Book VII. 429

Notes on Book VII. 461

THE GEORGICS.

TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

PHILIP,

EARL OF CHESTERFIELD, &c.[1]

MY LORD,

I cannot begin my address 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 Æneas passed in his wandering voyage, before he reached the promised Italy. But I considered, that nothing which my meanness could produce, was worthy of your patronage. At last this happy occasion offered, of presenting to you the best poem of the best poet. If I balked this opportunity, I was in despair of finding such another; and, if I took it, I was still uncertain whether you would vouchsafe to accept it from my hands. It was a bold venture which I made, in desiring your permission to lay my unworthy labours at your feet. But my rashness has succeeded beyond my hopes; and you have been pleased not to suffer an old man to go discontented out of the world, for want of that protection, of which he had been so long ambitious. I have known a gentleman in disgrace, and not daring to appear before King Charles the Second, though he much desired it: at length he took the confidence to attend a fair lady to the court, and told his majesty, that, under her protection, he had presumed to wait on him. With the same humble confidence, I present myself before your lordship, and, attending on Virgil, hope a gracious reception. The gentleman succeeded, because the powerful lady was his friend; but I have too much injured my great author, to expect he should intercede for me. I would have translated him; but, according to the literal French and Italian phrases, 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 service. Virgil wrote his Georgics in the full strength 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 about the age of thirty-five, and scarce concluding it before he arrived at forty. It is observed, 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 inspired them, yet that heat was not perfectly digested. There is required a continuance of warmth, to ripen the best and noblest 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 overpoise to his imagination: he grew too cautious to be bold enough; for he descended in his Fourth by slow degrees, and, in his Satires and Epistles, was more a philosopher and a critic than a poet. In the beginning of summer, the days are almost at a stand, with little variation of length or shortness, because at that time the diurnal motion of the sun partakes more of a right line than of a spiral. The same is the method of nature in the frame of man. He seems at forty to be fully in his summer tropic; somewhat before, and somewhat after, he finds in his soul but small increases or decays. From fifty to three score, the balance generally holds even, in our colder climates: for he loses not much in fancy; and judgement, which is the effect of observation, still increases. His succeeding years afford him little more than the stubble of his own harvest: yet, if his constitution be healthful, his mind may still retain a decent vigour; and the gleanings of that Ephraim, in comparison with others, will surpass the vintage of Abiezer. I have called this somewhere, by a bold metaphor, a green old age; but Virgil has given me his authority for the figure--

_Jam senior; sed cruda Deo, viridisque senectus._

Among those few who enjoy the advantage of a latter spring, your lordship is a rare example; who, being now arrived at your great climacteric, yet give no proof of the least decay of your excellent judgment and comprehension of all things which are within the compass of human understanding. Your conversation is as easy as it is instructive; and I could never observe the least vanity, or the least assuming, in any thing you said, but a natural unaffected modesty, full of good sense, and well digested; a clearness of notion, expressed in ready and unstudied words. No man has complained, or even can, that you have discoursed too long on any subject; for you leave us in an eagerness of learning more; pleased with what we hear, but not satisfied, because you will not speak so much as we could wish. I dare not excuse 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 confess, the critics make it one of Virgil's beauties, that, having said what he thought convenient, he always left somewhat for the imagination of his readers to supply; 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 thought, when it was all there before-hand, and he only saved himself the expence of words. However it was, I never went from your lordship, but with a longing to return, or without a hearty curse to him who invented ceremonies in the world, and put me on the necessity of withdrawing, when it was my interest, 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 too little be left at last. A prodigal fire is only capable of large remains; and yours, my lord, still burns the clearer in declining. The blaze is not so fierce as at the first; but the smoke is wholly vanished; and your friends, who stand about you, are not only sensible of a cheerful warmth, but are kept at an awful distance by its force. In my small observations of mankind, I have ever found, that such as are not rather too full of spirit when they are young, degenerate to dulness in their age. Sobriety in our riper years is the effect of a well-concocted warmth: but, where the principles are only phlegm, what can be expected from the waterish matter, but an insipid manhood, and a stupid old infancy--discretion in leading-strings, and a confirmed ignorance on crutches? Virgil, in his Third Georgic, when he describes a colt, who promises a courser for the race, or for the field of battle, shews him the first to pass the bridge, which trembles under him, and to stem the torrent of the flood. His beginnings must be in rashness--a noble fault: but time and experience will correct that error, and tame it into a deliberate and well-weighed courage, which knows both to be cautious and to dare, as occasion offers. Your lordship is a man of honour, not only so unstained, but so unquestioned, that you are the living standard of that heroic virtue; so truly such, that if I would flatter you, I could not. It takes not from you, that you were born with principles of generosity and probity; but it adds to you, that you have cultivated nature, and made those principles the rule and measure of all your actions. The world knows this, without my telling; yet poets have a right of recording it to all posterity:

_Dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori._

Epaminondas, Lucullus, and the two first Cæsars, were not esteemed the worse commanders, for having made philosophy and the liberal arts their study. Cicero might have been their equal, but that he wanted courage. To have both these virtues, and to have improved them both with a softness of manners and a sweetness of conversation--few of our nobility can fill that character. One there is, and so conspicuous by his own light, that he needs not

_Digito monstrari, et dicier, "Hic est!"_

To be nobly born, and of an ancient family, is in the extremes of fortune, either good or bad; for virtue and descent are no inheritance. A long series of ancestors shews the native with great advantage at the first; but, if he any way degenerate from his line, the least spot is visible on ermine. But, to preserve this whiteness in its original purity, you, my lord, have, like that ermine, forsaken the common tract of business, which is not always clean: you have chosen for yourself a private greatness, and will not be polluted with ambition. It has been observed in former times, that none have been so greedy of employments, and of managing the public, as they who have least deserved their stations. But such only merit to be called patriots, under whom we see their country flourish. I have laughed sometimes, (for who would always be a Heraclitus?) when I have reflected on those men, who from time to time have shot themselves into the world. I have seen many successions of them; some bolting out upon the stage with vast applause, and others hissed off, and quitting it with disgrace. But, while they were in action, I have constantly observed, that they seemed desirous to retreat from business; greatness, they said, was nauseous, and a crowd was troublesome: a quiet privacy was their ambition. Some few of them, I believe, said this in earnest, and were making a provision against future want, that they might enjoy their age with ease. They saw the happiness of a private life, and promised to themselves a blessing, which every day it was in their power to possess. But they deferred it, and lingered still at court, because they thought they had not yet enough to make them happy: they would have more, and laid in, to make their solitude luxurious:--a wretched philosophy, which Epicurus never taught them in his garden. They loved the prospect of this quiet in reversion, but were not willing to have it in possession: they would first be old, and make as sure of health and life, as if both of them were at their dispose. But put them to the necessity of a present choice, and they preferred continuance in power; like the wretch who called Death to his assistance, but refused him when he came. The great Scipio was not of their opinion, who indeed sought honours in his youth, and endured the fatigues with which he purchased them. He served his country when it was in need of his courage and conduct, till he thought it was time to serve himself; but dismounted from the saddle when he found the beast which bore him began to grow restiff and ungovernable. But your lordship has given us a better example of moderation. You saw betimes, that ingratitude is not confined to commonwealths; and therefore, though you were formed alike for the greatest of civil employments and military commands, yet you pushed not your fortune to rise in either, but contented yourself with being capable, as much as any whosoever of defending your country with your sword, or assisting it with your counsel, when you were called.[2] For the rest, the respect and love which was paid you, not only in the province where you live, but generally by all who had the happiness to know you, was a wise exchange for the honours of the court--a place of forgetfulness, at the best, for well-deservers. It is necessary, for the polishing of manners, to have breathed that air; but it is infectious, even to the best morals, to live always in it. It is a dangerous commerce, where an honest man is sure at the first of being cheated, and he recovers not his loses, but by learning to cheat others. The undermining smile becomes at length habitual; and the drift of his plausible conversation is only to flatter one, that he may betray another. Yet it is good to have been a looker on, without venturing to play; that a man may know false dice another time, though he never means to use them. I commend not him who never knew a court, but him who forsakes it because he knows it. A young man deserves no praise, who, out of melancholy zeal, leaves the world before he has well tried it, and runs headlong into religion. He who carries a maidenhead into a cloister, is sometimes apt to lose it there, and to repent of his repentance. He only is like to endure austerities, who has already found the inconvenience of pleasures: for almost every man will be making experiments in one part or another of his life; and the danger is the less when we are young; for, having tried it early, we shall not be apt to repeat it afterwards. Your lordship therefore may properly be said to have chosen a retreat, and not to have chosen it till you had maturely weighed the advantages of rising higher, with the hazards of the fall.

_Res, non parta labore, sed relicta,_

was thought by a poet to be one of the requisites to a happy life. Why should a reasonable man put it into the power of Fortune to make him miserable, when his ancestors have taken care to release him from her? Let him venture, says Horace, _qui zonam perdidit_. He, who has nothing, plays securely; for he may win, and cannot be poorer if he loses: but he who is born to a plentiful estate, and is ambitious of offices at court, sets a stake to Fortune, which she can seldom answer. If he gains nothing, he loses all, or part of what was once his own; and, if he gets, he cannot be certain but he may refund. In short, however he succeeds, it is covetousness that induced him first to play; and covetousness is the undoubted sign of ill sense at bottom. The odds are against him, that he loses; and one loss may be of more consequence to him than all his former winnings. It is like the present war of the Christians against the Turk: every year they gain a victory, and by that a town; but, if they are once defeated, they lose a province at a blow, and endanger the safety of the whole empire. You, my lord, enjoy your quiet in a garden, where you have not only the leisure of thinking, but the pleasure to think of nothing which can discompose your mind. A good conscience is a port which is land-locked on every side, and where no winds can possibly invade, no tempests can arise. There a man may stand upon the shore, and not only see his own image, but that of his Maker, clearly reflected from the undisturbed and silent waters. Reason was intended for a blessing; and such it is to men of honour and integrity, who desire no more than what they are able to give themselves; like the happy old Corycian, whom my author describes in his Fourth Georgic, whose fruits and sallads, on which he lived contented, were all of his own growth, and his own plantation. Virgil seems to think, that the blessings of a country-life are not complete without an improvement of knowledge by contemplation and reading:

_O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona nôrint, Agricolas!_

It is but half possession, not to understand that happiness which we possess. A foundation of good sense, and a cultivation of learning, are required to give a seasoning to retirement, and make us taste the blessing. God has bestowed on your lordship the first of these; and you have bestowed on yourself the second. Eden was not made for beasts, though they were suffered to live in it, but for their master, who studied God in the works of his creation. Neither could the devil have been happy there with all his knowledge; for he wanted innocence to make him so. He brought envy, malice, and ambition, into Paradise, which soured to him the sweetness of the place. Wherever inordinate affections are, 'tis hell. Such only can enjoy the country, who are capable of thinking when they are there, and have left their passions behind them in the town. Then they are prepared for solitude; and, in that solitude, is prepared for them,

_Et secura quies, et nescia fallere vita._

As I began this Dedication with a verse of Virgil, so I conclude it with another.

The continuance of your health, to enjoy that happiness which you so well deserve, and which you have provided for yourself, is the sincere and earnest wish of

Your lordship's Most devoted And most obedient servant, JOHN DRYDEN.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Philip Stanhope, second Earl of Chesterfield, born in 1634. He was a man of considerable talent and political activity; was active in forwarding the Restoration; and enjoyed at the court of Charles II. several offices, but was now retired. He died in 1713.

[2] Dryden's praise, though often hyperbolical, is always founded on some circumstances appropriate to its object. Lord Chesterfield, who had enjoyed offices of honour at the court of Charles II., now lived in retirement at an elegant villa, according to Mr Malone, near Twickenham.

AN ESSAY ON THE GEORGICS.

BY MR ADDISON.[3]

Virgil may be reckoned the first who introduced three new kinds of poetry among the Romans, which he copied after three the greatest masters of Greece. Theocritus and Homer have still disputed for the advantage over him in Pastoral and Heroics; but I think all are unanimous in giving him the precedence to Hesiod in his "Georgics." The truth of it is, the sweetness and rusticity of a Pastoral cannot be so well expressed in any other tongue as in the Greek, when rightly mixed and qualified with the Doric dialect; nor can the majesty of a Heroic poem anywhere appear so well as in this language, which has a natural greatness in it, and can he often rendered more deep and sonorous by the pronunciation of the Ionians. But, in the middle style, where the writers in both tongues are on a level, we see how far Virgil has excelled all who have written in the same way with him.

There has been abundance of criticism spent on Virgil's "Pastorals" and "Æneïs:" but the "Georgics" are a subject which none of the critics have sufficiently taken into their consideration; most of them passing it over in silence, or casting it under the same head with pastoral: a division by no means proper, unless we suppose the style of a husbandman ought to be imitated in a Georgic, as that of a shepherd is in a Pastoral. But, though the scene of both these poems lies in the same place, the speakers in them are of a quite different character, since the precepts of husbandry are not to be delivered with the simplicity of a ploughman, but with the address of a poet. No rules, therefore, that relate to pastoral, can any way affect the Georgics, which fall under that class of poetry which consists in giving plain and direct instructions to the reader; whether they be moral duties, as those of Theognis and Pythagoras, or philosophical speculations, as those of Aratus and Lucretius, or rules of practice, as those of Hesiod and Virgil. Among these different kinds of subjects, that which the Georgic goes upon, is, I think, the meanest and least improving, but the most pleasing and delightful. Precepts of morality, besides the natural corruption of our tempers, which makes us averse to them, are so abstracted from ideas of sense, that they seldom give an opportunity for those beautiful descriptions and images which are the spirit and life of poetry. Natural philosophy has indeed sensible objects to work upon; but then it often puzzles the reader with the intricacy of its notion, and perplexes him with the multitude of its disputes. But this kind of poetry I am now speaking of, addresses itself wholly to the imagination: it is altogether conversant among the fields and woods, and has the most delightful part of nature for its province. It raises in our minds a pleasing variety of scenes and landscapes, whilst it teaches us, and makes the driest of its precepts look like a description. _A Georgic therefore is some part of the science of husbandry put into a pleasing dress, and set off with all the beauties and embellishments of poetry._ Now, since this science of husbandry is of a very large extent, the poet shows his skill in singling out such precepts to proceed on, as are useful, and at the same time most capable of ornament. Virgil was so well acquainted with this secret, that, to set off his Georgic, he has run into a set of precepts, which are almost foreign to his subject, in that beautiful account he gives us of the signs in nature, which precede the changes of the weather.

And, if there be so much art in the choice of fit precepts, there is much more required in the treating of them, that they may fall in after each other by a natural unforced method, and show themselves in the best and most advantageous light. They should all be so finely wrought together in the same piece, that no coarse seam may discover where they join; as, in a curious brede of needle-work, one colour falls away by such just degrees, and another rises so insensibly, that we see the variety, without being able to distinguish the total vanishing of the one from the first appearance of the other. Nor is it sufficient to range and dispose this body of precepts into a clear and easy method, unless they are delivered to us in the most pleasing and agreeable manner: for there are several ways of conveying the same truth to the mind of man; and to chuse the pleasantest of these ways, is that which chiefly distinguishes poetry from prose, and makes Virgil's rules of husbandry pleasanter to read than Varro's. Where the prose-writer tells us plainly what ought to be done, the poet often conceals the precept in a description, and represents his countryman performing the action in which he would instruct his reader. Where the one sets out, as fully and distinctly as he can, all the parts of the truth which he would communicate to us, the other singles out the most pleasing circumstance of this truth, and so conveys the whole in a more diverting manner to the understanding. I shall give one instance, out of a multitude of this nature, that might be found in the Georgics, where the reader may see the different ways Virgil has taken to express the same thing, and how much pleasanter every manner of expression is, than the plain and direct mention of it would have been. It is in the Second Georgic, where he tells us what trees will bear grafting on each other:

_Et sæpe alterius ramos impune videmus Vertere in alterius, mutatamque insita mala Ferre pyrum, et prunis lapidosa rubescere corna. --Steriles platani malos gessere valentes: Castaneæ fagus, ornusque incanuit albo Flore pyri; glandemque sues fregere sub ulmis. ----Nec longum tempus; et ingens Exiit ad cælum ramis felicibus arbos; Miraturque novas frondes, et non sua poma._

Here, we see, the poet considered all the effects of this union between trees of different kinds, and took notice of that effect which had the most surprise, and by consequence the most delight in it, to express the capacity that was in them of being thus united. This way of writing is every where much in use among the poets, and is particularly practised by Virgil, who loves to suggest a truth indirectly, and, without giving us a full and open view of it, to let us see just so much as will naturally lead the imagination into all the parts that lie concealed. This is wonderfully diverting to the understanding, thus to receive a precept, that enters, as it were, through a by-way, and to apprehend an idea that draws a whole train after it. For here the mind, which is always delighted with its own discoveries, only takes the hint from the poet, and seems to work out the rest by the strength of her own faculties.

But, since the inculcating precept upon precept will at length prove tiresome to the reader, if he meets with no entertainment,--the poet must take care not to encumber his poem with too much business, but sometimes to relieve the subject with a moral reflection, or let it rest a while for the sake of a pleasant and pertinent digression. Nor is it sufficient to run out into beautiful and diverting digressions, (as it is generally thought,) unless they are brought in aptly, and are something of a piece with the main design of the Georgic: for they ought to have a remote alliance at least to the subject, that so the whole poem may be more uniform and agreeable in all its parts. We should never quite lose sight of the country, though we are sometimes entertained with a distant prospect of it. Of this nature are Virgil's descriptions of the original of agriculture, of the fruitfulness of Italy, of a country life, and the like, which are not brought in by force, but naturally rise out of the principal argument and design of the poem. I know no one digression in the Georgics that may seem to contradict this observation, besides that in the latter end of the first book, where the poet launches out into a discourse of the battle of Pharsalia, and the actions of Augustus: but it is worth while to consider how admirably he has turned the course of his narration into its proper channel, and made his husbandman concerned even in what relates to the battle, in those inimitable lines:

_Scilicet et tempus veniet, cum finibus illis Agricola, incurvo terram molitus aratro, Exesa inveniet scabrâ rubigine pila, Aut gravibus rastris galeas pulsabit inanes, Grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulcris._

And afterwards, speaking of Augustus's actions, he still remembers, that agriculture ought to be some way hinted at throughout the whole poem:

----_Non ullus aratro Dignus honos: squalent abductis arva colonis; Et curvæ rigidum falces conflantur in ensem._

We now come to the style which is proper to a Georgic; and indeed this is the part on which the poet must lay out all his strength, that his words may be warm and glowing, and that every thing he describes may immediately present itself, and rise up to the reader's view. He ought, in particular, to be careful of not letting his subject debase his style, and betray him into a meanness of expression, but every where to keep up his verse in all the pomp of numbers, and dignity of words.

I think nothing, which is a phrase or saying in common talk, should be admitted into a serious poem; because it takes off from the solemnity of the expression, and gives it too great a turn of familiarity. Much less ought the low phrases and terms of art, that are adapted to husbandry, have any place in such a work as the Georgic, which is not to appear in the natural simplicity and nakedness of its subject, but in the pleasantest dress that poetry can bestow on it. Thus Virgil, to deviate from the common form of words, would not make use of _tempore_, but _sidere_, in his first verse, and every where else abounds with metaphors, Grecisms, and circumlocutions, to give his verse the greater pomp, and preserve it from sinking into a plebeian style. And herein consists Virgil's master-piece, who has not only excelled all other poets, but even himself, in the language of his Georgics, where we receive more strong 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 sight of what he describes.

I shall now, after this short scheme of rules, consider the different success that Hesiod and Virgil have met with in this kind of poetry, which may give us some further notion of the excellence of the Georgics. To begin with Hesiod:--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, discreet, and frugal: he lived altogether in the country, and was probably, for his great prudence, the oracle of the neighbourhood.--These principles of good husbandry ran through his works, and directed him to the choice of tillage and merchandize, for the subject of that which is the most celebrated of them. He is every where bent on instruction, avoids all manner of digressions, and does not stir out of the field once in the whole Georgic. His method, in describing month after month, with its proper seasons and employments, is too grave and simple; it takes off from the surprise and variety of the poem, and makes the whole look but like a modern almanack in verse. The reader is carried through a course of weather, and may beforehand guess whether he is to meet with snow or rain, clouds or sunshine, in the next description. His descriptions, indeed, have abundance of nature in them; but then it is nature in her simplicity and undress. Thus, when he speaks of January,--"The wild beasts," says he, "run shivering through the woods, with their heads stooping to the ground, and their tails clapt between their legs; the goats and oxen are almost flayed 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 sit at home with their mothers by a warm fire-side." Thus does the old gentleman give himself up to a loose kind of tattle rather than endeavour after a just poetical description. Nor has he shown more of art or judgment in the precepts he has given us, which are sown so very thick, that they clog the poem too much, and are often so 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 still discover something venerable in the antiqueness of the work: but, if we would see the design 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 Hesiod has dispatched in half a one; but has so raised the natural rudeness and simplicity of his subject with such a significancy of expression, such a pomp of verse, such variety of transitions, and such a solemn air in his reflections, that, if we look on both poets together, we see in one the plainness of a downright countryman, and, in the other, something of a rustic majesty, 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 tosses the dung about, with an air of gracefulness. His prognostications of the weather are taken out of Aratus, where we may see how judiciously he has picked out those that are most proper for his husbandman's observation; how he has enforced the expression, and heightened the images, which he found in the original.

The Second Book has more wit in it, and a greater boldness in its metaphors, than any of the rest. The poet, with a great beauty, applies oblivion, ignorance, wonder, desire, and the like, to his trees.--The last Georgic has, indeed, as many metaphors, but not so daring as this; for human thoughts and passions may be more naturally ascribed 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 philosopher 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! qui me gelidis in vallibus Hæmi Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbrâ!_--

and is every where mentioning, among his chief pleasures, the coolness of his shades and rivers, vales and grottoes, which a more northern poet would have omitted for the description of a sunny hill, and fire-side.

The Third Georgic seems to be the most laboured of them all: there is a wonderful vigour and spirit in the description of the horse and chariot-race. The force of love is represented in noble instances, and very sublime expressions. The Scythian winter-piece appears so very cold and bleak to the eye, that a man can scarce look on it without shivering. The murrain, at the end, has all the expressiveness that words can give. It was here that the poet strained hard to out-do Lucretius in the description of his plague: and, if the reader would see what success he had, he may find it at large in Scaliger.

But Virgil seems no where so well pleased, as when he is got among his Bees in the Fourth Georgic; and ennobles the actions of so 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 swarms. And as, in his Æneïs, he compares the labours of his Trojans to those of bees and pismires, here he compares the labours of the bees to those of the Cyclops. In short, the last Georgic was a good prelude to the Æneïs, and very well showed what the poet could do in the description of what was really great, by his describing the mock grandeur of an insect with so 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 spacious 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 so divine a work.

After this particular account of the beauties in the Georgics, I should, in the next place, endeavour to point out its imperfections, if it has any. But, though I think there are some few parts in it that are not so beautiful as the rest, I shall not presume to name them, as rather suspecting my own judgement, than I can believe a fault to be in that poem, which lay so long under Virgil's correction, and had his last hand put to it. The First Georgic was probably burlesqued in the author's life-time; for we still find in the scholiasts a verse that ridicules part of a line translated from Hesiod--_Nudus ara, sere nudus_: And we may easily guess at the judgment of this extraordinary critic, whoever he was, from his censuring this particular precept. We may be sure Virgil would not have translated it from Hesiod, had he not discovered some 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 so indirectly, and singling out the particular circumstance of sowing and ploughing naked, to suggest to us, that these employments are proper only in the hot season of the year.

I shall not here compare the style of the Georgics with that of Lucretius, (which the reader may see already done in the preface to the second volume of Miscellany Poems,) but shall conclude this poem to be the most complete, elaborate, and finished piece of all antiquity. The Æneïs, indeed, is of a nobler kind; but the Georgic is more perfect in its kind. The Æneïs has a greater variety of beauties in it; but those of the Georgic are more exquisite. 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 settled, and all his faculties in their full vigour and maturity.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Addison had already distinguished himself as a man of letters, and as an admirer of Dryden, by a copy of verses addressed to our author, and by a translation of the Fourth Book of the Georgics, exclusive of the story of Aristæus. This last performance is liberally commended by Dryden in the Postscript to Virgil. The following Essay, which has been much admired for judicious criticism contained in elegant language, was sent by him to our author, but without permission to prefix the writer's name. This circumstance led Tickell to throw some reflection on Dryden, as if he had meant to assume to himself the merit of the composition. This charge was refuted by Steele, in a letter to Congreve, prefixed to an edition of the comedy of "The Drummer," in 1722, who proves, that the Essay was the same paper which Dryden calls the Preface to the Georgics, and which he acknowledges to have been sent by a friend, whose name he was not at liberty to make public. See the article _Addison_ in the "Biographia Britannica."

GEORGICS.