Nil est jucundum; vivas in amore jocisque. "Vive, vale. Si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidus imperti: si non, his utere mecum. NOTES. character of Swift, whom he had attacked in one of his earliest productions, on portents and prodigies; in which he says, page 32: "The religious author of the Tale of a Tub will tell you, religion is but a reservoir of fools and madmen; and the virtuous Lemuel Gulliver will answer for the state, that it is a den of savages and cut-throats." Edition, 12mo. 1727. Misanthropy," says a true philosopher, "is so dangerous a thing, and goes so far in sapping the very foundation of morality and religion, that I esteem the last part of Swift's Gulliver, (that, I mean, relative to his Houyhnhnms and Yahoos,) to be a worse book to peruse, than those which we forbid as the most flagitious and obscene. One absurdity in this author 66 W w Adieu ! If this advice appear the worst, 130 E'en take the counsel which I gave you first: Why do; I'll follow them with all my heart. NOTES. (a wretched philosopher, though a great wit) is well worth remarking; in order to render the nature of men odious, and the nature of beasts amiable, he is compelled to give human characters to his beasts, and beastly characters to his men; so that we are to admire the beasts, not for being beasts, but amiable men; and to detest the men, not for being men, but detestable beasts. "Whoever has been reading this unnatural filth, let him turn for a moment to a Spectator of Addison, and observe the philanthropy of that classical writer; I may add, the superior purity of his diction and his wit." Harris's Philological Inquiries, p. 538.-Warton. ADVERTISEMENT. THE reflections of Horace, and the judgments passed in his Epistle to Augustus, seemed so seasonable to the present times, that I could not help applying them to the use of my own country. The author thought them considerable enough to address them to his prince; whom he paints with all the great and good qualities of a monarch, upon whom the Romans depended for the increase of an absolute empire. But to make the poem entirely English, I was willing to add one or two of those which contribute to the happiness of a free people, and are more consistent with the welfare of our neighbours. This Epistle will show the learned world to have fallen into two mistakes: one, that Augustus was a patron of poets in general; whereas he not only prohibited all but the best writers to name him, but recommended that care even to the civil magistrate: Admonebat Prætores, ne paterentur Nomen suum obsolefieri, &c. The other, that this piece was only a general discourse of poetry; whereas it was an apology for the poets, in order to render Augustus more their patron. Horace here pleads the cause of his contemporaries, first, against the taste of the town, whose humour it was to magnify the authors of the preceding age; secondly, against the court and nobility, who encouraged only the writers for the theatre; and lastly, against the emperor himself, who had conceived them of little use to the government. He shows (by a view of the progress of learning, and the change of taste |