25.4.
mvp-aristotle-comment-112
25.8
OR PERHAPS IT MAY BE SAID THAT THE FACT WAS ACTUALLY SO AT THAT TIME.
IF the poet has so managed as to represent the customs of the time in which the action of his poem is supposed to have passed, however contrary they may be to those of his own age, so far from needing an excuse it will itself be strong proof of merit. In this the excellence of Homer, as a just imitator of the manners of the age he wrote on, is Thewn by a particular instance. (F) In his own time the art of horfe- [F] See Pope's Essay on Homer's battles. manship
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. manship was arrived at a pitch of perfection capable of rivalling the exploits of Hughes and Astley. But though in his fifteenth Iliad, ν. 679, (ν. 822 of Pope's tranflation) when he speaks in his own person he does not fcruple to compare Ajax leaping from deck to deck of the Grecian vessels to a skilful horfeman, who manages [G] four horses at a time, leaping occafionally from the back of one to the other; yet in defcribing the different evolutions of the field he never puts his warriors on horfeback, but always represents them as fighting from chariots. But the excuse which Ariftotle means to make is from the poet's representing things as they were at the time while he was writing, which, as far as they differ only from the time of the criticism, is allowable; but if they differ from the practice of the time concerning which the poet is writing, they are excusable only on the fame principle with the objections mentioned in the first note on this chapter. Virgil has been guilty of this fault in the very circumstance just mentioned of the horfemanship of Homer's heroes. For Afcanius is represented as an expert horseman soon after he is at Carthage. Our Shakespear is too often guilty of this fault, and is apt to make the customs of all ages and countries congenial with those of his own. [G] Pope has entirely destroyed the difficulty of this manœuvre by saying they were Four fair coursers practised to obey." Here is an instance, it is true, of the sense and spirit of the original facrificed to rhyme; but could not Pope have done better when a very inferior rhymist might have written, • So when some man, the courser skill'd to rein, • Four steeds selecting from a num'rous train, • To the full city from th' extended mead, • Impels their flight, and urges on their speed.' When
When however he only incurs the censure made by hypercriticism, and to which the candor of Aristotle here furnishes an answer, he affords fometimes entertainment and sometimes difficulty to the antiquarian. We learn that in the days of Queen Elizabeth rooms of state were strewed with rushes, and we hear with furprize, that the [H] dagger was used for breaking heads, as we now speak of a cudgel. How abfurd will the equestrian expedition of Sophia and her maid appear to future readers, who shall not know that in the year 1745 poft chaises, which became very foon after so universal, were hardly if at all used. I do not exactly know when two-wheeled chaises (now entirely laid afide) were partially introduced from France, but I very well remember the first four-wheel chaise that run post, introduced by March of Maidenhead-bridge, at least eight years fince the era of Tom Jones. There is a passage in the Spectator that may probably puzzle our pofterity, who will hear fo much of the exclusive merit of English gardening and its comparative excellence and diftinguishing character when opposed to the fame art among our neighbours, from the writers of the present day. • We have before observed, that there is generally in nature something more grand and august than what we meet with in the curiofities of art. When therefore we see this imitated in any measure it gives us a [H] The old English dagger must have something resembled a stick with a tuck at the end of it, as in Grofe's account of ancient armour, one of the uses ascribed to it in miliof faftening tary service is to be stuck in the ground for the purpose a horse to it.
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. ⚫ nobler and more exalted kind of pleasure than what we receive from • the nicer and more accurate productions of art: on this account our • English gardens are not so entertaining to the fancy as those in France • and Italy, where we fee a large extent of ground covered over with an ، . agreeable mixture of garden and foreft, which represent every where an artificial rudeness, much more charming than that neatness and elegancy which we meet with in those of our own country. - • Our British gardeners instead of humouring nature love to deviate • from it as much as possible. Our trees rise in cones, globes and pyra- ، mids. We see the marks of the scissars upon every plant and bush.' SPECTATOR, No. 414, by ADDISON. Pope's Epistle to Lord Burlington will appear equally furprizing.
