CLVI.

Euripides.-Aristophanes.—Many things in Euripides hath Aristophanes wittily reprehended, not out of art, but out of truth. For Euripides is sometimes peccant, as he is most times perfect. But judgment when it is greatest, if reason doth not accompany it, is not ever absolute.

CLVII.

Cens. Scal. in Lil. Germ.-Horace.-To judge of poets is only the faculty of poets; and not of all poets, but the best. Nemo infeliciùs de poetis judicavit, quàm qui de poetis scripsit. But some will say critics are a kind of tinkers, that make more faults than they mend ordinarily. See their diseases and those of grammarians. It is true, many bodies are the worse for the meddling with; and the multitude of physicians hath destroyed many sound patients with their wrong practice. But the office of a true critic or censor is, not to throw by a letter any where, or damn an innocent syllabe, but lay the words together, and amend them; judge sincerely of the author, and his matter, which is the sign of solid and perfect learning in a man. Such was Horace, an author of much civility; and (if any one among heathen can be) the best master both of virtue and wisdom; an excellent and true judge upon cause and reason; not because he thought so, but because he knew so, out of use and experience.

Cato the grammarian, a defender of Lucilius.*
Cato grammaticus, Latina syren,

Qui solus legit, et facit poetas.

Quintilian of the same heresy, but rejected.'

i Senec. de Brev. Vit. cap. 13, et epist. 88.

Heins. de Sat. 265.

1 Pag. 267.

the

Horace his judgment of Chœrillus defended against Joseph Scaliger.m And of Laberius against Julius."

But chiefly his opinion of Plautus vindicated against many that are offended, and say, it is a hard censure upon the parent of all conceit and sharpness. And they wish it had not fallen from so great a master and censor in the art; whose bondmen knew better how to judge of Plautus, than any that dare patronize the family of learning in this age, who could not be ignorant of the judgment of the times in which he lived, when poetry and the Latin language were at the height; especially being a man so conversant and inwardly familiar with the censures of great men, that did discourse of these things daily amongst themselves. Again, a man so gracious, and in high favour with the emperor, as Augustus often called him his witty manling; (for the littleness of his stature ;) and, if we may trust antiquity, had designed him for a secretary of estate, and invited him to the place, which he modestly prayed off, and refused.

CLVIII.

Terence.- Menander.- Horace did so highly esteem Terence's comedies, as he ascribes the art in comedy to him alone among the Latins, and joins him with Menander.

Now let us see what may be said for either, to defend Horace's judgment to posterity, and not wholly to condemn Plautus.

CLIX.

The parts of a comedy and tragedy. The parts of a comedy are the same with a tragedy, and the end is partly the same; for they both delight and

teach

the comics are called darxaλo of the Greeks, no less than the tragics.

CLX.

Aristotle.-Plato.-Homer.-Nor is the moving of laughter always the end of comedy, that is rather a fowling for the people's delight, or their fooling. For as Aristotle says rightly, the moving of laughter is a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude, that depraves some part of a man's nature without a disease. As a wry face without pain moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude clown dressed in a lady's habit, and using her actions; we dislike, and scorn such representations, which made the ancient philosophers ever think laughter unfitting in a wise man. And this induced Plato to esteem of Homer as a sacrilegious person, because he presented the gods sometimes laughing. As also it is divinely said of Aristotle, that to seem ridiculous is a part of dishonesty, and foolish.

CLXI.

The wit of the old comedy.-So that what either in the words or sense of an author, or in the language or actions of men, is awry, or depraved, does strangely stir mean affections, and provoke for the most part to laughter. And therefore it was clear, that all insolent and obscene speeches, jests upon the best men, injuries to particular persons, perverse and sinister sayings (and the rather unexpected) in the old comedy did move laughter, especially where it did imitate any dishonesty, and scurrility came forth in the place of wit; which, who understands the nature and genius of laughter, cannot but perfectly know.

CLXII.

Aristophanes. Plautus.-Of which Aristophanes affords an ample harvest, having not only outgone

Plautus, or any other in that kind; but expressed all the moods and figures of what is ridiculous, oddly. In short, as vinegar is not accounted good until the wine be corrupted; so jests that are true and natural seldom raise laughter with the beast the multitude. They love nothing that is right and proper. The farther it runs from reason, or possibility with them, the better it is.

CLXIII.

Socrates.-Theatrical wit.-What could have made them laugh, like to see Socrates presented, that example of all good life, honesty, and virtue, to have him hoisted up with a pully, and there play the philosopher in a basket; measure how many foot a flea could skip geometrically, by a just scale, and edify the people from the engine. This was theatrical wit, right stage jesting, and relishing a play-house, invented for scorn and laughter; whereas, if it had savoured of equity, truth, perspicuity, and candour, to have tasten a wise, or a learned palate, spit it out presently! this is bitter and profitable; this instructs and would inform us: what need we know any thing that are nobly born, more than a horserace, or a hunting-match, our day to break with citizens, and such innate mysteries?

CLXIV.

The cart. This is truly leaping from the stage to the tumbril again, reducing all wit to the original dung-cart.

CLXV.

Of the magnitude and compass of any fable,
epic or dramatic.

What the measure of a fable is.-The fable or plot of a poem defined.—The epic fable, differing from the

dramatic. To the resolving of this question, we must first agree in the definition of the fable. The fable is called the imitation of one entire and perfect action, whose parts are so joined and knit together, as nothing in the structure can be changed, or taken away, without impairing or troubling the whole, of which there is a proportionable magnitude in the members. As for example: if a man would build a house, he would first appoint a place to build it in, which he would define within certain bounds: so in the constitution of a poem, the action is aimed at by the poet, which answers place in a building, and that action hath his largeness, compass and proportion. But as a court or king's palace requires other dimensions than a private house; so the epic asks a magnitude from other poems: since what is place in the one, is action in the other, the difference is in space. So that by this definition we conclude the fable to be the imitation of one perfect and entire action, as one perfect and entire place is required to a building. By perfect, we understand that to which nothing is wanting; as place to the building that is raised, and action to the fable that is formed. It is perfect perhaps not for a court, or king's palace, which requires a greater ground, but for the structure he would raise; so the space of the action may not prove large enough for the epic fable, yet be perfect for the dramatic, and whole.

CLXVI.

What we understand by whole.-Whole we call that, and perfect, which hath a beginning, a midst, and an end. So the place of any building may be whole and entire for that work, though too little for a palace. As to a tragedy or a comedy, the action may be convenient and perfect, that would not fit an epic poem in magnitude. So a lion is a perfect