Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/37

 no more than an intrepid Courage, may be separated from many others which are good, and accompany'd with many which are ill. A Man may be very Valiant, and yet Impious and Vicious. But the same can not be said of Piety, which excludes all ill Qualities, and comprehends even Valour it self, with all other Qualities which are good. Can we, for Example, give the praise of Valour to a Man who shou'd see his Gods prophan'd, and shou'd want the Courage to defend them? To a Man who shou'd abandon his Father, or desert his King in his last Necessity?

Thus far Segrais, in giving the preference to Piety, before Valour. I will now follow him, where he considers this Valour, or intrepid Courage, singly in it self; and this also Virgil gives to his Æneas, and that in a Heroical degree.

Having first concluded, that our Poet did for the best in taking the first Character of his Heroe, from that Essential Virtue on which the rest depend, he proceeds to tell us, that in the Ten Years War of Troy, he was consider'd as the second Champion of his Country; allowing Hector the first place; and this, even by the Confession of Homer, who took all occasions of setting up his own Countrymen the Grecians, and of undervaluing the Trojan Chiefs. But Virgil, (whom Segrais forgot to cite) makes Diomede give him a higher Character for Strength and Courage. His Testimony is this, in the Eleventh Book: