! ABOUT this time it became fashionable among the wits at Button's, the mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease, to translate Ovid. Their united performances were published in form by Garth, with a preface written in a flowing and lively style, but full of strange opinions. He declares that none of the classic poets had the talent of expressing himself with more force and perspicuity than Ovid; that the Fiat of the Hebrew Lawgiver is not more fublime than the juffit et extendi campos of the Latin Poet; that he excels in the propriety of his fimiles and epithets, the perfpicuity of his allegories, and the instructive excellence of his morals. Above all, he commends him for his unforced tranfitions, and for the ease with which he slides into some new circumftances, without any violation of the unity of the story; the texture, says he, is so artful, that it may be compared to the work of his own Arachne, where the shade dies so gradually, and the light revives so imperceptibly, that it is hard to tell where the one ceafes and the other begins. But it is remarkable that Quintilian thought very differently on this subject of the tranfitions; and the admirers of Ovid would do well to confider his opinion : " Illa vero frigida et puerilis eft in scholis affectatio, et hujus velut præstigiæ plaufum petat." Garth was a most amiable and benevolent man: It was faid of him, "that no physician knew his art more, nor his trade less." Pope told Mr. Richardfon, that there was hardly an alteration, of the innumerable corrections that were made throughout every edition of the Dispensary, that was not for the better. The vivacity of his conversation, the elegance of his manners, and the sweet. ness of his temper, made Garth an universal favourite, both with Whigs and Tories when party-rage ran high. The notes which Addison wrote on those parts of Ovid which he translated are full of good sense, candour, and instruction. Great is the change in passing from Statius to Ovid; from force to facility of style, from thoughts and images too much studied and unnatural, to fuch as are obvious, careless, and familiar. Voltaire has treated Augustus with pointed, but just severity, for banishing Ovid to Pontus, and assigning for a reason his having written The Art of Love; a work even of decency compared with feveral parts of Horace, whom Augustus so much praised and patronized; and which contained not a line at all comparable to fome of the gross obscenities of Augustus's own verses. Laying many circumstances together, he thinks the real cause of this banishment was, that Ovid had seen and detected Augustus in some very criminal amour, and, in short, been witness to an act of incest. Ovid himself says, " Cur aliquid vidi?" And Minutianus Apuleius says, "Pulsum quoq. in exitium quod Augusti incestum vidisset." Voltaire adds, " That Ovid himself deserves almost equal reproaches for having so lavishly and naufeously flattered both that emperor and his successor Tiberius." Vol. v. p. 297. |