Castor and Pollux were unlike, even though they came from one and the same egg. This is far more extraordinary and marvellous, than that two common brothers should have different inclinations. I love to pour out all myself, as plain My chief pleasure is to write satires like Lucilius," says Horace. "My chief pleasure (says Pope) is,-What? to speak my mind freely and openly." There should have been an instance of some employment, and not a virtuous habit; there follows in the original, a line which Bentley has explained very acutely, and in a manner different from the other commentators : neque si malè gesserat, usquam Decurrens, alio, neque si bene-.‡ T 2 * Ver. 28. † Ver. 51. Ver. 31. He He affirms, that the true reading should be malè cesserat; and that it does not mean, whether his affairs went ill or not, but whether he wrote successfully or not. "Nusquam alio præterquam ad libros decurrens, seu bene ei cesserat in scribendo, seu malè. Scilicet quovis ille die scribere amabat, sive aptus tum ad studium, seu, ut sæpe usû venit, ineptior: seu musis faventibus sive aversis." The passage that immediately follows, in the original, at verse the thirty-fifth, Nam Venusinus arat, down to verse the thirty-ninth, to the words, incuteret violenta, which are frequently printed in a parenthesis, and have been supposed to be an awkward interpolation, were undoubtedly intended by Horace to represent the loose, incoherent and verbose manner* of Lu cilius, * amat scripsisse ducentos Ante cibum versus, totidem cænatus Hor. sat. x. lib. 1. v. 61. Ad. Baillet, in his Jugemens, among his numerous blunders, and false judgments, is so absurd as to take literally the expression of Lucilius-Stans pede in uno. cilius, (incomposito pede,) who loaded his satires with many useless and impertinent thoughts: 8. O Pater & Rex, Jupiter, ut pereat positum rubigine telum.* Save but our army! and let Jove incrust He could not suffer so favourable an opportunity to pass, without joining with his friends, the patriots of that time, in the cry against a standing army. The sentiment in the original is taken, as the old scholiast observes, from Callimachus : Ζευ πάτερ, ὡς χαλύβων παν απολοιτο γενος. T 3. Numberless * Ver. 42. † Ver. 73. He imitates two other epigrams of Callimachus, in verse 8. of the 2d Sat. lib. 1. Præclaram ingratâ stringat malus ingluvie rem and also, as Heinsius observes, in the 105th verse of the same satire Leporem venator ut altâ In nive sectatur In Numberless are the passages in Horace, which he has skilfully adopted and interwoven from the Greek writers, with whom he was minutely and intimately acquainted; perhaps more so than any other Roman poet, having studied at Athens longer than any of them. Quidquid sub terrâ est in apricum proferet ætas is from the Ajax of Sophocles, verse 659. Απανθ' ὁ μακρος κἀναρίθμητος χρόνος Pernicies & Tempestas, Barathrumque macelli--+. GROTIUS, in that very entertaining book, his Excerpta ex Tragediis & Comædiis Græcis, has preserved, In the sixth satire of the second book, he has Sophocles in his preserved, page 583, a fragment of Alevis, to which this passage of Horace alludes: Δειπνει δ' άφωνος Τηλεφος, νεύων μόνον Προς τις επερωτωντας τις ωςε πολλακις Χειμων ὁμειρακίσκος εστι τοις φίλοις. Per mare pauperiem fugiens, per saxa, per ignes,* is from Theognis : Ην δη χρη φεύγοντα και ες μεγακητεα ποιου Sunt verba & voces quibus hunc lenire dolorem is from the Hippolitus of Euripides: Εισιν δ' επωδαι και λογοι θελκτηριοδο Si quid novisti rectius istis Candidus imperti, si non, his utere mecum,‡ T 4 Ep. i. lib. 1, ver. 46. + Ep. i. lib. 1. ver. 35. * Ep. vi. 67. is |