I think nothing which is a phrafe or faying in cemmon talk fhould be admitted into a serious Poem: because it takes off from the folemnity of the expression, and gives it too great a turn of familiarity: much less ought the low phrafes and terms of art, that are adapted to husbandry, have any place in fuch a work as the Georgic, which is not to appear in the natural fimplicity and nakedness of its fubject, but in the pleafanteft dress that poetry can bestow on it. Thus Virgil, to deviate from the common form of words, would not make use of tempore but fydere in his first verse; and every where else abounds with Metaphors, Græcisms, and Circumlocutions, to give his verse the greater pomp, and preferve it from finking into a plebeian ftyle. And herein confifts Virgil's mafterpiece, who has not only excelled all other Pocts, but even himself in the language of his Georgics; where we receive more ftrong and lively ideas of things from his words, than we could have done from the objects themselves and find our imaginations more affected by his descriptions, than they would have been by the very fight of what he defcribes. I shall now, after this fhort fcheme of rules, confider the different fuccefs that Hefiod and Virgil have met with in this kind of poetry, which may give us fome further notion of the excellence of the Georgics. To begin with Hefiod; if we may guess at his character from his writings, he had much more of the husbandman than the Poet in his temper: he was wonderfully grave, difcreet, and frugal, he lived al together together in the country, and was probably for his great prudence the oracle of the whole neighbourhood. Thefe principles of good husbandry ran through his works, and directed him to the choice of tillage and merchandize, for the fubject of that which is the moft celebrated of them. He is every where bent on instruction, avoids all manner of digreffions, and does not ftir out of the field once in the whole Georgic His method in describing month after month, with its proper feafons and employments, is too grave and fimple; it takes off from the furprize and variety of the Poem, and makes the whole look but like a nodern almanack in verfe. The reader is carried throngh a course of weather; and may before-hand guess whether he is to meet with fnow or rain, clouds or funfhine, in the next defcription. His defcriptions indeed have abundance of nature in them, but then it is nature in her fimplicity and undrefs. Thus when he speaks of January, "The wild beafts, fays he, "run fhivering through the woods with their heads "ftooping to the ground, and their tails clapt be"tween their legs; the goats and oxen are almost "flead with cold; but it is not so bad with the sheep, "because they have a thick coat of wool about them. "The old men too are bitterly pinched with the "weather; but the young girls feel nothing of it, "who fit at home with their mothers by a warm fire-"fide." Thus does the old gentleman give himself up to a loose kind of tattle, rather than endeavour after a juft poetical defcription. Nor has he fhewn more more of art or judgment in the precepts he has given us; which are fown fo very thick, that they clog the Poem too much, and are often fo minute and full of circumstances, that they weaken and unnerve his verse. But, after all, we are beholden to him for the first rough sketch of a Georgic: where we may ftill difcover fomething venerable in the antiqueness of the work; but, if we would fee the defign enlarged, the figures, reformed, the colouring laid on, and the whole piece finished, we must expect it from a greater master's hand. Virgil has drawn out the rules of tillage and planting into two Books, which Hefiod has difpatched in half a one; but has fo raised the natural rudeness and fimplicity of his fubject, with fuch a fignificancy of expreffion, fuch a pomp of verfe, fuch variety of tranfitions, and fuch a folemn air in his reflexions, that, if we look on both Poets together, we fee in one the plainnefs of a downright countryman; and in the other, fomething of ruftic majefty, like that of a Roman dictator at the plough-tail. He delivers the meanest of his precepts with a kind of grandeur; he breaks the clods and toffes the dung about with an air of gracefulness. His prognoftications of the weather are taken out of Aratus, where we may fee how judiciously he has picked out those that are moft proper for his husbandman's obfervation; how he has enforced the expreffion, and heightened the images which he found in the original. The The Second Book has more wit in it, and a greater boldness in its metaphors, than any of the reft. The Poet, with great beauty, applies oblivion, ignorance, wonder, defire, and the like, to his trees. The laft Georgic has indeed as many metaphors, but not fo daring as this; for human thoughts and paffions may be more naturally afcribed to a bee, than to an inanimate plant. He who reads over the pleasures of a country life, as they are defcribed by Virgil in the latter end of this Book, can fcarce be of Virgil's mind in preferring even the life of a philofopher to it. We may, I think, read the Poet's clime in his defcription, for he feems to have been in a fweat at the writing of it: "O quis me gelidis fub montibus Hæmi "Siftat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!" and is every where mentioning, among his chief pleafures, the coolness of his fhades and rivers, vales and grottoes, which a more Northern Poet would have omitted for the defcription of a funny hill, and fire-fide. The Third Georgic feems to be the moft laboured of them all; there is a wonderful vigour and spirit in the defcription of the horfe and chariot-race. The force of love is reprefented in noble inftances, and very fublime expreffions. The Scythian winter-piece appears fo very cold and bleak to the eye, that a man can scarce look on it without fhivering. The murrain at the end has all the expreffiveness that words can give. It was here that the Poet ftrained hard to out-do Lucretius in the defcription of his plague; and if the reader would fee what fuccefs he had, he may find it at large in Scaliger. But Virgil feems no where fo well pleased, as when he is got among his bees in the Fourth Georgic: and ennobles the actions of fo trivial a creature, with metaphors drawn from the most important concerns of mankind. His verses are not in a greater noise and hurry in the battles of Æneas and Turnus, than in the engagement of two fwarms. And as in his neis he compares the labours of his Trojans to thofe of bees and pifmires, here he compares the labours of the bees to those of the Cyclops. In fhort, the laft Georgic was a good prelude to the Æneis; and very well fhewed what the Poet could do in the defcription of what was really great, by his defcribing the mock-grandeur of an infect with fo good a grace. There is more pleasantness in the little platform of a garden, which he gives us about the middle of this Book, than in all the fpacious walks and water-works of Rapin. The speech of Proteus at the end can never be enough admired, and was indeed very fit to conclude fo divine a work. After this particular account of the beauties in the Georgics, I fhould in the next place endeavour to point out its imperfections, if it has any. But though I think there are fome few parts in it that are not fo beautiful as the reft, I fhall not prefume to name them; as rather fufpecting my own judgment, than I can believe a fault to be in that Poem, which lay fo long under Virgil's correction, and had his last hand put |