Caes. Thanks, Horace, for thy free and wholesome sharpness, Which pleaseth Caesar more than servile fawns. A flatter'd prince soon turns the prince of fools. And for thy sake, we'll put no difference more Between the great and good for being poor. Say then, loved Horace, thy true thought of Virgil.
Hor. I judge him of a rectified spirit, By many revolutions of discourse, (In his bright reason's influence,) refined From all the tartarous moods of common men; Bearing the nature and similitude Of a right heavenly body; most severe In fashion and collection of himself; And, then, as clear and confident as Jove.
Gal. And yet so chaste and tender is his ear, In suffering any syllable to pass, That he thinks may become the honour'd name Of issue to his so examined self, That all the lasting fruits of his full merit, In his own poems, he doth still distaste; And if his mind's piece, which he strove to paint, Could not with fleshly pencils have her right.
Tib. But to approve his works of sovereign worth, This observation, methinks, more than serves, And is not vulgar. That which he hath writ Is with such judgment labour'd, and distill'd Through all the needful uses of our lives, That could a man remember but his lines, He should not touch at any serious point, But he might breathe his spirit out of him.
Caes. You mean, he might repeat part of his works, As fit for any conference he can use?
Caes. Worthily observed; And a most worthy virtue in his works. What thinks material Horace of his learning?
Hor. His learning savours not the school-like gloss, That most consists in echoing words and terms, And soonest wins a man an empty name; Nor any long or far-fetch'd circumstance Wrapp'd in the curious generalities of arts; But a direct and analytic sum Of all the worth and first effects of arts. And for his poesy, 'tis so ramm'd with life, That it shall gather strength of life, with being, And live hereafter more admired than now.
Caes. This one consent in all your dooms of him, And mutual loves of all your several merits, Argues a truth of merit in you all.--- [Enter VIRGIL. See, here comes Virgil; we will rise and greet him. Welcome to Caesar, Virgil! Caesar and Virgil Shall differ but in sound; to Caesar, Virgil, Of his expressed greatness, shall be made A second sirname, and to Virgil, Caesar. Where are thy famous AEneids? do us grace To let us see, and surfeit on their sight.