I think I may
be judge of this, because I have translated both. The famous author
of "The Art of Love" has nothing of his own; he borrows all from a
greater master in his own profession, and, which is worse, improves
nothing which he finds. Nature fails him; and, being forced to his
old shift, he has recourse to witticism. This passes, indeed, with
his soft admirers, and gives him the preference to Virgil in their
esteem; but let them like for themselves, and not prescribe to
others, for our author needs not their admiration.
The motive that induced Virgil to coin this fable I have showed
already, and have also begun to show that he might make this
anachronism, by superseding the mechanic rules of poetry, for the
same reason that a monarch may dispense with or suspend his own laws
when he finds it necessary so to do, especially if those laws are
not altogether fundamental. Nothing is to be called a fault in
poetry, says Aristotle, but what is against the art; therefore a man
may be an admirable poet without being an exact chronologer.
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