This brilliant passage of Pope is quoted in this place by the author of that English Commentary, who has also subjoined many excellent remarks on the revival of old words, worthy the particular attention of those who cultivate prose as well as poetry, and shewing at large, that "the riches of a language are actually increased by retaining its old words: and besides, they have often a greater real weight and dignity, than those of a more fashionable cast, which succeed to them. This needs no proof to such as are versed in the earlier writings of any language."—"The growing prevalency of a very different humour, first catched, as it should seem, from our commerce with the French Models, and countenanced by the too scrupulous delicacy of some good writers amongst ourselves, bad gone far towards unnerving the noblest modern language, and effeminating the public taste."—"The rejection of old words, as barbarous, and of many modern ones, as unpolite," had so exhausted the strength and stores of our language, that it was high time for some master-hand to interpose, and send us for supplies to our old poets; which there is the highest authority for saying, no one ever despised, but for a reason, not very consistent with his credit to avow: rudem esse omnino in nostris poetis, aut inertissimae nequitiae est, aut fastidii delicatissimi.— Cic. de fin. 1. i. c. 2.
[As woods endure, &c.] Ut silvae foliis, &c. Mr. Duncombe, in his translation of our Author, concurs with Monsieur Dacier in observing that "Horace seems here to have had in view that fine similitude of Homer in the sixth book of the Iliad, comparing the generations of men to the annual succession of leaves.
[Greek:
Oipaeer phyllon genehn, toiaede ch ahndron.
phylla ta mehn t anemohs chamahdis cheei, ahllah de thula
Taeletheasa phyei, earos depigigyel(*)ai orae
Oz andron genen. aemen phnei, aeh dahpolaegei.]
"Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies,
They fall successive, and successive rise:
So generations in their turns decay;
So flourish these, when those are past away."
The translator of Homer has himself compared words to leaves, but in another view, in his Essay on Criticism.
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
In another part of the Essay he persues the same train of thought with
Horace, and rises, I think, above his Master.
Short is the date, alas, of modern rhymes,
And 'tis but just to let them live betimes.
No longer now that golden age appears,
When Patriarch-wits surviv'd a thousand years;
Now length of Fame (our second life) is lost,
And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast;
Our sons their father's failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.
So when the faithful pencil has design'd
Some bright idea of the Master's mind,
Where a new world leaps out at his command,
And ready Nature waits upon his hand;
When the ripe colours soften and unite,
And sweetly melt into just shade and light;
When mellowing years their full perfection give,
And each bold figure just begins to live;
The treach'rous colours the fair art betray,
And all the bright creation fades away!
Essay an Criticism.
95.—WHETHER THE SEA, &c.] Sive receptus, &c.