These interpretations, as they are certainly the most obvious, seem also to be most consonant to the plain sense of the Poet.
330.—For holiday spectators, flush'd and wild, With new conceits and mummeries were beguil'd. Quippe erat ILLECEBRIS, &c.
Monsieur Dacier, though he allows that "all that is here said by Horace proves incontestibly, that the Satyrick Piece had possession of the Roman stage;" tout ce qu' Horace dit icy prouve incontestablement qu'il y avoit des Satyres; yet thinks that Horace lavished all these instructions on them, chiefly for the sake of the atellane fables. The author of the English Commentary is of the same opinion, and labours the point very assiduously. I cannot, however, discover, in any part of Horace's discourse on the satyrs, one expression glancing towards the atellanes, though their oscan peculiarities might easily have been marked, so as not to be mistaken.
335.—That GOD or HERO of the lofty scene, May not, &c. Ne quicumque DEUS, &c.
The Commentators have given various explanations of this precept. De Nores interprets it to signify that the same actor, who represented a God or Hero in the Tragick part of the Drama, must not be employed to represent a Faun or Sylvan in the Satyrick. _Dacier has a strange conceit concerning the joint performance of a Tragedy and Atellane at one time, the same God or Hero being represented as the principal subject and character of both; on which occasion, (says he) the Poet recommends to the author not to debase the God, or Hero of the Tragedy, by sinking his language and manners too low in the atellane; whose stile, as well as measure, should be peculiar to itself, equally distant from Tragedy and Farce.
The author of the English Commentary tells us, that "Gods and Heroes were introduced as well into the Satyrick as Tragick Drama, and often the very same Gods and Heroes, which had born a part in THE PRECEDING TRAGEDY; a practice, which Horace, I suppose, intended, by this hint, to recommend as most regular."
The two short notes of Schrevelius, in my opinion, more clearly explain the sense of Horace, and are in these words.
Poema serium, jocis Satyricis ita commiscere—ne seilicet is, qui paulo ante DEI instar aut herois in scenam fuit introductus, postea lacernosus prodeat.
On the whole, supposing the Satyrick Piece to be Tragi-Comick, as Dacier himself seems half inclined to believe, the precept of Horace only recommends to the author so to support his principal personage, that his behaviour in the Satyrick scenes shall not debase the character he has sustained in the TRAGICK. No specimen remaining of the Roman Satyrick Piece, I may be permitted to illustrate the rule of Horace by a brilliant example from the seroi-comick Histories of the Sovereign of our Drama. The example to which I point, is the character of the Prince of Wales, in the two Parts of Henry the Fourth, Such a natural and beautiful decorum is maintained in the display of that character, that the Prince is as discoverable in the loose scenes with Falstaff and his associates, as in the Presence Chamber, or the closet. after the natural, though mixt dramas, of Shakespear, and Beaumont and Fletcher, had prevailed on our stage, it is surprising that our progress to pure Tragedy and Comedy, should have been interrupted, or disturbed, by the regular monster of Tragi-comedy, nursed by Southerne and Dryden.