MONIMIA.
Oh men, for flattery and deceit renown'd!
[211]: Burns disait que dans son village il était arrivé, au moyen du raisonnement et des livres, à se figurer à peu près exactement tout ce qu'il avait vu plus tard dans les salons, tout, sauf une femme du grand monde.
[212]: «The stage to which my genius never much inclined me.»
[213]: I might find in France a living Horace and a Juvenal in the person of the admirable Boileau, whose numbers are excellent, whose expressions are noble, whose thoughts are just, whose language is pure, whose satire is pointed, and whose sense is close. What he borrows from the ancient, he repays with usury of his own; in coin as good and almost as universally valuable. (Dédicace au comte de Dorcet.)
[214]: «Spenser wanted only to have read the rules of Bossu.» Ailleurs il cite Longin, Boileau, Rapin: «The latter of whom is alone sufficient, were all other criticks lost, to teach anew the rules of writing.»
Arioste neither designed justly, nor observed any unity of action or compass of time, or moderation in the vastness of his draught. His style is luxurious without majesty or decency, and his adventures without the compass of nature and possibility.
[215]: His wit is faint, and his salt almost insipid. Juvenal is of a more vigorous and masculine wit; he gives me as much pleasure as I can bear.
[216]: Their language is not strung with sinews like our English. It has the nimbleness of a grey-hound, but not the bulk and body of a mastiff. They have set up purity for the standard of their language, and a masculine vigour is that of ours.
[217]: To receive the blessings and prayers of mankind, you need only be seen together. We are ready to conclude that you are a pair of angels sent below to make virtue amiable in your persons, or to sit for poets when they would pleasantly instruct the age, by drawing goodness in the most perfect and alluring shape of nature.... No part of Europe can afford a parallel to your noble Lord in masculine beauty and in goodliness of shape. (Dédicace de la Conquête de Mexico.)