18 



representations of manners be introduced ; or if at best the 

 characters, however true, should be superficially traced in 

 the ever-varying tints of custom and fashion, rather than 

 deeply and distinctly marked by the impressive stamp of pas- 

 sion and of nature. We should ever remember that all can- 

 not be equally novel and natural, and that a poet, if he be 

 strictly confined to the latter class, must make the same con- 

 fession and defence to which Terence had resorted so many 

 ages before him. 



Eas se non negat 



Personas transtulissc ex Graeca 



Quod si personis iisdem uti aliis non licet. 

 Qui magis licet currentes servos scribere, 

 Bonas matronas facere, meretrices tnalas, 

 Parasitum edacem, gloriosum militem, 

 Puerum siipponi, falli per servoni senem, 

 Amare, odisse, suspicari? denique 

 Ii)ulhiin est jam dictum, quod non dictum sit prius, 

 Quare aequom est, vos cognoscere et ignoscere. 

 Quae veteres factitarunt, si faciunt novi. 



Prol. ad Eunuch. 



If we now turn our attention to the grand source, from which 

 poetry derives all its similes, allusions and illustration*, it is 

 immediately apparent that the progress of time has not 

 added to natural objects any qualities with which they were 

 not originally endowed, and therefore no such object is bet- 

 ter adapted now to excite in the mind a train of poetical 

 images, than it had been in the primaeval days of poetry. 



