Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/145

 It is hardly credible that a grave poetic moralist of fifty-five should have written without afterthought this thrice unhappy poem of Andromeda Liberata. Its appearance did for once succeed in attracting attention; but the comment it drew down was of such a nature as at once to elicit from the author "a free and offenceless justification of a lately published and most maliciously misinterpreted poem;" a defence almost as amazing as the offence, and decidedly more amusing. The poet could never imagine till now so far-fetched a thought in malice ("such was my simplicity," he adds with some reason) as would induce any reader to regard as otherwise than "harmlessly and gracefully applicable to the occasion"—these are his actual words—the representation of "an innocent and spotless virgin (sic) rescued from the polluted throat of a monster, which I in this place applied to the savage multitude." Such is the perversity of man, that on perusing this most apt and judicious allegory "the base, ignoble, barbarous, giddy multitude" of readers actually thought fit to inquire from what "barren rock" the new Perseus might