He was a rival to Lucilius, his predecessor, and was
resolved to surpass him in his own manner. Lucilius, as we see by
his remaining fragments, minded neither his style, nor his numbers,
nor his purity of words, nor his run of verse. Horace therefore
copes with him in that humble way of satire, writes under his own
force, and carries a dead weight, that he may match his competitor
in the race. This, I imagine, was the chief reason why he minded
only the clearness of his satire, and the cleanness of expression,
without ascending to those heights to which his own vigour might
have carried him. But limiting his desires only to the conquest of
Lucilius, he had his ends of his rival, who lived before him, but
made way for a new conquest over himself by Juvenal his successor.
He could not give an equal pleasure to his reader, because he used
not equal instruments. The fault was in the tools, and not in the
workman. But versification and numbers are the greatest pleasures
of poetry. Virgil knew it, and practised both so happily that, for
aught I know, his greatest excellency is in his diction.
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