5-118. Romulus, et Liber pater, &c.] The subject commences from v. 5, where, by a contrivance of great beauty, a pertinent illustration of the poet’s argument becomes an offering of the happiest address to the emperor. Its double purpose may be seen thus. His primary intention was to take off the force of prejudice against modern poets, arising from the superior veneration of the ancients. To this end the first thing wanting was to demonstrate by some striking instance, that it was, indeed, nothing but prejudice; which he does effectually in taking that instance from the heroic, that is, the most revered, ages. For if such, whose acknowledged virtues and eminent services had raised them to the rank of heroes, that is, in the pagan conception of things, to the honours of divinity, could not secure their fame, in their own times, against the malevolence of slander, what wonder that the race of wits, whose obscurer merit is less likely to dazzle the public eye, and yet, by a peculiar fatality, is more apt to awaken its jealousy, should find themselves oppressed by its rudest censure? In the former case the honours, which equal posterity paid to excelling worth, declare all such censure to have been the calumny of malice only. What reason then to conclude, it had any other original in the latter? This is the poet’s argument.
But now, of these worthies themselves, whom the justice of grateful posterity had snatched out of the hands of detraction, there were some, it seems, whose illustrious services the virtue or vain-glory of the emperor most affected to emulate; and these, therefore, the poet, by an ingenious flattery, selects for examples to his general observation,
Romulus, et Liber pater, et cum Castore Pollux
Post ingentia fata, &c.
Further, as the good fortune of Augustus, though adorned with the same enviable qualities, had exempted him from the injuries which had constantly befallen those admired characters, this peculiar circumstance in the history of his prince affords him the happiest occasion, flattery could desire, of paying distinguished honours to his glory.
Praesenti tibi maturos largimur honores.
And this constitutes the fine address and compliment of his Application.
But this justice, which Augustus had exacted, as it were, by the very authority of his virtue, from his applauding people, was but ill discharged in other instances.
Sed tuus hoc populus sapiens et justus in uno,
Te nostris ducibus, te Graiis anteferendo,
Cetera nequaquam simili ratione modoque
Aestimat, &c.
And thus the very exception to the general rule, which forms the encomium, leads him with advantage into his argument; which was to observe and expose “the malignant influence of prepossession in obstructing the proper glories of living merit.” So that, as good sense demands in every reasonable panegyric, the praise results from the nature and foundation of the subject-matter, and is not violently and reluctantly dragged into it.
His general charge against his countrymen “of their bigotted attachment to those, dignified by the name of ancients, in prejudice to the just deserts of the moderns,” being thus delivered; and the folly of such conduct, with some agreeable exaggeration, exposed; he sets himself with a happy mixture of irony and argument, as well becomes the genius and character of the epistle, to confute the pretences, and overturn the very foundations, on which it rested.