st was so great a
lover of it, that to his care and industry we are said (by some
authors) to owe the collection and preservation of the loose and
scattered pieces, of Homer in the order wherein they have since
appeared. Alexander is reported neither to have travelled nor slept
without those admirable poems always in his company. Phalaris, that
was inexorable to all other enemies, relented at the charms of
Stesichorus his muse. Among the Romans, the last and great Scipio
passed the soft hours of his life in the conversation of Terence, and
was thought to have a part in the composition of his comedies. Caesar
was an excellent poet as well as orator, and composed a poem in his
voyage from Rome to Spain, relieving the tedious difficulties of his
march with the entertainments {41} of his muse. Augustus was not only
a patron, but a friend and companion of Virgil and Horace, and was
himself both an admirer of poetry and a pretender too, as far as his
genius would reach, or his busy scene allow. 'Tis true, since his age
we have few such examples of great Princes favouring or affecting
poetry, and as few perhaps of great poets deserving it. Whether it be
that the fierceness of the Gothic humours, or noise of their perpetual
wars, frighted it away, or that the unequal mixture of the modern
languages would not bear it; certain it is, that the great heights and
excellency both of poetry and music fell with the Roman learning and
empire, and have never since recovered the admiration and applauses
that before attended them. Yet, such as they are amongst us, they must
be confessed to be the softest and sweetest, the most general and most
innocent amusements of common time and life. They still find room in
the courts of Princes and the cottages of shepherds. They serve to
revive and animate the dead calm of poor or idle lives, and to allay or
divert the violent passions and perturbations of the greatest and the
busiest men. And both these effects are of equal use to human life;
for the mind of man is like the sea, which is neither agreeable to the
beholder nor the voyager in a calm or in a storm, but is so to both
when a little agitated by gentle gales; and so the mind, when moved by
soft and easy passions and affections. I know very well that many, who
pretend to be wise by the forms of being grave, are apt to despise both
poetry and music as toys and trifles too light for the use or
entertainment of serious men. But, who