w a cypress: but
what is that to the purpose, if he, whe is painted for the given price,
is [to be represented as] swimming hopeless out of a shipwreck? A large
vase at first was designed: why, as the wheel revolves, turns out a
little pitcher? In a word, be your subject what it will, let it be
merely simple and uniform.

The great majority of us poets, father, and youths worthy such a
father, are misled by the appearance of right. I labor to be concise, I
become obscure: nerves and spirit fail him, that aims at the easy: one,
that pretends to be sublime, proves bombastical: he who is too cautious
and fearful of the storm, crawls along the ground: he who wants to vary
his subject in a marvelous manner, paints the dolphin in the woods, the
boar in the sea. The avoiding of an error leads to a fault, if it lack
skill.

A statuary about the Aemilian school shall of himself, with singular
skill, both express the nails, and imitate in brass the flexible hair;
unhappy yet in the main, because he knows not how to finish a complete
piece. I would no more choose to be such a one as this, had I a mind to
compose any thing, than to live with a distorted nose, [though]
remarkable for black eyes and jetty hair.

Ye who write, make choice of a subject suitable to your abilities; and
revolve in your thoughts a considerable time what your strength
declines, and what it is able to support. Neither elegance of style, nor
a perspicuous disposition, shall desert the man, by whom the subject
matter is chosen judiciously.

This, or I am mistaken, will constitute the merit and beauty of
arrangement, that the poet just now say what ought just now to be said,
put off most of his thoughts, and waive them for the present.

In the choice of his words, too, the author of the projected poem must
be delicate and cautious, he must embrace one and reject another: you
will express yourself eminently well, if a dexterous combination should
give an air of novelty to a well-known word. If it happen to be
necessary to explain some abstruse subjects by new invented terms; it
will follow that you must frame words never heard of by the
old-fashioned Cethegi: and the license will be granted, if modestly
used: and the new and lately-formed words will have authority, if they
descend from a Greek source, with a slight deviation. But why should the
Romans grant to Plutus and Caecilius a privilege denied to Virgil and
Varius? Why should I be envied, if I have i