THE FIRST EPISTLE

OF THE

SECOND BOOK OF HORACE;

With this Motto in the first Edition, in folio, 1737:

"Ne rubeam pingui donatus munere." HoR.

142

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Reflections of Horace, and the Judgments passed in his Epistle to Augustus, seemed so seasonable to the present Times, that I could not help applying them to the use of my own Country. The Author thought them considerable enough to address them to his Prince; whom he paints with all the great and good qualities of a Monarch, upon whom the Romans depended for the Increase of an Absolute Empire. But to make the Poem entirely English, I was willing to add one or two of those which contribute to the Happiness of a Free People, and are more consistent with the Welfare of our Neighbours.

This Epistle will shew the learned World to have fallen into two mistakes: one, that Augustus was a Patron of Poets in general; whereas he not only prohibited all but the Best Writers to name him, but recommended that Care even to the Civil Magistrate: Admonebat Prætores, ne paterentur Nomen suum obsolefieri, &c. The other, that this Piece was only a general Discourse of Poetry; whereas it was an Apology for the Poets, in order to render Augustus more their Patron. Horace here pleads the Cause of his Contemporaries, first against the Taste of the Town, whose humour it was to magnify the Authors of the preceding Age; secondly against the Court and Nobility, who encouraged only the Writers for the Theatre; and lastly against the Emperor himself, who had con

ceived them of little Use to the Government. He shews (by a View of the Progress of Learning, and the Change of Taste among the Romans) that the Introduction of the Polite Arts of Greece had given the Writers of his Time great advantages over their Predecessors; that their Morals were much improved, and the Licence of those ancient Poets restrained: that Satire and Comedy were become more just and useful; that whatever extravagances were left on the Stage, were owing to the Ill Taste of the Nobility; that Poets, under due Regulations, were in many respects useful to the State; and concludes, that it was upon them the Emperor himself must depend, for his Fame with Posterity.

We may farther learn from this Epistle, that Horace made his Court to this Great Prince by writing with a decent Freedom towards him, with a just Contempt of his low Flatterers, and with a manly regard to his own Character.

EPISTOLA I.

AD AUGUSTUM.

CUM tot 'sustineas et tanta negotia solus, Res Italas armis tuteris, moribus ornes,

NOTES.

Ver. I. While you, great Patron] All those nauseous and outrageous compliments, which Horace, in a strain of abject adulation, degraded himself by paying to Augustus, Pope has converted into bitter and pointed sarcasms, conveyed under the form of the most artful irony.

"Horace," says Pope, in the advertisement to this piece, "made his court to this great prince (or rather this cool and subtle tyrant), by writing with a decent freedom towards him, with a just contempt of his low flatterers, and with a manly regard to his own character." Surely he forgot the 15th and 16th lines:

Jurandasque tibi per numen ponimus aras,

Nil oriturum alias, nil ortum tale fatentes, &c.

We sometimes speak incorrectly of what are called the writers of the Augustan age. Terence, Lucretius, Catullus, Tully, J. Cæsar, and Sallust, wrote before the time of Augustus; and Livy, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, and Propertius, were by no means made good writers by his patronage and encouragement. The reigns of Augustus and Louis XIV. are often said to resemble each other, in the number of illustrious men, of every species of literature, that appeared together in those reigns. But (says the President Henault, with his usual sagacity and judgment), "On ne doit pas croire que ce soit l'effet du hasard; & si ces deux regnes ont de grands rapports, c'est qu'ils ont été accompagnés à peu près des mêmes circonstances. Ces deux Princes sortoient des guerres civiles; de ce tems ou les peuples toujours armés, nourris sans cesse au milieu des périls, entêtés des plus hardis desseins, ne voyent rien ou ils ne puissent atteindre; de ce tems

EPISTLE I.

TO AUGUSTUS.

WHILE you, great Patron of Mankind! sustain The balanc'd World, and open all the Main;

NOTES.

ou les évenemens heureux & malheureux, mille fois répétés, etendent les idées, fortifient l'âme, à force d'épreuves, augmentent son ressort, & lui donnent le desir de gloire qui ne manque jamais de produire de grandes choses." Abrégé. 4to. p. 613.

I beg leave to add, that one of the most unaccountable prejudices that ever obtained, seems to be that of celebrating Augustus for clemency. "Clementiam non voco, lassam crudelitatem," says Seneca. Can we possibly forget his cruel proscriptions, and unjust banishment of Ovid? or the infamous obscenity of his verses? In the second line of the Original, Bentley would read manibus instead of moribus. If we place an interrogation point after Cæsar in the fourth line, it will vindicate the Poet from the seeming inconsistency of, longo sermone: Dr. Hurd imagines, but perhaps without just grounds, that by sermone we are to understand, not the body of the epistle, but the proeme or introduction only. This interpretation appears to be one of those refinements in which this learned Critic has rather too freely indulged himself in his Commentaries and Notes on this Epistle, and on the Art of Poetry. See, for instance, the interpretation he has adopted and amplified, from Catrou, of the temple Virgil has described, as prefiguring the Æneid, in the beginning of the Third Georgic. Notes on the Epistle to Augustus, p. 43.

A noted French Writer calls Augustus, "Un fourbe, un assassin, nommé Octave, parvenu à l'Empire par des crimes qui meritoient le dernier supplice."

Ver. 2. open all the Main ;] A very obscure expression; as it was suggested to me by a judge of good writing, Lord Macartney.