Page:Monsieur Bossu's Treatise of the epick poem - Le Bossu (1695).djvu/330

 the World at the Birth of Pollio's Son, he should not have excited the Pastoral Muses to leave their natural Strain, and raise their Voices to a pitch which they can never reach; his Business was to have left them, and have address'd himself to some others. Yet I do not know after all if it had not have been better to have kept to the Pastoral Muses; for, he might have given a pleasing Description of the good which the Return of Peace was ready to cause in the Country; and this, methinks, had been as acceptable at least as all those incomprehensible Wonders which he borrows of the Cumæan Sibyl, this new Race of Men which is to descend from Heaven, these Grapes which are to grow on Bryars, and these Lambs whose Native Fleece is to be of a Scarlet, or Crimson hue, to save Mankind the trouble of dying the Wool. He might have flatter'd Pollis more agreeably with things that might have seem'd more consistent with probability, though, after all, even these perhaps did not wholly seem inconsistent with it, at least to the Party concern'd; for Praise is seldom thought such by those on whom it is lavish'd.

Shall I dare to say that Calpurnius, an Author much inferiour to Virgil seems to have handled a Subject of the same nature much more to the purpose: Take notice that I only speak of the Design or Fable, and not at all of the Stile. He brings in two Shepherds, who to be skreen'd from the Sun's sultry heat, shelter themselves in a Cave where they find some Verses written with the God Faunus's own hand, which contain a Prophecy about the Happiness which the Roman Empire is to enjoy under the Emperour Carus. According to the Duty of a Pastoral Poet, he dwells sufficiently on the Prosperity and Plenty that relates to the Country, and then proceeds to higher Matters; because, as he makes a God speak, he has a Right to do so; but he brings in nothing like the Sibyl's Prophecies. 'Tis pity that Virgil did not write the Verses of this Piece; neither had there been need to have had them all written by him.

Virgil makes Phœbus say to him at the beginning of his sixth Eclogue, that a Shepherd ought not to sing Kings nor Wars, but to stick to his Flocks, and such Subjects as only require a plain Stile. Without doubt Phœbuss Counsel was very good, but I cannot imagine how Virgil could forget it so much as to fall a singing immediately after, the original of the World, and the framing of the Universe, according to Epicuruss System, which was a great deal worse than to sing Kings and Wars. I must needs own that I cannot in the least tell what to make of this Piece; I do not understand what is the Design, nor what Coherence there is between the several parts of it: For after these Philosophical Notions, we have the Fables of Hylas and Pasiphae, and of Phaeton's Sisters which have no manner of Relation to them, and in the middle of these Fables, which are all borrow'd from very remote times, we have Cornelius