PASTORALS.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HUGH, LORD CLIFFORD, BARON OF CHUDLEIGH.[282]

MY LORD,

I have found it not more difficult to translate Virgil, than to find such patrons as I desire for my translation. For, though England is not wanting in a learned nobility, yet such are my unhappy circumstances, that they have confined me to a narrow choice.[283] To the greater part I have not the honour to be known; and to some of them I cannot show at present, by any public act, that grateful respect which I shall ever bear them in my heart. Yet I have no reason to complain of fortune, since, in the midst of that abundance, I could not possibly have chosen better, than the worthy son of so illustrious a father. He was the patron of my manhood, when I flourished in the opinion of the world; though with small advantage to my fortune, till he awakened the remembrance of my royal master. He was that Pollio, or that Varus,[284] who introduced me to Augustus: and, though he soon dismissed himself from state affairs, yet, in the short time of his administration, he shone so powerfully upon me, that, like the heat of a Russian summer, he ripened the fruits of poetry in a cold climate, and gave me wherewithal to subsist, at least, in the long winter which succeeded. What I now offer to your lordship, is the wretched remainder of a sickly age, worn out with study, and oppressed by fortune; without other support than the constancy and patience of a Christian. You, my lord, are yet in the flower of your youth, and may live to enjoy the benefits of the peace which is promised Europe: I can only hear of that blessing; for years, and, above all things, want of health, have shut me out from sharing in the happiness. The poets, who condemn their Tantalus to hell, had added to his torments, if they had placed him in Elysium, which is the proper emblem of my condition. The fruit and the water may reach my lips, but cannot enter; and, if they could, yet I want a palate as well as a digestion. But it is some kind of pleasure to me, to please those whom I respect; and I am not altogether out of hope, that these Pastorals of Virgil may give your lordship some delight, though made English by one who scarce remembers that passion which inspired my author when he wrote them. These were his first essay in poetry, if the "Ceiris"[285] was not his: and it was more excusable in him to describe love when he was young, than for me to translate him when I am old. He died at the age of fifty-two; and I began this work in my great climacteric. But, having perhaps a better constitution than my author, I have wronged him less, considering my circumstances, than those who have attempted him before, either in our own, or any modern language. And, though this version is not void of errors, yet it comforts me, that the faults of others are not worth finding. Mine are neither gross nor frequent in those Eclogues, wherein my master has raised himself above that humble style in which pastoral delights, and which, I must confess, is proper to the education and converse of shepherds: for he found the strength of his genius betimes, and was, even in his youth, preluding to his "Georgics" and his "Æneïs." He could not forbear to try his wings, though his pinions were not hardened to maintain a long laborious flight; yet sometimes they bore him to a pitch as lofty as ever he was able to reach afterwards. But, when he was admonished by his subject to descend, he came down gently, circling in the air, and singing, to the ground; like a lark, melodious in her mounting, and continuing her song till she alights, still preparing for a higher flight at her next sally, and tuning her voice to better music. The fourth, the sixth, and the eighth Pastorals, are clear evidences of this truth. In the three first, he contains himself within his bounds: but, addressing to Pollio, his great patron, and himself no vulgar poet, he no longer could restrain the freedom of his spirit, but began to assert his native character, which is sublimity—putting himself under the conduct of the same Cumæan Sibyl, whom afterwards he gave for a guide to his Æneas. It is true, he was sensible of his own boldness; and we know it by the paulo majora, which begins his fourth Eclogue. He remembered, like young Manlius, that he was forbidden to engage; but what avails an express command to a youthful courage, which presages victory in the attempt?[286] Encouraged with success, he proceeds farther in the sixth, and invades the province of philosophy. And, notwithstanding that Phœbus had forewarned him of singing wars, as he there confesses, yet he presumed, that the search of nature was as free to him as to Lucretius, who, at his age, explained it according to the principles of Epicurus. In his eighth Eclogue, he has innovated nothing; the former part of it being the complaint and despair of a forsaken lover; the latter, a charm of an enchantress, to renew a lost affection. But the complaint perhaps contains some topics which are above the condition of his persons; and our author seems to have made his herdsmen somewhat too learned for their profession: the charms are also of the same nature; but both were copied from Theocritus, and had received the applause of former ages in their original.

There is a kind of rusticity in all those pompous verses; somewhat of a holiday shepherd strutting in his country buskins. The like may be observed both in the "Pollio" and the "Silenus," where the similitudes are drawn from the woods and meadows. They seem to me to represent our poet betwixt a farmer and a courtier, when he left Mantua for Rome, and drest himself in his best habit to appear before his patron, somewhat too fine for the place from whence he came, and yet retaining part of its simplicity. In the ninth Pastoral, he collects some beautiful passages, which were scattered in Theocritus, which he could not insert into any of his former Eclogues, and yet was unwilling they should be lost. In all the rest, he is equal to his Sicilian master, and observes, like him, a just decorum both of the subject and the persons; as particularly in the third Pastoral, where one of his shepherds describes a bowl, or mazer, curiously carved:

He remembers only the name of Conon, and forgets the other on set purpose. Whether he means Anaximander, or Eudoxus, I dispute not; but he was certainly forgotten, to show his country swain was no great scholar.

After all, I must confess, that the boorish dialect of Theocritus has a secret charm in it, which the Roman language cannot imitate, though Virgil has drawn it down as low as possibly he could; as in the cujum pecus, and some other words, for which he was so unjustly blamed by the bad critics of his age, who could not see the beauties of that merum rus, which the poet described in those expressions. But Theocritus may justly be preferred as the original, without injury to Virgil, who modestly contents himself with the second place, and glories only in being the first who transplanted pastoral into his own country, and brought it there to bear as happily as the cherry-trees which Lucullus brought from Pontus.

Our own nation has produced a third poet in this kind, not inferior to the two former: for the "Shepherd's Kalendar" of Spenser is not to be matched in any modern language, not even by Tasso's "Aminta," which infinitely transcends Guarini's "Pastor Fido," as having more of nature in it, and being almost wholly clear from the wretched affectation of learning. I will say nothing of the "Piscatory Eclogues," because no modern Latin can bear criticism.[287] It is no wonder, that, rolling down, through so many barbarous ages, from the spring of Virgil, it bears along with it the filth and ordures of the Goths and Vandals. Neither will I mention Monsieur Fontenelle, the living glory of the French. It is enough for him to have excelled his master Lucian, without attempting to compare our miserable age with that of Virgil, or Theocritus. Let me only add, for his reputation,

But Spenser, being master of our northern dialect, and skilled in Chaucer's English, has so exactly imitated the Doric of Theocritus, that his love is a perfect image of that passion which God infused into both sexes, before it was corrupted with the knowledge of arts, and the ceremonies of what we call good manners.

My lord, I know to whom I dedicate; and could not have been induced, by any motive, to put this part of Virgil, or any other, into unlearned hands. You have read him with pleasure, and, I dare say, with admiration, in the Latin, of which you are a master. You have added to your natural endowments, which, without flattery, are eminent, the superstructures of study, and the knowledge of good authors. Courage, probity, and humanity, are inherent in you. These virtues have ever been habitual to the ancient house of Cumberland, from whence you are descended, and of which our chronicles make so honourable mention in the long wars betwixt the rival families of York and Lancaster. Your forefathers have asserted the party which they chose till death, and died for its defence in the fields of battle. You have, besides, the fresh remembrance of your noble father, from whom you never can degenerate:

It being almost morally impossible for you to be other than you are by kind, I need neither praise nor incite your virtue. You are acquainted with the Roman history, and know, without my information, that patronage and clientship always descended from the fathers to the sons, and that the same plebeian houses had recourse to the same patrician line which had formerly protected them, and followed their principles and fortunes to the last. So that I am your lordship's by descent, and part of your inheritance. And the natural inclination which I have to serve you, adds to your paternal right; for I was wholly yours from the first moment when I had the happiness and honour of being known to you. Be pleased therefore to accept the rudiments of Virgil's poetry, coarsely translated, I confess, but which yet retain some beauties of the author, which neither the barbarity of our language, nor my unskilfulness, could so much sully, but that they appear sometimes in the dim mirror which I hold before you. The subject is not unsuitable to your youth, which allows you yet to love, and is proper to your present scene of life. Rural recreations abroad, and books at home, are the innocent pleasures of a man who is early wise, and gives Fortune no more hold of him, than of necessity he must. It is good, on some occasions, to think before-hand as little as we can; to enjoy as much of the present as will not endanger our futurity; and to provide ourselves of the virtuoso's saddle, which will be sure to amble, when the world is upon the hardest trot. What I humbly offer to your lordship, is of this nature. I wish it pleasant, and am sure it is innocent. May you ever continue your esteem for Virgil, and not lessen it for the faults of his translator; who is, with all manner of respect and sense of gratitude,

My Lord, Your Lordship's Most humble and Most obedient servant, John Dryden.

FOOTNOTES:

PREFACE TO THE PASTORALS, WITH A SHORT DEFENCE OF VIRGIL, AGAINST SOME OF THE REFLECTIONS OF MONSIEUR FONTENELLE.

BY WILLIAM WALSH, Esq.

As the writings of greatest antiquity are in verse, so, of all sorts of poetry, pastorals seem the most ancient; being formed upon the model of the first innocence and simplicity, which the moderns, better to dispense themselves from imitating, have wisely thought fit to treat as fabulous, and impracticable. And yet they, by obeying the unsophisticated dictates of nature, enjoyed the most valuable blessings of life; a vigorous health of body, with a constant serenity and freedom of mind; whilst we, with all our fanciful refinements, can scarcely pass an autumn without some access of a fever, or a whole day, not ruffled by some unquiet passion. He was not then looked upon as a very old man, who reached to a greater number of years, than in these times an ancient family can reasonably pretend to; and we know the names of several, who saw and practised the world for a longer space of time, than we can read the account of in any one entire body of history. In short, they invented the most useful arts, pasturage, tillage, geometry, writing, music, astronomy, &c. whilst the moderns, like extravagant heirs made rich by their industry, ungratefully deride the good old gentleman who left them the estate. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that pastorals are fallen into disesteem, together with that fashion of life, upon which they were grounded. And methinks I see the reader already uneasy at this part of Virgil, counting the pages, and posting to the "Æneïs:" so delightful an entertainment is the very relation of public mischief and slaughter now become to mankind. And yet Virgil passed a much different judgment on his own works: he valued most this part, and his "Georgics," and depended upon them for his reputation with posterity; but censures himself in one of his letters to Augustus, for meddling with heroics, the invention of a degenerating age. This is the reason that the rules of pastoral are so little known, or studied. Aristotle, Horace, and the Essay of Poetry, take no notice of it; and Monsieur Boileau, one of the most accurate of the moderns, because he never loses the ancients out of his sight, bestows scarce half a page on it.

It is the design therefore of the few following pages, to clear this sort of writing from vulgar prejudices; to vindicate our author from some unjust imputations; to look into some of the rules of this sort of poetry, and enquire what sort of versification is most proper for it; in which point we are so much inferior to the ancients, that this consideration alone were enough to make some writers think as they ought, that is meanly, of their own performances.

As all sorts of poetry consist in imitation, pastoral is the imitation of a Shepherd, considered under that character. It is requisite therefore to be a little informed of the condition and qualification of these shepherds.

One of the ancients has observed truly, but satirically enough, that, "Mankind is the measure of every thing." And thus, by a gradual improvement of this mistake, we come to make our own age and country the rule and standard of others, and ourselves at last the measure of them all. We figure the ancient countrymen like our own, leading a painful life in poverty and contempt, without wit, or courage, or education. But men had quite different notions of these things, for the first four thousand years of the world. Health and strength were then in more esteem than the refinements of pleasure; and it was accounted a great deal more honourable to till the ground, or keep a flock of sheep, than to dissolve in wantonness and effeminating sloth.[288] Hunting has now an idea of quality joined to it, and is become the most important business in the life of a gentleman; anciently it was quite otherways.[289] Mr Fleury has severely remarked, that this extravagant passion for hunting is a strong proof of our Gothic extraction, and shews an affinity of humour with the savage Americans. The barbarous Franks and other Germans, (having neither corn nor wine of their own growth,) when they passed the Rhine, and possessed themselves of countries better cultivated, left the tillage of the land to the old proprietors; and afterwards continued to hazard their lives as freely for their diversion, as they had done before for their necessary subsistence. The English gave this usage the sacred stamp of fashion; and from hence it is that most of our terms of hunting are French.[290] The reader will, I hope, give me his pardon for my freedom on this subject, since an ill accident, occasioned by hunting, has kept England in pain, these several months together, for one of the best and greatest peers[291] which she has bred for some ages; no less illustrious for civil virtues and learning, than his ancestors were for all their victories in France.

But there are some prints still left of the ancient esteem for husbandry, and their plain fashion of life, in many of our surnames, and in the escutcheons of the most ancient families, even those of the greatest kings, the roses, the lilies, the thistle, &c. It is generally known, that one of the principal causes of the deposing of Mahomet the Fourth, was, that he would not allot part of the day to some manual labour, according to the law of Mahomet, and ancient practice of his predecessors. He that reflects on this, will be the less surprised to find that Charlemagne, eight hundred years ago, ordered his children to be instructed in some profession; and, eight hundred years yet higher, that Augustus wore no clothes but such as were made by the hands of the empress and her daughters; and Olympias did the same for Alexander the Great. Nor will he wonder, that the Romans, in great exigency, sent for their dictator from the plough, whose whole estate was but of four acres; too little a spot now for the orchard, or kitchen-garden, of a private gentleman. It is commonly known, that the founders of three the most renowned monarchies in the world were shepherds; and the subject of husbandry has been adorned by the writings and labour of more than twenty kings. It ought not therefore to be matter of surprise to a modern writer, that kings, the shepherds of the people in Homer, laid down their first rudiments in tending their mute subjects; nor that the wealth of Ulysses consisted in flocks and herds, the intendants over which were then in equal esteem with officers of state in latter times. And therefore Eumæus is called διος ὑφορβος in Homer; not so much because Homer was a lover of a country life, to which he rather seems averse, but by reason of the dignity and greatness of his trust, and because he was the son of a king, stolen away, and sold by the Phœnician pirates; which the ingenious Mr Cowley seems not to have taken notice of. Nor will it seem strange, that the master of the horse to king Latinus, in the ninth Æneïd, was found in the homely employment of cleaving blocks, when news of the first skirmish betwixt the Trojans and Latins was brought to him.

Being therefore of such quality, they cannot be supposed so very ignorant and unpolished: the learning and good-breeding of the world was then in the hands of such people. He who was chosen by the consent of all parties to arbitrate so delicate an affair as, which was the fairest of the three celebrated beauties of heaven—he who had the address to debauch away Helen from her husband, her native country, and from a crown—understood what the French call by the too soft name of galanterie; he had accomplishments enough, how ill use soever he made of them. It seems, therefore, that M. Fontenelle had not duly considered the matter, when he reflected so severely upon Virgil, as if he had not observed the laws of decency in his Pastorals, in making shepherds speak to things beside their character, and above their capacity. He stands amazed, that shepherds should thunder out, as he expresses himself, the formation of the world, and that too according to the system of Epicurus. "In truth," says he, page 176, "I cannot tell what to make of this whole piece, (the sixth Pastoral.) I can neither comprehend the design of the author, nor the connection of the parts. First come the ideas of philosophy, and presently after those incoherent fables, &c." To expose him yet more, he subjoins, "It is Silenus himself who makes all this absurd discourse. Virgil says indeed, that he had drank too much the day before; perhaps the debauch hung in his head when he composed this poem," &c. Thus far M. Fontenelle, who, to the disgrace of reason, as himself ingenuously owns, first built his house, and then studied architecture; I mean, first composed his Eclogues, and then studied the rules. In answer to this, we may observe, first, that this very pastoral which he singles out to triumph over, was recited by a famous player on the Roman theatre, with marvellous applause; insomuch that Cicero, who had heard part of it only, ordered the whole to be rehearsed, and, struck with admiration of it, conferred then upon Virgil the glorious title of

Magnæ spes altera Romæ.

Nor is it old Donatus only who relates this; we have the same account from another very credible and ancient author; so that here we have the judgment of Cicero, and the people of Rome, to confront the single opinion of this adventurous critic. A man ought to be well assured of his own abilities, before he attacks an author of established reputation. If Mr Fontenelle had perused the fragments of the Phœnician antiquity, traced the progress of learning through the ancient Greek writers, or so much as consulted his learned countryman Huetius, he would have found, (which falls out unluckily for him,) that a Chaldæan shepherd discovered to the Egyptians and Greeks the creation of the world. And what subject more fit for such a pastoral, than that great affair which was first notified to the world by one of that profession? Nor does it appear, (what he takes for granted,) that Virgil describes the original of the world according to the hypothesis of Epicurus. He was too well seen in antiquity to commit such a gross mistake; there is not the least mention of chance in that whole passage, nor of the clinamen principiorum, so peculiar to Epicurus's hypothesis. Virgil had not only more piety, but was of too nice a judgment to introduce a god denying the power and providence of the Deity, and singing a hymn to the atoms and blind chance. On the contrary, his description agrees very well with that of Moses; and the eloquent commentator Dacier, who is so confident that Horace had perused the sacred history, might with greater reason have affirmed the same thing of Virgil; for, besides that famous passage in the sixth Æneïd, (by which this may be illustrated,) where the word principio is used in the front of both by Moses and Virgil, and the seas are first mentioned, and the spiritus intus alit, which might not improbably, as M. Dacier would suggest, allude to the "Spirit moving upon the face of the waters;" but, omitting this parallel place, the successive formation of the world is evidently described in these words,

Rerum paulatim sumere formas:

And it is hardly possible to render more literally that verse of Moses, "Let the waters be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear," than in this of Virgil,

Jam durare solum, et discludere Nerea ponto.

After this, the formation of the sun is described, (exactly in the Mosaical order,) and, next, the production of the first living creatures, and that too in a small number, (still in the same method,)

Rara per ignotos errent animalia montes.

And here the foresaid author would probably remark, that Virgil keeps more exactly to the Mosaic system, than an ingenious writer, who will by no means allow mountains to be coeval with the world. Thus much will make it probable at least, that Virgil had Moses in his thoughts rather than Epicurus, when he composed this poem. But it is further remarkable, that this passage was taken from a song attributed to Apollo, who himself, too, unluckily had been a shepherd; and he took it from another yet more ancient, composed by the first inventor of music, and at that time a shepherd too; and this is one of the noblest fragments of Greek antiquity. And, because I cannot suppose the ingenious M. Fontenelle one of their number, who pretend to censure the Greeks, without being able to distinguish Greek from Ephesian characters, I shall here set down the lines from which Virgil took this passage, though none of the commentators have observed it:

Thus Linus too began his poem, as appears by a fragment of it preserved by Diogenes Laertius; and the like may be instanced in Musæus himself; so that our poet here, with great judgment, as always, follows the ancient custom of beginning their more solemn songs with the creation, and does it too most properly under the person of a shepherd. And thus the first and best employment of poetry was, to compose hymns in honour of the great Creator of the universe.

Few words will suffice to answer his other objections. He demands why those several transformations are mentioned in that poem:—And is not fable then the life and soul of poetry? Can himself assign a more proper subject of pastoral than the Saturnia regna, the age and scene of this kind of poetry? What theme more fit for the song of a god, or to imprint religious awe, than the omnipotent power of transforming the species of creatures at their pleasure? Their families lived in groves, near the clear springs; and what better warning could be given to the hopeful young shepherds, than that they should not gaze too much into the liquid dangerous looking-glass, for fear of being stolen by the water-nymphs, that is, falling and being drowned, as Hylas was? Pasiphaë's monstrous passion for a bull is certainly a subject enough fitted for bucolics. Can M. Fontenelle tax Silenus for fetching too far the transformation of the sisters of Phaëton into trees, when perhaps they sat at that very time under the hospitable shade of those alders and poplars—or the metamorphosis of Philomela into that ravishing bird, which makes the sweetest music of the groves? If he had looked into the ancient Greek writers, or so much as consulted honest Servius, he would have discovered, that, under the allegory of this drunkenness of Silenus, the refinement and exaltation of men's minds by philosophy was intended. But, if the author of these reflections can take such flights in his wine, it is almost pity that drunkenness should be a sin, or that he should ever want good store of burgundy and champaign. But indeed he seems not to have ever drank out of Silenus's tankard, when he composed either his Critique or Pastorals.

His censure on the fourth seems worse grounded than the other. It is entitled, in some ancient manuscripts, the "History of the Renovation of the World." He complains, that he "cannot understand what is meant by those many figurative expressions:" but, if he had consulted the younger Vossius's dissertation on this Pastoral, or read the excellent oration of the emperor Constantine, made French by a good pen of their own, he would have found there the plain interpretation of all those figurative expressions; and, withal, very strong proofs of the truth of the Christian religion; such as converted heathens, as Valerianus, and others. And, upon account of this piece, the most learned of all the Latin fathers calls Virgil a Christian, even before Christianity. Cicero takes notice of it in his books of Divination; and Virgil probably had put it in verse a considerable time before the edition of his Pastorals. Nor does he appropriate it to Pollio, or his son, but complimentally dates it from his consulship; and therefore some one, who had not so kind thoughts of M. Fontenelle as I, would be inclined to think him as bad a Catholic as critic in this place.

But, in respect to some books he has wrote since, I pass by a great part of this, and shall only touch briefly some of the rules of this sort of poem.

The first is, that an air of piety, upon all occasions, should be maintained in the whole poem. This appears in all the ancient Greek writers, as Homer, Hesiod, Aratus, &c. And Virgil is so exact in the observation of it, not only in this work, but in his "Æneïs" too, that a celebrated French writer taxes him for permitting Æneas to do nothing without the assistance of some god. But by this it appears, at least, that M. St Evremont is no Jansenist.

M. Fontenelle seems a little defective in this point: he brings in a pair of shepherdesses disputing very warmly, whether Victoria be a goddess or a woman. Her great condescension and compassion, her affability and goodness, (none of the meanest attributes of the divinity,) pass for convincing arguments, that she could not possibly be a goddess.

In short, she has too many divine perfections to be a deity, and therefore she is a mortal; which was the thing to be proved. It is directly contrary to the practice of all ancient poets, as well as to the rules of decency and religion, to make such odious preferences. I am much surprised, therefore, that he should use such an argument as this:

Was not Aurora, and Venus, and Luna, and I know not how many more of the heathen deities, too easy of access to Tithonus, to Anchises, and to Endymion? Is there any thing more sparkish and better-humoured than Venus's accosting her son in the deserts of Libya? or than the behaviour of Pallas to Diomedes, one of the most perfect and admirable pieces of all the Iliads; where she condescends to raillé him so agreeably; and, notwithstanding her severe virtue, and all the ensigns of majesty with which she so terribly adorns herself, condescends to ride with him in his chariot? But the Odysseys are full of greater instances of condescension than this.

This brings to mind that famous passage of Lucan, in which he prefers Cato to all the gods at once:

Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni—

which Brebœuf has rendered so flatly, and which may be thus paraphrased:

It is an unpardonable presumption in any sort of religion, to compliment their princes at the expence of their deities.

But, letting that pass, this whole Eclogue is but a long paraphrase of a trite verse in Virgil, and Homer;

Nec vox hominem sonat: O Dea certe!

So true is that remark of the admirable Earl of Roscommon, if applied to the Romans, rather, I fear, than to the English, since his own death:

Another rule is, that the characters should represent that ancient innocence, and unpractised plainness, which was then in the world. P. Rapin has gathered many instances of this out of Theocritus and Virgil; and the reader can do it as well as himself. But M. Fontenelle transgressed this rule, when he hid himself in the thicket to listen to the private discourse of the two shepherdesses. This is not only ill breeding at Versailles; the Arcadian shepherdesses themselves would have set their dogs upon one for such an unpardonable piece of rudeness.

A third rule is, that there should be some ordonnance, some design, or little plot, which may deserve the title of a pastoral scene. This is everywhere observed by Virgil, and particularly remarkable in the first Eclogue, the standard of all pastorals. A beautiful landscape presents itself to your view; a shepherd, with his flock around him, resting securely under a spreading beech, which furnished the first food to our ancestors; another in a quite different situation of mind and circumstances; the sun setting; the hospitality of the more fortunate shepherd, &c. And here M. Fontenelle seems not a little wanting.

A fourth rule, and of great importance in this delicate sort of writing, is, that there be choice diversity of subjects; that the Eclogue, like a beautiful prospect, should charm by its variety. Virgil is admirable in this point, and far surpasses Theocritus, as he does everywhere, when judgment and contrivance have the principal part. The subject of the first Pastoral is hinted above.

The Second contains the love of Corydon for Alexis, and the seasonable reproach he gives himself, that he left his vines half pruned, (which, according to the Roman rituals, derived a curse upon the fruit that grew upon it,) whilst he pursued an object undeserving his passion.

The Third, a sharp contention of two shepherds for the prize of poetry.

The Fourth contains the discourse of a shepherd comforting himself, in a declining age, that a better was ensuing.

The Fifth, a lamentation for a dead friend, the first draught of which is probably more ancient than any of the pastorals now extant; his brother being at first intended; but he afterwards makes his court to Augustus, by turning it into an apotheosis of Julius Cæsar.

The Sixth is the Silenus.

The Seventh, another poetical dispute, first composed at Mantua.

The Eighth is the description of a despairing lover, and a magical charm.

He sets the Ninth after all these, very modestly, because it was particular to himself; and here he would have ended that work, if Gallus had not prevailed upon him to add one more in his favour.

Thus curious was Virgil in diversifying his subjects. But M. Fontenelle is a great deal too uniform: begin where you please, the subject is still the same. We find it true what he says of himself,

Toûjours, toûjours de l'amour.

He seems to take pastorals and love-verses for the same thing. Has human nature no other passion? Does not fear, ambition, avarice, pride, a capriccio of honour, and laziness itself, often triumph over love? But this passion does all, not only in pastorals, but in modern tragedies too. A hero can no more fight, or be sick, or die, than he can be born, without a woman. But dramatics have been composed in compliance to the humour of the age, and the prevailing inclination of the great, whose example has a more powerful influence, not only in the little court behind the scenes, but on the great theatre of the world. However, this inundation of love-verses is not so much an effect of their amorousness, as of immoderate self-love; this being the only sort of poetry, in which the writer can, not only without censure, but even with commendation, talk of himself. There is generally more of the passion of Narcissus, than concern for Chloris and Corinna, in this whole affair. Be pleased to look into almost any of those writers, and you shall meet everywhere that eternal Moi, which the admirable Pascal so judiciously condemns. Homer can never be enough admired for this one so particular quality, that he never speaks of himself, either in the Iliad or the Odysseys: and, if Horace had never told us his genealogy, but left it to the writer of his life, perhaps he had not been a loser by it. This consideration might induce those great critics, Varius and Tucca, to raze out the four first verses of the "Æneïs," in great measure, for the sake of that unlucky Ille ego. But extraordinary geniuses have a sort of prerogative, which may dispense them from laws, binding to subject wits. However, the ladies have the less reason to be pleased with those addresses, of which the poet takes the greater share to himself. Thus the beau presses into their dressing-room; but it is not so much to adore their fair eyes, as to adjust his own steenkirk and peruke, and set his countenance in their glass.

A fifth rule (which one may hope will not be contested) is, that the writer should show in his compositions some competent skill of the subject matter, that which makes the character of persons introduced. In this, as in all other points of learning, decency, and œconomy of a poem, Virgil much excels his master Theocritus. The poet is better skilled in husbandry than those that get their bread by it. He describes the nature, the diseases, the remedies, the proper places, and seasons, of feeding, of watering their flocks; the furniture, diet, the lodging and pastimes, of his shepherds. But the persons brought in by M. Fontenelle are shepherds in masquerade, and handle their sheep-hook as aukwardly as they do their oaten reed. They saunter about with their chers moutons; but they relate as little to the business in hand, as the painter's dog, or a Dutch ship, does to the history designed. One would suspect some of them, that, instead of leading out their sheep into the plains of Mont-Brison and Marcilli, to the flowery banks of Lignon, or the Charante, they are driving directly à la boucherie, to make money of them. I hope hereafter M. Fontenelle will chuse his servants better.

A sixth rule is, that, as the style ought to be natural, clear, and elegant, it should have some peculiar relish of the ancient fashion of writing. Parables in those times were frequently used, as they are still by the eastern nations; philosophical questions, ænigmas, &c.; and of this we find instances in the sacred writings, in Homer, contemporary with king David, in Herodotus, in the Greek tragedians. This piece of antiquity is imitated by Virgil with great judgment and discretion. He has proposed one riddle, which has never yet been solved by any of his commentators. Though he knew the rules of rhetoric as well as Cicero himself, he conceals that skill in his Pastorals, and keeps close to the character of antiquity. Nor ought the connections and transitions to be very strict and regular; this would give the Pastorals an air of novelty; and of this neglect of exact connections, we have instances in the writings of the ancient Chineses, of the Jews and Greeks, in Pindar, and other writers of dithyrambics, in the choruses of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. If M. Fontenelle and Ruæus had considered this, the one would have spared his critique of the sixth, and the other, his reflections upon the ninth Pastoral. The over-scrupulous care of connections makes the modern compositions oftentimes tedious and flat: and by the omission of them it comes to pass, that the Pensées of the incomparable M. Pascal, and perhaps of M. Bruyère, are two of the most entertaining books which the modern French can boast of. Virgil, in this point, was not only faithful to the character of antiquity, but copies after Nature herself. Thus a meadow, where the beauties of the spring are profusely blended together, makes a more delightful prospect, than a curious parterre of sorted flowers in our gardens: and we are much more transported with the beauty of the heavens, and admiration of their Creator, in a clear night, when we behold stars of all magnitudes promiscuously moving together, than if those glorious lights were ranked in their several orders, or reduced into the finest geometrical figures.

Another rule omitted by P. Rapin, as some of his are by me, (for I do not design an entire treatise in this preface,) is, that not only the sentences should be short and smart, (upon which account he justly blames the Italian and French, as too talkative,) but that the whole piece should be so too. Virgil transgressed this rule in his first Pastorals, (I mean those which he composed at Mantua,) but rectified the fault in his riper years. This appears by the Culex, which is as long as five of his Pastorals put together. The greater part of those he finished have less than a hundred verses; and but two of them exceed that number. But the "Silenus," which he seems to have designed for his master-piece, in which he introduces a god singing, and he, too, full of inspiration, (which is intended by that ebriety, which M. Fontenelle so unreasonably ridicules,) though it go through so vast a field of matter, and comprises the mythology of near two thousand years, consists but of fifty lines; so that its brevity is no less admirable, than the subject matter, the noble fashion of handling it, and the deity speaking. Virgil keeps up his characters in this respect too, with the strictest decency: for poetry and pastime was not the business of men's lives in those days, but only their seasonable recreation after necessary labours. And therefore the length of some of the modern Italian and English compositions is against the rules of this kind of poesy.

I shall add something very briefly, touching the versification of Pastorals, though it be a mortifying consideration to the moderns. Heroic verse, as it is commonly called, was used by the Greeks in this sort of poem, as very ancient and natural; lyrics, iambics, &c. being invented afterwards: but there is so great a difference in the numbers of which it may be compounded, that it may pass rather for a genus, than species, of verse. Whosoever shall compare the numbers of the three following verses, will quickly be sensible of the truth of this observation:

Tityre, tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi—

the first of the Georgics,

Quid faciat lætas segetes, quo sidere terram—

and of the Æneïs,

Arma, virumque cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris.

The sound of the verses is almost as different as the subjects. But the Greek writers of Pastoral usually limited themselves to the example of the first; which Virgil found so exceedingly difficult, that he quitted it, and left the honour of that part to Theocritus. It is indeed probable, that what we improperly call rhyme, is the most ancient sort of poetry; and learned men have given good arguments for it; and therefore a French historian commits a gross mistake, when he attributes that invention to a king of Gaul, as an English gentleman does, when he makes a Roman emperor the inventor of it. But the Greeks, who understood fully the force and power of numbers, soon grew weary of this childish sort of verse, as the younger Vossius justly calls it, and therefore those rhyming hexameters, which Plutarch observes in Homer himself, seem to be the remains of a barbarous age. Virgil had them in such abhorrence, that he would rather make a false syntax, than what we call a rhyme. Such a verse as this,

Vir, precor, uxori, frater succurre sorori,

was passable in Ovid; but the nicer ears in Augustus's court could not pardon Virgil for

At regina pyrâ....

so that the principal ornament of modern poetry was accounted deformity by the Latins and Greeks. It was they who invented the different terminations of words, those happy compositions, those short monosyllables, those transpositions for the elegance of the sound and sense, which are wanting so much in modern languages. The French sometimes crowd together ten or twelve monosyllables into one disjointed verse. They may understand the nature of, but cannot imitate, those wonderful spondees of Pythagoras, by which he could suddenly pacify a man that was in a violent transport of anger; nor those swift numbers of the priests of Cybele, which had the force to enrage the most sedate and phlegmatic tempers. Nor can any modern put into his own language the energy of that single poem of Catullus,

Super alta vectus Atys, &c.

Latin is but a corrupt dialect of Greek; and the French, Spanish, and Italian, a corruption of Latin; and therefore a man might as well go about to persuade me that vinegar is a nobler liquor than wine, as that the modern compositions can be as graceful and harmonious as the Latin itself. The Greek tongue very naturally falls into iambics, and therefore the diligent reader may find six or seven-and-twenty of them in those accurate orations of Isocrates. The Latin as naturally falls into heroic; and therefore the beginning of Livy's History is half a hexameter, and that of Tacitus an entire one. The Roman historian[293], describing the glorious effort of a colonel to break through a brigade of the enemy's, just after the defeat at Cannæ, falls, unknowingly, into a verse not unworthy Virgil himself—

Ours and the French can at best but fall into blank verse, which is a fault in prose. The misfortune indeed is common to us both; but we deserve more compassion, because we are not vain of our barbarities. As age brings men back into the state and infirmities of childhood, upon the fall of their empire, the Romans doted into rhyme, as appears sufficiently by the hymns of the Latin church; and yet a great deal of the French poetry does hardly deserve that poor title. I shall give an instance out of a poem which had the good luck to gain the prize in 1685; for the subject deserved a nobler pen:

The judicious Malherbe exploded this sort of verse near eighty years ago. Nor can I forbear wondering at that passage of a famous academician, in which he, most compassionately, excuses the ancients for their not being so exact in their compositions as the modern French, because they wanted a dictionary, of which the French are at last happily provided. If Demosthenes and Cicero had been so lucky as to have had a dictionary, and such a patron as cardinal Richelieu, perhaps they might have aspired to the honour of Balzac's legacy of ten pounds, Le prix de l'éloquence.

On the contrary, I dare assert, that there are hardly ten lines in either of those great orators, or even in the catalogue of Homer's ships, which are not more harmonious, more truly rhythmical, than most of the French or English sonnets; and therefore they lose, at least, one half of their native beauty by translation.

I cannot but add one remark on this occasion,—that the French verse is oftentimes not so much as rhyme, in the lowest sense; for the childish repetition of the same note cannot be called music. Such instances are infinite, as in the forecited poem:

M. Boileau himself has a great deal of this μονοτονια, not by his own neglect, but purely by the faultiness and poverty of the French tongue. M. Fontenelle at last goes into the excessive paradoxes of M. Perrault, and boasts of the vast number of their excellent songs, preferring them to the Greek and Latin. But an ancient writer, of as good credit, has assured us, that seven lives would hardly suffice to read over the Greek odes; but a few weeks would be sufficient, if a man were so very idle as to read over all the French. In the mean time, I should be very glad to see a catalogue of but fifty of theirs with

Exact propriety of word and thought.[294]

Notwithstanding all the high encomiums and mutual gratulations which they give one another, (for I am far from censuring the whole of that illustrious society, to which the learned world is much obliged,) after all those golden dreams at the Louvre, that their pieces will be as much valued, ten or twelve ages hence, as the ancient Greek or Roman, I can no more get it into my head that they will last so long, than I could believe the learned Dr H——k [of the Royal Society,] if he should pretend to show me a butterfly, that had lived a thousand winters.

When M. Fontenelle wrote his Eclogues, he was so far from equalling Virgil, or Theocritus, that he had some pains to take before he could understand in what the principal beauty and graces of their writings do consist.

Cum mortuis non nisi larvæ luctantur.

FOOTNOTES:

PASTORAL I. OR, TITYRUS AND MELIBŒUS.

ARGUMENT.

The occasion of the First Pastoral was this: When Augustus had settled himself in the Roman empire, that he might reward his veteran troops for their past service, he distributed among them all the lands that lay about Cremona and Mantua; turning out the right owners for having sided with his enemies. Virgil was a sufferer among the rest, who afterwards recovered his estate by Mæcenas's intercession; and, as an instance of his gratitude, composed the following Pastoral, where he sets out his own good fortune in the person of Tityrus, and the calamities of his Mantuan neighbours in the character of Melibœus.

MELIBŒUS.

TITYRUS.

MELIBŒUS.

TITYRUS.

MELIBŒUS.

TITYRUS.

MELIBŒUS.

TITYRUS.

MELIBŒUS.

TITYRUS.

MELIBŒUS.

TITYRUS.

FOOTNOTES:

PASTORAL II. OR, ALEXIS.

ARGUMENT.

The commentators can by no means agree on the person of Alexis, but are all of opinion that some beautiful youth is meant by him, to whom Virgil here makes love, in Corydon's language and simplicity. His way of courtship is wholly pastoral: he complains of the boy's coyness; recommends himself for his beauty and skill in piping; invites the youth into the country, where he promises him the diversions of the place, with a suitable present of nuts and apples. But when he finds nothing will prevail, he resolves to quit his troublesome amour, and betake himself again to his former business.

FOOTNOTES:

PASTORAL III. OR, PALÆMON. MENALCAS, DAMŒTAS, PALÆMON.

ARGUMENT.

Damœtas and Menalcas, after some smart strokes of country raillery, resolve to try who has the most skill at song; and accordingly make their neighbour, Palæmon, judge of their performances; who, after a full hearing of both parties, declares himself unfit for the decision of so weighty a controversy, and leaves the victory undetermined.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

PALÆMON.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

DAMŒTAS.

MENALCAS.

PALÆMON.

FOOTNOTES:

PASTORAL IV. OR, POLLIO.

ARGUMENT.

The Poet celebrates the birth-day of Saloninus, the son of Pollio, born in the consulship of his father, after the taking of Salonæ, a city in Dalmatia. Many of the verses are translated from one of the Sibyls, who prophesied of our Saviour's birth.

FOOTNOTES:

PASTORAL V. OR, DAPHNIS.

ARGUMENT.

Mopsus and Menalcas, two very expert shepherds at a song, begin one by consent to the memory of Daphnis, who is supposed by the best critics to represent Julius Cæsar. Mopsus laments his death; Menalcas proclaims his divinity; the whole eclogue consisting of an elegy and an apotheosis.

MENALCAS.

MOPSUS.

MENALCAS.

MOPSUS.

MENALCAS.

MOPSUS.

MENALCAS.

MOPSUS.

MENALCAS.

MOPSUS.

MENALCAS.

MOPSUS.

MENALCAS.

MOPSUS.

PASTORAL VI. OR, SILENUS.

ARGUMENT.

Two young shepherds, Chromis and Mnasylus, having been often promised a song by Silenus, chance to catch him asleep in this Pastoral; where they bind him hand and foot, and then claim his promise. Silenus, finding they would be put off no longer, begins his song, in which he describes the formation of the universe, and the original of animals, according to the Epicurean philosophy; and then runs through the most surprising transformations which have happened in Nature since her birth. This Pastoral was designed as a compliment to Syron the Epicurean, who instructed Virgil and Varus in the principles of that philosophy. Silenus acts as tutor, Chromis and Mnasylus as the two pupils.[299]

FOOTNOTES:

PASTORAL VII. OR, MELIBŒUS.

ARGUMENT.

Melibœus here gives us the relation of a sharp poetical contest between Thyrsis and Corydon, at which he himself and Daphnis were present; who both declared for Corydon.

CORYDON.

THYRSIS.

CORYDON.

THYRSIS.

CORYDON.

THYRSIS.

CORYDON.

THYRSIS.

CORYDON.

THYRSIS.

CORYDON.

THYRSIS.

MELIBŒUS.

PASTORAL VIII.[300] OR, PHARMACEUTRIA.

ARGUMENT.

This Pastoral contains the Songs of Damon and Alphesibœus. The first of them bewails the loss of his mistress, and repines at the success of his rival Mopsus. The other repeats the charms of some enchantress, who endeavoured, by her spells and magic, to make Daphnis in love with her.