The works of Horace : with English notes, critical and ... - Cristo Raul

EXPLANATOEY NOTES. EPISTLE TO THE PISOS. 643
It is worthy of observation, that in the satirical picture of a frantic bard,
with which Horace conolndes his epistle, he not only runs counter to whal
might be expected as a corollarj- of an Essay on the Art of Poetz^ bw
contradicts his own usual practice and sentiments. In his epistle to Augustus,
instead of stigmatizing the lore of verse as an abominable phrensy,
he calls it a slight madness (Zesis hac insania), and descants on its good
effects [quantas virtutes habeai, sic collige /). In another epistle, speak-
- ing of himself, and hia attachment to poetry, he says,
* Ubi quid datur oiif
niudo chartis .• hoc est tnediocribus illis
Ex vitiis imum,' &c.
All which, and several other passages in his works, almost demonstrate
that it was not without a particular purpose in view that he dwelt so
forcibly on the description of a man resolved
' in spite
Of nature and his stars to write.'
Various passages of this work of Horace have been imitated in Vida's
Poeticorum, in the Duke ofBuckingham's Essay on Poetryt in Koscommon
On Translated Verse, in Pope's Essay on Criticism, and in Boileau's
Art Poeiiq'oe. The plan, however, of this last production is more
closely formed than any of the others on the model of Horace's Epistle.
Like the first division of the Ars Poetica, it commences with some gen-
eral rules and introductory principles. The second book touches on elegiac
and lyric poetry, which are not only cursorily referred to by Horace,
but are introduced by him in that part of his epistle which corresponds to
this portion of the present work. The third, which is the most important,
and by much the longest of the piece, chiefly treats, in the manner of
Horace, of dramatic poetry ; and the concluding book is formed on the last
section of the Bpistle to the Fisos, the author, however, omitting the description
of the frantic bard, and terminating his critical work with a pane-
gyric on his sovereign. Of all the modem Arts of Poetry, Boileau's is the
best. It is remarkable for the brevity of its precepts, the esactness of its
method, the perspicacity of the remarks, the propriety of the metaphors
and it proved of the utmost utility to his own nation, in diffusing a juat
mode of thinking and writing, in banishing every species of false wit, and
^troducing a pure taste for the simplicity of the ancients. Boileau, at
the conclusion of his last book, avows, and glories, as it were, in the charge,
that his work is founded on that of Horace.
' Four moi, qui jusqu'ici nourri dans la Satire,
N'ose encore manier la Trompette et la Lyre
Vous me venez pourtant, dans ce champ glorious
Vous ofiir ces lemons, que ma Muse au Famasse,
Rapporta, jeune encore, du commerce d' Horace.'
1-18. 1. Humano capiti eervicem pictor equinam. Sec. The epistle be-
gins with the general and fundamental precept of preserving a unity in
the subject and disposition of every piece. A poet who neglects this
leading principle, and produces a wdtk, the several parts of which have
no just relation to each other or to one grand whole, is compared to a
{iainter who puts on canvass a form of heterogeneous character, its mem-
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