A war ensues, the Cretans own their cause, * TRANSLA CONCERNING OVID'S EPISTLES. HE life T of Ovid being already written in our language before the tranflation of his Metamorphoses, I will not prefume so far upon myself, to think I can add any thing to Mr. Sandys his undertaking. The English reader may there be fatisfied, that he flourished in the reign of Augustus Cæfar; that he was extracted from an ancient family of Roman Knights; that he was born to the inheritance of a splendid fortune; that he was designed to the study of the law, and had made confiderable progress in it, before he quitted that profession, for this of Poetry, to which he was more naturally formed. The cause of his banishment is unknown; because he was himself unwilling further to provoke the emperor, by afcribing it to any other reason, than what was pretended by Augustus, which was, the lasciviousness of his Elegies, and his Art of Love. It is true, they. are not to be excused in the severity of manners, as being able to corrupt a larger empire, if there were any, than that of Rome: yet this may be said in behalf of Ovid, that no man has ever treated the pafsion of love with so much delicacy of thought, and of expreffion, or searched into the nature of it more philosophically than he. And the emperor, who condemned him, had as little reason as another man to punish that fault with so much severity, if at least he were the author of a certain Epigram, which is ascribed to him, relating to the cause of the first civil war betwixt himself and Marc Antony the triumvir, which is more fulsome than any passage I have met with in our Pet. To pass by the naked familiarity of his expreffions to Horace, which are cited in that author's life, I need only mention one notorious act of his, in taking Livia to his bed, when she was not only married, but with child by her husband then living. But deeds, it seems, may be justified by arbitrary power, when words are questioned in a Poet. There is another guess of the grammarians, as far from truth as the first from reason: they will have him banished for fome favours, which, they say, he received from Julia the daughter of Augustus, whom they think he celebrates under the name of Corinna in his Elegies: but he, who will observe the verses, which are made to that mistress, may gather from the whole contexture of them, that Corinna was not a woman of the highest quality. If Julia were then married to Agrippa, why should our Poet make his petition to Ifis, for her fafe delivery, and afterwards condole her miscarriage; which, for ought he knew, might be by her own husband? Or, indeed, how durft he be so bold to make the least discovery of fuch a crime, which was no less than capital, especially committed against a perfon of Agrippa's rank? Or, if it were before her marriage, he would fure have been more difcreet, than to have published an accident which must have been fatal to them both. But what most confirms me against this opinion, is, that Ovid himself complains, that the true person of Corinna was found out by the fame of his verses to her: which if it had been Julia, he durst not have owned; and, befides, an immediate punishment must have followed. He seems himself more truly to have touched at the cause of his exile in those obfcure verses; |