human
Can you write a poem for me in the style of Henry James?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem in the style of Henry James:
  taking a boat down the river with three friends, one of them his
brother-in-law Sir Robert Howard, another Sir Charles Sedley, and
worthless measure, and the chief feature of the Essay, which was
Dryden always wrote good masculine prose, and all his critical
essays are good reading as pieces of English.  His "Essay of
weakness.  They represent also Dryden himself with a riper mind
covering a larger field of thought, and showing abundantly the
strength and independence of his own critical judgment, while he
that are blended with them, and in the occasional touches of the
poet's personality in quiet references to his critics.  The
The wishes and desires of all good men, which have attended your
lordship from your first appearance in the world, are at length
irreconcilable to one another, that are not united in their
affection to you, and the respect they pay you.  They are equally
kind.  The universal empire made him only more known and more
powerful, but could not make him more beloved.  He had greater
declare it to be daylight at high noon:  and all who have the
benefit of sight can look up as well and see the sun.
It is true, I have one privilege which is almost particular to
rudiments of my poetry, without name or reputation in the world,
having rather the ambition of a writer than the skill; when I was
inventor of some useful art, to make a monopoly of his learning--
knowledge of the compass, I was sailing in a vast ocean without
foretell you to mankind as the restorer of poetry, the greatest
genius, the truest judge, and the best patron.
beneficence and candour, is the product of right reason; which of
considering that there is nothing perfect in mankind; and by
distinguishing that which comes nearest to excellency, though not
lordship's to find out the errors of other men; but it is your
prerogative to pardon them; to look with pleasure on those things
conceptions; and to forgive the many failings of those who, with
place without dispute; and have been arrogantly content to be
esteemed as second to your lordship, and even that also with a
their opinion; they must be like the officer in a play who was
called captain, lieutenant, and company.  The world will easily
conclude whether such unattended generals can ever be capable of
making a revolution in Parnassus.
expression.  That which is the prime virtue and chief ornament of
conspicuous in your verses that it casts a shadow on all your
letter of my own invention of which I have not the example there.
It is a general complaint against your lordship, and I must have
Fame is in itself a real good, if we may believe Cicero, who was
against it, but His own example to the contrary.  The world, my
your production--is requisite to refresh your character.
their prose and doggerel.  I am so far from defending my poetry
thought by posterity what those authors would be thought if any
memory of them or of their writings could endure so long as to
Heaven be praised, our common libellers are as free from the
imputation of wit as of morality, and therefore whatever mischief
Persius has given us a fair example in his first Satire, which is
In the meantime, as a counsellor bred up in the knowledge of the
reputation of private persons, under the notion of humour.  But I
produced in you by an excellent wit, a masterly and commanding
genius over all writers:  whereby you are empowered, when you
yours what was written by any others, or to mistake your genuine
poetry for their spurious productions.  I can farther add with
part, I could separate your gold from their copper; and though I
names.  But your lordship, on the contrary, is distinguished not
only by the excellency of your thoughts, but by your style and
manner of expressing them.  A painter judging of some admirable
have written, and out of a vicious modesty will not publish.
Virgil has confined his works within the compass of eighteen
neither.
The same prevalence of genius is in your lordship, but the world
language had not yielded to the Roman majesty, and length of time
sciences, as that of Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and the
rest, for stage-poetry amongst the Greeks; that of Augustus for
especially if we take into that century the latter end of the
But suppose that Homer and Virgil were the only of their species,
heroic poetry; in tragedy and satire I offer myself to maintain,
against some of our modern critics, that this age and the last,
particularly in England, have excelled the ancients in both those
eye; that Lucan is wanting both in design and subject, and is
unequal, and almost always forced; and, besides, is full of
Homer had bestowed the like number on King Priam; he kills the
youngest in the same manner; and has provided his hero with a
Patroclus, under another name, only to bring him back to the wars
throughout the whole poem, and succours the rest when they are in
Sidney, whom he intended to make happy by the marriage of his
Gloriana, dying before him, deprived the poet both of means and
spirit to accomplish his design.  For the rest, his obsolete
language and the ill choice of his stanza are faults but of the
second magnitude; for, notwithstanding the first, he is still
difficulty, his verses are so numerous, so various and so
harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he professedly imitated, has
surpassed him among the Romans, and only Mr. Waller among the
As for Mr. Milton, whom we all admire with so much justice, his
subject is not that of an heroic poem, properly so called.  His
significant than those in practice, and when their obscurity is
taken away by joining other words to them which clear the sense--
"Juvenilia" or verses written in his youth, where his rhyme is
By this time, my lord, I doubt not but that you wonder why I have
embellishments which are afforded in the belief of those ancient
heathens.
prime virtues; and that these include no action but that of the
soul, whereas, on the contrary, an heroic poem requires to its
heroic action of some great commander, enterprised for the common
I wish I could as easily remove that other difficulty which yet
remains.  It is objected by a great French critic as well as an
admirable poet, yet living, and whom I have mentioned with that
honour which his merit exacts from me (I mean, Boileau), that the
doctrine, grounded as it was on ridiculous fables, was yet the
belief of the two victorious monarchies, the Grecian and Roman.
Their gods did not only interest themselves in the event of wars
(which is the effect of a superior Providence), but also espoused
particular) has contented himself with the partiality of his
business, and makes her know the difference of strength betwixt a
latter instance from Tasso (as if God had never another messenger
This, my lord, I confess is such an argument against our modern
But what if I venture to advance an invention of my own to supply
philosophy and the mechanics is discovered almost every year, and
will, perhaps, conclude to be little worth.
It is this, in short--that Christian poets have not hitherto been
known to the Almighty Majesty of Heaven, His providential designs
called), judging that it would be more for God's honour and the
benefit of His people that the Median and Persian monarchy, which
conducted, is not my business to show or determine:  these things
liberal arts and sciences (and particularly moral philosophy, the
evil spirits contending with the good.  For being so much weaker
Now what these wicked spirits cannot compass by the vast
characters of the chiefest English persons (wherein, after Virgil
might perhaps have done as well as some of my predecessors, or at
design; but being encouraged only with fair words by King Charles
shining qualities which distinguish you from others of your rank.
Richelieu of late, would willingly have been such; and David and
entitled you, or your merits have acquired you.
"Ne forte pudori
Sit tibi Musa lyrae solers, et cantor Apollo."
only as are obvious to every man of sense and judgment who loves
success attends your lordship's thoughts, which would look like
wherewithal to imagine so strongly, so justly, and so pleasantly:
"Ut sibi quivis
Speret idem, sudet multum, frustraque laboret,
Ausus idem."
writers, a mixture of rain and sunshine by fits:  you are always
variety of entertainment; which creates such an appetite in your
picture to a great degree of likeness, though it is but in
commissioned me to perform in their behalf this office of a
long epistle, to give you from the best authors the origin, the
antiquity, the growth, the change, and the completement of satire
shall be the subject of my following discourse.
The most perfect work of poetry, says our master Aristotle, is
tragedy.  His reason is because it is the most united; being more
limited to a natural day; and the place circumscribed at least
comprehending the whole beauty of it without distraction.
But after all these advantages an heroic poem is certainly the
If it signifies anything which of them is of the more ancient
acquisitions which I have named above, and as many more as I have
In a word, what I have to say in relation to this subject, which
does not particularly concern satire, is that the greatness of an
learned Casaubon, Heinsius, Rigaltius, Dacier, and the Dauphin's
Juvenal, to which I shall add some observations of my own.
invective, it is certain that it is almost as old as verse; and
higher, from the latter end of the second, where his wife advises
scoffs and revilings are of the growth of all nations; and
descend from Greece to Rome; and derives the word "satire" from
signifies a poem, cannot possibly descend.  For satira is not
that they were wholly different in species from that to which the
Aristotle divides all poetry, in relation to the progress of it,
into nature without art, art begun, and art completed.  Mankind,
prayers.  The first poetry was thus begun in the wild notes of
natural poetry before the invention of feet and measures.  The
Grecians and Romans had no other original of their poetry.
Festivals and holidays soon succeeded to private worship, and we
need not doubt but they were enjoined by the true God to His own
their necessities, and to thank him for his benefits.  Thus the
Romans, as Horace tells us, paid their thanks to Mother Earth or
performed) to spend the remainder of the day in sports and
merriments; amongst which songs and dances, and that which they
called wit (for want of knowing better), were the chiefest
entertainments.  The Grecians had a notion of Satyrs, whom I have
young Satyrs and the old--for the tutors, attendants, and humble
companions of their Bacchus, habited themselves like those rural
deities, and imitated them in their rustic dances, to which they
joined songs with some sort of rude harmony, but without certain
numbers; and to these they added a kind of chorus.
The Romans also, as nature is the same in all places, though they
hobbling verse, and they answered in the same kind of gross
confounds the singing and dancing of the Satyrs with the rustical
this:  that Casaubon finding little light from antiquity of these
solemnities, might suppose those wanton Satyrs did the same; and
well as Romans), though it is plainly otherwise that he only
described the beginning and first rudiments of poetry in his own
country.  The verses are these, which he cites from the First
Epistle of the Second Book, which was written to Augustus:-
"Agricolae prisci, fortes, parvoque beati,
Condita post frumenta, levantes tempore festo
Corpus, et ipsum animum spe finis dura ferentem,
Cum sociis operum, et pueris, et conjuge fida,
Tellurem porco, Silvanum lacte piabant;
Floribus et vino Genium memorem brevis aevi.
Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem
Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit."
"Our brawny clowns of old, who turned the soil,
Content with little, and inured to toil,
At harvest-home, with mirth and country cheer,
Restored their bodies for another year,
Refreshed their spirits, and renewed their hope
Of such a future feast and future crop.
Then with their fellow-joggers of the ploughs,
Their little children, and their faithful spouse,
A sow they slew to Vesta's deity,
And kindly milk, Silvanus, poured to thee.
With flowers and wine their Genius they adored;
A short life and a merry was the word.
From flowing cups defaming rhymes ensue,
And at each other homely taunts they threw."
Yet since it is a hard conjecture that so great a man as Casaubon
both were prosecuted with mirth and raillery and rudiments of
verses; amongst the Greeks by those who represented Satyrs, and
amongst the Romans by real clowns.
For, indeed, when I am reading Casaubon on these two subjects
methinks I hear the same story told twice over with very little
beginning of poetry was the same, with a small variety, in both
countries, and that the mother of it in all nations was devotion.
observed), and the old comedy of the Greeks (which was invective)
forbidden for its too much licence in exposing of particular
persons, and the rude satire of the Romans was also punished by a
"Libertasque recurrentes accepta per annos
Lusit amabiliter; donec jam saevus apertam
In rabiem verti caepit jocus, et per honestas
Ire domos impune minax:  doluere cruento
Dente lacessiti; fuit intactis quoque cura
Conditione super communi:  quinetiam lex,
Paenaque lata, malo quae nollet carmine quenquam
Describi:  vertere modum, formidine fustis
Ad benedicendum delectandumque redacti."
being all of the same opinion, it becomes me to be silent and to
submit to better judgments than my own.
Thespis, or whoever he were that invented tragedy (for authors
gross railleries.
features.  The very kinds are different; for what has a pastoral
tragedy to do with a paper of verses satirically written?  The
character and raillery of the Satyrs is the only thing that could
communication with the Greeks, or indeed any knowledge of that
people.
And here it will be proper to give the definition of the Greek
satiric poem from Casaubon before I leave this subject.  "The
commonly is happy."
different species from the Roman poems of Ennius, Pacuvius,
Virgil's, but by applying them to another sense they are made a
supposed to be the original of Roman satire.  To these "silli,"
Thus, my lord, I have at length disengaged myself from those
antiquities of Greece, and have proved, I hope, from the best
predecessor in that sort of poetry, et Graecis intacti carminis
empire), that satire was wholly of Latin growth, and not
contradicts them both, and gives no better reason than the
empty-handed, had they been ever the less Satyrs?  Or were the
"Lancibus et pandis fumantia reddimus exta;"
chargers and the cakes."
clear a light that no further room will be left for the least
dispute.
unpolished, as all other operations of the soul are in their
remaining; we only know from authors that they were nearer prose
obscene.
verses, after measure and numbers had been added to them, at the
triumph of their generals; of which we have an example in the
triumph of Julius Caesar over Gaul in these expressions:  Caesar
Gallias subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem.  Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat,
Romans, which, says Dacier, we cannot better represent than by
imagining a company of clowns on a holiday dancing lubberly and
barbers' shops.
hister signifies a player; and therefore those actors which were
clownish jests, but what they acted was a kind of civil cleanly
farce, with music and dances, and motions that were proper to the
In this condition Livius Andronicus found the stage when he
attempted first, instead of farces, to supply it with a nobler
entertainment of tragedies and comedies.  This man was a Grecian
born, and being made a slave by Livius Salinator, and brought to
Andronicus, thus become a freeman of Rome, added to his own name
theatre, and conversant in the archaea comaedia or old comedy of
Aristophanes and the rest of the Grecian poets, he took from that
Rome.  But I will adventure on this hint to advance another
proposition, which I hope the learned will approve; and though we
tragedies might be, yet in his comedies he expressed the way of
Aristophanes, who turned the wise Socrates into ridicule, and is
Andronicus.  And then Quintilian and Horace must be cautiously
interpreted, where they affirm that satire is wholly Roman, and a
reconcilement of my opinion to the standard of their judgment is
theatrical satire was from the plays of Livius Andronicus, which
The people, says he, ran in crowds to these new entertainments of
farces, in the nature of a separate entertainment from their
A year after Andronicus had opened the Roman stage with his new
dramas, Ennius was born; who, when he was grown to man's estate,
having seriously considered the genius of the people, and how
several sorts of verse, varied often in the same paper, retaining
formed plays of Livius Andronicus, which were copied from the
countrymen in their clownish extemporary way of jeering.
their notice.  Most evident it is that, whether he imitated the
distinguished from any sort of stage-play.
graceful turn, and endeavoured to imitate more closely the vetus
amongst the Romans in these words -
"Quid? cum est Lucilius auses
Primus in hunc operis componere carmina morem" -
he is only thus to be understood--that Lucilius had given a more
graceful turn to the satire of Ennius and Pacuvius, not that he
invented a new satire of his own; and Quintilian seems to explain
which the Romans wanted were not admitted even in the times of
Lucretius and Cicero, of which both complain.
But to proceed:  Dacier justly taxes Casaubon for saying that the
Diomedes makes a specifical distinction betwixt the satires of
Ennius and those of Lucilius.  But this, as we say in English, is
appear with how much diffidence and caution we are to read their
works when they treat a subject of so much obscurity and so very
ancient as is this of satire.
several sorts of verse."  The only difficulty of this passage is
But Quintilian meant not that the satire of Varro was in order of
corrupted.  The tithes of many of them are indeed preserved, and
impudence and obscenity; that he was much given to those parodies
manners and his style in many of his dialogues, where Menippus
reproduced].  But Varro in imitating him avoids his impudence and
public, it will easily be seen by any one sentence whether it be
supposititious or genuine.  Many of Lucian's dialogues may also
This is what I have to say in general of satire:  only, as Dacier
which decried vice or exposed folly, but for others also, where
virtue was recommended.  But in our modern languages we apply it
satura, not from Satyrus; and if this be so, then it is false
correcting afterwards.  But the French are more nice, and never
spell it any otherwise than "satire."
truth, morality, and common justice, and especially in the
charioteer in blue, and some for him in green.  The colours
animosities, commotions, and bloodshed often happened; and in the
engaged in it, even when the barbarians were at their doors, and
stickled for the preference of colours when the safety of their
people was in question.  I am now myself on the brink of the same
unheard cannot be concluded an oppressor.  I remember a saying of
encroaching on his fellows, and detracting from them or enriching
First, then, for the verse; neither Casaubon himself, nor any for
Casaubon gives this point for lost, and pretends not to justify
Then, as his verse is scabrous and hobbling, and his words not
everywhere well chosen (the purity of Latin being more corrupted
commended for his illustrations of him, yet he is still obscure;
whether he affected not to be understood but with difficulty; or
whether the fear of his safety under Nero compelled him to this
render him so cloudy, we may be bold to affirm that the best of
After all he was a young man, like his friend and contemporary
Lucan--both of them men of extraordinary parts and great acquired
think so strongly, than to accuse them of those faults from which
believed that he who commits the same crime often and without
necessity cannot but do it with some kind of pleasure.
which he calls "Imitatio Horatiana."
master.  He compliments him with so much reverence that one would
insinuates that he himself was sufficiently vain-glorious and a
virtue of holy obedience to his master.  I cannot help my own
himself; but the nature of the thing, as Lucretius says, will not
understanding, and may be reckoned amongst those things of
Demosthenes which AEschines called [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced] not [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]--that is,
knowledge of many things is lost in our modern ages which were of
difficult nature in itself, and is not written to vulgar readers;
Thus far, my lord, you see it has gone very hard with Persius.  I
making these two authors English.  In the meantime I think myself
A man who is resolved to praise an author with any appearance of
Indian, to another light, that he might give it the better gloss.
exhortation to virtue."  Thus wit, for a good reason, is already
antagonists.  The philosophy in which Persius was educated, and
which he professes through his whole book, is the Stoic--the most
severe virtue in the soul, to raise in us an undaunted courage
against the assaults of fortune, to esteem as nothing the things
vices, and conform our actions and conversation to the rules of
right reason.  See here, my lord, an epitome of Epictetus, the
doctrine of Zeno, and the education of our Persius; and this he
expressed, not only in all his satires, but in the manner of his
Christian faith).  Persius has fallen into none of them, and
edification of the flock.  Passion, interest, ambition, and all
their bloody consequences of discord and of war are banished from
tranquillity of the mind; virtue lodged at home, and afterwards
diffused in her general effects to the improvement and good of
humankind.  And therefore I wonder not that the present Bishop of
sermons, as the storehouses and magazines of moral virtues, from
whence they may draw out, as they have occasion, all manner of
assistance for the accomplishment of a virtuous life, which the
Stoics have assigned for the great end and perfection of mankind.
Persius is everywhere the same--true to the dogmas of his master.
been enough to civilise his conversation, and render him
accomplished and knowing in all the arts of complacency and good
behaviour; and, in short, an agreeable companion for the retired
they are equal in the failings of their style, where Juvenal
manifestly triumphs over both of them.
because Horace has written many of them satirically against his
private enemies; yet these, if justly considered, are somewhat of
reputation of other men; it is taking from them what we cannot
restore to them.  There are only two reasons for which we may be
permitted to write lampoons, and I will not promise that they can
affronted in the same nature, or have been anywise notoriously
expect the like pardon for those which we daily commit against
which they have done to us; for which reason I have many times
avoided the commission of that fault, even when I have been
almost any man now living; and I had reason on my side to have
crimes and follies, both for their own amendment (if they are not
punished in the persons of others.  The first reason was only an
capable of this duty!  When they come in my way, it is impossible
Amongst men, those who are prosperously unjust are entitled to a
panegyric, but afflicted virtue is insolently stabbed with all
manner of reproaches; no decency is considered, no fulsomeness
better judgments, Juvenal is the more delightful author.  I am
unbiassed readers will conclude that my moderation is not to be
condemned; to such impartial men I must appeal, for they who have
prejudice; and though all who are my readers will set up to be my
opinion.
Juvenal, excepting only his first satire, is in all the rest
confined to the exposing of some particular vice; that he lashes,
instructive; but they are sprinkled here and there.  Horace is
teaching us in every line, and is perpetually moral; he had found
imagined), so perhaps it was not so much his talent.
"Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
Tangit, et admissus circum praecordia ludit."
following the court, as well as in the prosecutor Crispinus, his
impertinence and importunity.  It is true, he exposes Crispinus
profit, but in pleasure.  But, after all, I must confess that the
verse more numerous; and his words are suitable to his thoughts,
sublime and lofty.  All these contribute to the pleasure of the
reader; and the greater the soul of him who reads, his transports
adds a more lively agitation to the spirits.  The low style of
copes with him in that humble way of satire, writes under his own
other parts of poetry he is faultless, but in this he placed his
"Non tu, in triviis indocte, solebas
Stridenti, miserum, stipula, disperdere carmen?"
But to return to my purpose.  When there is anything deficient in
attending it, as they deserve, with the utmost rigour; and
consequently a noble soul is better pleased with a zealous
vindicator of Roman liberty than with a temporising poet, a well-
servile.
After all, Horace had the disadvantage of the times in which he
under the reign of Domitian were unknown in the time of Augustus
Caesar; that therefore Juvenal had a larger field than Horace.
asserted.  There was more need of a Brutus in Domitian's days to
redeem or mend, than of a Horace, if he had then been living, to
laugh at a fly-catcher.  This reflection at the same time excuses
which concerns the particular merits of these two satirists.
However, I will pursue my business where I left it, and carry it
farther than that common observation of the several ages in which
people.  They could not possibly have forgotten the usurpation of
defenders--amongst the rest, that horrible action of his when he
forced Livia from the arms of her husband (who was constrained to
petulancy of Cassius Severus, who had defamed many illustrious
persons of both sexes in his writings."  The law to which Tacitus
auctoribus, id modo censuit, cognoscendum posthac de iis qui
urbis; sed revera ut sibi consuleret:  nam habuit in animo
accounted sacred who belonged to him.  As for Cassius Severus, he
proverb, with one stone, and revenge both himself and his emperor
From hence I may reasonably conclude that Augustus, who was not
altogether so good as he was wise, had some by-respect in the
enacting of this law; for to do anything for nothing was not his
should; for prior laesit is a good excuse in the civil law if
belonging to all of them, is yet remaining to be considered.
Persius says, Secuit urbem; . . . et genuinum fregit in illis;
meaning Mutius and Lupus; and Juvenal also mentions him in these
words
"Ense velut stricto, quoties Lucilius ardens
Infremuit, rubet auditor, cui frigida mens est
Criminibus, tacita sulant praecordia culpa."
So that they thought the imitation of Lucilius was more proper to
than amend a man."
Thus far that learned critic Barten Holyday, whose interpretation
cannot give him up the manner of Horace in low satire so easily.
pleases, yet still the nicest and most delicate touches of satire
thinking, which is not to be taught, and therefore not to be
shadowing.  This is the mystery of that noble trade, which yet no
fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body and
leaves it standing in its place.  A man may be capable, as Jack
extravagances; to which the wittier a man is, he is generally the
could not railly, but he could declaim:  and as his provocations
This manner of Horace is indeed the best; but Horace has not
wittily than Horace has rallied.  Horace means to make his reader
quickness of their own understandings, that they can see a jest
farther off than other men; they may find occasion of laughter in
scolding.  For my own part, I can only like the characters of all
sake of Horace; but certain it is, he has no fine palate who can
feed so heartily on garbage.
But I have already wearied myself, and doubt not but I have tired
trivial discourse.  Upon the one-half of the merits, that is,
pleasure, I cannot but conclude that Juvenal was the better
satirist.  They who will descend into his particular praises may
subject.
Barten Holyday, who translated both Juvenal and Persius, has made
And to show I am impartial I will here translate what Dacier has
said on that subject:-
It is easy to observe that Dacier, in this noble similitude, has
"In these two books of satire it is the business of Horace to
instruct us how to combat our vices, to regulate our passions, to
things themselves; to come back from our prejudicate opinions, to
Let Horace go off with these encomiums, which he has so well
deserved.
To conclude the contention betwixt our three poets I will use the
rewards of the foot-race to the three first who should reach the
"Tres praemia primi . . .
Accipient, flauaque caput nectentur oliva."
Let these three ancients be preferred to all the moderns as first
"Primus equum phaleris insignem victor habeto."
Let Juvenal ride first in triumph.
"Alter Amazoniam pharetram, plenamque sagittis
Threiciis, lato quam circumplectitur auro
Balteus, et tereti subnectit fibula gemma."
golden belt and the diamond button.
"Tertius Argolico hoc clypeo contentus abito."
"Nomen fama tot ferre per annos, . . .
Tithoni prima quot abest ab origine Caesar."
true; but then they had no communication with Greece; so that
Andronicus was the first who wrote after the manner of the old
properly, began the Roman satire, according to that description
which Juvenal gives of it in his first:-
"Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira voluptas,
Gaudia, discurses, nostri est farrago libelli."
This is that in which I have made hold to differ from Casaubon,
Roman satire; which sort of poem, though we had not derived from
Rome, yet nature teaches it mankind in all ages and in every
country.
It is but necessary that, after so much has been said of satire,
some definition of it should be given.  Heinsius, in his
figuratively and occultly; consisting, in a low familiar way,
satire, is wholly accommodated to the Horatian way, and excluding
necessity he must fall with him; and I may safely say it of this
present age, that if we are not so great wits as Donne, yet
certainly we are better poets.
But I have said enough, and it may be too much, on this subject.
Will your lordship be pleased to prolong my audience only so far
them.  Will you please but to observe that Persius, the least in
perfect satire--that it ought only to treat of one subject; to be
only be transiently lashed, and not be insisted on, so as to make
adventures, yet they are subservient to the chief fable, carried
beloved author to be the first who found out and introduced this
method of confining himself to one subject.
authority, has wholly confined himself in all his satires to this
subject, as it is diversely treated in the several subordinate
branches of it, all relating to the chief.  It may be illustrated
Under this unity of theme or subject is comprehended another rule
virtue, and to caution him against some one particular vice or
inculcate one virtue, and insist on that.  Thus Juvenal, in every
instructive point, or to the shunning of moral evil.  Even in the
womankind, there is a latent admonition to avoid ill women, by
showing how very few who are virtuous and good are to be found
setting up for a moral poet.
I have already declared who are the only persons that are the
adequate object of private satire, and who they are that may
properly be exposed by name for public examples of vices and
satire is of the Varronian kind, though unmixed with prose.  The
choice of his numbers is suitable enough to his design as he has
managed it; but in any other hand the shortness of his verse, and
perpetually shining through all he writes; it affords us not the
time of finding faults:  we pass through the levity of his rhyme,
After all, he has chosen this kind of verse, and has written the
The quickness of your imagination, my lord, has already prevented
advantage.  For a burlesque rhyme I have already concluded to be
Merlin Cocaius in his "Baldus."  I will speak only of the two
former, because the last is written in Latin verse.  The "Secchia
"Nec tibi diva parens, generis nec Dardanus auctor,
Perfide; sed duris genuit te cautibus horrens
Caucasus, Hyrrcanaeque admorunt ubera tigres:"
which he thus translates, keeping to the words, but altering the
"Non, ton pere a Paris, ne fut point boulanger:
Et tu n'es point du sang de Gervais, l'horloger;
Ta mere ne fut point la maitresse d'un coche;
Caucase dans ses flancs te forma d'une roche;
Une tigresse affreuse, en quelque antre ecarte,
Te fit, avec son lait, succer sa cruaute."
ennobles it by comparisons drawn from empires and from monarchs -
"Admiranda tibi levium spectacula rerum,
Magnanimosque duces, totiusque ordine gentis
Mores et studia, et populos, et praelia dicam;"
and again -
"At genus immortale manet, multosque per annos
Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum;"
we see Boileau pursuing him in the same flights, and scarcely
yielding to his master.  This I think, my lord, to be the most
this and some other of his satires, but it might turn to his
prejudice if it were carried back to France.
fathers of our English poetry, but had not seriously enough
considered those beauties which give the last perfection to their
brought me afterwards to seek for the supply of them in other
thoughts which were clothed with admirable Grecisms and ancient
words, which he had been digging from the minds of Chaucer and
Spenser, and which, with all their rusticity, had somewhat of
farther into the Italian, I found Tasso had done the same; nay,
beauties; delicate, et bien tourne, are the highest commendations
"Heu! quantum scelus est, in viscera, viscera condi!
Congestoque avidum pinguescere corpore corpus;
Alteriusque animantem animantis vivere leto."
"Tum jam nulla viro juranti faemina credat;
Nulla viri speret sermones esse fideles;
Qui, dum aliquid cupiens animus praegestit apisci,
Sed simul ac cupidae mentis satiata libido est,
Dicta nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant."
An extraordinary turn upon the words is that in Ovid's "Epistolae
"Si, nisi quae forma poterit te digna videri,
Nulla futura tua est, nulla futura tua est."
Lastly a turn, which I cannot say is absolutely on words--for the
"Cum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem;
Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes."
conclude them to be great beauties.  I might descend also to the
mechanic beauties of heroic verse; but we have yet no English
Prosodia, not so much as a tolerable dictionary or a grammar (so
that our language is in a manner barbarous); and what Government
because it is but a little one.
sons.  I have perused some of the Satires which are done by other
And if we are not altogether so faithful to our author as our
predecessors Holyday and Stapleton, yet we may challenge to
ourselves this praise--that we shall be far more pleasing to our
They who will not grant me that pleasure is one of the ends of
poetry, but that it is only a means of compassing the only end
(which is instruction), must yet allow that without the means of
succeeded in the poetic part.
"Pulverulenta putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum."
Here is the difference of no less than seven syllables in a line
monosyllables (of which our barbarous language affords him a wild
cramming his ill-chosen and worse-sounding monosyllables so close
recompense my pains; but in Holyday and Stapleton my ears, in the
make us intelligible.  We make our author at least appear in a
poetic dress.  We have actually made him more sounding and more
manners of nations and ages are not to be confounded; we should
Thus, my lord, having troubled you with a tedious visit, the best
great confusion for having entertained you so long with this
thankful acknowledgments, prayers, and perpetual good wishes of,
Your Lordship's
Most obliged, most humble, and
Most obedient servant,
convenient to carry on the main design--either so necessary that
without them the poem must be imperfect, or so convenient that no
cavities ought not to be filled with rubbish which is of a
perishable kind--destructive to the strength--but with brick or
poet's aim (the completing of his work), which he is driving on,
strength with his master, Virgil, as Virgil had before tried his
confess the truth) they were both ornamental, or, at best,
convenient parts of it, rather than of necessity arising from it.
Champions (who are heroes all alike), or more properly for the
serpent (that author of all evil) to make way for those funeral
If this economy must be observed in the minutest parts of an epic
whole body of so great a work?  I touch here but transiently,
without any strict method, on some few of those many rules of
imitating nature which Aristotle drew from Homer's "Iliads" and
flourished under AEschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles (for the
original of the stage was from the epic poem).  Narration,
limbs they formed their bodies; what he had contracted, they
have each of them the divinae particulam aurae.  They flowed from
year, it sufficed to teach them that their action being less, and
consequence, must be circumscribed in a less compass, which they
slow, but the cure is likely to be more perfect.  The effects of
tragedy, as I said, are too violent to be lasting.  If it be
It is one reason of Aristotle's to prove that tragedy is the more
because it shoots up in the compass of a night.  A chariot may be
proportion to their several magnitudes; and consequently the
quickness or slowness of their motion, and the time of their
characteristical virtue his poet gives him, raises first our
admiration; we are naturally prone to imitate what we admire, and
vicious--as, for example, the choler and obstinate desire of
enemy, nor the selling his body to his father.  We abhor these
virtue.  Horace paints him after Homer, and delivers him to be
copied on the stage with all those imperfections.  Therefore they
drama.
passions.  The passions, as I have said, are violent; and acute
that both sorts of poetry are of use for their proper ends.  The
I proceed from the greatness of the action to the dignity of the
actors--I mean, to the persons employed in both poems.  There
likewise tragedy will be seen to borrow from the epopee; and that
subject supplies.  And suppose the persons of the drama wholly
I might also add that many things which not only please, but are
real beauties in the reading, would appear absurd upon the stage;
over with much delight and as much instruction, and without
which is made sacred by his place.  I gave the unknown author his
approbation was given to your merit, not your titles.  Thus, like
adventures of your life.
some of the objections; for in this address to your lordship I
design not a treatise of heroic poetry, but write in a loose
through all this prefatory dedication.  Yet all this while I have
admirers.
There have been but one great "Ilias" and one "AEneis" in so many
excellence.  After these three are entered, some Lord Chamberlain
"Fortunam Priami cantabo, et nobile bellum."
plea for his "Faerie Queen," had his action been finished, or had
worthies, they are not to be ranked amongst the three whom I have
Before I quitted the comparison betwixt epic poetry and tragedy I
There an author may beautify his sense by the boldness of his
expression, which if we understand not fully at the first we may
dwell upon it till we find the secret force and excellence.  That
I must now come closer to my present business, and not think of
against the manners of his hero, I shall omit the rest as mere
cavils of grammarians--at the worst but casual slips of a great
discipline in an army, and obedience in the several chiefs to the
resents the injury.  Both parties are faulty in the quarrel, and
"Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi."
As the poet in the first part of the example had shown the bad
effects of discord, so after the reconcilement he gives the good
adapted to the times in which the Roman poet lived.  Had Virgil
flourished in the age of Ennius and addressed to Scipio, he had
mob), under the specious pretence of the public good and of doing
priesthood refining on the heathen.  Sylla, to be sure, meant no
more good to the Roman people than Marius before him, whatever he
landlord to take physic (of which be died) for the benefit of his
meglio, sto qui."
After the death of those two usurpers the commonwealth seemed to
each being a check to the other's growth, struck up a false
friendship amongst themselves and divided the government betwixt
what you know, after the death of Crassus Pompey found himself
injured, and unable to resist the faction of the nobles which was
been violated on the account of any private wrong.  But he
prevailed, and Heaven declaring for him, he became a providential
though Dante in his "Inferno" has put him and Cassius, and Judas
Iscariot betwixt them, into the great devil's mouth), the
republican principles in heart.
"Secretosque pios; his dantem jura Catonem."
But to return from my long rambling; I say that Virgil having
them happy.  This was the moral of his divine poem; honest in the
himself, or that AEneas ever was in Italy, which Bochartus
last will and testament, was because it did him a real service as
immortality stamped upon it.
Lucretius dedicates to one of that family, a branch of which
destroyed Corinth.  I likewise either found or formed an image to
thoroughly provoked, he will do himself justice, how ever dear it
commentators; but one poet may judge of another by himself.  The
humour:  they would be thought to descend from a son, I think, of
I have transgressed my bounds and gone farther than the moral led
Frenchman durst.  I have already told your lordship my opinion of
subjects, and deserve to be called the "Father of His Country."
From this consideration it is that he chose for the groundwork of
Priam's heir in a lineal succession, for Anchises, the hero's
father, was only of the second branch of the royal family, and
Caesar, such a title being but one degree removed from conquest:
Pantheus, in the second book of the "AEneis," for his hero to
"Sacra suosque tibi commendat Troja Penates."
"Postquam res Asiae, Priamique evertere gentem,
Immeritam visum superis."--AENEIS, I. iii., line 1.
Augustus, it is true, had once resolved to rebuild that city, and
I will pass by many less material objections for want of room to
answer them.  What follows next is of great importance, if the
eminently seen in his Augustus.  Those manners were piety to the
possibly be expressed in any modern language, for there it
comprehends not only devotion to the gods, but filial love and
tender affection to relations of all sorts.  As instances of this
sorrow for his death, of the games instituted in honour of his
memory, or seeking him by his command even after death in the
Elysian fields.  I will not mention his tenderness for his son,
which everywhere is visible; of his raising a tomb for Polydorus;
obstacle to it was unremoved.
Of the other parts which compose his character as a king or as a
general I need say nothing; the whole "AEneis" is one continued
assertion good, which is but doing justice to my country--part of
always just, your numbers harmonious, your words chosen, your
example would make all precepts needless.  In the meantime that
contemporaries), as a principal ornament of our language; but the
When I speak of your lordship, it is never a digression, and
blamed for giving what predominant quality they pleased to their
"Virgil had considered that the greatest virtues of Augustus
valour, destitute of other virtues, cannot render a man worthy of
itself, with all other qualities which are good.  Can we, for
necessity?"
"Stetimus tela aspera contra,
Contulimusque manus:  experto credite, quantus
In clypeum adsurgat, quo turbine torqueat hastam.
Si duo praeterea tales Inachias venisset ad urbes
Dardanus, et versis lugeret Graecia fatis.
Quicquid apud durae cessatum est maenia Trojae,
Hectoris AEneaeque manu victoria Grajum
Haesit, et in decumum vestigia retulit annum.
Ambo animis, ambo insignes praestantibus armis:
Hic pietate prior."
I give not here my translation of these verses, though I think I
insinuates that Homer had done his hero wrong in giving the
advantage of the duel to his own countryman, though Diomedes was
manifestly the second champion of the Grecians; and Ulysses
The French translator thus proceeds:- "They who accuse AEneas for
errant.  If it be replied, continues Segrais, that it was not
difficult for him to undertake and achieve such hardy enterprises
them, and therefore is safe if they are so.  Who knows, says
(who was well versed in the Chaldean mysteries), under the
though not only Horace and Persius, but Augustus himself, thought
becomes a man of courage.
described lamenting their lost loves:  Briseis was taken away by
force from the Grecians, Creusa was lost for ever to her husband.
booby, was complaining to his mother when he should have revenged
"Extemplo AEneae solvuntur frigore membra:
Ingemit, et duplices tendens ad sidera palmas," &c.
But to this I have answered formerly that his fear was not for
reader?  They were threatened with a tempest, and he wept; he was
Thus much I have urged elsewhere in the defence of Virgil:  and
doubtful of his fortune is apparent by the address she made to
Jupiter on his behalf; to which the god makes answer in these
"Parce metu, Cytherea, manent immota tuorum
Notwithstanding which the goddess, though comforted, was not
assured; for even after this, through the course of the whole
"AEneis," she still apprehends the interest which Juno might make
whether he could alter fate or not; and indeed some passages in
Virgil would make us suspect that he was of opinion Jupiter might
"Si mora praesentis leti, tempusque caduco
Oratur juveni, meque hoc ita ponere sentis,
Tolle fuga Turnum, atquc instantibus eripe fatis.
Hactenus indulsisse vacat.  Sin altior istis
Sub precibus venia ulla latet, totumque moveri
Mutarive putas bellum, spes pascis inanis."
"Trojae sub maenibus altis
Tot nati cecidere deum; quin occidit una
Sarpedon, mea progenies; etiam sua Turnum
Fata vocant, metasque dati pervenit ad aevi."
doctrine of the Stoics, and he set me right, from the concurrent
"Tolle fuga Turnum, atque instantibus eripe fatis" -
himself obeyed destiny in giving her that leave.
I need say no more in justification of our hero's courage, and am
misfortunes which befell others.  They give him two contrary
characters--acknowledging and ungrateful, compassionate and hard-
"Vultis et his mecum pariter considere regnis?
Urbem quam statuo, vesra est."
This was an obligement never to be forgotten, and the more to be
considered because antecedent to her love.  That passion, it is
these advances, it was still in his power to have refused them.
party.  Segrais pleads for Virgil that no less than an absolute
command from Jupiter could excuse this insensibility of the hero,
"Fata obstant, placidasque viri Deus obstruit aures."
This notwithstanding, as Segrais confesses, he might have shown a
according to his character.
But let Virgil answer for himself.  He still loved her, and
struggled with his inclinations to obey the gods:-
"Curam sub corde premebat,
Multa gemens, magnoque animum labefactus amore."
Upon the whole matter, and humanly speaking, I doubt there was a
sometimes in a heroic poem!  This of Mercury is plainly one; and
Virgil was constrained to use it here, or the honesty of his hero
mercy than the Bacchanals did Orpheus:  for if too much constancy
pass to another article of his defence on the present subject,
concluded for the banishment of all poets, would at least have
But let us consider the secret reasons which Virgil had for thus
framing this noble episode, wherein the whole passion of love is
"AEneis," yet there he has given its beginning, its progress, its
ensuing books.
She was warmed with the graceful appearance of the hero; she
after that the consummation.  Of Venus and Juno, Jupiter and
Mercury, I say nothing (for they were all machining work); but
possession having cooled his love, as it increased hers, she soon
nothing availing, despairs, curses, and at last becomes her own
indeed our common duty.  A poet makes a farther step for
account, slew not Mezentius, but was slain by him; and the
chronicles of Italy tell us little of that Rinaldo d'Este who
apply this to Virgil, he thought himself engaged in honour to
nations.  It is true, he colours the falsehood of AEneas by an
express command from Jupiter to forsake the queen who had obliged
ages before it was invented.
Thus I hope, my lord, that I have made good my promise, and
justified the poet, whatever becomes of the false knight.  And,
decreed for the future--no poet should presume to make a lady die
story, Virgil is the Apollo who has this dispensing power.  His
credit of Virgil was so great that he made this fable of his own
others, for our author needs not their admiration.
The motive that induced Virgil to coin this fable I have showed
already, and have also begun to show that he might make this
anachronism, by superseding the mechanic rules of poetry, for the
fiction against the order of time, when we commend Ovid and other
nature?  For what else are the splendid miracles of the
things as he finds not there, if they can be brought to embellish
"Nec pars ulla magis legitur de corpore toto,
Quam non legitimo faedere junctus amor."
Where, by the way, you may observe, my lord, that Ovid in those
writing my 'Art of Love' and my wanton elegies; yet your own poet
owns it a marriage by an innuendo--pulchramque uxorius urbem
when he leaves his lady.  "I made no such bargain with you at our
comfort yourself with the next stranger who happens to be
aright, we must pardon him for a poor blind heathen, who knew no
better morals.
I have detained your lordship longer than I intended on this
Rhodius, and others who preceded him.  But in the first place, if
read it.  At this rate, as Solomon hath told us, there is nothing
imitated others which were built before it?  Walls, doors and
"Quid prohibetis aquas?  Usus communis aquarum est."
distinguish copies from originals.  The Poet who borrows nothing
mother was forced to appear to him and restrain his fury, which
their original.  They translate him, as I do Virgil; and fall as
short of him as I of Virgil.  There is a kind of invention in the
their heroes--one went home, and the other sought a home.
either of them were in being.  But to close the simile as I began
would not give the same story under other names, with the same
better verse."  This is like Merry-Andrew on the low rope copying
performing on the high.
I will trouble your lordship but with one objection more, which I
misspends it on some trivial image.  He pours cold water into the
Similitudes (as I have said) are not for tragedy, which is all
violent, and where the passions are in a perpetual ferment; for
there they deaden, where they should animate; they are not of the
business; and admiration is not of so violent a nature as fear or
declining; when he has warmed us in his description as much as
Neptune composing the ocean, on which AEolus had raised a tempest
them from the seas; he had beaten down the billows with his mace;
"Ac, veluti magno in populo cum saepe coorta est
Seditio, saevitque animis ignobile vulgus;
Jamque faces, et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat;
Tum, pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem
Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant:
Ille regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet:
Sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, aequora postquam
Prospiciens genitor, coeloque invectus aperto
Flectit equos, curruque volans dat lora secundo."
This is the first similitude which Virgil makes in this poem, and
improper; for the poet could have compared it to nothing more
impetuous than itself; consequently he could have made no
illustration.  If he could have illustrated, it had been an
ambitious ornament out of season, and would have diverted our
judicious commentator on Virgil's works) has used Pontanus, his
greatest benefactor, of whom he is very silent, and I do not
remember that he once cites him.
action were within the year, or took up some months beyond it.
Indeed, the whole dispute is of no more concernment to the common
action of the "AEneis" began in the spring, and was not extended
beyond the autumn; and we have known campaigns that have begun
sooner and have ended later.
confesses farther, that AEneas left Carthage in the latter end of
"Quin etiam hiberno moliris sidere classem."
which time he places the first appearance of his hero on the sea,
Carthage in the latter end of summer, staying there the winter
following, departing thence in the very beginning of the spring,
making a short abode in Sicily the second time, landing in Italy,
remained for him but without delay to pursue his first adventure?
beaten soldiers on a friendly coast.  These indeed are but
suppositions on both sides, yet those of Segrais seem better
autumn; the hunting followed properly, when the heats of that
which the poet seems to have painted expressly in the seventh
"Aurora in roseis fulgebat lutea bigis,
Cum venti posuere . . .
. . . variae circumque supraque
Assuetae ripis volucres, et fluminis alveo,
AEthera mulcebant cantu."
complete, and may be comprehended in less compass.
"Pastorals," but more particularly in the "Georgics," our poet is
"Cum subito assurgens fluctu nimbosus Orion."
"Dum pelago desaevit hiems, et aquosus Orion."
Ilioneus calls him nimbosus, Anna, aquosus.  He is tempestuous in
commendation in this new criticism.
I have yet a word or two to say of Virgil's machines, from my own
religion as well as in the Greek, that there were gods, and both
thought to derive the rites of their religion than from the
Grecians, because they thought themselves descended from them).
Each of those gods had his proper office, and the chief of them
Create new ministers; he must take what he found in his religion.
watching, and secure of a quiet passage by his observation of the
"O nimium coelo et pelago confise sereno,
Nudus in ignota, Palinure, jacebis arena."
mistress kills Aruns.  The next is in the twelfth AEneid, where
Virgil had not life enough to correct his work, though he had
should be burned.  As for the death of Aruns, who was shot by a
goddess, the machine was not altogether so outrageous as the
wounding Mars and Venus by the sword of Diomede.  Two divinities,
"Nec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus" -
that rule is to be applied to the theatre, of which he is then
speaking, and means no more than this--that when the knot of the
play is to be untied, and no other way is left for making the
sword; for that of Turnus was not his own (which was forged by
"Non me tua turbida virtus
Terret, ait; dii me terrent, et Jupiter hostis."
In answer to which, I say that this machine is one of those which
"Jupiter ipse duas aequota examine lances
Sustinet, et fata imponit diversa duorum;
Quem damnet labor, et quo vergat pondere letum."
For I have taken these words Quem damnet labor in the sense which
genius as Milton; for I am much mistaken if he alludes not to the
nymph beforehand that her brother was to fight
"Imparibus fatis; nec diis, nec viribus aequis;"
"Non me tua turbida virtus
Terret, ait; dii me terrent, et Jupiter hostis."
I doubt not but the adverb solum is to be understood ("It is not
Turnus by the sword; whereas Turnus had manifestly declined the
consented to it; for it is plain he knew her by these words:-
"O soror, et dudum agnovi, cum prima per artem
Faedera turbasti, teque haec in bella dedisti;
Et tunc necquicquam fallis dea."
I have dwelt so long on this subject that I must contract what I
lordship my opinion that those two friends had consulted each
other's judgment wherein they should endeavour to excel; and they
"Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri" -
and therefore, as he himself professes, are sermoni propriora
(nearer prose than verse).  But Virgil, who never attempted the
lyric verse, is everywhere elegant, sweet, and flowing in his
endeavoured to follow the example of my master, and am the first
Englishman perhaps who made it his design to copy him in his
language which is overstocked with consonants.  Such is not the
Latin where the vowels and consonants are mixed in proportion to
each other; yet Virgil judged the vowels to have somewhat of an
that his versification cannot so properly be called sweet as
luscious.  The Italians are forced upon it once or twice in every
advantage, that they may go the farther.  He must also know the
translation of his works, I had four years more allowed me to
correct my errors, that I might make my version somewhat more
many you will make allowances, with Horace:-
"Si plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis
Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,
Aut humana parum cavit natura."
leave two vowels opening on each other, as in that verse of the
third pastoral--
"Et succus pecori, et lac subducitur agnis."
But nobis non licet esse tam disertis--at least, if we study to
refine our numbers.  I have long had by me the materials of an
English "Prosodia," containing all the mechanical rules of
versification, wherein I have treated with some exactness of the
Alexandrines.  But as Virgil propounds a riddle which he leaves
unsolved -
"Dic quibus in terris, inscripti nomina regum
Nascantur flores, et Phyllida solus habeto" -
"Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full" -
quantities is difficult to be cured in any modern language; since
observed those rules myself which I can teach others; since I
liberty to make my thoughts public.  In the meantime, that I may
often employed it in his odes.  It adds a certain majesty to the
verse when it is used with judgment, and stops the sense from
language is not strong with sinews, like our English; it has the
trifling in comparison of the English--more proper for sonnets,
those turns, like Ovid, but much more sparing of them in his
"AEneis" than in his Pastorals and Georgics.
"Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere manes."
That turn is beautiful indeed; but he employs it in the story of
Orpheus and Eurydice, not in his great poem.  I have used that
"Semivirumque bovem, semibovemque virum."
banishment of Ovid was a blot in his escutcheon; yet he was only
banished, and who knows but his crime was capital?  And then his
exile was a favour.  Ariosto, who, with all his faults, must be
"Non fu si santo ni benigno Augusto,
Come la tuba di Virgilio suona;
L'haver havuto in poesia buon gusto,
La proscrittione iniqua gli pardona."
little speed.  I will not make a digression here, though I am
strangely tempted to it, but will only say that he who can write
I return to our Italian translator of the "AEneis;" he is a foot-
"Sorti pater aequus utrique."
gods cannot control destiny.  The verse follows -
"Sic ait; atque oculos Rutulorum rejicit arvis" -
What I have said, though it has the face of arrogance, yet is
burden light, let them attempt the fourth, sixth, or eighth
manners, his judicious management of the figures, the sober
judges, and would stand or fall by them alone.  Segrais has
represent them on a mountebank's stage, or to be masters of the
describes an ill habit of body, full of humours, and swelled with
governor in their travels, and many of these three sorts are the
I have already named two sorts of judges, but Virgil wrote for
reader; the more he studies it, the more it grows upon him, every
"AEneis" and Marini's "Adone."  And if I may be allowed to change
describes:-
"Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo."
Such a sort of reputation is my aim, though in a far inferior
great an ornament.
"Arms, and the man I sing, who forced by Fate," &c. -
but a much better instance may be given from the last line of
Manilius, made English by our learned and judicious Mr. Creech -
"Nor could the world have borne so fierce a flame" -
where the many liquid consonants are placed so artfully that they
remember, taxes Balzac for placing twenty monosyllables in file
without one dissyllable betwixt them.
added of my own.  Yet the omissions, I hope, are but of
language before they brought it to perfection.  They rejected all
English as he would himself have spoken if he had been born in
magnificence of his style.  But I shall have occasion to speak
farther on this subject before I end the preface.
that the affected purity of the French has unsinewed their heroic
excels all other poets; but he knows how far to extend his
franchises, and advances to the verge without venturing a foot
times he was forced to travel at an age when, instead of learning
Latin, excepting only Virgil:  and there is no question but he
thought he had Virgil's authority for that licence.  But I am
confident our poet never meant to leave him or any other such a
perfection at which he aimed, that we know how hard a sentence he
"Peperit fumante Creusa."
For Ascanius must have been born some years before the burning of
enthusiasm seizing him while he was reading to Augustus:-
"Misenum AEolidem, quo non praestantior alter
AEre ciere viros, . . . "
unanimated mud.
consist of common men.
another book?  I had certainly been reduced to pay the public in
hammered money for want of milled; that is, in the same old words
observed, in some Latin words, which is wholly lost in any modern
unworthy the grandson of the goddess.
If I cannot copy his harmonious numbers, how shall I imitate his
noble flights, where his thoughts and words are equally sublime?
" . . . quisquis studet aemulari,
. . . caeratis ope Dedalea
Nititur pennis, vitreo daturus
Nomina ponto."
"Aude, hospes, contemnere opes, et te quoque dignum
Lay by Virgil, I beseech your lordship and all my better sort of
comes in sight.
them from a foreign country?  I carry not out the treasure of the
myself; and if the public approves of it, the bill passes.  But
Besides this help, which was not inconsiderable, Mr. Congreve has
excellent young man has shown me many faults, which I have
Two other worthy friends of mine, who desire to have their names
doubt that any part of it is another's.
That your lordship may see I was in earnest when I premised to
learned in all things.
I have emitted the four preliminary lines of the first AEneid,
substantive arva in the latter end of the third; which keeps his
"Arma, virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris," -
Scarce a word without an r, and the vowels for the greater part
sonorous.  The prefacer began with Ille ego, which he was
Tucca and Varius, than retrenched.
beginning of this work, as he did to the two former, in the last
lines of the fourth Georgic.  I will not reply otherwise to this,
others, which we know are his, because no poet but he alone could
amidst a thousand courtiers.  It was a superfluous office, and
"I, who before, with shepherds in the groves,
Sung to my oaten pipe their rural loves,
And issuing thence, compelled the neighb'ring field
A plenteous crop of rising corn to yield;
Manured the glebe, and stocked the fruitful plain
(A poem grateful to the greedy swain)," &c.
place; but I have done great wrong to Virgil in the whole
translation.  Want of time, the inferiority of our language, the
undertaking.  What avails it me to acknowledge freely that I have
Be pleased, my lord, to accept with your wonted goodness this
unworthy present which I make you.  I have taken off one trouble
cannot be concealed you will please to connive at, though in the
public, I may expose your judgment to be censured.  As for my own
lordship has any, they will not dare to arraign you for want of
addressed to a poet and a critic of the first magnitude, I had
myself been taxed for want of judgment, and shamed my patron for
want of understanding.  But neither will you, my lord, so soon be
That I may pursue the allegory with a short prayer after a long
sermon.
cannot be wished more earnestly by any man than by
Your Lordship's most humble,
Most obliged and most
Obedient servant,
misconstrued in all I write; and my judges, if they are not very
equitable, already prejudiced against me by the lying character
which has been given them of my morals.  Yet steady to my
especially the last, in all our poets; even in those who being
One is for raking in Chaucer (our English Ennius) for antiquated
this redemption any more than the crowds of men who daily die, or
Neither am I ignorant but I may justly be condemned for many of
these faults of which I have too liberally arraigned others:
"Cynthius aurem
Vellit, et admonuit."
gratitude is due to such who were willing to oblige me.  But how
liberality [was] as much unexpected as it was undeserved.  The
might justly be condemned for the most unthankful of mankind if I
"Extremum hunc, Arethusa; . . .
. . . neget quis carmina Gallo?"
Neither am I to forget the noble present which was made me by
editions of Virgil and all the commentaries of those editions in
Latin, amongst which I could not but prefer the Dauphin's as the
Being invited by that worthy gentleman, Sir William Bowyer, to
Denham Court, I translated the first Georgic at his house and the
surpass the rest; and own the satisfaction I received in his
criticise my master.
Georgics, and six first AEneids from my bookseller, and has read
them in the country together with my friend.  This noble person
access, and desire of obliging those who stand in need of his
protection are known to all who have approached him, and to me in
Georgic (which he calls "The Power of Love") has put me to
sufficient pains to make my own not inferior to his; as my Lord
passages than proofs that so he meant.  The unlearned may have
recourse to any poetical dictionary in English for the names of
persons, places, or fables, which the learned need not, but that
little which I say is either new or necessary, and the first of
these qualifications never fails to invite a reader, if not to
please him.