In all
other parts of poetry he is faultless, but in this he placed his
chief perfection. And give me leave, my lord, since I have here an
apt occasion, to say that Virgil could have written sharper satires
than either Horace or Juvenal if he would have employed his talent
that way. I will produce a verse and half of his, in one of his
Eclogues, to justify my opinion, and with commas after every word,
to show that he has given almost as many lashes as he has written
syllables. It is against a bad poet, whose ill verses he describes
"Non tu, in triviis indocte, solebas
Stridenti, miserum, stipula, disperdere carmen?"
But to return to my purpose. When there is anything deficient in
numbers and sound, the reader is uneasy and unsatisfied; he wants
something of his complement, desires somewhat which he finds not:
and this being the manifest defect of Horace, it is no wonder that,
finding it supplied in Juvenal, we are more delighted with him. And
besides this, the sauce of Juvenal is more poignant, to create in us
an appetite of reading him.
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