BOOK II. EPISTLE I. TO AUGUSTUS. ADVERTISEMENT. The reflections of Horace, and the judgements past in his epistle to Augustus, seemed so seasonable to the present times, that I could not help applying them to the use of my own country. The author thought them considerable enough to address them to his prince; whom he paints with all the great and good qualities of a monarch, upon whom the Romans depended for the increase of an absolute empire. But to make the poem entirely English, I was willing to add one or two of those which contribute to the happiness of a free people, and are more consistent with the welfare of our neighbours. This Epistle will show the learned world to have fallen into two mistakes: one, that Augustus was the patron of poets in general; whereas he not only prohibited all but the best writers to name him, but recommended that care even to the civil magistrate: Admonebat pratores, ne paterentur nomen suum obsolefieri, &c. The other, that this piece was only a general discourse of poetry; whereas it was an apo logy for the poets, in order to render Augustus more their patron. Horace here pleads the cause of his contemporaries, first against the taste of the town, whose humour it was to magnify the authors of the preceding age; secondly, against the court and nobility, who encouraged only the writers for the theatre; and lastly, against the emperor himself, who government. had conceived them of little use to the He shows (by a view of the progress of learning, and the change of taste among the Romans) that the introduction of the polite arts of Greece had given the writers of his time great advantages over their predecessors; that their morals were much improved, and the licence of those ancient poets restrained; that satire and comedy were become more just and useful; that whatever extravagancies were left on the stage, were owing to the ill taste of the nobili ty; that poets, under due regulations, were in many respects useful to the state; and concludes, that it was upon them the emperor himself must depend for his fame with posterity. We may farther learn from this Epistle, that Horace made his court to this great prince, by writing with a decent freedom towards him, with a just contempt of his low flatterers, and with a manly regard to his own character. WHILE you, great patron of mankind! sustain The balanc'd world, and open all the main; Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame, Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm'd, Finds envy never conquer'd but by death. To thee the world its present homage pays, He swears the muses meet him at the Devil. We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well; Shall we, or shall we not, account him so, 'Who lasts a century can have no flaw; I hold that wit a classic, good in law.' Suppose he wants a year, will you compound? And shall we deem him ancient, right, and sound, Or damn to all eternity at once, At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce? 'We shall not quarrel for a year or two; By courtesy of England he may do.' Then, by the rule that made the horse-tail bare, I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair, And melt down ancients like a heap of snow: While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe, And estimating authors by the year, Bestow a garland only on a bier. Shakespeare (whom you and every playhouse bill. But still I love the language of his heart. Of Shakespeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit; [writ; All this may be; the people's voice is odd, Q To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays, But let them own, that greater faults than we And Sydney's verse halts ill on Roman feet: In the dry desert of a thousand lines, [page, Or lengthen'd thought that gleams through many a Has sanctify'd whole poems for an age. I lose my patience, and I own it too, When works are censur'd, not as bad, but new; One tragic sentence if I dare deride, And having once been wrong, will be so still. |