channel, has changed its course which was so destructive[1] to the fruits. Mortal works must perish: much less can the honor and elegance of language be long-lived. Many words shall revive,[2] which now have fallen off; and many which are now in esteem shall fall off, if it be the will of custom, in whose power is the decision and right and standard of language.
Homer has instructed us in what measure the achievements[3] of kings, and chiefs, and direful war might be written.
Plaintive strains originally were appropriated to the unequal numbers [of the elegiac]:[4] afterward [love and] successful desires were included. Yet what author first published humble[5] elegies, the critics dispute, and the controversy still waits the determination of a judge.
- ↑ The Scholiast informs us, that Agrippa opened a canal to receive the waters of the Tiber, which had overflowed the country.
- ↑ This revival of old words is one of those niceties in composition, not to be attempted by any but great masters. It may be done two ways: 1. by restoring such terms as are grown entirely obsolete: or 2. by selecting out of those which have still a currency, and are not quite laid aside, such as are most forcible and expressive. These choice words, among such as are still in use, I take to be those which are employed by the old writers in some peculiarly strong and energetic sense, yet so as with good advantage to be copied by the moderns, without appearing barbarous or affected. (See Hor. lib. ii. ep. ii. v. 115.) The other use of old terms, i. e. when become obsolete, he says, must be made parcè, more sparingly. Hurd.
- ↑ The purport of these lines (from v. 73 to 86), and their connection with what follows, hath not been fully seen. They would express this general proposition, “That the several kinds of poetry essentially differ from each other, as may be gathered, not solely from their different subjects, but their different measures ; which good sense, and an attention to the peculiar natures of each, instructed the great inventors and masters of them to employ. The use made of this proposition is to infer”, “That therefore the like attention should be had to the different species of the same kind of poetry (v. 89, etc.), as in the case of tragedy and comedy (to which the application is made), whose peculiar differences and correspondences, as resulting from the natures of each, should, in agreement to the universal law of decorum, be exactly known and diligently observed by the poet.” Hurd.
- ↑ Elegy was at first only a lamentation for the death of a person beloved, and probably arose frem the death of Adonis. It was afterward applied to the joys and griefs of lovers. Torr.
- ↑ The pentameter, which Horace calls “exiguum,” because it has a Toot less than the hexameter. For the same reason he says, “versibua impariter junctis.” DAC.
