Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/51

 has nothing of his own, he borrows all from a greater Master in his own Profession; and which is worse, improves nothing which he finds. Nature fails him, and being forc'd to his old Shift, he has recourse to Witticism. This passes indeed with his soft Admirers, and gives him the preference to Virgil, in their esteem. But let them like for themselves, and not prescribe to others; for our Author needs not their Admiration.

The Motives that induc'd Virgil to Coyn this Fable, I have shew'd already; and have also begun to shew that he might make this Anachronism, by superseding the Mechanick Rules of Poetry, for the same Reason, that a Monarch may dispense with, or suspend his own Laws, when he finds it necessary so to do; especially if those Laws are not altogether fundamental. Nothing is to be call'd a fault in Poetry, says Aristotle, but what is against the Art; therefore a Man may be an admirable Poet, without being an exact Chronologer. Shall we dare, continues Segrais, to condemn Virgil, for having made a Fiction against the order of Time, when we commend Ovid and other Poets who have made many of their Fictions against the order of Nature? For what are the splendid Miracles of the Metamorphoses? Yet these are Beautiful as they are related; and have also deep Learning and instructive Mythologies couch'd under them: But to give, as Virgil does in this Episode, the Original Cause of the long Wars betwixt Rome and Carthage, to draw Truth out of Fiction, after so probable a manner, with so much Beauty, and so much for the Honour of his Country, was proper only to the Divine Wit of Maro; and Tasso, in one of his Discourses, admires him for this particularly. Tis not lawful indeed, to contradict a Point of History, which is known to all the World; as for Example, to make Hannibal and Scipio Contemporaries with Alexander; but in the dark Recesses of Antiquity, a great Poet