and very unluckily for himself, is for measuring a sword with a man so much superior in force to him on the same subject. I think I may be judge of this, because I have translated both. The famous author of THE ART OF LOVE has nothing of his own; he borrows all from a greater master in his own profession; and which is worse, improves nothing which he finds. Nature fails him and being forced to his old shift, he has recourse to witticism. This passes indeed with his soft admirers, and gives him the preference to Virgil in their esteem. But let them like for themselves, and not prescribe to others; for our author needs not their admiration.

The motive that induced Virgil to coin this fable, I have shewed already; and have also begun to shew that he might make this anachronism,"

5 The modern editions read, after the second folio,"as for measuring a sword," by which the passage is rendered nonsense. The true reading is found in the original copy of 1697.

6 Heyne has shewn, that this anachronism is by no means so certain as has been commonly supposed; the precise period when Carthage was founded, being itself extremely doubtful: some ancient authorities placing its foundation fifty years, others thirty-seven years, before the destruction of Troy; others again placing it one. hundred and thirty-three years after Troy was destroyed; and others three hundred and twenty-three. "In hoc itaque scriptorum optimorum dissensu, (says this excellent critick,) tantaque rei obscuritate, quis hoc a poeta postulet vel expectet, ut temporum rationes subtilius

by superseding the mechanick rules of poetry, for the same reason that a monarch may dispense with, or suspend his own laws, when he finds it necessary so to do; especially if those laws are not altogether fundamental. Nothing is to be called a fault in poetry, says Aristotle, but what is against the art; therefore a man may be an admirable poet, without being an exact chronologer. Shall we dare, continues Segrais, to condemn Virgil, for having made a fiction against the order of time, when we commend Ovid and other poets, who have made many of their fictions against the order of nature? For what else are the splendid miracles of the METAMORPHOSES? Yet these are beautiful, as they are related; and have also deep learning and instructive mythologies couched under them. But to give, as Virgil does in this episode, the original cause of the long wars betwixt Rome and Carthage, to draw truth out of fiction, after so probable a manner, with so much beauty, and so much for the honour of his coun

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quam ipsi historici nonnulli fecerunt, subducere sustineat ? Ultimo loco et illud monendum, jam ante Virgilium amores Didonis et Aeneae videri celebratos fuisse ab historicis Rom. Nam ad lib. iv. 682, Servius : Varro ait, non Didonem, sed Annam, amore Aeneae impulsam se super rogum interimisse.' Cf. eund. ad. v. 4. Nullam igitur in Didone ad Aeneae aetatem revocanda reprehensionis materiam subesse, ex iis quae disputata sunt, satis intelligi puto." EXCURS. I. ad lib. iv.-The quotation from Varro shews that the love-adventure of Æneas in Carthage was not, as our author represents it, wholly of Virgil's invention.

try, was proper only to the divine wit of Maro; and Tasso, in one of his discourses, admires him for this particularly. It is not lawful indeed, to contradict a point of history which is known to all the world; as for example, to make Hannibal and Scipio contemporaries with Alexander; but in the dark recesses of antiquity, a great poet may and ought to feign such things as he finds not there, if they can be brought to embellish that subject which he treats. On the other side, the pains and diligence of ill poets is but thrown away, when they want the genius to invent and feign agreeably. But if the fictions be delightful, (which they always are, if they be natural,) if they be of a piece, if the beginning, the middle, and the end be in their due places, and artfully united to each other, such works can never fail of their deserved success. And such is Virgil's episode of Dido and Æneas; where the sourest critick must acknowledge, that if he had deprived his ENEIS of so great an ornament, because he found no traces of it in antiquity, he had avoided their unjust censure, but had wanted one of the greatest beauties of his poem.

I shall say more of this in the next article of their charge against him, which is,―want of invention. In the mean time, I may affirm, in honour of this episode, that it is not only now esteemed the most pleasing entertainment of the ENEIS, but was so accounted in his own age, and before it was mellowed into that reputation which time has given it; for which I need produce no

other testimony than that of Ovid, his contemporary:

Nec pars ulla magis legitur de corpore toto,

Quam non legitimo fœdere junctus amor.

Where by the way, you may observe, my Lord, that Ovid in those words, non legitimo fædere junctus amor, will by no means allow it to be a lawful marriage betwixt Dido and Æneas. He was in banishment when he wrote those verses, which I cite from his letter to Augustus. You, Sir, saith he, have sent me into exile for writing my ART OF LOVE, and my wanton Elegies; yet your own poet was happy in your good graces, though he brought Dido and Æneas into a cave, and left them there not over-honestly together: may I be so bold to ask your majesty, is it a greater fault to teach the art of unlawful love, than to shew it in the action? But was Ovid, the court-poet, so bad a courtier, as to find no other plea to excuse himself, than by a plain accusation of his master ? Virgil confessed it was a lawful marriage betwixt the lovers; that Juno, the goddess of matrimony, had ratified it by her presence; for it was her business to bring matters to that issue: that the ceremonies were short we may believe, for Dido was not only amorous, but a widow. Mercury himself, though employed on a quite contrary errand, yet owns it a marriage by an inuendo,pulchramque uxorius urbem extruis. He calls Æneas not only a husband, but upbraids him for being a fond husband, as the word uxorius implies. Now mark a little, if your Lordship pleases, why Virgil

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A DISCOURSE ON

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is so much concerned to make this marriage* (for hs seems to be the father of the bride himself, and to give her to the bridegroom); it was to make way for the divorce which he intended afterwards; for he was a finer flatterer than Ovid; and I more than conjecture, that he had in his eye the divorce, which not long before had passed betwixt the Emperor and Scribonia. He drew this dimple in the cheek of Æneas, to prove Augustus of the same family, by so remarkable a feature in the same place. Thus, as we say in our homespun English proverb, he killed two birds with one stone; pleased the emperor, by giving him the resemblance of his ancestor, and gave him such a resemblance as was not scandalous in that age for to leave one wife and take another, was but a matter of gallantry at that time of day among the Romans. Neque hæc in fœdera veni, is the very excuse which Æneas makes, when he leaves his lady. I made no such bargain with you at our marriage, to live always drudging on at Carthage; my business was Italy, and I never made a secret of it. If I took my pleasure, had

* Here certainly our author strains a point. Virgil's own testimony is against him. Nec conjugis unquam prætendi tædas, says Eneas to Dido.

* Augustus was divorced from his second wife, Scribonia, in the year of Rome 715, after having lived with her about a year; and shortly afterwards he married Livia, who was then pregnant by her husband, Tiberius, whom he compelled to resign her.

* See Heyne's remark, p. 488: