Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/23

 may polish it at leisure. Thus, my Lord, you pay the Fine of my forgetfulness, and yet the merits of both Causes are where they were, and undecided, till you declare whether it be more for the benefit of Mankind to have their Manners in general corrected, or their Pride and Hardheartedness removed.

I must now come closer to my present Business; and not think of making more invasive Wars abroad, when like Hannibal, I am call'd back to the defence of my own Country. Virgil is attack'd by many Enemies: He has a whole Confederacy against him, and I must endeavour to defend him as well as I am able. But their principal Objections being against his Moral, the duration or length of time taken up in the Action of the Poem, and what they have to urge against the Manners of his Hero, I shall omit the rest as meer Cavils of Grammarians: at the worst but casual slips of a great Man's Pen, or inconsiderable faults of an admirable Poem, which the Author had not leisure to review before his Death. Macrobius has answer'd what the Ancients cou'd urge against him: and some things I have lately read in Tanneguy le Fevre, Valois, and another whom I name not, which are scarce worth answering. They begin with the Moral of his Poem, which I have elsewhere confess'd, and still must own not to be so Noble as that of Homer. But let both be fairly stated, and without contradicting my first Opinion, I can shew that Virgils was as useful to the Romans of his Age, as Homers was to the Grecians of his; in what time so ever he may be suppos'd to have liv'd and flourish'd. Homer's Moral was to urge the necessity of Union, and of a good understanding betwixt Confederate States and Princes engag'd in a War with a Mighty Monarch: as also of Discipline in an Army, and Obedience in their several Chiefs, to the Supream Commander of the joint Forces. To inculcate this, he sets