17. Nil oriturum alias, nil ortum tale fatentes.] Il n’est impossible, says M. de Balzac, in that puffed, declamatory rhapsody, intitled, Le Prince, de resister au mouvement interieur, qui me pousse. Je ne sçaurois m’empecher de parler du Roy, et de sa vertu; de crier à tous les princes, que c’est l’exemple, qu’ils doivent suivre; DE DEMANDER A TOUS LES PEUPLES, ET A TOUS LES AGES, S’ILS ONT JAMAIS RIEN VEU DE SEMBLABLE. This was spoken of a king of France, who, it will be owned, had his virtues. But they were the virtues of the man, and not of the Prince. This, however, was a distinction, which the eloquent encomiast was not aware of, or, to speak more truly, his business required him to overlook. For the whole elogy is worth perusing, as it affords a striking proof of the uniform genius of flattery, which, alike under all circumstances, and indifferent to all characters, can hold the same language of the weakest, as the ablest of princes, of Louis le juste, and Caesar Octavianus Augustus.
23. Sic fautor veterum, &c. to v. 28.] The folly, here satyrized, is common enough in all countries, and extends to all arts. It was just the same preposterous affectation of venerating antiquity, which put the connoisseurs in painting, under the emperors, on crying up the simple and rude sketches of Aglaophon and Polygnotus, above the exquisite and finished pictures of Parrhasius and Zeuxis. The account is given by Quintilian, who in his censure of this absurdity, points to the undoubted source of it. His words are these: “Primi, quorum quidem opera non vetustatis modò gratiâ visenda sunt, clari pictores fuisse dicuntur Polygnotus et Aglaophon; quorum simplex color tam sui studiosos adhuc habet, ut illa propè rudia ac velut futurae mox artis primordia, maximis, qui post eos extiterunt, auctoribus praeferantur, PROPRIO QUODAM INTELLIGENDI (ut mea fert opinio) AMBITU.” [L. xii. c. 10.] The lover of painting must be the more surprized at this strange preference, when he is told, that Aglaophon, at least, had the use of only one single colour: whereas Parrhasius and Zeuxis, who are amongst the maximi autores, here glanced at, not only employed different colours, but were exceedingly eminent, the one of them for correct drawing, and the delicacy of his outline; the other, for his invention of that great secret of the chiaro oscuro. “Post Zeuxis et Parrhasius: quorum prior LUMINUM UMBRARUMQUE INVENISSE RATIONEM, secundus, EXAMINASSE SUBTILIUS LINEAS DICITUR.” [Ibid.]
28. Si, quia Graiorum sunt antiquissima quaeque scripta vel OPTIMA, &c.] The common interpretation of this place supposes the poet to admit the most ancient of the Greek writings to be the best. Which were even contrary to all experience and common sense, and is directly confuted by the history of the Greek learning. What he allows is, the superiority of the oldest Greek writings extant; which is a very different thing. The turn of his argument confines us to this sense. For he would shew the folly of concluding the same of the old Roman writers, on their first rude attempts to copy the finished models of Greece, as of the old Greek writers themselves, who were furnished with the means of producing those models by long discipline and cultivation. This appears, certainly, from what follows:
Venimus ad summum fortunae: pingimus atque
Psallimus et luctamur Achivis doctius unctis.
The design of which hath been entirely overlooked. For it hath been taken only for a general expression of falsehood and absurdity, of just the same import, as the proverbial line,
Nil intra est oleâ, nil extra est in nuce duri.
Whereas it was designedly pitched upon to convey a particular illustration of the very absurdity in question, and to shew the maintainers of it, from the nature of things, how senseless their position was. It is to this purpose: “As well it may be pretended, that we Romans surpass the Greeks in the arts of painting, music, and the exercises of the palaestra, which yet it is confessed, we do not, as that our old writers surpass the modern. The absurdity, in either case, is the same. For, as the Greeks, who had long devoted themselves, with great and continued application, to the practice of these arts (which is the force of the epithet UNCTI, here given them) must, for that reason, carry the prize from the Romans, who have taken very little pains about them; so, the modern Romans, who have for a long time been studying the arts of poetry and composition, must needs excel the old Roman writers, who had little or no acquaintance with those arts, and had been trained, by no previous discipline, to the exercise of them.”