19. Sed nunc non erat his locus.] If one was to apply this observation to our dramatic writings, I know of none which would afford pleasanter instances of the absurdity, here exposed, than the famous Orphan of Otway. Which, notwithstanding its real beauties, could hardly have taken so prodigiously, as it hath done, on our stage, if there were not somewhere a defect of good taste as well as of good morals.
23. Denique sit quidvis: simplex duntaxat et unum.] Is not it strange that he, who delivered this rule in form, and, by his manner of delivering it, appears to have laid the greatest stress upon it, should be thought capable of paying no attention to it himself, in the conduct of this epistle?
25-28. Brevis esse laboro, Obscurus fio: sectantem lenia nervi Deficiunt animique: professus grandia turget: Serpit humi tutus nimium timidusque procellae.] If these characters were to be exemplified in our own poets, of reputation, the first, I suppose, might be justly applied to Donne; the second, to Parnell; the third, to Thomson; and the fourth, to Addison. As to the two following lines;
Qui variare cupit rem prodigialiter unam,
Delphinum silvis adpingit, fluctibus aprum:
they are applicable to so many of our poets, that, to keep the rest in countenance, I will but just mention Shakespear himself; who, to enrich his scene with that variety, which his exuberant genius so largely supplied, hath deformed his best plays with these prodigious incongruities.
29. Qui variare cupit rem prodigialiter unam, &c.] Though I agree with M. Dacier that prodigialiter is here used in a good sense, yet the word is so happily chosen by our curious speaker as to carry the mind to that fictitious monster, under which he had before allusively shadowed out the idea of absurd and inconsistent composition, in v. 1. The application, however, differs in this, that, whereas the monster, there painted, was intended to expose the extravagance of putting together incongruous parts, without any reference to a whole, this prodigy is designed to characterize a whole, but deformed by the ill-judged position of its parts. The former is like a monster, whose several members, as of right belonging to different animals, could, by no disposition, be made to constitute one consistent animal. The other, like a landskip, which hath no objects absolutely irrelative, or irreducible to a whole, but which a wrong position of the parts only renders prodigious. Send the boar to the woods; and the dolphin to the waves; and the painter might shew them both on the same canvass.