most of them, a Varius, a Horace, a Virgil, a Pollio, a Livy, were not, could not, dared not, be that which they would have been, had the champions of liberty succeeded in restoring the commonwealth, or, since the antient foundation was crushed beneath the enormous weight of its superstruc+ ture, in raising another temple of liberty on new columns, strong enough to support it perhaps as many centuries as the old one had stood.

In the mean time, the few excel lent characters who had seen and survived the republic, and who as it were fell to the lot of the future Augustus, as the chief valuables of the spoil of the vanquished liberty of his country, composed the principal ornaments of his reign. They were beneficial to their contemporaries by what they contributed to the happy change that succeeded in their opinions and manners; and are perhaps the real cause that the world, by a sort of fascination, is ever and anon forgetting that the triumvir Octavius Cæsar, and Augustus the father of the country, are - one and the same person.

The pleasure that all men of taste and discernment found in the works of these poets; the celebrity of their names, which, although a mere echo of the applause of the few, from the mouths of the fond sequacious multitude, always, however, appears an enviable distinction; and especially the favour and esteem in which they were seen to be held by the great, and by Augustus himself, - all this soon procured them an infinite number of imitators and rivals of various

degrees of mediocrity or vileness. With the multitude of poets, the multitude of readers also increased, and with both the multitude of critics and judges. Every one either made verses himself, or at least took upon him to pass decretory sentences, on the poets and their works. The newly - regenerated Cæsarian Rome swarmed with idle people, to whom every method of killing time was wel come; the luxury of the opulent and the indigence of the poor set all talents in motion; and because riches and taste but seldom go together, so even the most incompetent pretenders to genius and wit were rarely in want of patrons and encomiasts.

Witlings and sciolists, bardlings and

puny readers, have always been cor relates, reciprocally giving and accepting the cue, and mutually fond of each other, and however violent, for various reasons, the intestine jars and broils in the kingdom of dullness may be, yet there is always somewhat that on every occasion unites them under one banner, against the common enemy. Thence the various coteries and bureaux d'esprit in which parties were formed for or against a celebrated character; and where consultations were held how much or how little value should be. set upon a new publication; where wretched authors could never be in want of means for gaining admirers and patrons, and only the good, who thought such props unnecessary, saw themselves unbefriended, unnoticed, and delivered up to the ignorant or malicious censure of conceited critics, who held them in contempt, or of paltry rivals, who thought to eclipse them.

It is generally imagined, that the contemporaries of a writer, whose worth and reputation have been settled by a long succession of ages, formed the same judgment of him as we do. The present Epistle may serve to convince us of the contrary, at least as far as our Poet is con cerned. It was in that respect 1800 years ago at Rome, exactly as it is with us and - every where else. Horace was in high repute, but had few literary friends. His name was known to every one, his merit only to the few who themselves were imeritorious in his sight. Those by whom perhaps he was the most diligently read, i. e. they who the most impur dently stole from him, acted in pub lic as though there had been no such person at all in the world, as Horace. The critics by profession wreaked their vengeance upon him for not taking any notice of them, in oblique verdicts. The smatterers in litera ture affected to shew their consc quence by a shrug of the shoulders whenever they heard him commended by one or another in proper terms of respect, giving to understand that much was to be said on that matter. The servile herd of imitators would fain have reduced him to their level there is no such great art, said they, in making odes like Horace; and the best of them are only imitations of

the

the Greek. The dilettanti were at a loss to find in his dithyrambicks the sublimity of Pindar, in his moral sentiments the fire of Sappho, in his heroical odes the grace and ease of Anacreou; and they were not ashamed to prefer the rugged and gossiping satires of Lucilius to his Sermones. In general they seem to have availed themselves of the circumstance, that the beauties of his performances were for the most part too refined for making impression on the great multi-, tude, or for being properly understood by them. The ignorance, the reader is always the safe-conduct of an ignorant or malevolent censor; and nothing is easier than to make the most iniquitous judgment satisfactory to a great number of people. To some he was too bitter in his satires, to others he had not nerve enough; such verses, said they, one might make a thousand in a day *. Others could not comprehend the light, humourous, and ironical tone of his writings; they did not always properly know what he would be at; his salt was too fine for their palates: in short, Horace, with all his genius, wit, and taste, was not a man for the Roman public; and although it inight be the fashion to have read him, yet of all the poets of his time, there was scarcely one - less understood.

Traces of all this are apparent in several places both of his Sermones and Epistles; and he himself was so persuaded uaded of it, that he raises no pretension at all to the approbation of the multitude, and jocosely compares himself with the dancer Arbuscula, who, on being hissed by the populace, consoled herself however that the equestrians had clapped hert. But even that playful style in which he spoke of his own poetry, and of the slight value he set upon it, was offensive to many. One while they could not believe him to be in earnest, and gave him to understand that he only spoke so in order to be more

sort.

Horace was too fond of his ease, and was too well acquainted with the waspish race of witlings and poetasters, to engage with them in a contest, in which a man is sure of being bespattered, whether he loses or wins. But as he had it now in contemplation to publish a book of Epistles, he determined not to let that opportunity escape of saying a word or two to the world respecting himself, respecting his imitators, respecting those who censured and envied him, and touching the reason why the publick, notwithstanding the avidity with which his works were asked for and read, at the same time spoke of them with so much indifference, and discovered so little good will towards the author. And to whom could he with greater propriety address an Epistle in which he disburdens his heart of its cares on that point, than to the first friend of his Muse, the man to whom he was beholden for the calm prosperity of his life, who knew him better than any other, and whose own poet he is pleased to call himself in his seventh Epistle?

Such is the origin of this third Epistle to Mæcenas, in which, under the appearance of a sedate familiar con

* Paupertas impulit audax ut versus facerem. Epist, ii. 2. ver. 51.

+ Me pedibus delectat claudere verba. Sat. ii. 1. ver. 28.

‡ Ne faciam, inquis, omnino versus peream malè, si non optimum erat. Ibid.

versation with his potent friend, he solves the aforesaid problem in a way certainly not very flattering to the gentlemen whose favour he knows he may purchase by a dinner or a threadbare gown, but which otherwise must satisfy every dispassionate mind. The humour with which he does it, particularly the turn of expression he adopts to lead Mæcenas imperceptibly to what he especially intends to say, and the excellent key in which the whole letter is pitched, will carry with them their own commendation to the reader of taste. Pity only that the terse brevity, which is a main beauty of the original, must in every translation be sacrificed to perspicuity. Prisco si credis, Mecenas docte, Cratino.] Cratinus, one of the first who gave a better form to the rude farces of Thespis, and produced from them what at Athens went under the name of the old comedy, had a very personal reason for his assertion, that no water-drinker could be a good poet; for he was so zealous a votary of the rosy god, that he might have been taken for old Silenus himself; and proceeded such lengths in intemperance, that his mattresses* were quoted proverbially in a manner not very honourable to his urbanity. Aristophanes introduces them in his Knights for a bon moł, which must have excited a violent agitation of the diaphragm in the Athenian parterre, as most of the audience must have personally known Cratinus. Έι σε μη μισω, says the enraged Cleon to Argoracritus. γενοίμην εν Κραλιν κωδιων! Act. i. scene 3. If I do not hate thee, (instead of saying, Let me be hanged, or somewhat of that sort) may I lie in Cratinus's fleece ! no less comic, but more delicate stroke at this poet's extravagant fondness for wine, may be seen in the Treaty of Peace of the Grecian Moliere.

A

Mercury. And Cratinus, the sage,

what is become of him?

Trygœus. During the attack of the Laconest he died.

Mercury. But of what? ry.c Tryg. Of grief; his heart burst at seeing a pitcher of wine broke. To conclude, the entire works of

* Κωδιαι, properly sheep-skins, on which at Athens people of that stamp used to lie instead of a pillow. + Lacedemonians.

this antient comic poet (of which only some insignificant fragments remain) including the passage to which Horace here alludes, are all lost: an anonymus, however, has preserved them in a pretty epigram, which, not being able to find in Brunk's collection, the reader will not be displeased to see transcribed from Bentley: Οινος τοι χαριενλι πελει ταχυς ἱππος αοιδὼς Ύδωρ δε πινων χρησον εδεν αν τεκοις. Ταυΐ' ελεγεν, Διονυσε, και επνεεν εχ ̓ ένος

ασκε

ΚΡΑΤΙΝΟΣ, αλλα παντος ωδοδως πιθε. Τοιγαρλι σεφανων δομος εβρυεν, ειχε δε κιτλω Μεἶωπον, οἱα και σύ, κεκροκωμενον.:

Wine is to the jovial bard the real Pegasus: he who drinks water will never produce any thing good. Thus spoke Cratinus, o Bacchus, not smelling of only one bottle, but reeking with the effluvia of a whole cask. Therefore his house is grown over with wreaths, and his forehead, like thine, is tinged yellow with ivy.

Ut malè sanos adscripsit Liber Satyris Faunisque poëtas.] Among the Greeks all kinds of enthusiasm, therefore also the poetical, was under the influence of the god of wine. Poets who are not ambitious of being in such good company as satyrs and fauns, have therefore every reason to insist on the distinction between fanaticism and enthusiasm, whatever Democritus may object to it.

Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus.) By the epithets he always bestows upon wine, whenever he mentions it, and which are always derived either from its invigorating, enrapturing, exhilarating virtue, or from its brilliant colour.

Forum, putealque Libonis mandabo siccis, &c.] Whoever should wish to consult any philologer or antiquary anterior to Salmasius, respecting this puteal of Libo, we can assure him from experience, that he will reap nothing from it but confusion and error. Salmasius is the first who explained the matter *, by shewing, that the Puteal in Comitio (hard by the Curia, the sacred fig-tree, and the statue of Attius Navius) under which the famous razor, wherewith that augur, to the confusion of the unbelieving king Tarquinius Priscus, cut a grindstone in two, lay buried, together with the

said grindstone *, and the Puteal Libonis, of which Horace speaks, are two totally different things. For, according to the information of the grammarian Festus+, Libo's Puteal stood indeed on the Forum Romanum as well as that, but at a great distance from it, not wide from the porch of Minerva's temple. As far as we can collect from the short, rather indistinct account of Festus, the spot where this Putcal stood, had antiently been a sacellum, i. e. an inclosed sacred place, a chapel; but, as it should seem, struck and injured by lightning, and by lapse of time had completely fallen into ruins. The Romans had an extraordinary religious veneration for places that had been struck by lightning; it was sacrilegious to enter such a place, to build upon it, or to perform anything human there. Once then (Festus says not when it happened) that the Senate commissioned Scribonius Libo to visit all the places struck by lightning, and to provide them with what was wanting; he came likewise to this; and, because the place had already in former times been sacred, and was become doubly so by the stroke of lightning, he erected thereupon a Puteal, that is, a sort of structure like the wall of a well, without a roof, in the shape of an altar. This now from that time forward was called the Puteal of Libo, or Libo's Well, and in the form of an altar it even appears on some coins which bear the name Libo, and are to be seen engraved in all the well-known numismatic collections, as also in Nardini's Roma Antiqua, and in the third volume of Memoir. de Litterat. But, as there were several Scribonius Libos who filled public offices at Rome, from L. Scribonius Libo, who in the year 560 was Edilis Curulis, and in 562 Prætor, to the Libo of the same name who in the year 720 obtained the Consulate; the question is, which of them it was after whom the said Puteal was named. On this point, however, the learned who have written upon the subject leave us in the dark. Finally, it is to be re

* Cio de Divinat. lib. i. cap. 17. Dionys. Halicara. Antiqu. Rom. lib. iv. p. 204, edit. Sylb.

↑ De Verbor. Signif lib, xvii. p. 487.

marked, that (as Saumaise, luc. cit. has proved) the fancratores, i. e. the gentlemen who lend money upon interest, assembled in the district of this Puteal: and the meaning of the verse that has given rise to this illustration is therefore as follows: the water-drinkers may addict themselves to the dry, serious, and sober affairs that are transacted in the Forum and at Libo's Puteal. That is their business; but poetry, which requires quite another flow of animal spirits, they should let alone.

Hoc simul edixit.] The mostlearned Commentators on our Poet have been strangely puzzled how to answer the question, who was then the poetical Prætor that issued this edict? We find a long review of them, and some (quod pace tantorum virorum dixerim!) are miserable hypotheses indeed, in Bentley's edition, who gives them in return hard nuts to crack. He himself is of opinion, with Torrentius, that we ought to read edixi, and in support of it appeals to four OF five manuscripts, where the transcribers bers have omitted the t. Cruquius, on the contrary, reads it with the generality edixit, and supposes it to be spoken of Ennius. In this he is followed by Baxter, who has a nicer scent for the wit and humour of our Bard than all who went before him. Gessner, on the other hand, sides with Bentley, whose principal argument is; Ennius had been dead. and buried above a hundred years before Libo's Puteal was in existence. It would have been friendly in him if he had told us how he came to know this; for that he thought himself sure of his point, is evident from the contemptuous sneer with which he reproves Torrentius and his adherents for having so scandalously transgressed (turpiter peccûsse). However the true state of the case may be, non nostrum est tantas componere lites! But forasmuch as an illustrator should have an opinion, I simply adhere to the common reading, and think with Cruquius and Baxter, that Horace puts this humourous edict in the mouth of dan Ennius - and that is my belief, and (to speak with Addison's Vellum) the reasons thereof are threefold: Id: -first, because in the nature of coherence it is the most natural signification, which must at the first glance occur to every

man; secondly, because Horace, even in his jokes, is not wont to lose his sense of propriety, and therefore certainly not even in sport took upon him to issue edicts from Parnassus. Bentley, indeed, thinks in the following

- quod si

Pallerem casu, biberent exsangue

cuminum,

he perceives something to his purpose; but exactly in the poco più and poco meno, whereby the Horaces have so much and the Bentleys so little meaning, lies the difference. Thirdly and lastly, because, even on the supposition that in Ennius's time, that is, in the sixth century of the city of Rome, Libo's Puteal was not yet in being, Horace in a jocular edict, which he puts into the mouth of the arbiter and patriarch of the Roman poets, scarcely thought it worth being more scrupulous about an anachronism of this kind, than Virgil was concerning one of much greater moment in his Æneis.

Rupit Iarbitam Timagenis æmula lingua, &c.] Here, likewise, some expositors look for more finesse than probably Horace ever intended. The scholiast of Cruquius helps us to the track which enables us to form a just apprehension of the anecdote to which Horace alludes. In all likelihood the story was already known to Mæcenas, and therefore the poet had no need to be so circumstantial upon it, as if he had been writing for us. Propriety in declaiming was at that time (and I wish it were likewise so with us) deemed a very necessary qualification in a man of education and polished manners; and Rome swarmed with Græculis, who gave lessons in that elegant accomplishment. Among them the rhetor Timagenes was one of the most esteemed; and, as it appears, was frequently invited to entertamments, for the sake of hearing him give specimens of his skill in the art. A certain Mauritanian bably recently become a Roman citinamed Cordus *, who was present on one such occasion, was so ravished with the applause which Timagenes had acquired (as the people of his country easily take fire, and

zen

are apt to be seized with the most violent fits of jealousy) that he could not possibly refrain from likewise giving a proof on the spot, that he, notwithstanding his Mauritanian extraction, would yield the palm to none in those qualifications which were proper to a polite Roman. Accordingly he raised his voice, and, determined as he was to outdo the Greek, strained himself beyond his natural powers, and with such imprudence, that he either burst a bloodvessel or brought on a rupture - for rupit may here, I conceive, signify both.

Numeros animosque secutus Archilochi, &c.] Archilochus is mentioned by Plutarch as the inventor of several kinds of verse, and particularly that which is called the epodet, and in which Horace made his first lyric essays. He flourished somewhere betwixt the xvth and xxxth olympiad, and was no less celebrated on account of his talent for lyric poetry, than decried for the ill use he frequently made of his wit, the shafts of which were so pointed, or rather so enves nomed, that he drove to desperation those whom he selected for the butt of it. Such, at least, was the fate of a certain Lycambes, whose daugh ter Cleobule he courted. The father at first consented to the match. Afterwards, however, he altered his mind, and gave the maid to another. Archilochus revenged this affront upon the whole family by such cruel iambics, that Lycambes, Cleobule, and her two sisters, resolved not to survive the disgrace which he thus drew upon them, and all four hanged themselves unless the veracious Greeks have exaggerated the account. The pains which Horace takes throughout this passage to defend himself against the reproach of imitation, and to vindicate his originality amongst the Latin poets, me Horace had,

* Horace ludicrously calls him an Iarbite, that is, a descendant of the Moorish king larbas, who makes his appearance in Virgil's Æneis

as it appears (and as nothing less was to be expected) a number of imitators or ape-like mimics of that species which he calls serva pecora; who, not content with inditing lyris poems, as he had shewn them how,

† See the xxviiith note of M. Burette to Plutarch's dissertation concerning music, in the xivth volume of Memoir. de Litterat. p. 379, & seqq.