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

664 EXPLANATORY NOTES. EPISTLE TO THE PlbOH.
so small a portion of poetical merit, and if one be without it he can bardlj
lay claim to the appellation of poet, - For suppose I think all eyes will ba
turned to any faults that I may commit in the structure of my verses, and
am therefore on my guard against en-ors of this kind, what have I gained
by so doing ? I have only avoided censure, not merited praise.—265. Vt
omnes visuros peccata putem mea. " Suppose I think that every one will
see whatever faults I may commit." Ut putem is equivalent here to/ac
•' meputare.—268. Exemplaria Oresca. The Grecian models."
271j 273. 271. Nimiitm patienter utrumque, &c. It has been thought
strange, observes Hurd, that Horace should pass so severe a censure on
the wit of Plautus, which yet appeared to Cicero so admirable that he
speaks of it (De Off., i., 29) as elegans, urbanum, ingeniosum, facetum.
Nor can it be said that this difference of judgment was owing to the improved
delicacy of the taste for wit in the Augustan age, since it does not
appear that Horace's own jokes, when he attempts to divert us in this
way, are at all better than Cicero's. The common answer, so far as it
respects the poet, is, I believe, the true one : that, endeavoring to beat
down the excessive veneration of the elder Roman poets, and, among the
rest, of Plautus, he censures, without reserve, every the least defect in his
writings, though in general he agreed with Cicero in admiring him.—272.
Si modo ego et vos^ &c. "If you and I but know how to distinguish »
coarse joke from a smart sally of wit, and understand the proper cadence
of a verse by the aid of our fingers and ear." The allusion in digitis is to
the use made of the fingers in measuring the quantity of the verse.
275-280. 275. Ignotum tragicee genus, &c. " Thespis is said to have
invented a species of tragedy before unknown to the Greeks." With ignotum
supply antehac. Horace does not mean to say that tragedy ac
tually commenced with Thespis, but that he was the author of a new and
important step in the progress of the drama. The whole of this, however,
has been shown to be an eiTor, arising from the confounding, by those
whom Horace follows, of the rpaycpdla of Thespis with the KUfioi of Susarion,
to which the moving from place to place in carts, and the smearing
of che faces of the actors with wine-lees properly belonged. Thespis
merely placed his actor upon a kind of table (kXeS^), which was thus the
predecessor of the stage, and this was done in order that, as the chorus
stood upon the steps of the thymele^ or altar of Bacchus, the actor might
address them from an equal elevation. This standing-place of Thespis
was confounded subsequently with the wagon of Susarion. [Theatre of
the Greeks^ p. 42, 4th ed.)—276. Et plaustris vexisse poemata, &c. The
order of construction is, et vexisse plaustris histriones, qui, peruncti ora
fcecibus, canerent agerentque poemata ejus.—277. Perujicti fescibus ora.
In the earlier age of tragedy, observes Blomfield, the actors smeared their
faces either with the lees of wine, or with a kind of paint called parpa-
Xelov. Different actors invented different masks. Who first introduced
them iuto comedy is unknown ; but ^schylus first used them in tragedy.
—278. Post hunc personm^ &c. *' After him, ^scbylus, the inventor of
the mask and graceful robe, both spread a stage upon beams of moderate
size, and taught the actor to speak in lofty strain, and tread majestic in
the buskin." Horace here bnefly alludes to the improvements brought in
by ^schylus, namely, 1. Themask, or head-piece, so constructed as ti»