Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/45

 the matter cooling, he was forc'd to sit down contented with the Grant of his own Estate. He goes therefore to Mantua, produces his Warrant to a Captain of Foot, whom he found in his House; Arrius who had eleven Points of the Law, and fierce of the Services he had rendred to Octavius, was so far from yielding Possession, that words growing betwixt them, he wounded him dangerously, forc'd him to fly, and at last to swim the River Mincius to save his Life. Virgil, who us'd to say, that no Virtue was so necessary as Patience, was forc'd to drag a sick Body half the length of Italy, back again to Rome, and by the way, probably, compos'd his Ninth Pastoral, which may seem to have been made up in haste out of the Fragments of some other pieces; and naturally enough represents the disorder of the Poet's Mind, by its disjointed Fashion, tho' there be another Reason to be given elsewhere of its want of Connexion. He handsomely states his Case in that Poem, and with the pardonable Resentments of Injur'd Innocence,