Homer has instructed us in what measure the achievements The purport of these lines (from v. 73 to 86), and their connection with what follows, hath not been fully seen. They would express this general proposition, "That the several kinds of poetry essentially differ from each other, as may be gathered, not solely from their different subjects, but their different measures; which good sense, and an attention to the peculiar natures of each, instructed the great inventors and masters of them to employ." The use made of this proposition is to infer, "That therefore the like attention should be had to the different species of the same kind of poetry (v. 89, etc.), as in the case of tragedy and comedy (to which the application is made), whose peculiar differences and correspondences, as resulting from the natures of each, should, in agreement to the universal law of decorum, be exactly known and diligently observed by the poet." of kings, and chiefs, and direful war might be written.
Plaintive strains originally were appropriated to the unequal numbers [of the elegiac]: Elegy was at first only a lamentation for the death of a person beloved, and probably arose frem the death of Adonis. It was afterward applied to the joys and griefs of lovers. afterward [love and] successful desires were included. Yet what author first published humble The pentameter, which Horace calls exiguum, Hor. Ars 77 because it has a foot less than the hexameter. For the same reason he says, versibus impariter junctis. Hor. Ars 75 elegies, the critics dispute, and the controversy still waits the determination of a judge.
