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 : 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 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 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. It 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. the hardest trot. What I humbly offer to your Lordship is of this nature. 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, I wish it and most obedient servant, JOHN DRYDEN. DEDICATION OF THE GEORGICKS OF VIRGIL. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE PHILIP, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD, &c.9 MY LORD, I CANNOT better than in the words of Virgil: quod optanti divum promittere nemo Auderet, volvenda dies, en, attulit ultro. Seven years together I have concealed the longing 9 Philip Stanhope, second Earl of Chesterfield, who was born in the year 1634, and consequently at this time was sixty-three years old. His mother, who became a widow soon after his birth, having been Governess to Mary, daughter of Charles the First, who married William, the second Prince of Orange, and having attended the Princess to Holland, with her son, then a youth, he became acquainted with King William the Third, when a boy. His services in promoting the Restoration, during his residence in Holland, were considered of such value, that he filled several offices during the reign of Charles the Second, but in that of William he had no employment. -He died at his house in London, on Jan. 28th, 1713. |