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I'm reading one of Sir Philip Sidney's prose essays, "An Apology for Poetry" and I bumped into the following phrase which I never heard of. Can anyone please help me with it?
Yet will some bring in an example of Eunuchus in Terence, that containeth matter of two days, yet far short of twenty years. True it is, and so was it to be played in two days, and so fitted to the time it set forth. And though Plautus have in one place done amiss, let us hit it with him, and not miss with him.
Sidney contrasts Plautus’ single error with his usual, admirable practice, and is using the metaphor of shooting at a target. When Plautus obeys the rule of unity of time he hits the target, when he fails in one place to obey this rule he misses the target; and Sidney advises his contemporaries to follow Plautus’ practice only in the hits:
Even if Plautus in one place has made a mistake, let us succeed with him, not fail with him.
