But of this I shall take more seasonable cause to speak,
in my observations upon Horace his Art of Poetry, which, with the
text translated, I intend shortly to publish. In the mean time, if
in truth of argument, dignity of persons, gravity and height of
elocution, fulness and frequency of sentence, I have discharged the
other offices of a tragic writer, let not the absence of these
forms be imputed to me, wherein I shall give you occasion
hereafter, and without my boast, to think I could better prescribe,
than omit the due use for want of a convenient knowledge.
The next is, lest in some nice nostril the quotations might savour
affected, I do let you know, that I abhor nothing more; and I have
only done it to shew my integrity in the story, and save myself in
those common torturers that bring all wit to the rack; whose noses
are ever like swine, spoiling and rooting up the Muses' gardens;
and their whole bodies like moles, as blindly working under earth,
to cast any, the least, hills upon virtue. Whereas they are in
Latin, and the work in English, it was presupposed none but the
learned would take the pains to confer them: the authors themselves
being all in the learned tongues, save one, with whose English side
I have had little to do.
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