Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/182

Afranius wears Menander's robe with grace;
Plautus moves on at Epicharmus' pace;
In force and weight Cæcilius bears the palm;
While Terence—aye, refinement is his charm.
These are Rome's classics; these to see and hear
She throngs the bursting playhouse year by year:
'Tis these she musters, counts, reviews, displays,
From Livius' time to our degenerate days.
Sometimes the public sees like any lynx;
Sometimes, if 'tis not blind, at least it blinks.
If it extols the ancient sous of song
As though they were unrivalled, it goes wrong:
If it allows there's much that's obsolete,
Much hasty work, much rough and incomplete,
'Tis just my view; 'tis judging as one ought;
And Jove was present when that thought was thought.
Not that I'd act the zealot, and desire
To fling the works of Livius on the fire,
Which once Orbilius, old and not too mild,
Made me repeat by whipping when a child;
But when I find them deemed high art, and praised
As only not perfection, I'm amazed,
That here and there a thought not ill expressed,
A verse well turned, should carry off the rest;
Just as an unfair sample, set to catch
The heedless customer, will sell the batch.
I chafe to hear a poem called third-rate
Not as ill written, but as written late;