With conquering arts afferts his country's cause,
With arts of peace the willing people draws :
On the glad earth the golden age renews,
And his great father's path to heaven pursues.
While I at Naples pafs my peaceful days,
Affecting ftudies of lefs noify praife:

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And bold, through youth, beneath the beechen shade, The lays of fhepherds, and their loves, have play'd.

VIRGIL'S

Æ NE I S

KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER.

N Heroic Poem, truly fuch, is undoubtedly the

AN

greatest work which the foul of a man is capable to perform. The design of it is to form the mind to heroic virtue by example; it is conveyed in verse, that it may delight while it inftructs: the action of it is always one, entire, and great. The least and most trivial epifodes, or under-actions, which are interwoven in it, are parts either neceffary, or convenient, to carry on the main defign. Either fo necessary, that without them the poem must be imperfect; or fo convenient, that no others can be imagined more fuitable to the place in which they are. There is nothing to be left void in a firm building; even the cavities ought not to be filled with rubbish, which is of a perishable kind, deftructive to the strength: but with brick or ftone,

4

though