ABSTRACT
Among the classes of poetry, the epic has commonly been allowed the first place. Without attempting to define it, or to analyse its characters, the very small number of successful productions, which have ever appeared under this denomination, will be admitted as a proof, that this, if not the most excellent, is at least the most difficult of all poetical compositions. When we read that Virgil, after devoting eleven years to his Æneid, left it at last unfinished, and that an interval of about twelve years passed between the commencement and the completion of the Paradise Lost, we learn with astonishment, that Joan of Arc, in its first form, in twelve books, was, except the first three hundred lines, finished in six weeks; and that, afterwards, when the author, upon receiving the first proof from the printer, seeing its faults, formed a resolution to new-model the work, although, with the exception of the first three hundred and forty lines, the plan of the whole was changed, and not a thousand lines remained as they were originally written, the rest was composed while the printing went on. We feel ourselves little disposed, we must acknowledge, to concur with the author of this poem in the contempt which, in relating these particulars, he casts upon the Horatian precept, Nonum prematur in annum, 1 or to flatter an ill- placed vanity by applauding the rapidity with which this poem was written. Nevertheless, we would by no means allow a circumstance so perfectly adventitious any weight in the scale of criticism against the merit of the work. We thought it right to mention a fact on which the author, by detailing it in the beginning of his preface, appears to lay some stress; but we wish entirely to forget it in our examination of the poem, and request our readers to do the same.
