Art of Poetry an Epistle to the Pisos | Page 3

And this was indeed the very block upon
which HEINSIUS, and, before him,. JULIUS SCALIGER, himself
fumbled. These illustrious Criticks, with all the force of genius, which
is required to disembarrass 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