Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/233

Rh than I can believe a fault to be in that Poem, which lay so long under Virgil's Correction, and had his last hand put to it. The first Georgic was probably Burlesqu'd in the Author's Life-time; for we still find in the Scholiasts a Verse that ridicules part of a Line Translated from Hesiod. Nudus Ara, sere NudusAnd we may easily guess at the Judgment of this extraordinary Critick, whoever he was, from his Censuring this particular Precept. We may be sure Virgil wou'd not have Translated it from Hesiod, had he not discover'd some Beauty in it; and indeed the Beauty of it is what I have before observ'd to be frequently met with in Virgil, the delivering the Precept so indirectly, and singling out the particular circumstance of Sowing and Plowing naked, to suggest to us that these Employments are proper only in the hot Season of the Year.

I shall not here compare the Stile of the Georgics with that of Lucretius, which the Reader may see already done in the Preface to the Second Volume of Miscellany Poems; but shall conclude this Poem to be the most Compleat, Elaborate, and finisht Piece of all Antiquity. The Æneis indeed is of a Nobler kind, but the Georgic is more perfect in its kind. The Æneis has a greater variety