that they are both victorious, I should not have grieved could they have been both defeated. : The poem to Pollio is, indeed, of another kind it is filled with images at once splendid and pleasing, and is elevated with grandeur of language worthy of the first of Roman poets; but I am not able to reconcile myself to the disproportion between the performance and the occasion that produced it: that the golden age should return because Pollio had a son, appears so wild a fiction, that I am ready to suspect the poet of having written, for some other purpose, what he took this opportunity of producing to the publick. The fifth contains a celebration of Daphnis, which has stood to all succeeding ages as the model of pastoral elegies. To deny praise to a performance which so many thousands have laboured to imitate, would be to judge with too little deference for the opinion of mankind: yet whoever shall read it with impartiality, will find that most of the images are of the mythological kind, and therefore easily invented; and that there are few sentiments of rational praise or natural lamentation. In the Silenus he again rises to the dignity of philosophick sentiments, and heroick poetry. The address to Varus is eminently beautiful: but since the compliment paid to Gallus fixes the transaction to his own time, the fiction of Silenus seems injudicious: nor has any sufficient reason yet been found, to justify his choice of those fables that make the subject of the song. The seventh exhibits another contest of the tuneful shepherds: and, surely, it is not without some reproach to his inventive power, that of ten pastorals Virgil has written two upon the same plan. One of the shepherds now gains an acknowledged victory, but without any apparent superiority, and the reader, when he sees the prize adjudged, is not able to discover how it was deserved. Of the eighth pastoral, so little is properly the work of Virgil, that he has no claim to other praise or blame than that of a translator. Of the ninth, it is scarce possible to discover the design or tendency; it is said, I know not upon what authority, to have been composed from fragments of other poems; and except a few lines in which the author touches upon his own misfortunes, there is nothing that seems appropriated to any time or place, or of which any other use can be discovered than to fill up the poem. The first and the tenth pastorals, whatever be determined of the rest, are sufficient to place their author above the reach of rivalry. The complaint of Gallus disappointed in his love, is full of such sentiments as disappointed love naturally produces; his wishes are wild, his resentment is tender, and his purposes are inconstant. In the genuine language of despair, he soothes himself awhile with the pity that shall be paid him after his death. Tune your soft reeds, and teach your rocks my woes, So shall my shade in sweeter rest repose. O that your birth and business had been mine; Virg. Ec. x. 31. WARTON. Discontented with his present condition, and desirous to be any thing but what he is, he wishes himself one of the shepherds. He then catches the idea of rural tranquillity; but soon discovers how much happier he should be in these happy regions, with Lycoris at his side : Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori: Hic nemus, Me sine sola vides. Ah te ne frigora lædant! Ec. x. 42. Here cooling fountains roll through flow'ry meads, Here could I wear my careless life away, Instead of that, me frantick love detains, WARTON. He then turns his thoughts on every side, in quest of something that may solace or amuse him: he proposes happiness to himself, first in one scene and then in another: and at last finds that nothing will satisfy: Jam neque Hamadryades rursum, nec carmina nobis But now again no more the woodland maids, Love over all maintains resistless sway, And let us love's all-conquering power obey. Ec. x. 62. WARTON. But notwithstanding the excellence of the tenth pastoral, I cannot forbear to give the preference to the first, which is equally natural and more diversified. The complaint of the shepherd, who saw his old companion at ease in the shade, while himself was driving his little flock he knew not whither, is such as, with variation of circumstances, misery always utters at the sight of prosperity: Nos patriæ fines, et dulcia linquimus arva ; Nos patriam fugimus: Tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas. We leave our country's bounds, our much-lov'd plains; We from our country fly, unhappy swains! You, Tit'rus, in the groves at leisure laid, Teach Amaryllis' name to every shade. Ec. i. 3. WARTON. His account of the difficulties of his journey, gives a very tender image of pastoral distress: En ipse capellas Protenus ager ago: hanc etiam vix, Tityre, duco : Ec. i. 12. WARTON. The description of Virgil's happiness in his little farm, combines almost.all the images of rural pleasure; and he, therefore, that can read it with indifference, has no sense of pastoral poetry: Fortunate senex! ergo tua rura manebunt, Et tibi magna satis; quamvis lapis omnia nudus, Happy old man! then still thy farms restored, No touch contagious spread its influence here. Ec. i. 47. Happy old man! here 'mid th' accustom'd streams While from steep rocks the pruner's song is heard; WARTON. It may be observed, that these two poems were produced by events that really happened; and may, therefore, be of use to prove, that we can always feel more than we can imagine, and that the most artful fiction must give way to truth. It is often charged upon writers, that with all their pretensions to genius and discoveries, they do little more than copy one another; and that compositions obtruded upon the world with the pomp of novelty, contain only tedious repetitions of common sentiments, or at best exhibit a transposition of known images, and give a new appearance to truth only by some slight difference of dress and de coration. The allegation of resemblance between authors is indisputably true; but the charge of plagiarism, which is raised upon it, is not to be allowed with equal readiness. A coincidence of sentiment may easily happen without any communication, since there are many occasions in which all reasonable men will nearly think alike. Writers of all ages have had the same sentiments, because they have in |