Phædria, in the EUNUCH, had a command from his mistress to be absent two days, and encouraging himself to go through with it, said, Tandem ego non illâ caream, si sit opus, vel totum triduum?Parmeno, to mock the softness of his master, lifting up his hands and eyes, cries out, as it were in admiration, Hui! universum triduum ! the elegancy of which universum, though it cannot be rendered in our language, yet leaves an impression on our souls. But this happens seldom in him; in Plautus oftener, who is infinitely too bold in his metaphors and coining words, out of which many times his wit is nothing; which questionless was one reason why Horace falls upon him so severely in those verses: Sed proavi nostri Plautinos et numeros et Laudavere sales, nimium patienter utrumque, For Horace himself was cautious to obtrude a new word on his readers, and makes custom and common use the best measure of receiving it into our writings: Multa renascentur quæ nunc [jam] cecidere, cadentque The not observing this rule is that which the world has blamed in our satyrist, Cleiveland: to express a thing hard and unnaturally, is his new * Our author has quoted from memory. The lines are-At nostri proavi, &c. and afterwards-Ne dicam stulte, mirati. way of elocution. It is true, no poet but may sometimes use a catachresis: Virgil does itMistaque ridenti colocasia fundet acantho in his eclogue of Pollio; and in his seventh Æneid,' mirantur et undæ, Miratur nemus, insuetum fulgentia longe Scuta virum fluvio, pictasque innare carinas. And Ovid once so modestly, that he asks leave to do it: [quem,] si verbo audacia detur, Haud metuam summi dixisse Palatia cali. calling the court of Jupiter by the name of Augustus his palace; though in another place he is more bold, where he says,-et longas visent Capitolia pompas. But to do this always, and never be able to write a line without it, though it may be admired by some few pedants, will not pass upon those who know that wit is best conveyed to us in the most easy language; and is most to be admired when a great thought comes dressed in words so commonly received, that it is understood by the meanest apprehensions, as the best meat is the most easily digested: but we cannot read a verse of Cleiveland's without making a face at it, as if every word were a pill to swallow: he gives us 3 These lines are in the eighth Æneid. *This remark is unfounded; for the words are-et longa visent Capitolia pompa. Ovid. MET. 1. i. In the preceding quotation, for verbo, we should read verbis ; and for metuam summi,-timeam magni. many times a hard nut to break our teeth, without a kernel for our pains. So that there is this difference betwixt his Satires and doctor Donne's ; that the one gives us deep thoughts in common language, though rough cadence; the other gives us common thoughts in abstruse words. It is true, in some places his wit is independent of his words, as in that of the rebel Scot: Had Cain been Scot, God would have chang'd his doom; Si sic omnia dixisset! This is wit in all languages: it is like mercury, never to be lost or killed:-and so that other— For beauty, like white powder, makes no noise, You see, the last line is highly metaphorical, but it is so soft and gentle, that it does not shock us as we read it. But, to return from whence I have digressed, to the consideration of the ancients' writing, and their wit; of which by this time you will grant us in some measure to be fit judges. Though I see many excellent thoughts in Seneca, yet he, of them who had a genius most proper for the stage, was Ovid; he had a way of writing so fit to stir up a pleasing admiration and concernment, which are the objects of a tragedy, and to shew the various movements of a soul combating betwixt two dif 'ferent passions, that, had he lived in our age, or in his own could have writ with our advantages, no man but must have yielded to him; and therefore I am confident the MEDEA is none of his : for, though I esteem it for the gravity and sententiousness of it, which he himself concludes to be suitable to a tragedy,-Omne genus scripti gravitate tragedia vincit,-yet it moves not my soul enough to judge that he, who in the epick way wrote things so near the drama, as the story of Myrrha, of Caunus and Biblis, and the rest, should stir up no more concernment where he most endeavoured it.' The master-piece of Seneca I hold to be that scene in the TROADES, where Ulysses is seeking for Astyanax to kill him: there you see the tenderness of a mother so represented in Andromache, that it raises compassion to a high degree in the reader, and bears the nearest resemblance of any thing in the tragedies of the ancients, to the excellent scenes of passion in Shakspeare, or in Fletcher.-For love-scenes, you will find few among them; their tragick poets dealt not with that soft passion, but with lust, cruelty, revenge, ambition, and those bloody actions they produced; which were more capable of raising horrour than compassion in an audience leaving love untouched, whose gentleness would have tempered them; which is the most frequent of all the passions, and which being the 3 Our author (as Dr. Johnson has observed) "might have determined this question upon surer evidence; for it [Medea] is quoted by Quintilian as Seneca's, and the only line which remains of Ovid's play, for one line is left us, is not found there." private concernment of every person, is soothed by viewing its own image in a publick entertainment. Among their comedies, we find a scene or two of tenderness, and that where you would least expect it, in Plautus; but to speak generally, their lovers say little, when they see each other, but anima mea, vita mea; wnux, as the women in Juvenal's time used to cry out in the fury of their kindness. Any sudden gust of passion (as an extasy of love in an unexpected meeting) cannot better be expressed than in a word and a sigh, breaking one another. Nature is dumb on such occasions; and to make her speak, would be to represent her unlike herself. But there are a thousand other concernments of lovers, as jealousies, complaints, contrivances, and the like, where not to open their minds at large to each other, were to be wanting to their own love, and to the expectation of the audience; who watch the movements of their minds, as much as the changes of their fortunes. For the imaging of the first is properly the work of a poet; the latter he borrows from the historian. Eugenius was proceeding in that part of his discourse, when Crites interrupted him. I see, said he, Eugenius and I are never like to have this question decided betwixt us; for he maintains, the moderns have acquired a new perfection in writing, I can only grant they have altered the mode of it. Homer described his heroes men of great appetites, lovers of beef broiled upon the coals, and good |