Who to a friend his faults can freely show, Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfin'd; A knowledge both of books and human kind; 640 NOTES. 645 is directly contrary to Pope's own opinion. But it may be added, that Dr. Hurd was not the first who entertained this idea. A French writer, M. de Brueys, gave a paraphrase on this epistle of Horace, in 1683, totally grounded on this supposition. If my partiality to my lamented friend Mr. Colman does not mislead me, I should think his account of the matter the most judicious of any yet published. He conceives that the elder Piso had written or meditated a poetical work, probably a tragedy; and had communicated his piece, in confidence, to Horace; but Horace, either disapproving of the work, or doubting of the poetical faculties of the elder Piso, or both, wished to dissuade him from all thoughts of publication. With this view he wrote his epistle, addressing it with a courtliness and delicacy, perfectly agreeable to his acknowledged character, indifferently to the whole family, the father and his two sons. Epistle to the Pisos, with Notes by George Colman, 4to. 1783, p. 6. Warton. Ver. 642. with reason on his side?] Not only on his side, but in actual employment. The Critic makes but a mean figure, who, when he has found out the beauties of his author, contents himself with shewing them to the world in only empty exclamations. His office is to explain their nature, shew from whence they arise, and what effects they produce; or in the better and fuller expression of the Poet, "To teach the world with reason to admire." Warburton. Ver. 645. The mighty Stagirite] A noble and just character of the He steer'd securely, and discover'd far, NOTES. the first and the best of critics! Whoever surveys the variety and perfection of his productions, all delivered in the chastest style, in the clearest order, and the most pregnant brevity, is amazed at the immensity of his genius. His logic, however at present neglected for those rudiments and verbose systems which took their rise from Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, is a mighty effort of the mind; in which are discovered the principal sources of the art of reasoning, and the dependencies of one thought on another; and where, by the different combinations he hath made of all the forms the understanding can assume in reasoning, which he hath traced for it, he hath so closely confined it, that it cannot depart from them, without arguing inconsequentially. His Physics contain many useful observations, particularly his History of Animals, which Buffon highly praises; to assist him in which, Alexander gave orders, that creatures of different climates and countries should, at a great expense, be brought to him, to pass under his inspection. His Morals are, perhaps, the purest system of antiquity. His Politics are a most valuable monument of the civil wisdom of the ancients; as they preserve to us the description of several governments, and particularly of Crete and Carthage, that otherwise would have been unknown. But of all his compositions, his Rhetoric and Poetics are most excellent. No writer has shewn a greater penetration into the recesses of the human heart, than this VARIATIONS. Between ver. 646 and 649. I have found the following lines, since supprest by the author: That bold Columbus of the realms of wit, Led by the Light of the Mæonian Star, A boundless empire, and that own'd no sway. Poets, &c. VOL. III. K Warburton. 650 Poets, a race long unconfin'd, and free, NOTES. this philosopher, in the second book of his Rhetoric; where he treats of the different manners and passions that distinguish each different age and condition of man; and from whence Horace plainly took his famous description in the Art of Poetry (ver. 157). La Bruyere, La Rochefoucault, and Montaigne himself, are not to be compared to him in this respect. No succeeding writer on eloquence, not even Tully, has added any thing new or important on this subject. His Poetics, which, I suppose, are here by Pope chiefly referred to, seem to have been written for the use of that prince, with whose education Aristotle was honoured, to give him a just taste in reading Homer and the tragedians; to judge properly of which, was then thought no unnecessary accomplishment in the character of a prince. To attempt to understand poetry without having diligently digested this treatise, would be as absurd and impossible, as to pretend to a skill in geometry without having studied Euclid. The fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters, wherein he has pointed out the properest methods of exciting terror and pity, convince us, that he was intimately acquainted with those objects which most forcibly affect the heart. The prime excellence of this precious treatise is the scholastic precision, and philosophical closeness, with which the subject is handled, without any address to the passions, or imagination. It is to be lamented, that the part of the Poetics in which he had given precepts for comedy, did not likewise descend to posterity. Warton. Ver. 652. Who conquer'd nature, &c.] By this we must not understand physical nature, but moral. The force of the observation consists in giving it this sense. The Poet not only uses the word Nature, for human nature, throughout this poem; but also, where in the beginning of it, he lays down the principles of the arts he treats of, he makes the knowledge of human nature the foundation of all Criticism and Poetry. Nor is the observation less true than apposite. For Aristotle's natural inquiries were superficial and ill made, though extensive. But his logical and moral works are supremely Horace still charms with graceful negligence, And without method talks us into sense. Will, like a friend, familiarly convey The truest notions in the easiest way. 655 He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit, Yet judg'd with coolness, tho' he sung with fire; They judge with fury, but they write with flegm: NOTES. 665 supremely excellent. In his moral, he has unfolded the human mind, and laid open all the recesses of the heart and understanding ; and in his logical, he has not only conquered nature, but by his Categories, has kept her in tenfold chains; not as dulness kept the muses in the Dunciad, to silence them; but as Aristaus held Proteus in Virgil, to deliver oracles. Warburton. Ver. 652. Who conquer'd] By conquering nature, our Poet certainly meant, was a perfect master of all natural philosophy, as far as it was then understood; in his own manuscript lines quoted above, he uses the expression in the very same sense; Warton. He, when all nature was subdu'd before. Ver. 665. See Dionysius, &c.] In the first of these lines, on which the other depends, the peculiar excellence of this Critic, and indeed the most material and useful part of a Critic's office, is touched upon who, like the refiner, purifies the rich ore of an original writer; for such a one busied in creating, often neglects to separate and refine the mass; pouring out his riches rather in bullion than in sterling. Warburton. P. Ver. 665. See Dionysius] Of Halicarnassus. These prosaic lines, this spiritless eulogy, are much below the merit of the critic whom they are intended to celebrate. Pope Fancy and art in gay Petronius please, The scholar's learning, with the courtier's ease. NOTES. seems here rather to have considered Dionysius as the author only of reflections concerning Homer; and to have, in some measure, overlooked, or at least not to have sufficiently insisted on, his most excellent book ΠΕΡΙ ΣΥΝΘΗΣΕΩΣ ΟΝΟΜΑΤΩΝ, in which he has unfolded all the secret arts that render composition harmonious. One part of this discourse, I mean from the beginning of the twenty-first to the end of the twenty-fourth section, is, perhaps, one of the most useful pieces of criticism extant. He there discusses the three different species of composition; which he divides into the Nervous and Austere, the Smooth and Florid, and the Middle, which partakes of the nature of the two others. As examples of the first species, he mentions Antimachus and Empedocles in heroics, Pindar in lyric, Eschylus in tragic poetry, and Thucydides in history. As examples of the second, he produces Hesiod as a writer in heroics; Sappho, Anacreon, and Simonides, in lyric; Euripides only among tragic writers; among the historians, Ephorus and Theopompus; and Isocrates among the rhetoricians all these, says he, have used words that are AEIA xas ΜΑΛΑΚΑ, και ΠΑΡΘΕΝΩΠΑ. The writers which he alleges as instances of the third species, who have happily blended the two other species of composition, and who are the most complete models of style, are Homer in epic poetry; Stesichorus and Alcæus in lyric; in tragic, Sophocles; in history, Herodotus; in eloquence, Demosthenes; in philosophy, Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. Numberless are the passages which Quintilian has borrowed from this writer; who has lately been brought forward, and perhaps will be more read by being so often referred to, by the learned Lord Monboddo. The treatise, De Structurâ, was admirably well published by Mr. Upton, the editor also of Aristotle's Poetics, printed at Cambridge, under the inspection of Dr. Hare, in the year 1706, and also of Extracts from Ælian, Polyænus, and Herodotus, and of Ascham's Schoolmaster. Warton. Ver. 667. Fancy and art, &c.] The chief merit of Petronius (says an objector) is that of telling a story with grace and ease. But the poet is not here speaking, nor was it his purpose to speak, of the chief merit of Petronius, but of his merit as a Critic, which con siste d |