Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/95



Is worse than any of the rest. Horrentia is such a flat Epithete, as Tully wou'd have given us in his Verses. Tis a meer filler, to stop a vacancy in the Hexameter, and connect the Preface to the Work of Virgil. Our Author seems to sound a Charge, and begins like the clangour of a Trumpet;

Scarce a word without an R, and the Vowels for the greater part sonorous. The Prefacer began with Ille ego, which he was con­strain'd to patch up in the fourth Line with At nunc, to make the Sense cohere. And if both those words are not notorious Botches, I am much deceiv'd, though the French Translator thinks other­wise. For my own part, I am rather of Opinion, that they were ad­ded by Tucca and Varius, than Retrench'd.

I know it may be answer'd by such as think Virgil the Author of the four Lines; that he asserts his Title to the Æneis, in the be­ginning of this Work, as he did to the two former, in the last Lines of the fourth Georgic. I will not reply otherwise to this, than by de­siring them to compare these four Lines with the four others; which we know are his, because no Poet but he alone could write them. If they cannot distinguish Creeping from Flying, let them lay down Vir­gil, and take up Ovid de Ponto in his stead. My Master needed not the assistance of that Preliminary Poet to prove his Claim. His own Ma­jestick Meen discovers him to be the King, amidst a Thousand Cour­tiers. It was a superfluous Office, and therefore I wou'd not set