[265] Dionysius of Halicarnassus.—Pope.
These prosaic lines, this spiritless eulogy, are much below the merit of the critic whom they are intended to celebrate.—Warton.
A most meagre account of a very excellent and judicious critic. But what can we expect when men overstep the limit of their enquiries, and rush in where learning has not authorised them to tread.—Wakefield.
The lines first appeared in the second edition. In a pretended letter to Addison, dated October 10, 1714, Pope speaks of having found a particular remark in one of the treatises of the Greek critic, but he had probably never looked into the original when this couplet was written, and seems to have falsely inferred from chance quotations that the comments upon Homer were the special characteristic of the works of Dionysius. Pope was indebted for the leading phrase in his couplet to a passage of Rochester, quoted by Wakefield:
Compare each phrase, examine ev'ry line,
Weigh ev'ry word, and ev'ry thought refine.
[266] This dissolute and effeminate writer little deserved a place among good critics for only two or three pages on the subject of criticism.—Warton.
It is to be suspected that Pope had never read Petronius, and mentioned him on the credit of two or three sentences which he had often seen quoted, imagining that where there was so much, there must necessarily be more. Young men, in haste to be renowned, too frequently talk of books which they have scarcely seen.—Johnson.
If Pope had been acquainted with the general tenor of the fragments which remain of Petronius, he would not have celebrated the most corrupt and disgusting writer of antiquity for an unalloyed combination of charming qualities.
[267] To commend Quintilian barely for his method, and to insist merely on this excellence, is below the merit of one of the most rational and elegant of Roman writers. Considering the nature of Quintilian's subject, he afforded copious matter for a more appropriate and poetical character. No author ever adorned a scientifical treatise with so many beautiful metaphors.—Warton.
[268] In the early editions,