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Mediocribus esse poetis, Non Di, non homines, non concessere columna: it is I say again, not the fault of the art, but that by few men that art can be accomplished. Truly, for myself, meseems I see before my eyes the lost child's disdainful prodigality, turned to envy a swine's dinner: which by the learned divines are thought not historical acts, but instructing parables.
Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit; for though a pleasant writer said, "Liceat perire poetis," when one of them, in cold blood, is said to have leaped into the flames of a volcanic revolution, "ardentem frigidus Ætnam insiluit," I consider such a frolic rather as an unjustifiable poetic license than as one of the franchises of Parnassus; and whether he were poet, or divine, or politician, that chose to exercise this kind of right, I think that more wise, because more charitable, thoughts would urge me rather to save the man than to preserve his brazen slippers as the monuments of his folly.
When the reason hereof was demanded, the canons of the said place told him that there was no other cause of it but that Pictoribus atque Poetis, &c., that is to say, that painters and poets have liberty to paint and devise what they list after their own fancy.
The dabblers, whether in verse or in any other high sphere, should be every day unsparingly reminded that neither gods, nor men, nor booksellers have pardoned their mediocrity: mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non Dî, non concessere columnae. Are they not the weeds that prevent the corn coming up, so that they may cover all the ground themselves?
If I were furnished with materials, I should be very glad to write it. Mr. Scott of Amwell's Elegies were lying in the room. Dr. Johnson observed, 'They are very well; but such as twenty people might write. Upon this I took occasion to controvert Horace's maxim, mediocribus esse poetis Non Di, non homines, non concessere columnae.
Dissertatio de insignioribus Romanorum Poetis, i. e. A Dissertation upon the most Eminent Roman Poets: This is supposed to have been written about 1692. A Discourse on Ancient and Modern Learning; the time when it was written is uncertain, but probably as early as the former.
But Wilson wrote a very good rhetoric with no books before him but Quintilian, Cicero and the rhetoric Ad Herennium, which he thought to be Cicero's, Erasmus, Plutarch De audiendis poetis, and St. Basil. His treatment of poetry is quite naturally, then, that of a rhetorician who had been reared in the mediaeval tradition of allegory.
Besides, I do not know that dulness is strength, or that an observation is slight because it is striking. Mediocrity, insipidity, want of character is the great fault. Mediocribus esse poetis Non Dii, non homines, non concessere columnae. Neither is this privilege allowed to prose-writers in our time any more than to poets formerly.
"Mediocribus esse poetis Non dii, non homines, non concessere columnae." I would to God this sentence was written over the doors of all our printers, to forbid the entrance of so many rhymesters! "Verum Nihil securius est malo poetae."
"I am pleased," said Michael, "to tell you why it is usual to paint that which was never seen in the world, and how right such licence is, and how true it is, for some who do not understand him are accustomed to say that Horace, a lyric poet, wrote this verse in abuse of painters: Pictoribus adque poetis Quidlibet audendi semper fuit acqua potestas.
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