Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/227

Rh the low Phrases and Terms of Art, that are adapted to Husbandry, have any place in such a Work as the Georgic, which is not to appear in the natural simplicity and nakedness of its Subject, but in the pleasantest Dress that Poetry can bestow on it. Thus Virgil, to deviate from the common form of Words, wou'd not make use of Tempore but Sidere in his first Verse, and every where else abounds with Metaphors, Grecisms, and Circumlocutions, to give his Verse the greater Pomp, and preserve it from sinking into a Plebeian Stile. And herein consists Virgil's Master-piece, who has not only excell'd all other Poets, but even himself in the Language of his Georgics; where we receive more strong and lively Ideas of things from his words, than we cou'd have done from the Objects themselves: and find our Imaginations more affected by his Descriptions, than they wou'd have been by the very sight of what he describes.

I shall now, after this short Scheme of Rules, consider the different success that Hesiod and Virgil have met with in this kind of Poetry, which may give us some further Notion of the Excellence of the Georgics. To begin with Hesiod; If we may guess at his Character from his Writings, he had much