Buckingham has treated the subject of Dialogue very happily in his Essay on Poetry, glancing, but not servilely, at this part of Horace.
Figures of Speech, which Poets think so fine,
Art's needless varnish to make Nature shine,
Are all but Paint upon a beauteous face,
And in Descriptions only claim a place.
But to make Rage declaim, and Grief discourse,
From lovers in despair fine things to force,
Must needs succeed; for who can chuse but pity
A dying hero miserably witty?
201.——BE NOT YOUR OPENING FIERCE!] Nec sic incipies, Most of the Criticks observe, that all these documents, deduced from the Epick, are intended, like the reduction of the Iliad into acts, as directions and admonition to the Dramatick writer. Nam si in EPOPaeIA, que gravitate omnia poematum generae praecellit, ait principium lene esse debere; quanto magis in tragoedia et comoedia, idem videri debet? says de Nores. Praeceptum de intio grandiori evitaado, quod tam epicus quam tragicus cavere debet; says the Dauphin Editor. Il faut se souvenir qu' Horace appliqae à la Tragedie les regies du Poeme Epique. Car si ces debuts eclatans sont ridicules dans la Poeme Epique, ils le sont encore plus dans la Tragedie: says Dacier. The Author of the English Commentary makes the like observation, and uses it to enforce his system of the Epistle's being intended as a Criticism on the Roman drama. [ xviii] 202—-Like the rude ballad-monger's chant of old] ut scriptor cyclicus olim.] Scriptor cyclicus signisies an itinerant Rhymer travelling, like Shakespeare's Mad Tom, to wakes, and fairs, and market-towns. 'Tis not precisely known who was the Cyclick Poet here meant. Some have ascribed the character to Maevius, and Roscommon has adopted that idea.
Whoever vainly on his strength depends,
Begins like Virgil, but like Maevius ends:
That Wretch, in spite of his forgotten rhimes,
Condemn'd to live to all succeeding times,
With pompous nonsense, and a bellowing sound,
Sung lofty Ilium, tumbling to the ground,
And, if my Muse can thro' past ages fee,
That noisy, nauseous, gaping fool was he;
Exploded, when, with universal scorn,
The Mountains labour'd, and a Mouse was born.
Essay on Translated Verse.
The pompous exordium of Statius is well known, and the fragments of
Ennius present us a most tremendous commencement of his Annals.
horrida romoleum certamina pango duellum! this is indeed to split our ears asunder With guns, drums, trumpets, blunderbuss, and thunder!
211.—Say, Muse, the Man, &c.] Homer's opening of the Odyssey. his rule is perhaps no where so chastely observed as in the Paradise Lost. Homer's [Greek: Maenin aeide thea]! or, his [Greek: Andra moi ennepe,Mgsa]! or, Virgil's Arma, Urumque cano! are all boisterous and vehement, in comparison with the calmness and modesty of Milton's meek approach,
Of Man's first disobedience, &c.
2l5.—Antiphates, the Cyclops, &c].- Antiphatem, Scyllamque, & cum Cyclope Charybdim. Stories, that occur in the Odyssey. 218-19—Diomed's return—the Double Egg.]