Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/51

 wou'd now be very surprizing, but it was no more than customary amongst Friends, when Learning pass'd for Quality. Lelius, the second Man of Rome in his time, had done as much for that Poet, out of whose Dross Virgil would sometimes pick Gold; as himself said, when one found him reading Ennius: (the like he did by some Verses of Varro, and Pacuvius, Lucretius, and Cicero, which he inserted into his Works.) But Learned Men then liv'd easy and familiarly with the great: Augustus himself would sometimes sit down betwixt Virgil and Horace, and say jestingly, that he sate betwixt Sighing and Tears, alluding to the Asthma of one, and Rheumatick Eyes of the other; he would frequently Correspond with them, and never leave a Letter of theirs unanswered: Nor were they under the constraint of formal Superscriptions in the beginning, nor of violent Superlatives at the close of their Letter: The invention of these is a Modern Refinement. In which this may be remarked, in passing, that (