Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 3.djvu/361

Rh nec morte peribat, &c. When I Translated that Passage, I doubted of the Sense: And therefore omitted that He­mystic; Nunc te fata impia tangunt. But Heinsius is mistaken only in making an Interrogation point, instead of a Period. The words facta impia, I suppose are genuine: For she had perjur'd her self in her se­cond Marriage. Having firmly resolv'd, as she told her Sister, in the beginning of this Aeneid, never to love again, after the Death of her first Husband; and had confirm'd this Resolution, by a Curse on her self, if she shou'd alter it.

Sed mihi vel tellus optem, prius ima dehiscat, &c. Ante, pudor, quàm te violem, aut tua jura resolvam. Ille meos, primus, qui me sibi junxit, amores, Abstulit: Ille habeat secum, servetque sepulcro.

Æneid the 5th.A great part of this Book is borrow'd from Apollo­nius Rhodius. And the Reader may observe the great Judgment and di­stinction of our Author in what he borrows from the Ancients, by comparing them. I conceive the Reason why he omits the Horse-race in the Funeral Games, was because he shews Ascanius afterwards on Horseback, with his Troops of Boys, and would not wear that Sub­ject thread-bare; which Statius, in the next Age describ'd so happily. Virgil seems to me, to have excell'd Homer in all those Sports, and to have labour'd them the more, in Honour of Octavius, his Patron; who instituted the like Games for perpetuating the Memory of his Uncle Julius. Piety, as Virgil calls it, or Rh