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"Argutos inter strepere Anser olores," was ANSER. He was a partisan of Antony, and from this fact, together with the possible allusion in the Eclogues, later grammarians discovered that he was, like Bavius and Maevius, unhappy bards only known from the contemptuous allusions of their betters, an obtrectator Virgilii. As such he of course called down the vials of their wrath.
That artifice did not seem ingenious to me; but it is not for the dead to judge of novelties. "But I do not reproach this colonist of Sulla, born in an unhappy time, for making inharmonious verses or for being, if it be possible, as bad a poet as Bavius or Maevius. I have grievances against him which touch me more closely.
For, in the first place, a fine butterfly may have a pin stuck through his stomach even while living. There are Bavius and Maevius, who have been laughed at since Virgil wrote his Third Eclogue. Now why does the world laugh? What does the world know of either? They were stupid and malevolent, were they? Pray, how do you know that they were? You have Virgil's word for it.
For the art of writing a man must cultivate himself. The art of being reviewed consists in cultivating the acquaintance of reviewers. In the Augustan age criticism is cliquism. Belong to a clique and you are Horace or Tibullus. Belong to no clique and, of course, you are Bavius or Maevius. 'The Londoner' is the enemy of no man: it holds all men in equal contempt.
If, after three days' patient hearing of the witnesses and lawyers, he has one tangible idea floating in his head, he is either an Alcibiades or a Bavius a heaven-born genius or the mere incarnation of a fool!
But it may well be suspected that, if the verses of Alpinus and Fannius, of Bavius and Maevius, had come down to us, we might see Maecenas represented as the most niggardly and tasteless of human beings, nay as a man who, on system, neglected and persecuted all intellectual superiority. It is certain that Montague was thus represented by contemporary scribblers.
Bavius and Maevius were there, still complaining of 'cliques, railing at Horace for a mere rhymer of society, and at Virgil as a plagiarist, 'Take away his cribs from Homer and Apollonius Rhodius, quoth honest Maevius, 'and what is there left of him? I also met a society of gentlemen, in Greek costume, of various ages, from a half-naked minstrel with a tortoiseshell lyre in his hand to an elegant of the age of Pericles.
And did not the poems of our friend Bavius Blunderbore, Esq., which were of "a low and moderate sort," cause you to giggle yourself wellnigh into an asphyxy, calf and coxcomb as he was?
I can readily conjecture what should have moved the gall of some learned and intelligent writers who quarrel with certain versifiers; I confess myself, like them, unwilling to be stunned by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day. Bavius and Maevius undoubtedly are, as they ever were, insufferable persons. But it belongs to a philosophical critic to distinguish rather than confound.
I can readily conjecture what should have moved the gall of some learned and intelligent writers who quarrel with certain versifiers; I confess myself, like them, unwilling to be stunned, by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day. Bavius and Maevius undoubtedly are, as they ever were, insufferable persons. But it belongs to a philosophical critic to distinguish rather than confound.
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