mances. I blamed what is wrong, and pointed out the rules of the right, but I executed no great work like your heroic poem. VIRGIL. Indeed my Horace, we have dwelt too long for honest men, upon each other's praise. I grow ashamed of it. let us cease the theme. THE END. INDEX O F PRINCIPAL MATTERS. A A. CADEMY (French) its rife and nature, Page 185, 186 an English one proposed Action, of what use in speaking it ought to be eafy and natural not uniform See hands, eyes, voice. Address of an orator, what kind most proper AMBROSE's stile Antients, their excellence their way of expreffing the paffions 191, 192 79, 82, 84, 85 82, 83 83, 84 90 169 136, 137 85, 239, 302 their fimplicity beautiful than the evocation of spirits in the Odyssey. VIRGIL. My laft books were neglected. I did not intend to have left them so imperfect. you know I wanted to burn them. HORACE. What pity it had been! that was an excess of delicacy. any one may fee, that the author of the Georgics could have finished the Eneid with the fame care. I do not fo much mind that extreme exactness, as the elevation of genius, the oeconomy of the whole work, the ftrength and boldness of the painting. to deal ingenuously, if any thing hinders you from equalling Homer, it is your being more polished, more correct, more finished; but lefs fimple, lefs ftrong, lefs fublime. for with a fingle touch he fets nature unveiled before our eyes. VIRGIL. I own I did fome violence to fimple nature, in order to adapt myself to the taste of a magnificent people, delicate in every thing relating to politeness. Homer feems to forget the reader and to mind nothing but the painting of real nature in every circumftance. in this I yield to him. HORACE. You are still that modest Virgil, who was fo backward to push himself at the court of Augustus. now I have told you freely what I thought of your works, tell me in the fame manner the faults of mine. fure you do not think me incapable of acknowledging them. VIRGIL. There are, methinks, fome paffages of your odes which might have been retrenched without taking ought from the fubject, and which make no part of the defign. I am not ignorant of the transport effential to the ode. but there are fome things a little foreign, into which a beautiful transport never strays. there are also some paffionate, marvelous paffages, where you will perhaps obferve fomewhat wanting, either in point of harmony, or the fimplicity of the paffion. never did man give a happier turn to speech, to make it exprefs a fine fentiment with concifenefs and delicacy. the words become new by the ufe you make of them. but all is not equally flowing; there are some things I fhould think turned with rather too much art. HORACE. As for harmony, I do not wonder that you are fo difficult. for nothing is so smooth and harmonious as your numbers. their cadence alone is fo moving, that it draws tears from the eyes. VIRGIL. The ode requires a quite different harmony, which you have almost always hit on, and which is more varied than mine. HORACE. After all, I produced nothing but petty perfor of my greatest glory, was alfo the time of my greatest toils, and of my greatest dangers. I was frequently in hazard of my life, and the odium I then incurred broke out afterwards by my exile. in fine, it was nothing but my eloquence that occafioned my death, and had I not pushed Antony fo hard, I had been still in life. I fay nothing of your misfortunes; it were needlefs to recal them to your mind. but neither of us have any thing to blame but fate, or fortune, if you will, which made it our lot to be born in fo corrupt times, that it was impoffible to reform our commonwealths, or even to prevent their ruin. DEMOSTHENES. It was therein we wanted judgment, undertaking impossibilities: for it was not our people that forced us to take care of the public affairs, and we were not at all engaged in them by our birth. I forgive a prince born in the purple for governing, as he can, a state, which the gods have committed to his charge, by caufing him to be born of a certain race, seeing he is not at freedom to abandon that trust, how bad foever he find his situation: but a mere private perfon ought to think of nothing but regulating himself and governing his own family; he ought never to defire public offices, far lefs to court them: if they be forced upon him, he may accept them out of love to his country; but when once he has not the liberty of doing good, and his citizens grow regardless both of the laws and of rea |