in its perfection, and claims for himself the distinction of having given to Italy the Greek lyric— Princeps Æolium carmen ad Italos Addison may lay claim to having, guided by Steele, indeed, but surpassing him, brought the essay to that perfection in English that it had attained in the hands of its creator, Montaigne. In his essays he has displayed the maturity of his genius, as Horace has done in his odes; and the qualities of both are strikingly similar. In both is that combination of good sense and good taste that results in the urbanity for which each is famed. Both possess the curiosa felicitas which Petronius gave as the peculiar attribute of Horace. Addison follows Horace in his painstaking endeavor for perfection of style and diction. Horace has been described by Sellar, in his Roman Poets of the Augustan Age,' as belonging ‘to that class of lyrical poets in whom impulse and enthusiasm are subordinate to, and controlled by reflexion'; this might have been said of Addison both as essayist and as poet. But while Addison is the interpreter of Horace for the eighteenth century, he has given something of his own, which can be felt in his writings rather than expressed, and which constitutes the difference between the pagan and the Christian moralist. More steadily than his prototype, and with a deeper sense of the obligation entailed upon him by the gift of expression, he has kept before him the truth of Horace's own precept, Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci.3 10. 3. 30. 13-14. 2 Horace and the Elegiac Poets, p. 197. 3 A. P. 343. NICHOLAS ROWE, 1673-1718 Nicholas Rowe belongs perhaps more to the seventeenth than to the eighteenth century, though he was a contemporary of Addison, Steele, and Prior, and a friend of Pope. He forms a link between the dramatists of the Restoration and the Augustan poets. As a dramatist he belongs to the earlier period; his plays are romantic in spirit, and there is little of his classical learning to be discerned in them. Each play, however, bears upon its title-page a motto from the classics, which is usually taken from Virgil. One is taken from Ovid, one only from Horace, that of Ulysses:1 Stultum regum et populorum continet æstus His comedy, the Biter, has a motto from Persius. His dedications, too, are apt to contain classical allusion; in them he has indicated his familiarity with the teachings of Horace. In the dedication of his Dramatic Works to the Earl of Warwick and Holland, he says: 'If my advice might be taken upon this head, it should be always to submit with patience to the publick judgment, to be contented under condemnation with the thoughts of "Non si male nunc, et olim sic erit." "2 And in the dedication of the Royal Concert, he speaks of poetry thus: "This indeed would be much more properly said to the world and when I have told 'em what men have equally adorn'd 1 E. 1. 2. 8, 17-18. 2 O. 2. 10. 17. it, and been adorn'd by it, I might not unfitly apply to 'em, what Horace said to the Piso's: Et forte pudori Sit tibi musa lyræ solers et cantor Apollo.' In his dramas there are two instances where Horace may have been the source of his thought. In Tamerlane, Act 1, Scene 1, Tamerlane says: The brave meet every accident And these words echo the quiet assurance of Horace's admonition to Dellius:2 Equam memento rebus in arduis In Jane Shore, the speech of Hastings—3 Beyond myself, I prize my native land: And emulate the Greek and Roman name; Think England's peace bought cheaply with my blood, And die with pleasure for my country's good is instinct with Horace's Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, and the whole spirit of the Second Ode of the Third Book. But, in general, his plays have little suggestion from the classics. It is in his poetry that Rowe shows any kinship with the Augustan poets; and it is here that he shows indebtedness to Horace. Apart from his imitations and translations, his poetry owes little to the great satirist. He is at one time too pastoral, at another too panegyric, to 1 A. P. 406-407. 2 O. 2. 3. 1-2. 3 Act 3, Sc. 1. |