Euripides.--Aristophanes.--Many things in Euripides hath
Aristophanes wittily reprehended, not out of art, but out of truth.
For Euripides is sometimes peccant, as he is most times perfect.
But judgment when it is greatest, if reason doth not accompany it,
is not ever absolute.
Cens. Scal. in Lil. Germ.--Horace.--To judge of poets is only the
faculty of poets; and not of all poets, but the best. Nemo
infelicius de poetis judicavit, quam qui de poetis scripsit. {148a}
But some will say critics are a kind of tinkers, that make more
faults than they mend ordinarily. See their diseases and those of
grammarians. It is true, many bodies are the worse for the meddling
with; and the multitude of physicians hath destroyed many sound
patients with their wrong practice. But the office of a true critic
or censor is, not to throw by a letter anywhere, or damn an innocent
syllable, but lay the words together, and amend them; judge
sincerely of the author and his matter, which is the sign of solid
and perfect learning in a man. Such was Horace, an author of much
civility, and (if any one among the heathen can be) the best master
both of virtue and wisdom; an excellent and true judge upon cause
and reason, not because he thought so, but because he knew so out of
use and experience.
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