[79] TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE P H I L I P EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. I MY LORD, CANNOT begin my addrefs to your lordship, better than in the words of Virgil, -Quod optanti Divûm promittere nemo "Auderet, volvenda dies, en, attulit ultro." Seven years together I have concealed the longing which I had to appear before you: a time as tedious as Eneas paffed in his wandering voyage, before he reached the promised Italy. But I confidered, that nothing which my meanness could produce, was worthy of your patronage. At laft this happy occafion offered, of prefenting to you the best poem of the best poet. If I balked this opportunity, I was in defpair of finding fuch another; and if I took it, I was ftill uncertain whether you would vouchsafe to accept it from my hands. It was a bold venture which I made, in defiring your permiffion to lay my unworthy labours at your feet. But my rashness has fucceeded beyond my hopes and you have been pleased not to fuffer an old man to go difcontented out of the world for want of : that that protection, of which he had been fo long ambitious. I have known a gentleman in difgrace, and not daring to appear before king Charles the Second, though he much defired it. At length he took the confidence to attend a fair lady to the court, and told his majefty, that under her protection he had prefumed to wait on him. With the fame humble confidence I prefent myself before your lordship, and attending on Virgil hope a gracious reception. The gentleman fucceeded, because the powerful lady was his friend; but I have too much injured my great author, to expect he fhould intercede for me. I would have tranflated him; but, according to the literal French and Italian phrafes, I fear I have traduced him. It is the fault of many a well-meaning man, to be officious in a wrong place, and do a prejudice, where he had endeavoured to do a fervice. Virgil wrote his Georgics in the full ftrength and vigour of his age, when his judgment was at the height, and before his fancy was declining. He had (according to our homely saying) his full swing at this poem, beginning it at about the age of thirty-five; and fcarce concluding it before he arrived at forty. It is obferved both of him and Horace, and I believe it will hold in all great poets; that though they wrote before with a certain heat of genius which infpired them, yet that heat was not perfectly digefted. There is required a continuance of warmth to ripen the best and nobleft fruits. Thus Horace, in his First and Second Book of Odes, was still rising, but came not to his meridian till the Third. After : which his judgment was an overpoife to his imagination he grew too cautious to be bold enough, for he defcended in his Fourth by flow degrees, and in his Satires and Epiftles, was more a philofopher and a critic than a poet. In the beginning of summer the days are almost at a stand, with little variation of length or fhortnefs, becaufe at that time the diurnal motion of the fun partakes more of a right line, than of a spiral. The fame is the method of nature in the frame of man. He feems at forty to be fully in his fummer tropic; fomewhat before, and fomewhat after, he finds in his foul but fmall increafes or decays. From fifty to threefcore the balance generally holds in our colder climates: for he lofes not much in fancy; and judgment, which is the effect of obfervation, ftill increases: his fucceeding years afford him little more than the ftubble of his own harveft: yet if his conftitution be healthful, his mind may still retain a decent vigour; and the gleanings of that Ephraim, in comparison with others, will furpafs the vintage of Abiezer. I have called this fomewhere, by a bold metaphor, a green old age, but Virgil has given me his authority for the figure. even, "Jam fenior; fed cruda Deo, viridifque fenectus." Among those few who enjoy the advantage of a latter fpring, your lordship is a rare example: who being now arrived at your great climacteric, yet give no proof of the leaft decay of your excellent judgment, and comprehenfion of all things which are within the VOL. V. compafs G compafs of human underftanding. Your converfation is as easy as it is instructive, and I could never observe the least vanity or the leaft affuming in any thing you faid but a natural unaffected modefty, full of good fenfe, and well digested. A clearness of notion, expreffed in ready and unftudied words. No man has complained, or ever can, that you have difcourfed too long on any fubject: for you leave in us an eagernefs of learning more; pleased with what we hear, but not fatisfied, because you will not speak so much as we could wish. I dare not excufe your lordship from this fault; for though it is none in you, it is one to all who have the happiness of being known to you. I must confefs the critics make it one of Virgil's beauties, that having faid what he thought convenient, he always left fomewhat for the imagination of his readers to fupply that they might gratify their fancies, by finding more in what he had written, than at first they could, and think they had added to his thoughts when it was all there before-hand, and he only faved himself the expence of words. However it I never went from your lordship, but with a longing to return, or without a hearty curfe to him who invented ceremonies in the world, and put me on the neceffity of withdrawing when it was my intereft, as well as my desire, to have given you a much longer trouble. I cannot imagine (if your lordship will give me leave to speak my thoughts) but you have had a more than ordinary vigour in your youth. For too much of heat is required at first, that there may not was, : too |