Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/30

 I insist not on their Names; but am pleas'd to find the Memmii amongst them, deriv'd from Mnestheus, because Lucretius Dedicates to one of that Family, a Branch of which destroy'd Corinth. I likewise either found or form'd an Image to my self of the contrary kind; that those who lost the Prizes, were such as disoblig'd the Poet, or were in disgrace with Augustus, or Enemies to Mecænas: And this was the Poetical Revenge he took. For genus irritabile Vatum, as Horace says. When a Poet is throughly provok'd, he will do himself Justice, however dear it cost him, Animamque in Vulnere ponit. I think these are not bare Imaginations of my own, though I find no trace of them in the Commentators: But one Poet may judge of another, by himself. The Vengeance we defer, is not forgotten. I hinted before, that the whole Roman People were oblig'd by Virgil, in deriving them from Troy; an Ancestry which they affected. We, and the French are of the same Humor: They would be thought to descend from a Son, I think, of Hector: And we wou'd have our Britain, both Nam'd and Planted by a descendant of Æneas. Spencer favours this Opinion, what he can. His Prince Arthur, or whoever he intends by him, is a Trojan. Thus the Heroe of Homer was a Grecian, of Virgil a Roman, of Tasso an Italian.

I have transgress'd my Bounds, and gone farther than the Moral led me. But if your Lordship is not tir'd, I am safe enough.

Thus far, I think, my Author is defended. But as Augustus is still shadow'd in the Person of Æneas, of which I shall say more, when I come to the Manners which the Poet gives his Heroe: I must prepare that Subject, by shewing how dext'rously he manag'd both the Prince and People, so as to displease neither, and to do good to both; which is the part of a Wise and an Honest Man: And proves, that it is possible for a Courtier not