sworth referring to or
quoting Horace in the section on Poetic Creation; Dryden and Temple
appealing to him and Aristotle on the Rules; Hurd quoting him on Nature
and the Stage; Roger Ascham, Ben Jonson, and Dryden citing him as an
example on Imitation; Dryden and Chapman calling him master and
law-giver on Translation; Samuel Johnson referring to him on the same
subject; and Ben Jonson and Dryden using him on Functions and Principles
of Criticism. "Horace," writes Jonson, "an author of much civility, ...
an excellent and true judge upon cause and reason, not because he
thought so, but because he knew so out of use and experience." Pope, in
the _Essay on Criticism_, describes with peculiar felicity both Horace's
critical manner and the character of the authority, persuasive rather
than tyrannical, which he exercises over Englishmen:

"H_orace still charms with graceful negligence_,
A_nd without method talks us into sense_;
W_ill, like a friend, familiarly convey_
T_he truest notions in the easiest way_."

But the dynamic power of the _Ars Poetica_ will be still better
appreciated if we assemble some of its familiar principles. Who has not
heard of and wondered at the hold the "Rules" have had upon modern
drama, especially in France,--the rule of five acts, no more and no
less; the rule of three actors only, liberalized into the rule of
economy; the rule of the unities in time, place, and action; the rule
against the mingling of the tragic and comic "kinds"; the rule against
the artificial denouement? Who has not heard of French playwrights
composing "with one eye on the clock" for fear of violating the unity of
time, or of their delight in the writing of drama as in "a difficult
game well played?" If Alexandrian criticism, and, back of it, Aristotle,
were ultimately responsible for the rules, Horace was their disseminator
in later times, and was looked up to as final authority. Who has not
heard and read repeatedly the now common-place injunctions to be
appropriate and consistent in character-drawing; to avoid, on the one
hand, clearness at the cost of diffuseness, and, on the other, brevity
at the cost of obscurity; to choose subject-matter suited to one's
powers; to respect the authority of the masterpiece and to con by night
and by day the great Greek exemplars; to feel the emotion one wishes to
rouse; to stamp the universal with the mark of individual genius; to be
straightforward and rapid and omit the un