La Tragedie informe & grossiere au naissant n'etoit qu'un simple Choeur, ou chacun en danfant, et du Dieu des Raisins entonnant les louanges, s'essorçoit d'attirer de fertiles vendanges. la le vin et la joie eveillant les esprits, du plus habile chantre un Bouc étoit le prix. Thespis sut le premier, qui barbouillé de lie, promena par les bourgs cette heureuse folie; et d'acteurs mal ornés chargeant un tombereau, amusa les passans d'un spectacle nouveau. aeschyle dans le Choeur jetta les personages; d'un masque plus honnéte habilla les visages: sur les ais d'un Theatre en public exhaussé, fit paroitre l'acteur d'un brodequin chaussé.
L'art poetique, chant troisieme.
417.—the sland'rous Chorus drown'd In shameful silence, lost the pow'r to wound.
Chorusque turpiter obticuit, sublato jure nocendi.
"Evidently because, though the jus nocendi was taken away, yet that was no good reason why the Chorus should entirely cease. M. Dacier mistakes the matter. Le choeur se tût ignominuesement, parce-que la hi reprimasa licence, et que ce sut, à proprement parler, la hi qui le bannit; ce qu' Horace regarde comme une espece de siétrissure. Properly speaking, the law only abolished the abuse of the chorus. The ignominy lay in dropping the entire use of it, on account of this restraint. Horace was of opinion, that the chorus ought to have been retained, though the state had abridged it of the licence, it so much delighted in, of an illimited, and intemperate satire, Sublatus chorus fuit, says Scaliger, _cujus illae videntur esse praecipuae partet, ut potissimum ques liberet, laedertnt."
Notes on the Art of Poetry._ If Dacier be mistaken in this instance, his mistake is common to all the commentators; not one of whom, the learned and ingenious author of the above he excepted, has been able to extract from these words any marks of Horace's predilection in favour of a Chorus, or censure of "its culpable omission" in Comedy. De Nores expresses the general sense of the Criticks on this passage.
[Turpiter.] Quia lex, declaratâ Veteris Conaetdiae scriptorum improbitate, a maledicendi licentiâ deterruit.—Sicuti enim antea summâ cum laude Vetus Comediae, accepta est, ita postea summa est cum turpitudine vetantibus etiam legibus repudiata, quia probis hominibus, quia sapientibus, quia inte*s maledixerit. Quare Comaediae postea conscriptae ad hujusce Veteris differentiam sublato choro, novae appellatae sunt.
What Horace himself says on a similar occasion, of the suppression of the Fescennine verses, in the Epistle to Augustus, is perhaps the best comment on this passage.
—quin etiam lex
Paenaque lata, malo quae nollet carmine quenquam—
describi: vertere modum formindine fustis
ad bene dicendum delectandumque redacti.
421.—-Daring their Graecian masters to forsake,
And for their themes domestick glories take.