Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/48

 See here the whole Process of that Passion, to which nothing can be added. I dare go no farther, left I shou'd lose the connection of my Discourse.

To love our Native Country, and to study its Benefit and its Glory, to be interessed in its Concerns, is Natural to all Men, and is indeed our common Duty. A Poet makes a farther step; for endeavouring to do Honour to it, tis allowable in him even to be partial in its Cause; for he is not ty'd to Truth, or setter'd by the Laws of History. Homer and Tasso are justly praised, for chusing their Heroes out of Greece and Italy, Virgil indeed made his a Trojan, but it was to derive the Romans and his own Augustus from him; but all the three Poets are manifestly partial to their Heroes, in favour of their Country: For Dares Phrygius reports of Hector, that he was slain Cowardly; Æneas, according to the best account, slew not Mezentius, but was slain by him: and the Chronicles of Italy tell us little of that Rinaldo d'Esté, who Conquers Jerusalem in Tasso. He might be a Champion of the Church; but we know not that he was so much as present at the Siege. To apply this to Virgil, he thought himself engag'd in Honour to espouse the Cause and Quarrel of his Country against Carthage. He knew he cou'd not please the Romans better, or oblige them more to Patronize his Poem, than by disgracing the Foundress of that City. He shews her ungrateful to the Memory of her first Husband, doting on a Stranger; enjoy'd, and afterwards forsaken by him. This was the Original, says he, of the immortal hatred betwixt the two Rival Nations, Tis true, he colours the falsehood of Æneas by an express Command from Jupiter, to forsake the Queen, who had oblig'd him: but he know the Romans were to be his Readers, and them he brib'd, perhaps at the expence of his Heroe's honesty, but he gain'd his Cause however; as Pleading before Corrupt Judges.