But Vida was by no means the most celebrated poet that adorned the age of Leo X. His merits seem not to have been particularly attended to in England till Pope had bestowed this commendation upon him, although the Poetics had been correctly published at Oxford by Basil Kennet some time before. They are perhaps the most perfect of his compositions; they are excellently translated by Pitt.—Warton.
[283] "The ancients," says the writer of the Supplement to the Profound, "always gave ivy to the poets, as may appear from numberless places in the classics, nor was it ever applied to patrons or critics, in contradistinction to poets, by any but this ingenious author."
[284] Alluding to
"Mantua, væ miseræ, nimium vicina Cremonæ." Virg.—Warburton.
This application is made in Kennet's edition of Vida.—Warton.
To say that the birth-place of Vida would be next in fame to the birth-place of Virgil was to rank him before all the other poets that Italy had produced—before Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, and Ariosto. The antithesis is marred by its want of truth.
[285] This, Warburton says, refers to the sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon, which Pope assumed had driven poetry out of Italy. The assigned cause is inadequate to account for the effect.
[286] The "born to serve" is a sarcasm on the readiness with which the French submitted to the despotism of Louis XIV.
[287] May I be pardoned for declaring it as my opinion, that Boileau's is the best Art of Poetry extant? The brevity of his precepts, the justness of his metaphors, the harmony of his numbers, as far as Alexandrine lines will admit, the exactness of his method, the perspicacity of his remarks, and the energy of his style, all duly considered, may render this opinion not unreasonable. It is scarcely to be conceived, how much is comprehended in four short cantos. He that has well digested these, cannot be said to be ignorant of any important rule of poetry.—Warton.
Boileau is said by Pope to sway in right of Horace because the Frenchman avowed that he based his Art of Poetry on that of the Roman. The English poet has been indebted to both.