When in the full perfection of decay, Turn vinegar, and come again in play.[19]
Thus the corruption of a poet is the generation of a critic; I mean of a critic in the general acceptation of this age; for formerly they were quite another species of men. They were defenders of poets, and commentators on their works;--to illustrate obscure beauties; to place some passages in a better light; to redeem others from malicious interpretations; to help out an author's modesty, who is not ostentatious of his wit; and, in short, to shield him from the ill-nature of those fellows, who were then called Zoili and Momi, and now take upon themselves the venerable name of censors. But neither Zoilus, nor he who endeavoured to defame Virgil, were ever adopted into the name of critics by the ancients. What their reputation was then, we know; and their successors in this age deserve no better. Are our auxiliary forces turned our enemies? are they, who at best are but wits of the second order, and whose only credit amongst readers is what they obtained by being subservient to the fame of writers, are these become rebels, of slaves, and usurpers, of subjects? or, to speak in the most honourable terms of them, are they, from our seconds, become principals against us? Does the ivy undermine the oak, which supports its weakness? What labour would it cost them to put in a better line, than the worst of those which they expunge in a true poet? Petronius, the greatest wit perhaps of all the Romans, yet when his envy prevailed upon his judgment to fall on Lucan, he fell himself in his attempt; he performed worse in his "Essay of the Civil War" than the author of the "Pharsalia;" and, avoiding his errors, has made greater of his own. Julius Scaliger would needs turn down Homer, and abdicate him after the possession of three thousand years: has he succeeded in his attempt? he has indeed shown us some of those imperfections in him, which are incident to human kind; but who had not rather be that Homer than this Scaliger? You see the same hypercritic, when he endeavours to mend the beginning of Claudian, (a faulty poet, and living in a barbarous age,) yet how short he comes of him, and substitutes such verses of his own as deserve the ferula. What a censure has he made of Lucan, that "he rather seems to bark than sing?" Would any but a dog have made so snarling a comparison? one would have thought he had learned Latin as late as they tell us he did Greek. Yet he came off, with a _pace tuâ_,--by your good leave, Lucan; he called him not by those outrageous names, of fool, booby, and blockhead: he had somewhat more of good manners than his successors, as he had much more knowledge. We have two sorts of those gentlemen in our nation; some of them, proceeding with a seeming moderation and pretence of respect to the dramatic writers of the last age, only scorn and vilify the present poets, to set up their predecessors. But this is only in appearance; for their real design is nothing less than to do honour to any man, besides themselves. Horace took notice of such men in his age: