But he has taken his last farewell
of the muses, and he has done it civilly, by honouring them with the
name of "his long acquaintances," which is a compliment they have
scarce deserved from him. For my own part, I bear a share in
the public loss; and how emulous soever I may be of his fame and
reputation, I cannot but give this testimony of his style, that it is
extremely poetical, even in oratory; his thoughts elevated sometimes
above common apprehension; his notions politic and grave, and tending
to the instruction of princes, and reformation of states; that
they are abundantly interlaced with variety of fancies, tropes, and
figures, which the critics have enviously branded with the name of
obscurity and false grammar.
"Well, he is now fettered in business of more unpleasant nature:" The
muses have lost him, but the commonwealth gains by it; the corruption
of a poet is the generation of a statesman.
"He will not venture again into the civil wars of censure,
_ubi--nullos habitura triumphos_:" If he had not told us he
had left the muses, we might have half suspected it by that word
_ubi_, which does not any way belong to them in that place:
the rest of the verse is indeed Lucan's, but that _ubi_, I will
answer for it, is his own. Yet he has another reason for this disgust
of poesy; for he says immediately after, that "the manner of plays
which are now in most esteem is beyond his power to perform:" to
perform the manner of a thing, I confess, is new English to me.
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