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 verfe. But after all, we are beholden to him for the first rough sketch of a Georgic: Where we may still discover 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 subject 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 plainness of a downright countryman, and in the other, fomething of ruftic majefty, like that of a Roman dictator at the plow-tail. He delivers the meaneft 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 judicioufly he has pickt X 2

out

out thofe that are moft proper for his hufbandman's obfervation; how he has enforced the expreffion, and heightened the images which he found in the original.

The fecond book has more wit in it, and a greater boldness in its metaphors than any of the reft. The poet, with a great beauty, applies oblivion, ignorance, wonder, defire, and the like, to his trees. The last 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 described by Virgil in the latter end of this book, can scarce 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 description, for he seems to have been in a sweat at the writing of it.

O quis me gelidis fub montibus Hami Siftat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbrâ!

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

The third Geogic feems to be the most laboured of them all; there is a wonderful vigour and fpirit in the defcription of the horfe and chariot-race. The force of love is represented in noble inftances, and very fublime expreffions. The Scythian winterpiece appears fo very cold and bleak to the eye, that a man can fcarce look on it without fhivering. The murrain at the end has all the expreffivenefs that words can give. It was here that the poet strained 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 enobles the actions of fo trivial a creature, with metaphors drawn from the most important concerns of mankind. His verfes are not in a greater noife and hurry in the battles of Æneas and Turnus, than in the engagement of two fwarms. And as in his Aneis he compares the labours of his Trojans to thofe of bees and pifmires, here he compares the labours of the bees to thofe of the Cyclops. In fhort, the laft Georgic was a good prelude to the Eneis; and very well fhewed what the poet could do in the defcription of what was really great, by his defcribing the mock-grandeur

2

of

of an infect with fo good a grace. There is more pleasantnefs 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 so beautiful as the reft, I shall not presume 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 to it. The first Georgic was probably burlefked in the author's life-time; for we ftill find in the fcholiafts a verfe that ridicules part of a line tranflated from Hefiod. Nudus ara, fere nudus-And we may eafily guess at the judgment of this extraordinary critic, whoever he was, from his cenfuring this particular precept. We may be fure Virgil would not have tranflated it from Hefiod, had he not discovered fome beauty in it; and indeed the beauty of it is what I have before observed to be frequently met with in Virgil, the delivering the precept fo indirectly, and fingling

4230

fingling out the particular circumstance of fowing and plowing naked, to suggest to us that these employments are proper only in the hot season of the year.

I shall not here compare the ftyle of the Georgics with that of Lucretius, which the reader may see already done in the preface to the second volume of Dryden's Mifcellany Poems; but shall conclude this poem to be the most complete, elaborate, and finished piece of all antiquity. The Æneis indeed is of a nobler kind, but the Georgic is more perfect in its kind. The Eneis has a greater variety of beauties in it, but those of the Georgic are more exquifite. In short, the Georgic has all the perfection that can be expected in a poem written by the greatest poet in the flower of his age, when his invention was ready, his imagination warm, his judgment fettled, and all his faculties in their full vigour and maturity.

The End of the FIRST Volume.