Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/219



IRGIL may be reckon'd the first who introduc'd three new kinds of Poetry among the Romans, which he Copied after three the Greatest Masters of Greece. Theocritus and Homer have still disputed for the advantage over him in Pastoral and Heroicks, but I think all are Unanimous in giving him the precedence to Hesiod in his Georgics. The truth of it is, the Sweetness and Rusticity of a Pastoral cannot be so well exprest in any other Tongue as in the Greek, when rightly mixt and qualified with the Doric Dialect; nor can the Majesty of an Heroick Poem any where appear so well as in this Language, which has a Natural