[22] This, I think, must be the interpretation of sensibus celebrem, supposing it to be the true reading. But a learned critic has shewn with great appearance of reason, that the text is corrupt and should be reformed into sensibus CELEREM. According to which reading the encomium here past on Pomponius must be understood of his Wit, and not the gravity of his moral Sentences. Either way his title to the honour of Invention is just the same.—See a Specimen of a new Edition of Paterculus in Bibliotheque Britannique, Juillet, &c. 1736.
[23] In the library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
[24] Mr. Hume, Of Simplicity and Refinement.
[25] And no wonder, when, as Suetonius tells us, the emperor himself was so delighted with the old comedy. [c. 89.]
[26] This is further confirmed from Lucian, who, in the description of a splendid feast in his ΑΛΕΚΤΡΥΩΝ, and in the Symposium of his ΛΑΠΙΘΑΙ, brings in the ΓΕΛΩΤΟΠΟΙΟΙ as necessary attendants on the entertainment.—But the reader will not take what is said of the fine satyr of Xenophon’s Symposium, who hath not observed, that this sort of compositions, which were in great credit with the ancients, are of the nature of dramas, ΗΘΙΚΟΙ ΛΟΓΟΙ, as Aristotle would call them. In which the dialogists, who are real personages as in the old comedy, give a lively, and sometimes exaggerated expression of their own characters. Under this idea of a Symposium we are prepared to expect bad characters as well as good. Nothing in the kind of composition itself confined the writer to the latter; and the decorum of a festal conversation, which, in a republic especially, would have a mixture of satyr in it, seemed to demand the former. We see then the undoubted purpose of Xenophon in the persons of his JESTER and Syracusian; and of Plato, in those of Aristophanes and some others. Where we may further take notice, that, to prevent the abuse and misconstruction, to which these personated discourses are ever liable, Socrates is brought in to correct the looseness of them, in both dialogues, and in some measure doth the office of the dramatic chorus, BONIS FAVENDI. But it is the less strange that the moderns have not apprehended the genius of these Symposia, when Athenæus, who professedly criticises them, and one would think, had a better opportunity of knowing their real character, hath betrayed the grossest ignorance about them.—I can but just hint these things, which might afford curious matter for a dissertation. But enough is said to let the intelligent reader into the true secret of these convivial dialogues, and to explane the ground of the encomium here passed upon one of them.
[27] “L’étude égale des poëtes de différens tems à plaire à leurs spectateurs, a encore influé dans la maniere de peindre les characters. Ceux qui paroissent sur la scene Angloise, Espagnole, Françoise, sont plus Anglois, Espagnols, ou François que Grecs ou Romains, en un mot que ce qu’ils doivent être. Il ne faut qu’en peu discernement pour s’appercevoir que nos Césars et nos Achilles, en gardant même une partie de leur caractere primitif, prennent droit de naturalité dans le païs où ils sont transplantez, semblables à ces portraits, qui sortent de la main d’un peintre Flamand, Italien, ou François, et qui portent l’empreinte du païs. On veut plaire à sa nation, et rien ne plait tant que la resemblance de manieres et de genie.” [P. Brumoy, vol. i. p. 200.]
[28] Dionys. Halicarn Ep. ad C. Pomp. p. 205. Edit. Huds.
[29] In conformity with the Antique. Nec enim Phidias, cum faceret Jovis formam aut Minervæ, contemplabatur aliquem e quo similitudinem duceret: sed ipsius in mente incidebat species pulchritudinis eximia quædam, quam intuens in eaque defixus ad illius similitudinem artem et manum dirigebat [Cic. Orat. 2.]
[30] Sir William Temple.
[31] ἼΩΝ.