to give him a just taste in reading Homer and the tragedians: to judge properly of which, was then thought no unneceffary accomplishment in the character of a prince. To attempt to understand poetry without having diligently digested this treatise, would be as abfurd and impoffible, as to pretend to a skill in geometry, without having studied Euclid. The fourteenth, fifteenth, and fixteenth 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 moft forcibly affect the heart. The prime excellence of this precious treatise is the fcholaftic precision, and philofophical closeness, with which the subject is handled, without any address to the paffions, 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 pofterity. 38. HORACE ftill charms with graceful negligence, And without method talks us into fenfe *. THE vulgar notion, that Horace wrote his Epiftle to the Pifos without method, has been lately confuted, as we hinted before. It is equally falfe that, that epiftle contains a complete Art of Poetry; it being folely confined to the state and defects of the Roman drama. The tranfitions in the writings of Horace, are some of the moft exquifite ftrokes of his art: many of them pass at present unobserved; and that his cotemporaries were equally blind to this beauty, he himself complains, though with a feeming irony, Cum lamentamur, non APPARERE labores Ir feems alfo to be another common miftake, that one of Horace's characteristics is the SUBLIME of which indeed he has given a very few strokes, and those taken from Pindar, and, probably, from Alcæus +. * Epift. I. ver. 224. lib. 2. "De Horatio quidem ita fentimus; fi Græcorum Lyrica extarent, futurum, ut illius furta quamplurima deprehenderentur: qui tamen imitatores fervum pecus appellare non dubitarit.Ex Alcæo, ut opinor, [Horatii] multa, &c." Scaliger. Poet. L. 5. c. 7. His excellence lay in exquifite obfervations on human life, and in touching the foibles of mankind with delicacy and urbanity. 'Tis eafy to perceive this moral turn in all his compofitions: the writer of the epiftles is difcerned in the odes. Elegance, not fublimity, was his grand characteriftic. Horace is the most popular author of all antiquity; the reafon is, because he abounds in images drawn from familiar life, and in remarks, that "come home to mens "bufinefs and bofoms." Hence he is more frequently quoted and alluded to, than any poet of a higher cast. 39. See DIONYSIUS Homer's thoughts refine, And call new beauties forth from ev'ry line. THESE profaic lines, this fpiritless eulogy are much below the merit of the critic whom they are intended to celebrate. POPE feems here rather to have confidered Dionyfius, as the author only of reflections concerning и Homer; and to have in fome measure overlooked, or at least not to have fufficiently infisted on, his moft excellent book, ПIEPI ΣΥΝΘΗΣΕΩΣ ΟΝΟΜΑΤΩΝ, in which he has unfolded all the fecret arts that render compofition harmonious. One part of this difcourfe, 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 difcuffes the three different fpecies of compofition; 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 fpecies, he mentions Antimachus and Empedocles in heroics, Pindar in lyric, Æfchylus in tragic poetry, and Thucydides in history. As examples of the second, he produces Hefiod as a writer in heroics; Sappho, Anacreon, and Simonides, in lyric; Euripides ONLY, among tragic writers; among the hiftorians, Ephorus, and Theopompus; and Ifocrates, among the rhetoricians: all these, fays fays he, have used words that are AEIA, και ΜΑΛΑΚΑ, και ΠΑΡΘΕΝΩΠΑ. The writers which he alleges as inftances of the third fpecies, who have happily blended the two other species of compofition, and who are the most complete models of style, are Homer, in epic poetry; Stefichorus and Alcæus, in lyric; in tragic, Sophocles; in history, Herodotus; in eloquence, Demofthenes; in philofophy, Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. 40. Fancy and art in gay PETRONIUS please, The scholar's learning with the courtier's ease *. For what merit Petronius fhould be placed among useful critics, I could never difcern. There are not above two or three pages, containing critical remarks, in his work: the chief merit of which is that of telling a story with grace and eafe. His own ftyle is more affected than even that of his cotemporaries, when the Augustan fimplicity was laid aside. Many of his metaphors are far-fetched, and mixed; of which this glaring inftance may |