis
informs Vasco, that she and the other heathen di¬
vinities are nothing more than names to describe
the operations of providence.
In the Lusiad, notwithstanding, there is some
fine machinery of a different kind. The appearance
of the genius of the river Ganges, in a dream to
Emanuel, King of Portugal, inviting him to dis¬
cover its secret springs, and acquainting him that
he was destined to enjoy the treasures of the East,
is a fine idea. But it is in the fifth canto that the
poet displays his noblest conception of this sort.
Vasco is there recounting the wonders of his na¬
vigation. And when the fleet arrived at the Cape
of Good Hope, which never had been doubled be¬
fore by any navigator, he relates, that there ap¬
peared to them suddenly a huge phantom, rising
out of the sea in the midst of tempests and thun¬
der, with a head that advanced to the skies, and a
countenance the most terrific. This was the genius
of that hitherto unknown ocean ; and he menaced j
them, in a voice of thunder, not to invade those
undisturbed seas, and foretelling the calamities that
were to befal them, retired from their view. This
is a very solemn and striking piece of machinery.
THE TELEMACHUS OF FENELON.
IT would be unpardonable, in a review of epic
poets, to forget the amiable Fenelon. His work.