Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/15

Rh Pollio, ''his great Patron, and himself no vulgar Poet, he no longer cou'd 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 Sybil, whom afterwards he gave for a Guide to his Æneas. 'Tis 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 attempt? Encourag'd with Success, he proceeds farther in the Sixth, and invades the Province of Philosophy. And notwithstanding that Phœbus 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''