made a rule to myself about them some time ago, and I think verily 'tis the right one. We use them so in common conversation: and that use will authorize one, I think, for doing the same in slighter pieces, but not in formal ones. In a familiar letter for instance, but not in a weighty one: and more particularly in dialogue writing, but then it must be when the people introduced are talking, and not where the author appears in his own person.-P. "I wonder how Horace could say such coarse obscene things in so polite an age, or how such an age could allow of it?"-"Tis really a wonder, though it was the same with us in Charles the Second's time, or rather worse. However it was not above five or six years, even in that witty reign, that it passed for wit, as the saying of wicked things does among us now.-I wish there were not too great remains of the former vice still, even among people of the first fashion; but the prevailing notion of genteelness consisting in freedom and ease, has led many to a total neglect of decency, either in their words or behaviour.-True politeness consists, in being easy oneself, and making everybody about one as easy as one can. But the mistaking brutality for freedom, for which so many of our young people of quality have made themselves remarkable of late, has just the contrary effect. It leads them into the taking of liberties which often make others uneasy, and ought always to make the aggressors themselves so.-P. Gay was quite a natural man, wholly without art or design, and spoke just what he thought, and as he thought it. He dangled for twenty years about a court, and at last was offered to be made Usher to the young Princesses.-Secretary Craggs made Gay a present of stock in M the South Sea year: and he was once worth twenty thousand pounds, but lost it all again. He got about four hundred pounds by the first Beggar's Opera, and eleven or twelve hundred by the second.-He was negligent and a bad manager:-latterly the Duke of Queensbury took his money into his keeping, and let him have only what was necessary out of it: and as he lived with them he could not have occasion for much: he died worth upwards of three thousand pounds.-P. Otway has written but two tragedies, out of six, that are pathetic. I believe he did it without much design; as Lillo has done in his Barnwell.-'Tis a talent of nature, rather than an effect of judgment, to write so movingly.-P. Somebody had been speaking of Bayle's manner in his Dictionary :-upon which Mr. Pope said: "Ay, he is the only man that ever collected with so much judgment, and wrote with so much spirit at the same time.”—P. "Tis difficult to find out any fault in Virgil's Eclogues or Georgics. He could not bear to have any appear in his Eneid; and therefore ordered it to be burnt.-P. Virgil is very sparing in his commendations of other poets; and scarce ever does it, unless he is forced.-He *The following notice of Otway by a cotemporary, who still lived in the middle of the last century, was communicated to the Gentleman's Magazine in 1745. "His person was of the middle size, about five feet seven inches high, inclinable to fatness. He had a thoughtful speaking eye, and that was all. He gave himself up early to drinking, and like the unhappy wits of that age, passed his days between rioting and fasting, ranting jollity, and abject penitence, carousing one week with Lord Plymouth, and then starving a month in low company at an ale-house on Towerhill."-Editor. hints at Theocritus* because he had taken so much from him, and his subject led to it; and does the same by Hesiod,+ for the same reasons. He never speaks a single word of Homer and indeed could not do it, where some would have had him, because of the Anachronism. They have blamed him for not mentioning Homer, instead of Musæus (Æn. vi. 667.), without considering, that then Homer must have been put into Elysium long before he was born.-P. Virgil's triumph over the Greek poets in his Georgics,‡ is one of the vainest things that ever was written.-There are not above two or three lines in Virgil from Hesiod's Works, he acknowledges imitating that poet; and would never do so, for two or three lines only.-Perhaps what we call Hesiod's Works, at present, are misnamed. The Theogony has little prettinesses in it, not like the greatness of antiquity. The Shield of Hercules is taken from Homer's Shield of Achilles, and there are several lines exactly the same in both. The Huɛgwv, has the truest air of antiquity. -Nudus ara,§ is, I think, from the Egywv: but possibly none of it is Hesiod's.-P. Virgil's great judgment appears in putting things together, and in his picking gold out of the dunghills of the old Roman writers.-He borrowed even from his cotemporaries, as I think Aulus Gellius tells us.-The Æneid was evidently a party piece: as much as Absalom and Prima Syracosio dignata est ludere versu Ecl. vi. 1, 2. Ascræumque cano Romana per oppida carmen. Georg. ii. 176. Georg. iii. 10-22. § Ib. i. 299. Achitophel. I have formerly said that Virgil wrote one honest line, Secretosque pios, his dantem jura Catonem," and that, I now believe, was not meant of Cato Uticensis.-P. Otho Vænius has published a picture-book, which he calls the Emblems of Horace. "Misce consiliis stultitiam brevem," is represented by Minerva leading a little short child, with a fool's cap on, by the hand.-" Paulum sepultæ distat inertiæ celata virtus," is Virtue in a dark corner, Laziness in a sepulchre, and only a thin partition-wall between them.-P. Nil Admirari, is as true, in relation to our opinions of authors, as it is in morality; and one may say, O, admiratores, servum pecus! full as justly as O, Imitatores!—P. What terrible moments does one feel, after one has engaged for a large work!-In the beginning of my trans`lating the Iliad, I wished anybody would hang me, a hundred times. It sat so heavily on my mind at first, that I often used to dream of it, and do sometimes still.*—When I fell into the method of translating thirty or forty verses before I got up, and piddled with it the rest of the morning, it went on easy enough; and when I was thoroughly got into the way of it, I did the rest with pleasure.-P. * He used to dream that he was engaged in a long journey, puzzled which way to take; and full of fears that he should never get to the end of it.-Spence. END OF SECTION V. T was Cardinal Maurice who bought the Tabula Isiaca, after the taking of Mantua, and sent it to Turin; where it is now kept in the Archives of the Royal Academy. It is one of the finest Egyptian antiquities in the world, and had run a great many risks of being destroyed. At the sacking of Rome, five years before, it was sold to a locksmith. Bembo bought it of him and gave it to the Duke of Mantua. At Mantua it fell into the soldiers' hands again, and was saved the second time by the Cardinal of Savoy. It is a sort of table, of a particular metallic composition, four feet two inches long, and two feet and a half wide. The ledges * Several articles relating to the King of Savoy and his states, at the commencement of this section, are left out, because statistical accounts of that period are certainly out of their place here.—The seventh and eighth centuries, (according to Mr. Spence's division,) are here blended into one section; many unimportant and uninteresting articles being omitted, together with some which had been printed before, such as the Account of Magliabecchi, &c. Editor. |