Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/34

 Devotion to the Gods, but Filial Love and tender Affection to Relations of all sorts. As Instances of this, the Deities of Troy and his own Penates are made the Companions of his Flight: they appear to him in his Voyage, and advise him; and at last he re-places them in Italy, their Native Country. For his Father, he takes him on his Back; he leads his little Son, his Wife follows him: but losing his Footsteps, through Fear or Ignorance, he goes back into the midst of his Enemies to find her; and leaves not his pursuit 'till her Ghost appears, to forbid his farther search. I will say nothing of his Duty to his Father while he liv'd, his Sorrow for his Death; of the Games instituted in Honour of his Memory; or seeking him, by his Command, even after Death, in the Elysian Fields. I will not mention his Tenderness for his Son, which every where is visible: Of his raising a Tomb for Polydorus, the Obsequies for Misenus, his pious Remembrance of Deiphobus; the Funerals of his Nurse; his Grief for Pallas, and his Revenge taken on his Murtherer, whom, otherwise by his Natural Compassion, he had forgiven; and then the Poem had been left imperfect: for we could have had no certain prospect of his Happiness, while the last Obstacle to it was unremov'd. Of the other parts which compose his Character, as a King, or as a General, I need say nothing; the whole Æneis is one continued Instance, of some one or other of them; and where I find any thing of them tax'd, it shall suffice me, as briefly as I can, to vindicate my Divine Master to your Lordship, and by you to the Reader. But herein, Segrais, in his admirable Preface to his Translation of the Æneis, as the Author of the Dauphin's Virgil justly calls it, has prevented me. Him I follow, and what I borrow from him, am ready to acknowledge to him. For, impartially speaking, the French are as much better Criticks than the English, as