by Virgil in the latter end of this book, can scarce be of Virgil's mind in preferring even the life of a philosopher to it. We may, I think, read the poet's clime in his description; for he seems to have been in a sweat at the writing of it: O! qui me gelidis in vallibus Hami Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbrâ !— and is every where mentioning, among his chief pleasures, the coolness of his shades and rivers, vales and grottoes, which a more northern poet would have omitted for the description of a sunny hill, and fire-side. The Third Georgic seems to be the most laboured of them all: there is a wonderful vigour and spirit in the description of the horse and chariot-race. The force of love is represented in noble instances, and very sublime expressions. The Scythian winter-piece appears so very cold and bleak to the eye, that a man can scarce look on it without shivering. The murrain, at the end, has all the expressiveness that words can give. It was here that the poet strained hard to out-do Lucretius in the description of his plague and, if the reader would see what success he had, he may find it at large in Scaliger. But Virgil seems no where so well pleased, as when he is got among his Bees in the Fourth Georgic; and ennobles the actions of so trivial a creature, with metaphors drawn from the most important concerns of mankind. His verses are not in a greater noise and hurry in the battles of Æneas and Turnus, than in the engagement of two swarms. And as, in his Eneïs, he compares the labours of his Trojans to those of bees and pismires, here he compares the labours of the bees to those of the Cyclops. In short, the last Georgic was a good prelude to the Æneïs, and very well showed what the poet could do in the description of what was really great, by his describing the mock grandeur of an insect with so good a grace. There is more pleasantness in the little platform of a garden, which he gives us about the middle of this book, than in all the spacious walks and water-works of Rapin. The speech of Proteus, at the end, can never be enough admired, and was indeed very fit to conclude so divine a work. After this particular account of the beauties in the Georgics, I should, in the next place, endeavour to point out its imperfections, if it has any. But, though I think there are some few parts in it that are not so beautiful as the rest, I shall not presume to name them, as rather suspecting my own judgement, than I can believe a fault to be in that poem which lay so long under Virgil's correction, and had his last hand put to it. The First Georgic was probably burlesqued in the author's life-time; for we still find in the scholiasts a verse that ridicules part of a line translated from Hesiod-Nudus ara, sere nudus: And we may easily guess at the judgment of this extraordinary critic, whoever he was, from his censuring this particular precept. We may be sure Virgil would not have translated it from Hesiod, had he not discovered some beauty in it; and indeed the beauty of it is, what I have before observed to be frequently met with in Virgil, the delivering the precept so indirectly, and singling out the particular circumstance of sowing and ploughing naked, to suggest to us, that these employments are proper only in the hot season of the year. I shall not here compare the style of the Georgics with that of Lucretius, (which the reader may see already done in the preface to the second vo lume of Miscellany Poems,) but shall conclude this poem to be the most complete, elaborate, and finished piece of all antiquity. The Eneïs, indeed, is of a nobler kind; but the Georgic is more perfect in its kind. The Encïs has a greater variety of beauties in it; but those of the Georgic are more exquisite. In short, the Georgic has all the perfection that can be expected in a poem written by the greatest poet in the flower of his age, when his invention was ready, his imagination warm, his judgment settled, and all his faculties in their full vigour and maturity. GEORGICS. BOOK I. ARGUMENT. The poet, in the beginning of this book, propounds the general design of each Georgic: and, after a solemn invocation of all the gods, who are any way related to his subject, he addresses himself, in particular, to Augustus, whom he compliments with divinity; and, after, strikes into his business. He shows the different kinds of tillage proper to different soils; traces out the original of agriculture; gives a catalogue of the husbandman's tools; specifies the employments peculiar to each season; describes the changes of the weather, with the signs in heaven and earth that forbode them; instances many of the prodigies that happened near the time of Julius Cæsar's death; and shuts up all with a supplication to the gods for the safety of Augustus, and the preservation of Rome.* WHAT makes a plenteous harvest, when to turn The poetry of this book is more sublime than any part of Virgil, if I have any taste. And if ever I have copied his majes |