This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1844 Excerpt: ...ut experientia edoetus, et expertorum judicium subiturus, copiose et facunde in carmi nibus exhibet, neque dum singulorum hominum vires ultra modum, pro captu tamen audientium, auget et extollit, mortem ullius vulneri non fatali aut alii non idoneae causae usquam tribuit.' Payne Knight, Prol. in Horn. 48. Scandit fatalis machina muros, Feta armis. Pueri circura innuptseque puellse Sacra canunt, funemque manu contingere gaudent... Instamus tamen immemores, cacique furore, Et monstrum infelix sacrata sistimus arce. Tunc etiam fatis aperit Cassandra futuris Ora, dei jussu non unquam credita Teucris. Mn. Ii. 237-47. With respect to Napoleon's remarks on the episodes of Sinon and Laocoon, we cannot admit that their poetical beauty does not more than compensate for their improbability. If the events in Homer and Virgil were reduced to the ordinary standard, would they not lose in poetical interest far more than they would gain in probability? The narrative, in proportion as it approximated to a despatch, would recede from poetry. Napoleon might have remembered that even writers of bulletins have found that fiction is sometimes better fitted than truth to produce emotion. It is to be regretted that, amongst Napoleon's suite at St. Helena, there was no philologist who could point out to him the ingenious attempts which were made by the ancients to explain away the Trojan horse, and to substitute for the poetical narrative preferred by Virgil one more consonant with probability. With what satisfaction would he have learnt the suggestion of Hyginus and Tubero, that it was a machine for battering walls, called equus, as other similar machines were called aries and testudof or the supposition of others, that a horse was painted over the gate which Antenor, by tr...