[110] So Soame and Dryden of the Ode, in the Translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry:
Her generous style at random oft will part,
And by a brave disorder shows her art.
And again:
A generous Muse,
When too much fettered with the rules of art,
May from her stricter bounds and limits part.—Wakefield.
[111] This allusion is perhaps inaccurate. The shapeless rock, and hanging precipice do not rise out of nature's common order. These objects are characteristic of some of the features of nature, of those especially that are picturesque. If he had said that amid cultivated scenery we are pleased with a hanging rock, the allusion would have been accurate.—Bowles.
The criticism of Bowles does not apply to the passage in Sprat's Account of Cowley, from which Pope borrowed his comparison: "He knew that in diverting men's minds there should be the same variety observed as in the prospects of their eyes, where a rock, a precipice, or a rising wave is often more delightful than a smooth even ground, or a calm sea."
[112] Another couplet originally followed here:
But care in poetry must still be had;
It asks discretion ev'n in running mad:
And though, &c.
which is the insanire cum ratione taken from Terence by Horace, at Sat. ii. 3, 271.—Wakefield.
[113] "Their" means "their own."—Warton.