tune feem not inflicted on them, but on yourself. You are fo ready to redress, that you almost prevent their wishes, and always exceed their expectations: as if what was yours, was not your own, and not given you to poffefs, but to bestow on wanting merit. But this is a topic which I muft caft in fhades, left I offend your modefty, which is fo far from being oftentatious of the good you do, that it blushes even to have it known: and therefore I must leave you to the fatisfaction and teftimony of your own confcience, which though it be a filent panegyric, is yet the best.

The history of Peru afsures us, that their Incas, above all their titles, efteemed that the highest, which called them Lovers of the poor: a name more glorious than the Felix, Pius, and Auguftus of the Roman emperors; which were epithets of flattery, deserved by few of them; and not running in a blood, like the perpetual gentleness, and inherent goodness of the Ormond Family.

Gold, as it is the pureft, fo it is the fofteft, and most ductile of all metals: iron, which is the hardest, gathers ruft, corrodes itself; and is therefore fubject to corruption: it was never intended for coins and medals, or to bear faces and the infcriptions of the great. Indeed it is fit for armour, to bear off infults, and preserve the wearer in the day of battle: but the danger once repelled, it is laid afide by the brave, as a garment too rough for civil converfation: a neceffary guard in war, but too harsh and cumbersome in peace, and which keeps off the embraces of a more humane life.

For this reafon, my lord, though you have courage in a heroical degree, yet I ascribe it to you, but as your fecond attribute: mercy, beneficence, and compaffion, claim precedence, as they are firft in the divine nature. An intrepid courage, which is inherent in your Grace, is at heft but a holiday kind of virtue, to be feldom exercised, and never but in cafes of neceffity: affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word, which I would fain bring back to its original fignification of virtue, I mean Good-nature, are of daily use: they are the bread of mankind, and staff of life: neither fighs, nor tears, nor groans, nor curfes of the vanquished, follow acts of compaffion, and of charity but a fincere pleasure and ferenity of mind, in him who performs an action of mercy, which cannot suffer the misfortunes of another, without redress; left they should bring a kind of contagion along with them, and pollute the happiness which he enjoys.

Yet fince the perverfe tempers of mankind, fince oppreffion on one fide, and ambition on the other, are sometimes the unavoidable occafions of

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ed your own education as enables you to pay the debt you owe your country; or, more properly speaking, both your countries: because you were born, I may almost say in purple, at the caftle of Dublin, when your grandfather was lord-lieutenant, and have fince been bred in the court of England.

If this addrefs had been in verfe, I might have called you, as Claudian calls Mercury. "Numen "commune, gemino faciens commercia mundo." The better to fatisfy this double obligation, you have early cultivated the genius you have to arms, that when the fervice of Britain or Ireland shall require your courage and your conduct, you may exert them both to the benefit of either country. You began in the cabinet what you afterwards practifed in the camp; and thus both Lucullus and Cæfar (to omit a crowd of fhining Romans) formed themselves to war by the study of history, and by the examples of the greateft captains, both of Greece and Italy, before their time. I name those two commanders in particular, because they were better read in chronicle than any of the Roman leaders; and that Lucullus in particular, having only the theory of war from books, was thought fit, without practice, to be fent into the field, against the most formidable enemy of Rome. Tully indeed was called the learned conful in derifion; but then he was not born a foldier: his head was turned another way: when he read the Tactics, he was thinking on the bar, which was his field of battle. The knowledge of warfare is thrown away on a general who dares not make use of what he knows. I commend it only in a man of courage and refolution; in him it will direct his martial spirit, and teach him the way to the best victories, which are thofe that are least bloody, and which, though atchieved by the hand, are managed by the head. Science diftinguifkes a man of honour from one of those athletic brutes whom, undeservedly, we call heroes. Curfed be the poet, who first honoured with that name a mere Ajax, a man-killing idiot. The Ulyffes of Ovid upbraids his ignorance, that he understood not the fhield for which he pleaded: there were engraven on it, plans of cities, and maps of coun

It is with a poet as with a man who designs to build, and is very exact, as he supposes, in cafting up the coft beforehand; but, generally fpeaking, he is mistaken in his account, and reckons fhort in the expence he first intended: he alters his mind as the work proceeds, and will have this or that convenience more, of which he had not thought when he began. So has it happerred to me: I have built a house, where I intended but a lodge yet with better fuccefs than a certain nobleman, who, beginning with a dog-kennel, never lived to finish the palace he had contrived. From tranflating the first of Homer's Iliads (which I intended as an effay to the whole work) I proceeded to the tranflation of the twelfth book of Ovid's Metamorphofes, because it contains, among other things, the causes, the beginning, and ending of the Trojan war: here ought in reason to have stopped; but the fpeeches of Ajax and Ulyffes lying next in my way, I could not balk them. When I had compaffed them, I was fo taken with the former part of the fifteenth book (which is the mafter-piece of the whole Metamorphofes), that I enjoined myfelf the pleafing task of rendering it into English. And now I found, by the number of my verfes, that they began to fwell into a little volume: which gave me an occafion of looking backward on fome beauties of my author, in his former books there occurred to me the Hunting of the Boar, Cinyras and Myrrha, the good-natured ftory of Baucis and Philemon, with the reft, which I hope I have tranflated clofely enough, and given them the VOL. VI.

For

fame turn of verfe which they had in the original; and this, I may say without vanity, is not the talent of every poet: he who has arrived the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned Sandys, the beft verfifier of the former age; if I may properly call it by that name which was the former part of this concluding century. Spenfer and Fairfax both flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; great masters in our language; and who faw much farther into the beauties of our numbers, than those who immediately followed them. Milton was the poetical fon of Spenfer, and Mr, Waller of Fairfax; for we have our lineal defcents and clans, as well as other families: Spenfer more than once infinuates, that the foul of Chaucer was transfufed into his body; and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease. Milton has acknowledged to me, that Spenfer was his original; and many befides myfelf have heard our famous Waller own, that he derived the harmony of his numbers from the Godfrey of Bulloign, which was turned into English by Mr. Fairfax. But to return having done with Ovid for this time, it came into my mind, that our old English poet Chaucer in many things refembled him, and that with no difadvantage on the fide of the modern author, as I fhall endeavour to prove when I compare them; and as I am, and always have been, ftudious to promote the honour of my native country, fo I foon resolved to put their merits to the trial, by turning fome of the Canterbury tales into our language, as it is now refined; for by this means Q

both the poets being fet in the fame light, and dreffed in the fame English habit, story to be compared with story, a certain judgment may be made betwixt them, by the reader, without obtruding my opinion on him: or if I feem partial to my countryman, and predeceffor in the laurel, the friends of antiquity are not few: and befides many of the learned, Ovid has almoft all the beaux, and the whole fair fex, his declared patrons. Perhaps I have affumed fomewhat more to myself than they allow me; because I have adventured to fum up the evidence: but the readers are the jury; and their privilege remains entire to decide according to the merits of the caufe, or if they pleafe, to bring it to another hearing, before fome other court. In the mean time, to follow the thread of my difcourfe (as thoughts, according to Mr. Hobbes, have always fome connection) fo from Chaucer I was led to think on Boccace, who was not only his contemporary, but also purfued the fame ftudies; wrote novels in profe, and many works in verfe; particularly is faid to have invented the octave rhyme, or ftanza of eight lines, which ever fince has been maintained by the practice of all Italian writers, who are, or at least affume the title of Heroic Poets; he ai Chaucer, among other things, had this in common, that they refined their mother tongues; but with this difference, that Dante had begun to file their language, at leaft in verfe, before the time of Boccace, who likewife received no little help from his master Petrarch. But the reformation of their profe was wholly owing to Boccace himfelf, who is yet the standard of purity in the Italian tongue; though many of his phrafes are become obfolete, as in procefs of time it must needs happen. Chaucer (as you have formerly been told by our learned Mr. Rymer) firft adorned and amplified our barren tongue from the Provencall, which was then the moft polished of all the modern languages; but this fubject has been copiously treated by that great critic, who deferves no little commendation from us his countrymen. For thefe reafons of time, and refemblance of genius in Chaucer and Boccace, I refolved to join them in my prefent work; to which I have added fome original papers of my own; which whether they are equal or inferior to my other poems, an author is the most improper judge; and therefore I leave them wholly to the mercy of the reader. I will hope the beft, that they will not be condemned; but if they fhould, I have the excufe of an old gentleman, who, mounting on horfeback before fome ladies, when I was prefent, got up fomewhat heavily, but defred of the fair spectators, that they would count fourfcore and eight before they judged him. By the mercy of God, I am already come within twenty years of his number, a cripple in my limbs; But what decays are in my mind, the reader muft determine. I think myself as vigorous as ever in the faculties of my foul, excepting only my meinery, which is not impaired to any great degree; and if I lofe not more of it, I have no great reaon to complain. What judgment I had, increates

rather than diminishes; and thoughts, fuch as they are, come crowding in fo faft upon me, that my only difficulty is to choofe or to reject; to run them into verfe, or to give them the other harmony of profe. I have fo long ftudied and practifed both, that they are grown into a habit, and become familiar to me. In fhort, though I may lawfully plead fome part of the old gentleman's excufe; yet I will referve it till I think I have greater need, and afk no grains of allowance for the faults of this my prefent work, but those which are given of courfe to human frailty. I will not trouble my reader with the shortnefs of time in which I writ it, or the feveral intervals of ficknefs: they who think too well of their own performances, are apt to boast in their prefaces how little time their works have coft them; and what other bufinefs of more importance interfered; but the reader will be as apt to ask the queftion, why they allowed not a longer time to make their works more perfect? and why they had so defpicable an opinion of their judges, as to thrust their indigefted ftuff upon them, as if they deferved no better?

With this account of my present undertaking, I conclude the first part of this difcourfe in the fecond part, as at a fecond fitting, though I alter not the draught, I muft touch the fame features over again, and change the dead colouring of the whole. In general I will only fay, that I have written nothing which favours of immorality or profanenefs; at leaft, I am not conscious to myself of any fuch intention. If there happen to be found an irreverent expreffion, or a thought too wanton, they are crept into my verses through my inadvertency; if the fearchers find any in the cargo, let them be ftaved or forfeited, like contraband goods; at left, let their authors be anfwerable for them, as being but imported merchandife, and not of my own manufacture. On the other fide, I have endeavoured to choose such fables, both ancient and modern, as contain in each of them fome inftructive moral, which I could prove by induction, but the way is tedious; and they leap foremost inte fight, without the reader's trouble of looking after them. I wish I could affirm with a fafe confcience, that I had taken the fame care in all my former writings; for it must be owned, that fuppofing verfes are never fo beautiful or pleafing, yet if they contain any thing which fhocks religion, or good manners, they are at beft, what Horace fays of goed numbers, without good fenfe, "Verfus inopes rerum, nugæque "canore." Thus far, I hope, I am right in court, without renouncing my other right of felf. defence, where I have been wrongfully accused, and my fenfe wire-drawn into blafphemy or bawdry, as it has often been by a religious lawyer, in a late pleading against the stage; in which he mixes truth with falfehood, and has not forgotten the old rule of calumniating strongly, that something may remain.

I refume the thread of my discourse with the first of my tranflation, which was the firft Iliad of Homer. If it fhall pleafe God to give me longer