Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/56

 if the Commons knew a just Person, whom they entirely confided in, it would be for the advantage of all Parties, that such a one should be their Soveraign: Wherefore if you shall continue to administer Justice impartially, as hitherto you have done, your Power will prove safe to your self, and beneficial to Mankind. This excellent Sentence, which seems taken out of Plato, (with whose Writings the Grammarians were not much acquainted, and therefore cannot reasonably be suspected of Forgery in this matter,) contains the true state of Affairs at that time: For the Commonwealth Maxims were now no longer practicable; the Romans had only the haughtiness of the Old Commonwealth left, without one of its Virtues. And this Sentence we find, almost in the same words, in the first Book of the Æneis, which at this time he was writing; and one might wonder that none of his Commentators have taken notice of it. He compares a Tempest to a Popular Insurrection, as Cicero had compar'd a Sedition to a Storm, a little before.

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