Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/207

Rh ''this Poem, beginning it about the Age of Thirty Five; and scarce concluding it before he arriv'd at Forty. Tis observ'd both of him, and Horace, and I believe it will hold in all great Poets; that though they wrote before with a certain heat of Genius which inspir'd them, yet that heat was not perfectly digested. There is requir'd a continuance of warmth to ripen the best and Noblest Fruits. Thus Horace in his First and Second Book of Odes, was still rising, but came not to his Meridian till the Third. After which his Judgment was an overpoize to his Imagination: He grew too cautious to be bold enough, for he descended in his Fourth by slow degrees, and in his Satires and Epistles, was more a Philosopher and a Critick than a Poet. In the beginning of Summer the days are almost at a stand, with little variation of length or shortness, because at that time the Diurnal Motion of the Sun partakes more of a Right Line, than of a Spiral. The same is the method of Nature in the frame of Man. He seems at Forty to be fully in his Summer Tropick; somewhat before, and somewhat after, he finds in his Soul but small increases or decays. From Fifty to Threescore the Ballance generally holds even, in our colder Clymates: For he loses not much in Fancy; and Judgment, which is the effect of Observation, still'' Rh