Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/225

Rh the sake of a pleasant and pertinent digression. Nor is it sufficient to run out into beautiful and diverting digressions (as it is generally thought) unless they are brought in aptly, and are something of a piece with the main design of the Georgic: for they ought to have a remote alliance at least to the Subject, that so the whole Poem may be more uniform and agreeable in all its parts. We shou'd never quite lose sight of the Country, tho' we are sometimes entertain'd with a distant prospect of it. Of this nature are Virgil's Descriptions of the Original of Agriculture, of the Fruitfulness of Italy, of a Country Life, and the like, which are not brought in by force, but naturally rise out of the principal Argument and Design of the Poem. I know no one digression in the Georgics that may seem to contradict this Observation, besides that in the latter end of the First Book, where the Poet launches out into a discourse of the Battel of Pharsalia, and the Actions of Augustus: But it's worth while to consider how admirably he has turn'd the course of his narration into its proper Channel, and made his Husbandman concern'd even in what relates to the Battel, in those inimitable Lines, Scilicet & tempus veniet, cum finibus illis Agricola in curvo terram molitus aratro, Rh