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Scriptores trutinâ, non est quòd multa loquamur :
Nil intra est oleam, nil extra est in nuce duri.
Venimus ad summum fortunæ: pingimus, atque
Psallimus, et Pluctamur Achivis doctiùs unctis.
Si meliora dies, ut vina, poëmata reddit,
Scire velim, chartis pretium quotus arroget annus.
Scriptor abhinc annos centum qui decidit, inter
Perfectos veteresque referri debet, an inter
Viles atque novos? excludat jurgia finis.

Est vetus atque probus, 'centum qui perficit annos.
Quid? qui deperiit minor uno mense, vel anno,
Inter quos referendus erit? 'veteresne poetas,
An quos et præsens et postera respuat ætas ?
Iste quidem veteres inter ponetur 'honestè,
Qui vel mense brevi, vel toto est junior anno.

Utor permisso, caudæque pilos ut "equinæ Paulatim vello: et demo unum, demo et item

unum;

Dum cadat elusus ratione "ruentis acervi,
Qui redit in 'fastos, et virtutem æstimat annis,
Miraturque nihil, nisi quod ' Libitina sacravit.
"Ennius et sapiens, et fortis, et alter Homerus,

NOTES.

the superiority of the oldest Greek writings extant which is a very different thing. The turn of his argument confines us to this Hurd.

sense.

Ver. 55. can have no flaw ;] A very reprehensible expression; as also the words below, verse 58, right and sound. On the contrary, look in Stowe, verse 66, is very happy. Warton.

Ver. 63. the horse-tail bare,] Lambinus says this passage relates to a story mentioned in Plutarch of a soldier of Sertorius.

Warton.

In every public virtue we excel ;

We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well,
And learned Athens to our art must stoop,
Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.
If time improve our wit as well as wine,
Say at what age a poet grows divine?
Shall we, or shall we not, account him so,
Who died, perhaps, a hundred years ago?
End all dispute; and fix the year precise
When British bards begin to immortalize?

"Who lasts a 'century can have no flaw;

I hold that wit a classic, good in law."

45

50

55

Suppose he wants a year, will you compound? And shall we deem him 'ancient, right and sound, Or damn to all eternity at once,

At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?

"We shall not quarrel for a year or two;

By 'courtesy of England, he may do."

60

Then, by the rule that made the "horse-tail bare, I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,

And melt down "ancients like a heap of snow: 65
While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe,
And estimating authors by the year,
Bestow a garland only on a 'bier.

"Shakespear, (whom you and every play-house bill

Stile the divine, the matchless, what you will,) 70

NOTES.

Ver. 69. Shakespear,] Shakespear and Ben Jonson may truly be said not much to have thought of this immortality; the one in many pieces composed in haste for the stage; the other, in his latter works in general, which Dryden called his Dotages. Pope.

Dryden

Ut critici dicunt, leviter curare videtur

Quò promissa cadant, et somnia Pythagorea. Nævius in manibus non est: at 'mentibus hæret Penè recens: dadeò sanctum est vetus omne

poema.

Ambigitur quoties, uter utro sit prior; aufert
Pacuvius docti famam senis, Accius alti :
Dicitur Afranî toga convenisse Menandro;
Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi,
Vincere Cæcilius gravitate, Terentius arte:
Hos ediscit, et hos arcto stipata theatro

NOTES.

Dryden does, indeed, call them so, but very undeservedly. The truth is, he was not enough acquainted with the manners of the preceding age, to judge competently of them. Besides, nothing is more inconstant than his characters of his own country poets, nor less reasonable than most of his critical notions; for he had many occasional ends to serve, and few principles to go upon. This may be said as to the character of his critical works in general, though written with great elegance and vivacity.

Warburton. This censure of Dryden's critical works is surely too severe.

Warton.

Ver. 69. and every play-house bill] A ridicule on those who talk of Shakespear, because he is in fashion; who, if they dared to do justice to their taste or conscience, would own they liked Durfey better. Warburton.

Ver. 71. For gain, not glory,] I believe this perfectly true of Shakespear, but not of Ben Jonson; who was not made, as was Shakespear, a poet by accident, but had spent his life in a close study of the art. And as some of his plays, particularly the Silent Woman, were the first models of just comedy in our language, he could not, with propriety, be substituted for the ruder writers of Rome. The expression in verse 74, the life to come, is somewhat licentious. Warton.

75

For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,
And grew immortal in his own despite.
Ben, old and poor, as little seem'd to heed
"The life to come, in every poet's creed.
Who now reads 'Cowley? if he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art,
But still I love the language of his heart.
"Yet surely, surely, these were famous men!
What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben?
In all debates where critics bear a part,
Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art.
Of Shakespear's nature, and of Cowley's wit;
How Beaumont's judgment check'd what Fletcher
writ;

NOTES.

80

Ver. 72. in his own despite.] It was a good idea of Foote's, that Shakespear only meant to write furces; but the fine poetry, &c. he threw in gratis.

Bowles.

Ver. 77. Forgot his epic,] Rhymer absurdly prefers the Davideis to the Jerusalem of Tasso.

Warton.

Ver. 77. Pindaric art,] Which has much more merit than his epic, but very unlike the character, as well as numbers of Pindar.

Pope. when only

Ver. 83. Cowley's wit;] Why mention Cowley, dramatic writers are spoken of, and characterised? In verse 85, he alludes to a line of Rochester on Shadwell and Wycherley. It is plain he was only copying the trite and trivial opinions of the pretenders to taste, by omitting Otway, and mentioning only Southerne and Rowe, as masters of the pathetic; but whose Isabella and Jane Shore may in truth be almost put in competition with Belvidera. It is singular that Horace, in the original, should mention Afranius only as the copier of Menander, and not Te

* Cowley wrote four plays.

Bowles.

rence.

Spectat Roma potens; 'habet hos, numeratque

poëtas

Ad nostrum tempus, Livî scriptoris ab ævo. *Interdum vulgus rectum videt: est ubi peccat. Si veteres ita miratur laudatque poëtas,

NOTES.

rence. Instead of Livi, meaning Livius Andronicus, in the succeeding lines, Bentley would read Lævi; because he says that Livius Andronicus was too obsolete to be read by the scholars of Orbilius.

Warton.

Ver. 85. Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;] Nothing was less true than this particular. But the whole paragraph has a mixture of irony, and must not altogether be taken for Horace's own judgment, only the common chat of the pretenders to criticism; in some things right, in others, wrong; as he tells us in his

answer:

"Interdum vulgus rectum videt: est ubi peccat." Pope. Ver. 85. How Shadwell hasty,] These lines answer to lines 58, 59, in the original. Dr. Hurd observes, that Menander and his follower, Terence, were not admired by the Roman writers till after the Augustan age. The reason was, "that popular eloquence which continued, in a good degree of vigour, to that time, participating more of the freedom of the old comic banter, and rejecting, as improper to its end, the refinements of the new, insensibly depraved the public taste; which, by degrees only, and not till a studied and cautious declamation had, by the necessary influence of absolute power, succeeded to the liberty of their old oratory, was fully reconciled to the delicacy and strict decorum of Menander's wit." Warton.

Ver. 89. the people's voice is odd;] The capricious levity of popular opinion hath been noted even to a proverb: and yet it is this, which, after all, fixes the fate of authors. This seeningly odd phænomenon I would thus account for: what is usually complimented with the high and reverend appellation of public judgment is, in any single instance, but the repetition or echo, for the most part eagerly catched and strongly reverberated on all sides, of a few leading voices, which have happened to gain

the

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