Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/444

True to your characters, till all be past,
Preserve consistency from first to last.

⁠'Tis hard^[1] to venture where our betters fail,^[2]

Or lend fresh interest to a twice-told tale;

1. "Difficile est proprie communia dicere; tuque⁠
   Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus,
   Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus."

   Hor: De Arte Poet: 128-130.

   Mons. Dacier, Mons. de Sévigné, Boileau, and others, have left their dispute on the meaning of this sentence in a tract considerably longer than the poem of Horace. It is printed at the close of the eleventh volume of Madame de Sévigné's Letters, edited by Grouvelle, Paris, 1806. Presuming that all who can construe may venture an opinion on such subjects, particularly as so many who can't have taken the same liberty, I should have held "my farthing candle" as awkwardly as another, had not my respect for the wits of Louis 14th's Augustan "Siècle" induced me to subjoin these illustrious authorities. I therefore offer firstly Boileau: "Il est difficile de traiter des sujets qui sont à la portée de tout le monde d'une manière qui vous les rende propres, ce qui s'appelle s'approprier un sujet par le tour qu'on y donne." 2dly, Batteux: "Mais il est bien difficile de donner des traits propres et individuals aux êtres purement possibles." 3dly, Dacier: "Il est difficile de traiter convenablement ces caractères que tout le monde pent inventer." Mr. Sévigné's opinion and translation, consisting of some thirty pages, I omit, particularly as Mr. Grouvelle observes, "La chose est bien remarquable, aucune de ces diverses interpretations ne parait être la véritable." But, by way of comfort, it seems, fifty years afterwards, "Le lumineux Dumarsais" made his appearance, to set Horace on his legs again, "dissiper tous les nuages, et concilier tous les dissentiments;" and I suppose some fifty years hence, somebody, still more luminous, will doubtless start up and demolish Dumarsais and his system on this weighty affair, as if he were no better than Ptolemy or Copernicus and comments of no more consequence than astronomical calculations, I am happy to say, "la longueur de la dissertation"

2. What'eer the critic says or poet sings
   'Tis no slight task to write on common things.—[MS. L. (a).]