he would forgive me if he were alive; and I have often asked myself that question. I know this is a field,
Per quem magnus equos Auruncæ flexit alumnus,
but with all respect due to the name of Ben Jonson, to which no man pays more veneration than I; it cannot be denied, that the constraint of rhyme, and a literal translation (to which Horace in his book declares himself an enemy) has made him want a comment in many places."
Oldham follows:
"I doubt not but the reader will think me guilty of an high presumption in venturing upon a translation of the Art of Poetry, after two such great hands as have gone before me in the same attempts: I need not acquaint him that I mean Ben Jonson, and the earl of Roscommon; the one being of so established an authority, that whatever he did is held as sacred, the other having lately performed it with such admirable success, as almost cuts off all hope in any after pretenders, of ever coming up to what he has done."
The last is Henry Ames:
"'Tis certain my lord Roscommon has not only excelled in justness of version and elegance of style, but has given his poet all the natural beauties and genteel plainness of the English dress; but his lordship rid with a slack rein, and freed himself at once from all the incumbrance and perplexity of rhyme; and sure it must be confessed some difficulty to be circumscribed to syllables and sounds: Mr. Oldham, indeed, has very skillfully touched the Horatian lyre, and worked it into musical harmony; but so modernized the poem, and reduced it to the standard of his own time, that a peevish reader may not only be disgusted at want of the poetical history, but think himself privileged to except against all such freedoms in any one but Mr. Oldham.
Ben Jonson, (with submission to his memory,) by transgressing a most useful precept, has widely differed from them both; and trod so close upon the heels of Horace, that he has not only crampt, but made him halt, in (almost) every line,"
