_Euripides_.—_Aristophanes_.—Many things in Euripides hath Aristophanes wittily reprehended, not out of art, but out of truth. For Euripides is sometimes peccant, as he is most times perfect. But judgment when it is greatest, if reason doth not accompany it, is not ever absolute.
_Cens. Scal. in Lil. Germ_.—_Horace_.—To judge of poets is only the faculty of poets; and not of all poets, but the best. _Nemo infeliciùs de poetis judicavit_, _quàm qui de poetis scripsit_. { 148a} But some will say critics are a kind of tinkers, that make more faults than they mend ordinarily. See their diseases and those of grammarians. It is true, many bodies are the worse for the meddling with; and the multitude of physicians hath destroyed many sound patients with their wrong practice. But the office of a true critic or censor is, not to throw by a letter anywhere, or damn an innocent syllable, but lay the words together, and amend them; judge sincerely of the author and his matter, which is the sign of solid and perfect learning in a man. Such was Horace, an author of much civility, and (if any one among the heathen can be) the best master both of virtue and wisdom; an excellent and true judge upon cause and reason, not because he thought so, but because he knew so out of use and experience.
Cato, the grammarian, a defender of Lucilius. { 149a}
“Cato grammaticus, Latina syren, Qui solus legit, et facit poetas.”
Quintilian of the same heresy, but rejected. { 149b}
Horace, his judgment of Chœrillus defended against Joseph Scaliger. { 149c} And of Laberius against Julius. { 149d}
But chiefly his opinion of Plautus { 149e} vindicated against many that are offended, and say it is a hard censure upon the parent of all conceit and sharpness. And they wish it had not fallen from so great a master and censor in the art, whose bondmen knew better how to judge of Plautus than any that dare patronise the family of learning in this age; who could not be ignorant of the judgment of the times in which he lived, when poetry and the Latin language were at the height; especially being a man so conversant and inwardly familiar with the censures of great men that did discourse of these things daily amongst themselves. Again, a man so gracious and in high favour with the Emperor, as Augustus often called him his witty manling (for the littleness of his stature), and, if we may trust antiquity, had designed him for a secretary of estate, and invited him to the palace, which he modestly prayed off and refused.