condemned;
and the magistrates, whom he has elected, would modestly withdraw
from their employment, to avoid the scandal of his nomination.
The sharpness of his satire, next to himself, falls most heavily on
his friends, and they ought never to forgive him for commending them
perpetually the wrong way, and sometimes by contraries. If he have
a friend, whose hastiness in writing is his greatest fault, Horace
would have taught him to have minced the matter, and to have called
it readiness of thought, and a flowing fancy; for friendship will
allow a man to christen an imperfection by the name of some neighbour
virtue--

Vellem in amicitia sic erraremus; et isti
Errori nomen virtus posuisset honestum.

But he would never allowed him to have called a slow man hasty,
or a hasty writer a slow drudge, as Juvenal explains it--

------- Canibus pigris, scabieque vestusta
Laevibus, et siccae lambentibus ora lucernae,
Nomen erit, Pardus, Tigris, Leo; si quid adhuc est
Quod fremit in terris violentius.

Yet Lucretius laughs at a foolish lover, even for excusing the
imperfections of his mistress--

Nigra <melichroos> est, immunda et foetida <akosmos>
Balba loqui non quit, <traylizei>; muta pudens est, etc.

But to drive it ad Aethiopem cygnum is not to be endured. I leave
him to interpret this by the benefit of his French version on the
other side, and without further considering him, than I have the rest
of my illiterate censors, whom I have disdained to answer, because
they are not qualified for judges. It remains that I acquiant the
reader, that I have endeavoured in this play to follow the practice
of the ancients, who, as Mr. Rymer has judiciously observed, are and
ought to be our masters. Horace likewise gives it for a rule in his
art of poetry--

------- Vos exemplaria Graeca
Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.

Yet, though their models are regular, they are too little for English
tragedy; which requires to be built in a larger compass. I could
give an instance in the Oedipus Tyrannus, which was the masterpiece
of Sophocles; but I reserve it for a more fit occasion, which I hope
to have hereafter. In my style, I have professed to imitate the
divine Shakespeare; which that I might perform more freely, I have
disencumbered myself from rhyme. Not that I condemn my former way,
but that this is more proper to my present purpose. I hope I need
not to explain m