Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/229

 I understand "quæ genitor produxerit usus" not, with Orelli, "which shall be adopted into use at once, so that people shall fancy that they have been in use long before," but, with Ritter, "which shall have been already sanctioned by usage," the distinction being between words not only in common use but used in literature, and words in use, but not yet adopted into literature, and so relatively "nova." "Father" of course I use less strictly than Pope uses it in his well-known imitation of the passage, "For use will father what's begot by sense."

Attempts at ease emasculate my verse. I find Dean Bagot has a line, "A want of nerve effeminates my speech."

In words again be cautious and select, And duly pick out this, and that reject. I have adopted Bentley's transposition, simply because it happened to be convenient in translating.

Than alter facts and characters, and tell In a strange form the tale men know so well. Many years ago I proposed this solution of a passage of admitted difficulty in the Classical Museum. I take "Difficile est proprie communia dicere" in its ordinary sense, "It is hard to treat hackneyed subjects with originality." Horace then goes on to say that it is better to give up the attempt altogether and simply copy (say) Homer, than to run the risk of outraging popular feeling by a new treatment of (say) the Trojan story, or a new view of the chief characters: but that if a writer still wishes to make the attempt, he may succeed by attending to certain rules, "si nec circa vilem," &c. &c. Thus I make "publica