Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 7.djvu/168



HATE'ER your predecessors taught us, I have a great esteem for Plautus; And think your boys may gather there-hence More wit and humour than from Terence; But as to comic Aristophanes, The rogue too vicious and too prophane is. I went in vain to look for Eupolis Down in the Strand, just where the New Pole is; For I can tell you one thing, that I can, You will not find it in the Vatican. He and Cratinus us'd, as Horace says, To take his greatest grandees for asses. Poets, in those days, us'd to venture high; But these are lost full many a century. Thus you may see, dear fpiend, ex pede hence, My judgment of the old comedians. Proceed to tragicks: first, Euripides (An author where I sometimes dip a-days) Is rightly censur'd by the Stagirite, Who says, his numbers do not fadge aright. Commonly speaking, but a sad jade is. At least, I'm well assur'd, that no folk lays The weight on him they do on Sophocles. But,