: An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients by Ogilvie John Jackson Wallace Commentator - Classical poetry History and criticism

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An ESSAY on the LYRIC POETRY of the ANCIENTS.

ODES, &c.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

An ESSAY on the LYRIC POETRY of the ANCIENTS.

Humbly Inscribed to the RIGHT HONOURABLE JAMES Lord DESKFOORD.

An E S S A Y on the LYRIC POETRY of the ANCIENTS.

MY LORD,

It is an observation, no doubt, familiar to your Lordship, that Genius is the offspring of Reason and Imagination properly moderated, and co-operating with united influence to promote the discovery, or the illustration of truth. Though it is certain that a separate province is assigned to each of these faculties, yet it often becomes a matter of the greatest difficulty to prevent them from making mutual encroachments, and from leading to extremes which are the more dangerous, because they are brought on by an imperceptible progression. --Reason in every mind is an uniform power, and its appearance is regular, and invariably permanent. When this Faculty therefore predominates in the sphere of composition, sentiments will follow each other in connected succession, the arguments employed to prove any point will be just and forcible; the stability of a work will be principally considered, and little regard will be payed to its exterior ornament. Such a work however, though it may be valued by a few for its intrinsic excellence, yet can never be productive of general improvement, as attention can only be fixed by entertainment, and entertainment is incompatible with unvaried uniformity.

On the contrary, when Imagination is permitted to bestow the graces of ornament indiscriminately, we either find in the general that sentiments are superficial, and thinly scattered through a work, or we are obliged to search for them beneath a load of superfluous colouring. Such, my Lord, is the appearance of the superior Faculties of the mind when they are disunited from each other, or when either of them seems to be remarkably predominant.

That I may illustrate this observation as fully as the nature of the subject will permit, it will be expedient to enquire into the end which Lyric Poetry proposeth to obtain, and to examine the original standards from which the rules of this art are deduced.

The Muse to nobler subjects tun'd her lyre, Gods, and the sons of Gods her song inspire. FRANCIS.

In this infancy of the arts, when it was the business of the Muse, as the same Poet informs us,

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