Keep to each man his proper character;
Of countries and of times the humours know;
From diff'rent climates diff'ring customs grow.
The principle here is general. Pope, in terms and in fact, applied it only to the ancients. Had he extended the precept to modern literature he would have been cured of his delusion that every deviation from the antique type arose from unlettered tastelessness.
[95] In the first edition,
You may confound, but never criticise, which was an adaptation of a line from Lord Roscommon:
You may confound, but never can translate.
[96] The author, after this verse, originally inserted the following, which he has however omitted in all the editions:
Zoilus, had these been known, without a name
Had died, and Perrault ne'er been damned to fame;
The sense of sound antiquity had reigned,
And sacred Homer yet been unprophaned.
}
Perrault, in his Parallel between the ancients and the moderns, carped at Homer in the same spirit that Zoilus had done of old.
[97] Horace, Ars Poet., ver. 268: