THIS piece is the most finished of all his Imitations, and executed in the high manner the Italian painters call con amore. By which they mean, the exertion of that principle, which puts the faculties on the stretch, and produces the supreme degree of excellence. For the Poet had all the warmth of affection for the great Lawyer to whom it is addressed: and, indeed, no man ever more deserved to have a Poet for his friend. In the obtaining of which, as neither vanity, party, nor fear had any share, (which gave birth to the attachments of many of his noble acquaintance,) so he supported his title to it by all the good offices of a generous and true friendship. Warburton. EPISTOLA VI. e NIL 'admirari, propè res est una, Numici, NOTES. Pope. Ver. 4. Creech.] From whose Translation of Horace the two first lines are taken. Ver. 4. words of Creech.] Who, in truth, is a much better. translator than he is usually supposed and allowed to be. He is a nervous and vigorous writer; and many parts, not only of his Lucretius, but of his Theocritus and Horace, (though now decried,) have not been excelled by other translators. One of his pieces may be pronounced excellent: his translation of the thirteenth Satire of Juvenal; equal to any Dryden has given us of that author. Warton. Ver. 8. trust the Ruler] This last line is quaint and even obscure; the two first vigorously expressed. Horace thought of a striking and exalted passage in Lucretius, Book v. 1. 1185. Warton. It is perhaps too light and familiar, but certainly neither quaint nor obscure. |