Art of Poetry an Epistle to the Pisos | Page 3

an involved subject, and all the aids of learning, that can lend a ray to enlighten a dark one, have, notwithstanding, found themselves utterly unable to unfold the order of this Epistle; insomuch, that SCALIGER [Footnote: Praef. i x LIB. POET. ct 1. vi. p. 338] hath boldly pronounced, the conduct of it to be vicious; and HEINSIUS had no other way to evade the charge, than by recurring to the forced and uncritical expedient of a licentious transposition The truth is, they were both in one common error, that the Poet's purpose had been to write a criticism of the Art of Poetry at large, and not, as is here shewn of the Roman Drama in particular."
The remainder of this Introduction, as well as the Commentary and Notes, afford ample proofs of the erudition and ingenuity of the Critick: yet I much doubt, whether he has been able to convince the learned world of the truth of his main proposition, "than it was the proper and sole purpose of the Author, simply to criticise the Roman drama." His Commentary is, it must be owned, extremely seducing yet the attentive reader of Horace will perhaps often fancy, that he perceives a violence and constraint offered to the composition, in order to accommodate it to the system of the Commentator; who, to such a reader, may perhaps seem to mark transitions, and point out connections, as well as to maintain a method in the Commentary, which cannot clearly be deduced from the text, to which it refers.
This very-ingenious Commentary opens as follows:
"The subject of this piece being, as I suppose, one,_ viz. the state of the Roman Drama,_ and common sense requiring, even in the freest forms of composition, some kind of method. the intelligent reader will not be surprised to find the poet prosecuting his subject in a regular, well-ordered plan; which, for the more exact description of it, I distinguish into three parts:
"I. The first of them [from 1. 1 to 89] is preparatory to the main subject of the Epistle, containing some general rules and reflexions on poetry, but principally with an eye to the following parts: by which means it serves as an useful introduction to the poet's design, and opens with that air of ease and elegance, essential to the epistolary form.
"II. The main body of the Epistle [from 1. 89. to 295] is laid out in regulating the_ Roman_ Stage; but chiefly in giving rules for Tragedy; not only as that was the sublimer species of the Drama, but, as it should seem, less cultivated and understood.
"III. The last part [from 1. 295 to the end] exhorts to correctness in writing; yet still with an eye, principally, to the dramatic species; and is taken up partly in removing the causes, that prevented it; and partly in directing to the use of such means, as might serve to promote it. Such is the general plan of the Epistle."
In this general summary, with which the Critick introduces his particular Commentary, a very material circumstance is acknowledged, which perhaps tends to render the system on which it proceeds extremely doubtful, if not wholly untenable. The original Epistle consists of four hundred and seventy-six lines; and it appears, from the above numerical analysis, that not half of those lines, only two hundred and six verses, [from v. 89 to 295] are employed on the subject of the Roman Stage. The first of the three parts above delineated [from v. i to 89] certainly contains general rules and reflections on poetry, but surely with no particular reference to the Drama. As to the second part, the Critick, I think, might fairly have extended the Poet's consideration of the Drama to the 365th line, seventy lines further than he has carried it; but the last hundred and eleven lines of the Epistle so little allude to the Drama, that the only passage in which a mention of the Stage has been supposed to be implied, _[ludusque repertus, &c.]_ is, by the learned and ingenious Critick himself, particularly distinguished with a very different interpretation. Nor can this portion of the Epistle be considered, by the impartial and intelligent reader, as a mere exhortation "to correctness in writing; taken up partly in removing the causes that prevented it; and partly in directing to the use of such means, as might serve to promote it." Correctness is indeed here, as in many other parts of Horace's Satires and Epistles, occasionally inculcated; but surely the main scope of this animated conclusion is to deter those, who are not blest with genius, from attempting the walks of Poetry. I much approve what this writer has urged on the unity of subject, and beauty of epistolary method observed in this Work; but cannot agree that "the main