Nec te ullæ facies, non terruit ipse Typhœus
Arduus, arma tenens; non te Messapus et Ufens,
Contemtorque Deûm Mezentius.
Virg.
But to return. He that has this idea of perfection in the work he undertakes, however successful he is, will yet be modest; because to rise up to that idea, which he proposed for his model, is almost, if not absolutely, impossible.
These two observations account for what may seem as strange, as it is infallibly true; I mean, they show us why good writers have the lowest, and bad writers the highest, opinion of their own performances. They who have only a partial idea of this perfection, as their portion of ignorance or knowledge of it is greater or less, have proportionable degrees of modesty or conceit.
Nor, though natural good understanding makes a tolerably just judgment in things of this nature, will the reader judge the worse, for forming to himself a notion of what he ought to expect from the piece he has in hand, before he begins his perusal of it.
The ode, as it is the eldest kind of poetry, so it is more spiritous, and more remote from prose, than any other, in sense, sound, expression, and conduct. Its thoughts should be uncommon, sublime, and moral; its numbers full, easy, and most harmonious; its expression pure, strong, delicate, yet unaffected; and of a curious felicity beyond other poems; its conduct should be rapturous, somewhat abrupt, and immethodical to a vulgar eye. That apparent order, and connexion, which gives form and life to some compositions, takes [pg 160] away the very soul of this. Fire, elevation, and select thought, are indispensable; an humble, tame, and vulgar ode is the most pitiful error a pen can commit.
Musa dedit fidibus divos, puerosque deorum.
And as its subjects are sublime, its writer's genius should be so too; otherwise it becomes the meanest thing in writing, viz. an involuntary burlesque.