17. NIL ORITURUM ALIAS, NIL ORTUM TALE FATENTES.] Il n'est impossible, says M. DE BALZAC, in that puffed, declamatory rhapsody, intitled, Lɛ his subject, should immediately run away again to the point, from which he had set out, and this on so needless an errand, as the letting him into the secret of his allegory? But this inserted triplet agrees as ill with what follows, as with what precedes it. For how abrupt is the transition, and unlike the delicate connexion, so studiously contrived by the Augustan poets, from Tithoni prima quot abest ab origine Caesar, to Seu quis Olympiacae miratus praemia palmae, &c. When omit but these interpolated lines, and see how gracefully, and by how natural a succession of ideas, the poet slides into the main of his subject. Intereà Dryadum sylvas saltusque sequamur Intactos Te sine nil Rumpe moras: vocat ingenti clamore Cithaeron Seu quis Olympiacae miratus praemia palmae Pascit EQvos; seu quis fortes ad aratra JUVENCOS. On the whole, I have not the least doubt, that the lines before us are the spurious offspring of some later poet; if indeed the writer of them deserve that name; for, whoever he was, he is so far from partaking of the original spirit of Virgil, that, at most he appears to have been but a servile and paltry mimic of Ovid; from the opening of whose Metamorphosis the design was clearly taken. The turn of the thought is evidently the same in both, and even the expression. Mutatas dicere formas is echoed by ardentes dicere pugnas: dicere fert animus, is, by an affected improvement, accingar dicere: and Tithoni prima ab origine iş PRINCE, de resister au mouvement interieur, qui me pousse. Je ne sçaurois m'empecher de parler du Roy, et de sa vertu; de crier à tous les princes, que c'est l'exemple, qu'ils doivent suivre; DE DEMANDER A TOUS LES PEUPLES, ET A TOUS LES AGES, S'ILS ONT JAMAIS RIEN VEU DE SEmblable. This was spoken of a king of France, who, it will be owned, had his virtues. But they were the virtues of the man, and not of the Prince. This, however, was a distinction, which the eloquent encomiast was not aware of, or, to speak more truly, his business required him to overlook. For the whole elogy is worth perusing, as it affords a striking proof of the uniform genius of flattery, which, alike under all circumstances, and indifferent to all characters, can hold the saine language of the weakest, as the ablest of princes, of LOUIS LE JUSTE, and CAESAR OCTAVIANUS AUGUSTUS. almost literally the same as primâque ab origine mundi. For the insertion of these lines in this place, I leave it to the curious to conjecture of it, as they may: but in the mean time, must esteem the office of the true critic to be so far resembling that of the poet himself, as, within some proper limitations, to justify the honest liberty here taken. Cum tabulis animum censoris sumet honesti; Audebit quaecunque parum splendoris habebunt [2 Ep. ii, 110. 23. SIC FAUTOR VETERUM, &c. to v. 28.] The folly, here satyrized, is commön enough in all countries, and extends to all arts. It was just the same preposterous affectation of venerating antiquity, which put the connoisseurs in painting, under the emperors, on crying up the simple and rude sketches of AGLAOPHON and POLYGNOTUS, above the exquisite and finished pictures of PARRIASIUS and ZEUXIS. The account is given by Quintilian, who in his censure of this absurdity, points to the undoubted source of it. His words are these: "Primi, quorum "quidem opera non vetustatis modò gratiâ visenda "sunt, clari pictores fuisse dicuntur Polyghotus et "Aglaophon; quorum simplex color tam sui stu“diosos adhuc habet, ut illa propè rudia ac velut "futurae mox artis primordia, maximis, qui post eos extiterunt, auctoribus praeferantur, PROPRIO દ QUODAM INTELLIGENDI (ut meȧ fert opinio) AM"BITU." [L. xii. c. 10.] The lover of painting must be the more surprized at this strange preferencé, when he is told, that Aglaophon, at least, had the use of only one single colour: whereas Parrhasius and Zeuxis, who are amongst the maximi autores, here glanced at, not only employed different colours, but were exceedingly eminent, the one of them for correct drawing, and the delicacy of his outline; the other, for his invention of that great secret of the chiaro oscuro. "Post Zeuxis et Parrhasius: quorum 'prior LUMINUM UMBRARUMQUE INVENISSE RA TIONEM, secundus, EXAMINASSE SUBTILIUS LINEAS "DICITUR." [Ibid.] 28. SI, QUIA GRÁIORUM SUNT ANTIQUISSIMA QUAEQUE SCRIPTA vel OPTIMA, &c.] The common interpretation of this place supposes the poet to admit the most ancient of the Greek writings to be the best: Which were even contrary to all expérience and common sense, and is directly confuted by the history of the Greek learning. What he allows is, the superiority of the oldest Geeek writings extant; which is a very different thing. The turn of his argument confines us to this sense. For he would shew the folly of concluding the same of the old Roman writers, on their first rude attempts to copy the finished models of Greece, as of the old Greek writers themselves, who were furnished with the means of producing those models by long discipline and cultivation. This appears, certainly, from what follows: Venimus ad summum fortunae : pingimus atque Psallimus et luctamur Achivis doctius unctis. The design of which hath been entirely overlooked. For it hath been taken only for a general expression of falsehood and absurdity, of just the saine import, as the proverbial line, Nil intra est oled, nil extra est in nuce duri. Whereas it was designedly pitched upon to convey a particular illustration of the very absurdity in question, and to shew the maintainers of it, from the nature of things. how senseless their position was. It is to this purpose: "As well it "As well it may be pretended, "that we Romans surpass the Greeks in the arts of painting, music, and the exercises of the palaestra "which yet it is confessed, we do not, as that our "old writers surpass the modern. The absurdity, "in either case, is the same. For, as the Greeks, "who had long devoted themselves, with great and "continued application, to the practice of these arts (which is the force of the epithet UNCTI, here given them) must, for that reason, carry the prize from "the Romans, who have taken very little pains about "them; so, the modern Roinans, who have for a 66 66 long time been studying the arts of poetry and com66 position, must needs excel the old Roman writers, "who had little or no acquaintance with those arts "and had been trained, by no previous discipline, to the exercise of them." The conciseness of the expression made it neces sary to open the poet's sense at large. We now see, that his intention, in these two lines, was to expose, in the way of argumentative illustration, the ground of that absurdity, which the preceding verses had represented as, at first sight, so shocking to common sense. 33. UNCTIS.] This is by no means a general unmeaning epithet: but is beautifully chosen to express the unwearied assiduity of the Greek artists. |