verbal slip; though Horace would instruct them better in true criticism: — non ego paucis Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit, True judgment in poetry, like that in painting, takes a view of the whole together, whether it be good or not; and where the beauties are more than the faults, concludes for the poet against the little judge. It is a sign that malice is hard driven, when it is forced to lay hold on a word or syllable: to arraign a man is one thing, and to cavil at him is another. In the midst of an ill-natured generation of scribblers, there is always justice enough left in mankind, to protect good writers: and they too are obliged, both by humanity and interest, to espouse each other's cause, against false criticks, who are the common enemies. This last consideration puts me in mind of what I owe to the ingenious and learned translator of Lucretius." I have not here designed to rob him of any part of that commendation, which he has so justly acquired by the whole author, whose fragments only fall to my portion. What I have now performed, is no more than I intended above twenty years ago. The ways of our translation are very different; he follows him more closely than I have done; which * Thomas Creech, to whom our author has addressed some encomiastick verses, prefixed to the second edition of his translation of Lucretius, which was published in 1683. became an interpreter of the whole poem. I take more liberty, because it best suited with my design, which was to make him as pleasing as I could. He had been too voluminous, had he used my method in so long a work; and I had certainly taken his, had I made it my business to translate the whole. The preference then is justly his; and I join with Mr. Evelyn in the confession of it, with this additional advantage to him; that his reputation is already established in this poet, mine is to make its fortune in the world. If I have been any where obscure, in following our common author, or if Lucretius himself is to be condemned, I refer myself to his excellent Annotations, which I have often read, and always with some new pleasure. My preface begins already to swell upon me, and looks as if I were afraid of my reader, by so tedious a bespeaking of him; and yet I have Horace and Theocritus upon my hands; but the Greek gentleman shall quickly be dispatched, because I have more business with the Roman. That which distinguishes Theocritus from all other poets, both Greek and Latin, and which raises him even above Virgil in his Eclogues, is the inimitable tenderness of his passions, and the natural expression of them in words so becoming This surely is a high strain of courtesy. Creech was now but twenty-four years old, and had only been known as a poet for about the same number of months.—Our author, however, may have meant, not to speak generally, but only to say-my reputation in this poet is to make its fortune in the world. of a pastoral. A simplicity shines through all he writes he shows his art and learning by disguising both. His shepherds never rise above their country education in their complaints of love. There is the same difference betwixt him and Virgil, as there is betwixt Tasso's AMINTA and the PASTOR FIDO of Guarini. Virgil's shepherds are too well read in the philosophy of Epicurus and of Plato; and Guarini's seem to have been bred in courts: but Theocritus and Tasso have taken theirs from cottages and plains. It was said of Tasso, in relation to his similitudes, mai csce del bosco; that he never departed from the woods; that is, all his comparisons were taken from the country. The same may be said of our Theocritus; he is softer than Ovid, he touches the passions more delicately; and performs all this out of his own 9 Guarini and Tasso were contemporaries, but the former, who was born in 1538, was six years elder than the latter. Tasso died in 1599, Guarini in 1613. Baretti has preserved the following anecdote concerning their pastorals:" It is said that Torquato Tasso, on seeing the PASTOR FIDO represented, looked vexed, and said, If Guarini had not seen my AMINTA, he had not excelled it. If this is true, Tasso was as much in the wrong as Milton, for preferring his PARADISE REGAINED to his LOST," [of which, by the by, though it has been repeated again and again, there is no manner of evidence,]"the PASTOR FIDO being full of unnatural characters, false thoughts, and epigrammatick turns; besides, that Tasso had the merit of being the inventor of the pastoral style." Ital. Library, 8vo. 1758. fund, without diving into the arts and sciences for a supply. Even his Dorick dialect has an incomparable sweetness in his clownishness, like a fair shepherdess in her country russet, talking in a Yorkshire tone. This was impossible for Virgil to imitate; because the severity of the Roman language denied him that advantage. Spencer has endeavoured it in his SHEPHERD'S CALENDER; but neither will it succeed in English, for which reason I forbore to attempt it. For Theocritus writ to Sicilians, who spoke that dialect; and I direct this part of my translations to our ladies, who neither understand nor will take pleasure in such homely expressions. I proceed to Horace. Take him in parts, and he is chiefly to be considered in his three different talents, as he was a critick, a satyrist, and a writer of odes. His morals are uniform, and run through all of them; for let his Dutch commentators say what they will, his philosophy was Epicurean; and he made use of gods and providence, only to serve a turn in poetry. But since neither his Criticisms, which are the most instructive of any that are written in this art, nor his Satires, which are incomparably beyond Juvenal's, (if to laugh and rally is to be preferred to railing and declaiming,) are no part of my present undertaking,' I confine 1 Our author, in the construction of this sentence, has fallen into an inaccuracy. Instead of—“ are no part,” he should have written" are any part," &c. myself wholly to his Odes. These are also of several sorts; some of them are panegyrical, others moral, the rest jovial, or (if I may so call them) Bacchanalian. As difficult as he makes it, and as indeed it is, to imitate Pindar, yet in his most elevated flights, and in the sudden changes of his subject with almost imperceptible connexions, that Theban poet is his master. But Horace is of the more bounded fancy, and confines himself strictly to one sort of verse or stanza in every Ode. That which will distinguish his style from all other poets, is the elegance of his words, and the numerousness of his verse. There is nothing so delicately turned in all the Roman language. There appears in every part of his diction, or, to speak English, in all his expressions, a kind of noble and bold purity. His words are chosen with as much exactness as Virgil's; but there seems to be a greater spirit in them. There is a secret happiness attends his choice, which in Petronius is called curiosa felicitas, and which I suppose he had from the feliciter audere of Horace himself." But the most distinguishing part of all his character seems to me to be, his briskness, his jollity, and his good humour; and those I have chiefly endeavoured to copy; his This expression of Horace has been adopted by Quintilian, in his description of that poet : "At lyricorum idem Horatius fere solus legi dignus. Nam et insurgit aliquando, et plenus est jucunditatis et gratiæ, et variis figuris et verbis felicissime audax.”QUINTIL. 1. x. c. 1. |