Whose prompt assistance I must ask I call-am civilly dismissed- But in my case I own she's blameless. Spied in his brain a space to fix in, From out a corner, dark and dusty, One leg alone could not be found- As he thought, to his great good luck, But spite of wanting this supporter stare When he beheld this fossil bear, So vast in size-all bears surpassing, (Save that one killed by brave Munchaussen.) WIELAND'S KEY TO THE LAST EPISTLE OF HORACE-TO L. C. PISO AND HIS TWO SONS, (Continued from p. 319.) Ir my hypothesis, as to the origin and design of the last of Horace's epistles, be admitted, every thing in it becomes clear, intelligible, and to the purpose. A piece which, when considered as an ars poetica, or com pendium of the art of poetry, is a slovenly, ill connected, and even raving composition, is found to be, when taken for what it is, a poetical epistle, namely, written with the intention of weaning a young man from a passionate and ill-judged fondness for poetry, every thing that we can wish or expect: when it is taken for this, it is found to be a work altogether worthy of Horace. Upon this supposition, the reason is plain why he is not more complete in his rules-he was not writing an ars poetica. It is obvious why he is not more methodical :-he was writing a letter, and had no other plan but the main design, of which he never loses sight. Why do most of his rules consist in warnings against faults? The young gentleman stood most in need of these. Why are those passages, in which the mysteries of the art of poetry really lie concealed, intelligible only to adepts? and why, even to this day, has no mere pretender learned the smallest thing from this epistle? Nothing was farther from the mind of Horace than to make a poet of his young friend. And why does more than one-half of the piece consist in sarcasms at the pitiful poets of those times-in warnings against the seductive charms of the muses-in showing the danger of poetical self-deceit-in the severe and almost intolerable conditions which he imposes on the young man, and in that caustic satire, which he so liberally and unmercifully pours out on the crazy poets, as he calls the poor fellows? This was precisely the aim of the whole piece. I have called my opinion, with regard to the design of this epistle, an hypothesis, and as such I humbly lay it before the public; if, however, any one will take the trouble to follow our poet, step by step, along all the turnings and windings of this desultory composition, he will, perhaps, find that this is not a mere hypothesis, but may even be convinced, that, from the very beginning, Horace had the point in view at which he at last arrives. Should the reader wish, rather than go alone, to take this little trip in company with one, who has so long been following, as well as he could, this justly celebrated ancient writer, let him only please to come along. When the aim of an author is such, that, in order to its being attained, it must not be announced, the best way is to announce nothing at all. Accordingly, Horace begins this discourse without any introduction, and places before our eyes, in all its absurdity, the greatest fault which a poem or any other work of art can possibly have, a fault which, in poets of no real talents, is not to be corrected. Such people cannot form a whole: they begin with one thing and end with another; a work of their getting up is pasted together of incongruous parts, without unity, relation, or propor tion. The objection which our poet now supposes brought against himself: "How! have not poets been ever allowed to venture what they chose?" could only be expected from such a novice, as, according to the present hypothesis, the young Piso, was, and the objection is answered in such a manner as to set the rule here given in the clearest light; but, as the application of it depends entirely on the just judgment and delicate taste of the poet, it could be of no manner of service to the young gentleman in question. Horace proceeds to place the faults which are most usually committed against the rules of unity, in a soft light indeed, but such, however, as shows extremely well how ridiculous they are. Young people are very apt to value themselves on beautiful description, and, on any the slightest occasion in the world, they take up the pencil to paint you some landscape or other. Whether the painting be in its proper place; whether it be not contrary to the main design, that the reader be now detained by it; whether it be not in the light of another object, which should have stood in the very place which it occupies, is never once considered. A work is, accordingly, at last produced, in which there is no more coherence than in the dreams of a fever. We have the head of a beautiful woman, but it is joined to the neck of a horse; there is presented to your view cypress most exactly copied from nature, but it is the principal figure in a piece, which should excite your compassion for an unfortu nate man who has been shipwrecked; and the great master, who was to produce an elegant and capacious vase, disappoints your expectation, and puts you off with a paltry kitchen-pot. Here is another blunder into which young poets, who either have no warning Genius, or do not listen to his counsels, frequently fall; while they endeavour to avoid one extreme, they run into the other. Not to be harsh, they are insipidly smooth and soft; that they may not creep on the ground, they fly about in the aërial regions instead of advancing with an equal and manly pace; when they would be sublime they rave; and speak nonsense, when they aim at saying something new. One has observed that certain images produce a great effect, and forthwith concludes, that, in order to increase the effect to any degree whatever, nothing more is necessary than to give a double, triple, or quadruple dose of such images. Another remarks, that one or two small circumstances enliven a picture, and give it truth and expression; and now he believes that he cannot be sufficiently minute in detail. The chief source of all these blemishes is the poet's want of judgment or taste. Judgment must guide him, as a sharp and experienced eye guides the hand of the artizan. A man who has not this faculty may easily be told, that he has it not, but who can give him that which nature has refused to bestow? As children are often fool-hardy from their ignorance, so bearded children often attempt more than they can perform. Horace, therefore, admonishes (v. 72) those who delight in scribbling, above all things, to examine their force; not to venture upon any thing with which they are not intimately acquainted, and which they have not so scrupulously weighed and so narrowly viewed on all sides, as to be able to answer any question concerning it which they could put to themselves. How can a young man, who knows neither himself nor the objects around him, to whom things appear plain and easy only from ignorance or incapacity, ever be certain that he has not put too much confidence in his own strength, and that he has not chosen a wrong subject on which to try his talents? But even if he were certain of this, he is still far from having surmounted every difficulty. The same sound sense the same nice judgment, which must guide him in the choice and arrangement of his materials, in order to have first a complete and lively prototype of his work in his own mind, which he is afterwards to impress on the mind of his reader or hearer, must guide him in the use of language in the choice, arrangement, and connecting of words, (v. 87, &c.) Here the poet allows himself the first short digression, in which he seems to have had the then Roman public more than the Pisos in view. He justifies the prudent and modest use of antiquated words; the re-ennobling of such as did not deserve the neglect and dishonour into which they had fallen; the coining of new words, when necessity requires it; and concludes with an observation which must, in some measure, damp the spirit of those who write for fame. If the Latin had remained to this day the language of Italy, Virgil and Horace would probably have been much less intelligible to the Italians, than those English authors who wrote under our first Henrys and Edwards are to us. Next to their language, there is nothing in which young and old pretenders to poetry are usually more negligent than in their versification. Precisely that, which is one of the most difficult things in the poetic art, appears to them both the easiest and of the smallest consequence. Horace runs over this subject from v. 134 to v. 158; and as it was more his design to make dull fellows ridiculous than to form good poets, he positively asserts, after a few general rules which he gives on expression, stile, and versification, that no one could pretend to the name of a poet, who was not a complete master in these three points. Now, as he declared most of the poets of his own and of the preceding times, whose negligence in these three branches he had so often attacked, the merest dunces, he naturally leads the young Piso, who was encouraged perhaps by the ease of writing such verses as every body made at that time, to reflect, that to be a poet might probably not be a thing so extremely easy as he had imagined. Till now there has not been a single word about dramatic poetry. But as the Roman play-wrights were the people against whom our poet chiefly aimed the shafts of his ridicule; and as the young Piso, according to the present hypothesis, was either writing, or had a strong inclination to write, for the stage, it was quite natural for Horace to mention the drama. Accordingly, from v. 165 to v 241, he gives us a few of the principal rules of this species of writing, and at the same time mentions some of the most glaring and most unpardonable faults committed by the dramatic writers of his age. Time has long ago swept a way all their works, and, consequent ly, the frequent allusions to them, which one cannot avoid observing in this epistle, must, in a great measure, be lost upon us; we may, however, fairly conclude, from the warnings he gives, that, in what Horace says of the stage, his design was much less to show Piso how he himself might produce something excellent, than to teach him how to estimate performances of this kind, by which Rome was daily inundated. The progress of our poet in this piece has, as we have already observed, very much the appearance of a walk, when people have no other object but merely to saunter about. A small deviation from the path is of no consequence; they sometimes stand still to enjoy for a moment a fine prospect; they sometimes go a little from the straight line to gather a few flowers, or to recline in the shade of a hedge or a tree, and every object, as satire was never more unmercifully it presents itself, becomes the subject used than in the friendly admonitions of conversation. Horace dwells on no he gives them, from verse 469 to verse one subject long enough to gratify the 485; it is, perhaps, impossible to desire of knowledge; seldom gives a laugh with more bitterness and conrule with such precision as to make tempt than he does at the poor devils its application easy to a novice in the in the seven last verses of this passage. art; goes off every moment from par- In this humour he returns, before he ticulars to universals; from dramatic is aware, to versification; and now he poetry to poetry in general; and ne- carries it so far with his brethren of glects no opportunity of aiming a side- the quill, as to inform them what an thrust at those who would be poets Iambus is (the young Pisos must invitâ Minervâ. In this manner he have learned that from their preceptor goes on from the 165th to the 287th at home.) Next, with a certain deverse, when he now seems in good gree of indignation at the partiality of earnest to initiate his pupil into the the Romans for their old poets, he resecrets of the dramatic art. He in proaches them with the want of orreality touches, especially from v. 339 ganic acuteness to judge of the harto v. 356, on some points of the great mony of a verse, and, at the same est moment; but after having intro- time, declares, that their indulgence duced the beautiful sketch of the four to those who could not submit to the ages of man, he soon hastens away labour of the file was the chief cause from any thing that has the smallest why, in all the departments of poetry, resemblance to a precept in this kind and particularly in the dramatic, they of poetry, to dwell upon the part to remained so far behind their masters, be performed by the chorus, which, the Greeks. Correctness is, in his from the tragedies of Greece, must opinion, the great perfection of the have been sufficiently known to the art; and he conjures, one may say, Romans of the Augustan age. He the young Pisos, by the lustre of now wanders into a kind of historico- their house, (vos O P. sanguis,) to let philosophical deduction of the causes nothing pass for a poetical work which why, and the manner in which the has not, by unwearied diligence, been Chorus, by degrees, became that brought to the highest polish, and which Eschylus made it, and how from where beauty is not found without the Chorus of the oldest tragedies, or spot or blemish. It was his opinion goat-songs, satirical plays arose. If that the Romans set too high a value this distinguished poet had really in- on the mental powers, and too little tended to write an Art of Poetry, it on the labours of art; that to a poem, would be altogether inconceivable why which should merit the name, the lathe should dwell longer on such an in- ter were no less necessary than the significant sort of coarse little pieces former; and that what made the than on tragedy and comedy them- Greeks so much excel was, that fire selves. But an author, who has bound or genius in the composition was alhimself to nothing, cannot be called to ways, among them, united to diligence a strict account; and, having in his and perseverance in giving the finishmind a certain ideal how such satires ing hand to their productions. should be written, he falls into a kind of reverie, musing how he himself would go to work in this way, and seems for some moments to forget that he was not alone. What he says, on this occasion, of the peculiar language that he would adopt for this species of composition, is excellent, and may furnish a poet of real genius with a great variety of useful hints. He amuses himself so much and so long with this idea, that he becomes warmer than we have hitherto found him; his humour increases, and, with uninterrupted vivacity, he gives the poetas ters lash after lash. The scourge of In the passage from verse 594 to 694, Horace gives excellent precepts, and makes profound reflections upon the forming of a poet; points out the deep and laborious studies through which he must pass; and shows how much these contribute to the production of a work that shall survive its author. But the whole is thrown together in such confusion, that the agreeable carelessness of the epistolary style is not a sufficient apology for the poet, and that one is almost tempted to believe he introduced this disorder on purpose to confound the young Piso by the multiplicity and incole rence of his rules, and, by his manner of representing the subject, to make the difficulty appear so much the greater. Such a conjecture gains more and more credibility, when we observe, that, in the midst of all this confusion, which would be intolerable in a poem really didactic, there are found, here and there, very visible traces of a certain fine manoeuvring, and of the poet's eye being continually directed to what he has in view. If, from the beginning, he had shown too clearly at what he aimed, he might have been almost certain he would miss the mark. But our author shows a little more dexterity. He makes an offer, in the friendliest manner, to the young gentleman, who is all on fire to mount the arduous hill of the Muses, to be his fellow-traveller and guide. He leads him along a path, by the length and steepness of which the boldest might have been disheartened. The youth is now dismayed, he had imagined the way so short and pleasant; he had never dreamed of so many dangers and difficulties; he be comes quite fatigued before he is half way up; his guide encourages him; makes him stop a little to take breath; brings him, before he is aware, to a spot, from which he shows him, in the best possible light, the end of all his wishes. They set out again; but the road becomes always longer and longer, and, the more they advance, the more difficult. The beautiful temple, of which they have, from time to time, a distant peep, seems, instead of coming nearer, always to retire farther from them; and the guide, constantly dragging the disheartened youth along, has the ill-nature to talk to him of dangers which, without more than usual good fortune, it would be impossible for them to escape. He speaks of quagmires where they might easily be swallowed up; of dreadful precipices; of steep ascents that still lay before them; of what had befallen many others who had attempted what they were now attempting. And, when he had set all this before him, he, at last, abruptly tells him, that it depended on himself whether he would continue this perilous journey all alone, or, which was the safest course, abandon his design. It is nearly in this manner that Horace treats the young Piso, whom he accompanies on his tour of Parnas sus-From time to time, when he sees him quite crest-fallen, quite dismayed at the magnitude and difficulty of the things required of him, he seems willing to reanimate his courrge; he speaks of the rule of Five Acts (a rule as easily followed by a dunce as by an Eschylus) as a matter of the utmost importance; he teaches him how to make trimetrical iambics; he speaks of faults which we must overlook in a poet, observing, that, after all, we must not expect any thing like perfection from the weakness of human nature; and, at last, concludes by taking him, with great ceremony, aside, and whispering into his ear, with the air of saying something of vast importance, that there was nothing in the world more insufferable than mcdiocrity in a poet. 66 Here it is (from verse 694) that the real design of Horace, in composing this piece on poetry and poets, begins to be perfectly manifest. We have only to read to see his intention. After all he had done, to convince his young friend how difficult and hazardous the road to the temple of the Muses was, Piso had still one way left of putting illusion on himself. “Very well," might he say, you are probably in the right; but it is not my design, nor is it at all necessary, to be a great master in the art. I make verses for my amusement. Hundreds of young fellows like myself have written tragedies, comedies, elegies, and iambics, without wishing or pretending to any high rank among poets. Supposing that my verses are not the most polished in the world, is not genius always more than art? And then every one is not so severe a critic as you, Sir. Those friends to whom I have recited my essays were very well pleased with them. With my own eyes I have seen the effect which this or that happy passage produced." All these downy pillows on which our young gentleman might have wished to put his uneasy poetical conscience to sleep, our author now softly pulls, one after another, from under his head. In managing this delicate affair, there is not a word to be said against his good breeding. He even tells the young man that he by no means needs to blush at his love to the Muses; but, at the same time, takes from him the possibility of escaping him by any loop-hole what |