9 J. Scaliger says, Epistolas, GrÆcorum more, PhocylidÆ atque Theognidis [Horatius] scripsit: prÆceptis philosophiÆ divulsis minimeque inter se cohÆrentibus. And of this Epistle, in particular, he presumes to say, De Arte quÆres quid sentiam. Quid? Equidem quod de Arte sine arte traditÂ. And to the same purpose another great Critic; Non solum antiquorum ?p????a? in moralibus hoc habuere, ut ????????a? non servarent, sed etiam alia de quibuscunque rebus prÆcepta. Sic Epistola Horatii ad Pisones de PoËtic perpetuum ordinem seriemque NULLAM habet; sed ab uno prÆcepto ad aliud transilit, quamvis NULLA sit materiÆ affinitas ad sensum connectendum. [Salmasii Not. in Epictetum et Simplicium, p. 13. Lugd. Bat. 1640.]

10 See Victor. Comm. in Dem. Phaler. p. 73. Florent. 1594.

11 The reader may see a fine speech in the CyropÆdia of Xenophon [l. iv.] where not so much as this is observed.

12 See Robert Stephens’s Fragm. Vet. Latinorum.

13 Sir Philip Sidney.

14 Quel avantage ne peut il [le poËte] pas tirer d’une troupe d’acteurs, qui remplissent sa scene, qui rendent plus sensible la continuitÉ de l’action, et qui la font paroitre VRAISEMBLABLE, puisqu’il n’est pas naturel qu’elle se passe sans temoins. On ne sent que trop le vuide de notre ThÉatre sans choeurs, &c. [Le ThÉatre des Grecs, vol. i. p. 105.]

15 See also to the same purpose P. Corneille’s Exam. sur la MedÉe. If the objection, made by these critics, to the part of the chorus, be, the improbability, as was explained at large in the preceding note, of a slave’s taking the side of virtue against the pleasure of his tyrant, the manifest difference of the two cases will shew it to be without the least foundation. For 1. the chorus in the Medea consists of women, whom compassion and a secret jealousy and indignation at so flagrant an instance of the violated faith of marriage, attach, by the most natural connexion of interests, to the cause and person of the injured queen. In the Antigone, it is composed of old courtiers, devoted, by an habitude of slavery, to the will of a master, assembled, by his express appointment, as creatures of his tyranny, and, prompted, by no strong movements of self-love, to take part against him. 2. In the Antigone, the part of Creon is principal. Every step, in the progress of the play, depends so immediately upon him, that he is almost constantly upon the stage. No reflexions could therefore be made by the chorus, nor any part against him be undertaken, but directly in his presence, and at their own manifest hazard. The very reverse of this is the case in the Medea. Creon is there but a subaltern person—has a very small part assigned him in the conduct of the play—is, in fact, introduced upon the stage but in one single scene. The different situation of the chorus, resulting from hence, gives occasion for the widest difference in their conduct. They may speak their resentments freely. Unawed by the frowns and menaces of their tyrant, they are left at liberty to follow the suggestions of virtue. Nothing here offends against the law of probability, or, in the least, contradicts the reasoning about the chorus in the Antigone.

16 See note on v. 127.

17 For her own sake, as is pleaded, and in obedience to the laws,

which shews, that the other murders were not against the spirit of the laws, whatever became of the letter of them.

18 P. Brumoy, Disc. sur le parall. des Theat. p. 165. Amst. 1732.

19 Imitations of Horace by Thomas Nevile, M. A. Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, 1758.

20 There is a considerable difference in the copies of this ode, as given us in the best editions of AthenÆus and Diogenes Laertius. But the SIXTH verse is, in all of them, so inexplicable, in respect of the measure, the construction, and the sense, that I have no doubt of its being extremely corrupt. In such a case one may be indulged in making conjectures. And the following one, by a learned person, exactly skilled in the proprieties as well as elegancies of the Greek language, is so reasonable, that I had almost ventured to give it a place in the text.

The Poet had been celebrating v. 3. the divine form of virtue; which inspired the Grecian youth with an invincible courage and contempt of danger. It was natural therefore to conclude his panegyric with some such Epiphonema as this: “Such a passion do’st thou kindle up in the minds of men!”

To justify this passion, he next turns to the fruits, or advantages which virtue yields; which, he tells us, are more excellent than those we receive from any other possession, whether of wealth, nobility, or ease, the three great idols of mankind. Something like this we collect from the obscure glimmerings of sense that occur to us from the common reading,

But it is plain, then, that a very material word must have dropt out of the first part of the line, and that there is an evident corruption in the last. In a word, the whole passage may be reformed thus,

It need not be observed how easily ?a?p?? ????S is changed into ?a?p?? F????S: And as to the restored word ???ta, besides the necessity of it to complete the sense, it exactly suits with s??? te p????? in v. 12. Lastly, the measure will now sufficiently justify itself to the learned reader.

21 Agite, fugite, quatite, Satyri: A verse cited from one of these Latin satyrs by Marius Victorinus.

22 This, I think, must be the interpretation of sensibus celebrem, supposing it to be the true reading. But a learned critic has shewn with great appearance of reason, that the text is corrupt and should be reformed into sensibus CELEREM. According to which reading the encomium here past on Pomponius must be understood of his Wit, and not the gravity of his moral Sentences. Either way his title to the honour of Invention is just the same.—See a Specimen of a new Edition of Paterculus in Bibliotheque Britannique, Juillet, &c. 1736.

23 In the library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

24 Mr. Hume, Of Simplicity and Refinement.

25 And no wonder, when, as Suetonius tells us, the emperor himself was so delighted with the old comedy. [c. 89.]

26 This is further confirmed from Lucian, who, in the description of a splendid feast in his ???????O?, and in the Symposium of his ????T??, brings in the G??O??????? as necessary attendants on the entertainment.—But the reader will not take what is said of the fine satyr of Xenophon’s Symposium, who hath not observed, that this sort of compositions, which were in great credit with the ancients, are of the nature of dramas, ?T???? ??G??, as Aristotle would call them. In which the dialogists, who are real personages as in the old comedy, give a lively, and sometimes exaggerated expression of their own characters. Under this idea of a Symposium we are prepared to expect bad characters as well as good. Nothing in the kind of composition itself confined the writer to the latter; and the decorum of a festal conversation, which, in a republic especially, would have a mixture of satyr in it, seemed to demand the former. We see then the undoubted purpose of Xenophon in the persons of his JESTER and Syracusian; and of Plato, in those of Aristophanes and some others. Where we may further take notice, that, to prevent the abuse and misconstruction, to which these personated discourses are ever liable, Socrates is brought in to correct the looseness of them, in both dialogues, and in some measure doth the office of the dramatic chorus, BONIS FAVENDI. But it is the less strange that the moderns have not apprehended the genius of these Symposia, when AthenÆus, who professedly criticises them, and one would think, had a better opportunity of knowing their real character, hath betrayed the grossest ignorance about them.—I can but just hint these things, which might afford curious matter for a dissertation. But enough is said to let the intelligent reader into the true secret of these convivial dialogues, and to explane the ground of the encomium here passed upon one of them.

27 “L’Étude Égale des poËtes de diffÉrens tems À plaire À leurs spectateurs, a encore influÉ dans la maniere de peindre les characters. Ceux qui paroissent sur la scene Angloise, Espagnole, FranÇoise, sont plus Anglois, Espagnols, ou FranÇois que Grecs ou Romains, en un mot que ce qu’ils doivent Être. Il ne faut qu’en peu discernement pour s’appercevoir que nos CÉsars et nos Achilles, en gardant mÊme une partie de leur caractere primitif, prennent droit de naturalitÉ dans le paÏs oÙ ils sont transplantez, semblables À ces portraits, qui sortent de la main d’un peintre Flamand, Italien, ou FranÇois, et qui portent l’empreinte du paÏs. On veut plaire À sa nation, et rien ne plait tant que la resemblance de manieres et de genie.” [P. Brumoy, vol. i. p. 200.]

28 Dionys. Halicarn Ep. ad C. Pomp. p. 205. Edit. Huds.

29 In conformity with the Antique. Nec enim Phidias, cum faceret Jovis formam aut MinervÆ, contemplabatur aliquem e quo similitudinem duceret: sed ipsius in mente incidebat species pulchritudinis eximia quÆdam, quam intuens in eaque defixus ad illius similitudinem artem et manum dirigebat [Cic. Orat. 2.]

30 Sir William Temple.

31 ?O?.

32 Pope’s Works, vol. V. p. 244. 8^vo.

33 Quinctilian, lib. xi. c. 1.

34 Te? ?????t? ?p?????a?te?. Though, to complete the farce, it was with the greatest shyness and reluctance, that the humility of these lords of the universe could permit itself to accept the ensigns of deity, as the court-historians of those times are forward to inform us. An affectation, which was thought to sit so well upon them, that we find it afterwards practised, in the absurdest and most impudent manner, by the worst of their successors.

35 See a learned and accurate dissertation on the subject in Hist. de l’acad. des inscr. &c. tom. i.

36 Div. Leg. vol. i. B. ii. S. 4.

37 In these lines,

Which I suspect not to have been from the hand of Virgil. And,

I. On account of some peculiarities in the expression.

1. Accingar is of frequent use in the best authors, to denote a readiness and resolution to do any thing; but as joined with an infinitive mood, accingar dicere, I do not remember to have ever seen it. ’Tis often used by Virgil, but, if the several places be consulted, it will always be found with an accusative and preposition, expressed, or understood, as magicas accingier artes, or with an accusative and dative, as accingere se praedae, or lastly, with an ablative, expressing the instrument, as accingor ferro. La Cerda, in his notes upon the place, seemed sensible of the objection, and therefore wrote, Graeca locutio: the common, but paltry, shift of learned critics, when they determine, at any rate, to support an ancient reading.

2. Ardentes pugnas, burning battles, sounds well enough to a modern ear, but I much doubt, if it would have passed in the times of Virgil. At least, I recollect no such expression in all his works; ardens being constantly joined to a word, denoting a substance of apparent light, heat, or flame, to which the allusion is easy, as ardentes gladios, ardentes oculos, campos armis sublimibus ardentes, and, by an easy metaphor, ardentes hostes, but no where, that I can find, to so abstract a notion, as that of fight. It seems to be to avoid this difficulty, that some have chosen to read ardentis, in the genitive, which yet Servius rejects as of no authority.

3. But the most glaring note of illegitimacy is in the line,

It has puzzled all the commentators from old Servius down to the learned Mr. Martyn, to give any tolerable account of the poet’s choice of Tithonus, from whom to derive the ancestry of Augustus, rather than Anchises, or Assaracus, who were not only more famous, but in the direct line. The pretences of any or all of them are too frivolous to make it necessary to spend a thought about them. The instance stands single in antiquity: much less is there any thing like it to be found in the Augustan poets.

II. But the phraseology of these lines is the least of my objection. Were it ever so accurate, there is besides, on the first view, a manifest absurdity in the subject-matter of them. For would any writer, of but common skill in the art of composition, close a long and elaborate allegory, the principal grace of which consists in its very mystery, with a cold, and formal explanation of it? Or would he pay so poor a compliment to his patron, as to suppose his sagacity wanted the assistance of this additional triplet to lead him into the true meaning? Nothing can be more abhorrent from the usual address and artifice of Virgil’s manner. Or,

III. Were the subject-matter itself passable, yet, how, in defiance of all the laws of disposition, came it to be forced in here? Let the reader turn to the passage, and he will soon perceive, that this could never be the place for it. The allegory being concluded, the poet returns to his subject, which is proposed in the six following lines:

Would now any one expect, that the poet, after having conducted the reader, thus respectfully, to the very threshold of his subject, should immediately run away again to the point, from which he had set out, and this on so needless an errand, as the letting him into the secret of his allegory?

But this inserted triplet agrees as ill with what follows, as with what precedes it. For how abrupt is the transition, and unlike the delicate connexion, so studiously contrived by the Augustan poets, from

to

When omit but these interpolated lines, and see how gracefully, and by how natural a succession of ideas, the poet slides into the main of his subject.—

On the whole, I have not the least doubt, that the lines before us are the spurious offspring of some later poet; if indeed the writer of them deserve that name; for, whoever he was, he is so far from partaking of the original spirit of Virgil, that, at most he appears to have been but a servile and paltry mimic of Ovid; from the opening of whose Metamorphosis the design was clearly taken. The turn of the thought is evidently the same in both, and even the expression. Mutatas dicere formas is echoed by ardentes dicere pugnas: dicere fert animus, is, by an affected improvement, accingar dicere: and Tithoni prim ab origine is almost literally the same as primÂque ab origine mundi. For the insertion of these lines in this place, I leave it to the curious to conjecture of it, as they may: but in the mean time, must esteem the office of the true critic to be so far resembling that of the poet himself, as, within some proper limitations, to justify the honest liberty here taken.

38 [B. ix. v. 641.]

39 Notes on the story of PhaËton. [v. 23.]

40 Jacobi Philippi D’ Orville Animadversiones in Charit. Aphrod. lib. iv. c. 4.

41 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 325.

42 D. L. vol. ii. p. 644.

43 At inspiciamus porrÒ, quid alii, quibus correctius sapit, de hoc loquendi modo CENSUERINT. Agnoscunt enim, etc. p. 299.

44 Ibid.

45 v. 437.

46 Iliad, G. 327.

47 N. D. ii. 64.

48 Pag. 397.

49 Inst. Orat. xi. 3.

50 There having been such wretches, as the Painter Plutarch speaks of—?a??ef????, ?????st??? ????a? ???a???? p??? ??d?a?. De aud. Poet.

51 See an essay on the Composition of the Antients, by J. Geddes, Esq.

52 Sir Philip Sidney.

53 Diss. III. vol. ii.