nious, your words chosen, your expressions strong and manly, your verse flowing, and your turns as happy as they are easy. If you would set us more copies, your example would make all precepts needless. In the mean time, that little you have written is owned, and that particularly by the poets, (who are a nation not over-lavish of praise to their contemporaries,) as a principal ornament of our language; but the sweetest essences are always confined in the smallest glasses. When I speak of your Lordship, it is never a digression, and therefore I need beg no pardon for it; but take up Segrais where I left him; and shall use him less often than I have occasion for him. For his Preface is a perfect piece of criticism, full and clear, and digested into an exact method; mine is loose, and, as I intended it, epistolary. Yet I dwell on many things which he durst not touch; for it is dangerous to offend an arbitrary master; and every patron who has the power of Augustus, has not his clemency. In short, my Lord, I would not translate him, because I would bring you somewhat of my own. His notes and observations on every book are of the same excellency; and for the same reason I omit the greater part. He takes no notice that Virgil is arraigned for placing piety before valour, and making that piety the chief character of his hero. I have said already from Bossu, that a poet is not obliged to make his hero a virtuous man; therefore neither Homer nor Tasso are to be blamed for giving what predominant quality they pleased to their first character. But Virgil, who designed to form a perfect prince, and would insinuate that Augustus, whom he calls Æneas in his poem, was truly such, found himself obliged to make him without blemish,-thoroughly virtuous and a thorough virtue both begins and ends in piety. Tasso, without question, observed this before me ; and therefore split his hero in two: he gave Godfrey piety, and Rinaldo fortitude, for their chief qualities or manners. Homer, who had chosen another moral, makes both Agamemnon and Achilles vicious; for his design was, to instruct in virtue, by shewing the deformity of vice. I avoid repetition of that I have said above. What follows is translated literally from Segrais. Virgil had considered, that the greatest virtues of Augustus consisted in the perfect art of governing his people, which caused him to reign for more than forty years in great felicity. He considered that his emperor was valiant, civil, popular, eloquent, politick, and religious: he has given all these qualities to Æneas. But knowing that piety alone comprehends the whole duty of man towards the gods, towards his country, and towards his relations, he judged that this ought to be his first character, whom he would set for a pattern of perfection. In reality, they who believe that the praises which arise from valour are superior to those which proceed from any other virtues, have not considered, as they ought, that valour, destitute of other virtues, cannot render a man worthy of any true esteem. That quality, which signifies no more than an intrepid courage, may be separated from many others which are good, and accompanied with many which are ill. A man may be very valiant, and yet impious and vicious; but the same cannot be said of piety, which excludes all ill qualities, and comprehends even valour itself, with all other qualities which are good. Can we, for example, give the praise of valour to a man who should see his gods profaned, and should want the courage to defend them? to a man who should abandon his father, or desert his King, in his last necessity?" Thus far Segrais, in giving the preference to piety, before valour : I will now follow him, where he considers this valour, or intrepid courage, singly in itself; and this also Virgil gives to his ÆNEAS, and that in a heroical degree. Having first concluded that our poet did for the best, in taking the first character of his hero from that essential virtue on which the rest depend, he proceeds to tell us, that in the ten years' war of Troy he was considered as the second champion of his country, allowing Hector the first place; and this, even by the confession of Homer, who took all occasions of setting up his own countrymen, the Grecians, and of undervaluing the Trojan chiefs. But Virgil (whom Segrais forgot to cite,) 8 Iliad. . 513. Cf. Iliad. s. 467, 468. 8 makes Diomede give him* a higher character for strength and courage. His testimony is this, in the eleventh book: Stetimus tela aspera contra, Contulimusque manus: experto credite, quantus Terra viros, ultro Inachias venisset ad urbes I give not here my translation of these verses, though I think I have not ill succeeded in them; because your Lordship is so great a master of the original, that I have no reason to desire you should see Virgil and me so near together. But you may please, my Lord, to take notice, that the Latin author refines upon the Greek; and insinuates, that Homer had done his hero wrong, in giving the advantage of the duel to his own countryman, though Diomedes was manifestly the second champion of the Grecians: and Ulysses preferred him before Ajax, when he chose him for the companion of his nightly expedition; for he had a headpiece of his own, and wanted only the *This surely is very ill expressed. He means, that Virgil gives him, Æneas, (who is not the person last mentioned,) a higher character for strength and courage, (not than Hector, as the reader would naturally suppose, but) than Homer gives Æneas. fortitude of another to bring him off with safety, and that he might compass his design with honour. The French translator thus proceeds: "They who accuse Æneas for want of courage, either understand not Virgil, or have read him slightly; otherwise they would not raise an objection so easy to be answered." Hereupon he gives so many instances of the hero's valour, that to repeat them after him would tire your Lordship, and put me to the unnecessary trouble of transcribing the greatest part of the three last Æneids. In short, more could not be expected from an Amadis, a Sir Lancelot, or the whole Round Table, than he performs. Proxima quæque metit gladio, is the perfect account of a knight-errant. If it be replied, continues Segrais, that it was not difficult for him to undertake and achieve such hardy enterprizes, because he wore enchanted arms, that accusation, in the first place, must fall on Homer, ere it can reach Virgil. Achilles was as well provided with them as Æneas, though he was invulnerable without them; and Ariosto, the two Tassos, (Bernardo, and Torquato,) even our own Spencer, in a word, all modern poets, have copied Homer as well as Virgil: he is neither the first nor last, but in the midst of them; and therefore is safe, if they are so. Who knows, says Segrais, but that his fated armour was only an allegorical defence, and signified no more, than that he was under the peculiar protection of the gods? born, as the astrologers will tell us out of Virgil, (who was |