VOLUME THE FIRST.

CONTAINING

The ECLOGUES and GEORGICS.

The Life of VIRGIL.

Two ESSAYS on PASTORAL and DIDACTIC POETRY.

2

TO THE

HONOURABLE

Sir GEORGE LYTTELTON,

BARONET,

One of the

Lords Commiffioners of the Treasury.

SIR,

C

ENSURE is fo feldom foftened by apologies, that perhaps it may be Aufelefs for me to declare my confcioufness of inability to do juftice to the most perfect of poets, in the following translation. When I first entered upon this work, I fometimes imagined, that I heard the voice of Virgil addreffing me with the humanity of his hero;

Quo moriture ruis? majoraque viribus audes ? Fallit te incautum pietas tua !-----

for indeed, nothing but my affection for the author could have engaged me in fo arduous an undertaking.

VOL. I.

A

Who

Whoever confiders the degree of delicacy and correctness to which the Eclogues of Virgil are polished; together with the ease and wonderful harmony of his numbers; will be convinced of the extreme difficulty of tranffufing into another tongue, beauties of fo refined and fubtile a nature. It requires no fmall command of language, to be able to carry on Paftoral Dialogues, without finking into vulgar idioms, to unite fimplicity with grace, and to preferve familiarity without flatnefs. A ftyle too highly elevated would be naufeously unnatural, and one too profaic and plebeian, would be infipid and unaffecting. And to keep a juft mean, is perhaps as difficult in writing as in life.

There are few images and fentiments in the Eclogues of Virgil, but what are drawn from the Idylliums of Theocritus in whom there is a rural, romantic wildness of thought, heightened by the Doric dialect; with fuch lively pictures of the paffions, and of fimple unadorned nature, as are infinitely pleasing to fuch lovers and judges of true poetry as yourfelf. Theocritus is indeed the great ftore-house of paftoral description; and every fucceeding painter of rural beauty (except THOMSON in his Seafons,) hath copied his images from him, without ever looking abroad upon the face of nature themselves.

And