Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/65

 Pounds, odd Money; a round Sum for Twenty Seven Verses. But they were Virgil's. Another Writer says, that with a Royal Magnificence, she order'd him Massy Plate, unweigh'd, to a great value.

And now he took up a Resolution of Travelling into Greece, there to set the last Hand to this Work; purposing to devote the rest of his Life to Philosophy, which had been always his principal Passion. He justly thought it a foolish Figure for a grave Man to be over-taken by Death, whilst he was weighing the Cadence of Words, and measuring Verses; unless Necessity should constrain it, from which he was well secur'd by the liberality of that Learned Age. But he was not aware, that whilst he allotted three Years for the Revising of his Poem, he drew Bills upon a failing Bank: For unhappily meeting Augustus at Athens, he thought himself oblig'd to wait upon him into Italy, but being desirous to see all he could of the Greek Antiquities, he fell into a languishing Distemper at Megara; this, neglected