Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/38

 care to have their Poems curiously bound, and lodg'd in the most famous Libraries; but neither the Sacredness of those places, nor the greatness of their Names, cou'd preserve ill Poetry. Quitting therefore the Study of the Law, after having pleaded but one Cause with indifferent Success, he resolv'd to push his Fortune this way, which he seems to have discontinu'd for some time, and that may be the reason why the Culex, his first Pastoral, now extant, has little besides the novelty of the Subject, and the Moral of the Fable, which contains an exhortation to Gratitude, to recommend it; had it been as correct as his other pieces, nothing more proper and pertinent cou'd have at that time bin addressed to the Young Octavius, for the Year in which he Presented it, probably at the Baiæ, seems to be the very same, in which that Prince consented (tho' with seeming reluctance) to the Death of Cicero, under whose Consulship he was Born, the preserver of his Life, and chief instrument of his Advancement. There is no