Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/54

 at our Marriage, to live always drudging on at Carthage; my business was Italy, and I never made a secret of it. If I took my pleasure, had not you your share of it? I leave you free at my departure, to comfort your self with the next Stranger who happens to be Shipwreck'd on your Coast: Be as kind an Hostess as you have been to me, and you can never fail of another Husband. In the mean time, I call the Gods to witness, that I leave your Shore un­willingly; for tho' Juno made the Marriage, yet Jupiter com­mands me to forsake you. This is the effect of what he saith, when it is dishonour'd out of Latin Verse, into English Prose. If the Poet argued not aright, we must pardon him for a poor blind Heathen, who knew no better Morals.

I have detain'd your Lordship longer than I intended, on this Ob­jection; which would indeed weigh something in a Spiritual Court; but I am not to defend our Poet there. The next I think is but a Ca­vil, though the Cry is great against him, and has continu'd from the time of Macrobius to this present Age: I hinted it before. They lay no less than want of Invention to his Charge: a capital Crime, I must ac­knowledge: for a Poet is a Maker, as the word signifies; and who cannot make, that is, invent, hath his Name for nothing. That which makes this Accusation look so strange at the first sight, is, That he has borrow'd so many things from Homer, Appollonius Rhodius, and others who preceded him. But in the first place, if Invention is to be taken in so strict a sence, that the Matter of a Poem must be wholly new, and that in all its Parts; then Scaliger hath made out, saith Segrais, that the History of Troy was no more the Invention of Homer, than of Virgil. There was not an Old Woman, or almost a Child, but had it in their Mouths, before the Greek Poet or his Friends digested it into this admirable order in which we read it. At this rate, as