rough Saturnian numbers, and delicacy expelled the rank venom: but for a long time there remained, and at this day remain traces of rusticity. For late [the Roman writer] applied his genius to the Grecian pages; and enjoying rest after the Punic wars,[1] began to search what useful matter Sophocles, and Thespis, and Æschylus afforded: he tried, too, if he could with dignity translate their works; and succeeded in pleasing himself, being by nature [of a genius] sublime and strong; for he breathes a spirit tragic enough, and dares successfully; but fears a blot, and thinks it disgraceful in his writings.
Comedy is believed to require the least pains, because it fetches its subjects from common life; but the less indulgence It meets with, the more labor it requires. See how Plautus[2] supports the character of a lover under age, how that of a covetous father, how those of a cheating pimp: how Dossennus exceeds all measure in his voracious parasites; with how loose a sock he runs over the stage: for he is glad to put the money in his pocket, after this regardless whether his play stand or fall.
Him, whom glory in her airy car[3] has brought upon the
- ↑ In 514, a year after the first Punic war, Livius Andronicus first brought a play divided into acts upon the Roman stage. The republic then enjoyed an universal peace, for the temple of Janus was shut in 619. Dac.
- ↑ Our best interpreters imagine that Horace praises Plautus and Dossennus, and proposes them as examples worthy of our imitation in the beautiful characters in their plays. On the contrary, Horace, better to show the difficulty of succeeding in comedy, is willing to mark some of the faults which the best theatrical poets have committed. Plautus, who succeeded so well in the plots and intrigues of his plays, is very unhappy in his characters, which are generally either too tame, or too much outraged. Dossennus was in great reputation for the morality of his plays, as appears by his epitaph, “Hospes, resiste. et sophiam Dossenni lege;” but his characters were of one unvaried kind, and only fit for the diversion of the crowd. Horace pleasantly marks this negligence by saying, he walked over the stage with his comic slippers loose and untied. Heinsius. Dac.
- ↑ Quem tulit ad scenam ventoso gloria curru, exanimat lentus spectator, etc. There is an exquisite spirit of pleasantry in these lines, which hath quite evaporated in the hands of the critics. These have gravely supposed them to come from the person of the poet, and to contain his serious censure of the vanity of poetic fame. Whereas, besides the manifest absurdity of the thing, its inconsistency with what is delivered elsewhere on this subject (A. P. v. 324), where the Greeks are commended as being “præter laudem nullius avari,” absolutely requires us to understand them as proceeding from an objector; who, as the poet hath very satirically contrived, is left to expose himself in the very terms of his objection. Ho had just been blaming the venality of the Roman dramatic writers. They had shown themselves more solicitous about filling their pockets, than deserving the reputation of good poets. And, instead of insisting further on the excellence of this latter motive, he stops short, and brings in a bad poet himself to laugh at it.
“And what then,” says he, “you would have us yield ourselves to the very wind and gust of praise” and, dropping all inferior considerations, drive away to the expecting stage in the puffed car of vain glory? For what? To be dispirited, or blown up with air, as the capricious spectator shall think fit to enforce or withhold his inspirations. And is this the mighty benefit of your vaunted passion for fame? No; farewell the stage, if the breath of others is that on which the silly bard is to depend for the contraction or enlargement of his dimensions.” Hurd.
