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p. 1009, below), and, finally, several complimentary poems, and lists of subscribers to the work. The sculptures were from the plates, somewhat retouched, that had formerly been used for Ogleby's Virgil.

Soon after the volume was published, Dryden undertook a revision of it, which occupied him for only nine days. (See letter from Dryden to Tonson: Malone, I, 2, 61.) The second edition, which is the basis of the present text, was also in folio, and appeared in 1698. The third edition, in three volumes, octavo, was not printed until 1709.]

PASTORALS

TO THE

RIGHT HONORABLE HUGH, LORD CLIFFORD

MY LORD,

BARON OF CHUDLEIGH

I HAVE found it not more difficult to translate Virgil, than to find such patrons as I desire for my translation. For, tho' England is not wanting in a learned nobility, yet such are my unhappy circumstances, that they have confin'd me to a narrow choice. To the greater part I have not the honor to be known; and to some of them I cannot shew 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 flourish'd in the opinion of the world; tho' with small advantage to my fortune, till he awaken'd the remembrance of my royal master. He was that Pollio, or that Varus, who introduc'd me to Augustus; and, tho' he soon dismiss'd 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 ripen'd 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 oppress'd 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 promis'd 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 plac'd 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, tho' made English by one who scarce remembers that passion which inspir'd my author when he wrote them. These were his first essay in poetry, (if the Ceiris 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 wrong'd him less, considering my circumstances, than those who have attempted him before, either in our own, or any modern language. And, tho' 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 rais'd 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 Eneis. He could not forbear to try his wings, tho' his pinions were not harden'd 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 admonish'd 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. 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 Eneas. "T is true he was sensible of his own boldness; and we know it by the paulo majora which begins his Fourth Eclogue. He remember'd, like young Manlius, that he was forbidden to engage; but what avails an express command to a youthful courage which presages victory in the at

In

tempt? Encourag'd with success, he proceeds farther in the Sixth, and invades the province of philosophy. And notwithstanding that Phobus had forewarn'd him of singing wars, as he there confesses, yet he presum'd that the search of nature was as free to him as to Lucretius, who at his age explain'd 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 learn'd for their profession: the charms are also of the same nature; but both were copied from Theocritus, and had receiv'd 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 observ'd 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 dress'd 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 scatter'd 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 carv'd:

In medio duo signa: Conon, et quis fuit aller, Descripsit radio totum qui gentibus orbem? 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 shew 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, tho' 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 blam'd by the bad critics of his age, who could not see the beauties of that merum rus which the poet describ'd in those expressions. But Theocritus may justly be preferr'd 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.

For

Our own nation has produc'd a third poet in this kind, not inferior to the two former. the Shepherds' Kalendar of Spenser is not to be match'd 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. 'Tis no wonder that rolling down, thro' 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. 'Tis enough for him to have excell'd his master Lucian, without attempting to compare our miserable age with that of Virgil or Theocritus. Let me only add, for his reputation:

Si Pergama dextra

Defendi possint, etiam hac defensa fuissent. But Spenser, being master of our northern dialect, and skill'd in Chaucer's English, has so exactly imitated the Doric of Theocritus that his love is a perfect image of that passion which God infus'd 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 induc'd 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 honorable 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 defense in the fields of battle. You have, besides, the fresh remembrance of your noble father, from whom you never can degenerate.

-Nec imbellem feroces Progenerant aquila columbam. 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 follow'd 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 honor of being known to you. Be pleas'd therefore to accept the rudiments of Virgil's poetry, coarsely translated, I confess, but which yet retains 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. "T is good, on some occasions, to think beforehand 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 't 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.

THE FIRST PASTORAL

OR, TITYRUS AND MELIBUS

THE 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 'em 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 recover'd his estate by Macenas's intercession; and, as an instance of his gratitude, compos'd the following pastoral, where he sets out his own good fortune in the person of Tityrus, and the calamities of his Mantuan neighbors in the character of Melibœus.

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But we must beg our bread in climes unknown,

Beneath the scorching or the freezing zone;
And some to far Oaxis shall be sold,
Or try the Libyan heat, or Scythian cold;
The rest among the Britons be confin'd, 89
A race of men from all the world dis-
join'd.

O! must the wretched exiles ever mourn,
Nor after length of rolling years return?
Are we condemn'd by fate's unjust decree
No more our houses and our homes to
see?

Or shall we mount again the rural throne, And rule the country kingdoms, once our

own?

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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. YOUNG Corydon, th' unhappy shepherd swain,

The fair Alexis lov'd, but lov'd in vain;
And underneath the beechen shade, alone,
Thus to the woods and mountains made
his moan:

Is this, unkind Alexis, my reward?
And must I die unpitied, and unheard?
Now the green lizard in the grove is laid,
The sheep enjoy the coolness of the shade,
And Thestylis wild thyme and garlic beats
For harvest hinds, o'erspent with toil and
heats;

10

While in the scorching sun I trace in vain Thy flying footsteps o'er the burning plain. The creaking locusts with my voice conspire,

They fried with heat, and I with fierce desire.

How much more easy was it to sustain Proud Amaryllis and her haughty reign, The scorns of young Menalcas, once my

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