Art of Poetry an Epistle to the Pisos | Page 2

commentator.

_In every work regard THE AUTHOR'S END!
For none can
compass more than they intend. _ Pope.
With this view of illustrating and explaining Horace's Art of Poetry,
this shrewd and able writer, about thirty years ago, republished the
original Epistle, giving the text chiefly after Dr. Bentley, subjoining an
English Commentary and Notes, and prefixing an Introduction, from
which I beg leave to transcribe most part of the three first paragraphs,
"It is agreed on all hands, that the antients are our masters in the art of
composition. Such of their writings, therefore, as deliver instructions
for the exercise of this art, must be of the highest value. And, if any of
them hath acquired a credit, in this respect, superior to the rest, it is,
perhaps, the following work: which the learned have long since
considered as a kind of summary of the rules of good writing; to be
gotten by heart by every young student; and to whose decisive
authority the greatest masters in taste and composition must finally
submit.
"But the more unquestioned the credit of this poem is, the more it will
concern the publick, that it be justly and accurately understood. The
writer of these sheets then believed it might be of use, if he took some
pains to clear the sense, connect the method, and ascertain the scope
and purpose, of this admired epistle. Others, he knew indeed, and some
of the first fame for critical learning, had been before him in this
attempt. Yet he did not find himself prevented by their labours; in
which, besides innumerable lesser faults, he, more especially, observed
two inveterate errors, of such a fort, as must needs perplex the genius,
and distress the learning, of any_ commentator. The _one of these
respects the SUBJECT; the other, the METHOD of the Art of Poetry. It
will be necessary to say something upon each.
"1. That the Art of Poetry_, at large, is not the _proper subject of this
piece, is so apparent, that it hath not escaped the dullest and least
attentive of its Criticks. For, however all the different kinds of poetry
might appear to enter into it, yet every one saw, that some at least were
very slightly considered: whence the frequent attempts, the artes et

institutiones poetica, of writers both at home and abroad, to supply its
deficiencies. But, though this truth was seen and confessed, it unluckily
happened, that the sagacity of his numerous commentators went no
further. They still considered this famous Epistle as a collection_,
though not a _system, of criticisms on poetry in general; with this
concession however, that the stage had evidently the largest share in it
[Footnote: Satyra hac est in fui faeculi poetas, praecipui yero in
Romanum Drama, Baxter.]. Under the influence of this prejudice,
several writers of name took upon them to comment and explain it: and
with the success, which was to be expected from so fatal a mistake on
setting out, as the not seeing, 'that the proper and sole purpose of the
Author, was, not to abridge the Greek Criticks, whom he probably
never thought of; nor to amuse himself with composing a short critical
system, for the general use of poets, which every line of it absolutely
confutes; but, simply to criticize the Roman drama.' For to this end, not
the tenor of the work only, but as will appear, every single precept in it,
ultimately refers. The mischiefs of this original error have been long
felt. It hath occasioned a constant perplexity in defining the general_
method, and in fixing the import of _particular rules. Nay its effects
have reached still further. For conceiving, as they did, that the whole
had been composed out of the Greek Criticks, the labour and ingenuity
of its interpreters have been misemployed in picking out authorities,
which were not wanted, and in producing, or, more properly, by their
studied refinements in creating, conformities, which were never
designed. Whence it hath come to pass that, instead of investigating the
order of the Poet's own reflexions, and scrutinizing the peculiar state of
the Roman Stage (the methods, which common sense and common
criticism would prescribe) the world hath been nauseated with, insipid
lectures on Aristotle_ and _Phalereus; whose solid sense hath been so
attenuated and subtilized by the delicate operation of French criticism,
as hath even gone some way towards bringing the art itself into
disrepute.
"2. But the wrong explications of this poem have arisen, not from the
misconception of the subject only, but from an inattention to the
method of it. The latter was, in part the genuine consequence of the
former. For, not suspecting an unity of design in the subject it's

interpreters never looked for, or could never find, a consistency of
disposition in the method.