to, you have conferred a favour on him, for you have made his whole epistle consistent, a beauty all the spectacles of all his commentators could not find out-but, indeed, they proceed on the profound laws of criticism, you by the laws of common sense, which, marching on a plain natural path, is very apt to arrive sooner at the goal, than they who travel on the Appian Way; which was a very costly and durable work, but is very uneasy, and at present does not lead to a quarter of the places to which it was originally directed.

I am, Sir, with great regard, your most obedient and obliged humble servant.

(489) Now first collected.

(490) His translation of Horace’s Epistola ad Pisones de Arte Poeticae.-E.

(491) It had been the opinion of Bishop Hurd, that — it was the proper and sole purpose of ,Horace simply to criticise the Roman drama;” but Mr. Colman assumed a contrary ground.  “If my partiality to my lamented friend, Mr. Colman,” says Dr. Joseph Warton, “does not mislead me, I should think his account of the matter the most judicious of any yet published.  He conceives that the elder Piso had written, or meditated, a Poetical work-probably, a tragedy, and had communicated his piece in confidence to Horace; but Horace, either disapproving of the work, or doubting of the poetical faculties of the elder Piso, or both, wished to dissuade him from all thoughts of publication.  With this view he wrote his Epistle, addressing it, with a courtliness and delicacy perfectly agreeable to his acknowledged character, indifferently to the whole family, the father and his two sons."-E.

Letter 258 To The Earl Of Buchan.(492) Strawberry Hill, May 12, 1783. (page 324)

My lord, I did not know, till I received the honour of your lordship’s letter, that any obstruction had been given to your charter.  I congratulate your lordship and the Society on the defeat of that opposition, which does not seem to have been a liberal one.  The pursuit of national antiquities has rarely been an object, I believe, with any university:  why should they obstruct others from marching in that track?  I have often thought the English Society of Antiquaries have gone out of their way when they meddled with Roman remains, especially if not discovered within our island.  Were I to speak out, I should own, that I hold most reliques of the Romans that have been found in Britain, of little consequence, unless relating to such emperors as visited us.  Provincial armies stationed in so remote and barbarous a quarter as we were then, acted little, produced little worth being remembered.  Tombstones erected to legionary officers and their families, now dignified by the title of inscriptions; and banks and ditches that surrounded camps, which we understand much better by books and plans, than by such faint fragments, are given with much pomp, and tell us nothing new.  Your lordship’s new foundation seems to proceed