, this day was wholly taken up in
the examination of the 'Conquest of Granada.' A gentleman on the reading
of the First Part, and there in the description of the bull-baiting,
said, that Almanzor's playing at the bull was according to the standard
of the Greek heroes, who, as Mr. Dryden had learnedly observed (Essay
of Dramatic Poesy), were great beef-eaters. And why might not Almanzor
as well as Ajax, or Don Quixote, worry mutton, or take a bull by the
throat, since the author had elsewhere explained himself, by telling us
the heroes were more noble beasts of prey, in his Epistle to his
'Conquest of Granada,' distinguishing them into wild and tame; and in
his play we have Almanzor shaking his chains, and frighting his keeper,
broke loose, and tearing those that would reclaim his rage. To this he
added, that his bulls excelled other heroes, as far as his own heroes
surpassed his gods; that the champion bull was divested of flesh and
blood, and made immortal by the poet, and bellowed after death; that
the fantastic bull seemed fiercer than the true, and the dead
bellowings in verse were louder than the living; concluding with a
wish, that Mr. Dryden had the good luck to have varied that old verse
quoted in his dramatic essay:
'_Atque Ursum, el Pugiles media inter carmina poscunt
Tauros, et Pugiles pruna inter carmina posco_;'
and prefixed it to the front of his play, instead of
'_Major rerum mihi nascitur ordo,
Majus ojius moveo_.
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