the other's growth, struck up a false friendship amongst themselves, and divided the government betwixt them, which none of them was able to assume alone. These were the public-spirited men of their age; that is, patriots for their own interest. The commonwealth look'd with a florid countenance in their management, spread in bulk, and all the while was wasting in the vitals. Not to trouble your Lordship with the repetition of what you know; after the death of Crassus, Pompey found himself outwitted by Cæsar, broke with him, overpower'd him in the senate, and caus'd many unjust decrees to pass against him. Cæsar, thus injur'd, and unable to resist the faction of the nobles, which was now uppermost, (for he was a Marian,) had recourse to arms; and his cause was just against Pompey, but not against his country, whose constitution ought to have been sacred to him, and never to have been violated on the account of any private wrong. But he prevail'd; and, Heav'n declaring for him, he became a providential monarch, under the title of perpetual dictator. He being murther'd by his own son, whom I neither dare commend, nor can justly blame, (tho' Dante, in his Inferno, has put him and Cassius, and Judas Iscariot betwixt them, into the great devil's mouth,) the commonwealth popp'd up its head for the third time, under Brutus and Cassius, and then sunk for ever.

Thus the Roman people were grossly gull'd, twice or thrice over, and as often enslav'd in one century, and under the same pretense of reformation. At last the two battles of Philippi gave the decisive stroke against liberty; and, not long after, the commonwealth was turn'd into a monarchy by the conduct and good fortune of Augustus. 'T is true that the despotic power could not have fallen into better hands than those of the first and second Cæsar. Your Lordship well knows what obligations Virgil had to the latter of them: he saw, beside, that the commonwealth was lost without resource; the heads of it destroy'd; the senate, new molded, grown degenerate, and either bought off, or thrusting their own necks into the yoke, out of fear of being forc'd. Yet I may safely affirm for our great author, (as men of good sense are generally honest,) that he was still of republican principles in heart.

Secretisque piis, his dantem jura Catonem.

I think I need use no other argument to justify my opinion, than that of this one line, taken from the Eighth Book of the Eneis. If he had not well studied his patron's temper, it might have ruin'd him with another prince. But Augustus was not discontented, at least that we can find, that Cato was plac'd, by his own poet, in Elysium, and there giving laws to the holy souls who deserv'd to be separated from the vulgar sort of good spirits. For his conscience could not but whisper to the arbitrary monarch, that the kings of Rome were at first elective, and govern'd not without a senate; that Romulus was no hereditary prince; and tho', after his death, he receiv'd divine honors for the good he did on earth, yet he was but a god of their own making; that the last Tarquin was expell'd justly, for overt acts of tyranny and maladministration; for such are the conditions of an elective kingdom: and I meddle not with others, being, for my own opinion, of Montaigne's principles, that an honest man ought to be contented with that form of government, and with those fundamental constitutions of it, which he receiv'd from his ancestors, and under which himself was born; tho' at the same time he confess'd freely, that if he could have chosen his place of birth, it should have been at Venice; which, for many reasons, I dislike, and am better pleas'd to have been born an Englishman.

But, to return from my long rambling, I say that Virgil, having maturely weigh'd the condition of the times in which he liv'd; that an entire liberty was not to be retriev'd; that the present settlement had the prospect of a long continuance in the same family, or those adopted into it; that he held his paternal estate from the bounty of the conqueror, by whom he was likewise enrich'd, esteem'd, and cherish'd; that this conqueror, tho' of a bad kind, was the very best of it; that the arts of peace flourish'd under him; that all men might be happy, if they would be quiet; that, now he was in possession of the whole, yet he shar'd a great part of his authority with the senate; that he would be chosen into the ancient offices of the commonwealth, and rul'd by the power which he deriv'd from them, and prorogued his government from time to time, still, as it were, threat'ning to dismiss

himself from public cares, which he exercis'd more for the common good than for any delight he took in greatnessthese things, I say, being consider'd by the poet, he concluded it to be the interest of his country to be so govern'd; to infuse an awful respect into the people towards such a prince; by that respect to confirm their obedience to him, and by that obedience to make them happy. This was the moral of his divine poem; honest in the poet; honorable to the emperor, whom he derives from a divine extraction; and reflecting part of that honor on the Roman people, whom he derives also from the Trojans; and not only profitable, but necessary, to the present age, and likely to be such to their posterity. That it was the receiv'd opinion that the Romans were descended from the Trojans, and Julius Cæsar from Julius the son of Æneas, was enough for Virgil; tho' perhaps he thought not so himself, or that Æneas ever was in Italy; which Bochartus manifestly proves. And Homer, where he says that Jupiter hated the house of Priam, and was resolv'd to transfer the kingdom to the family of Æneas, yet mentions nothing of his leading a colony into a foreign country and settling there. But that the Romans valued themselves on their Trojan ancestry is so undoubted a truth that I need not prove it. Even the seals which we have remaining of Julius Cæsar, which we know to be antique, have the star of Venus over them, tho' they were all graven after his death, as a note that he was deified. I doubt not but it was one reason why Augustus should be so passionately concern'd for the preservation of the Eneis, which its author had condemn'd to be burnt, as an imperfect poem, by his last will and testament; was because it did him a real service, as well as an honor; that a work should not be lost where his divine original was celebrated in verse which had the character of immortality stamp'd upon it.

Neither were the great Roman families which flourish'd in his time less oblig'd by him than the emperor. Your Lordship knows with what address he makes mention of them, as captains of ships, or leaders in the war; and even some of Italian extraction are not forgotten. These are the single stars which are sprinkled thro' the Æneis; but there are whole constellations of them in the Fifth Book. And I

could not but take notice, when I translated it, of some favorite families to which he gives the victory and awards the prizes, in the person of his hero, at the funeral games which were celebrated in honor of Anchises. I insist not on their names; but am pleas'd to find the Memmii amongst them, deriv'd from Mnestheus, because Lucretius dedicates to one of that family, a branch of which destroy'd Corinth. I likewise either found or form'd an image to myself of the contrary kind; that those who lost the prizes were such as had disoblig'd the poet, or were in disgrace with Augustus, or enemies to Mæcenas; and this was the poetical revenge he took. For genus irritabile vatum, as Horace says. When a poet is throughly provok'd, he will do himself justice, however dear it cost him; animamque in vulnere ponit. I think these are not bare imaginations of my own, tho' I find no trace of them in the commentators; but one poet may judge of another by himself. The vengeance we defer is not forgotten. I hinted before that the whole Roman people were oblig'd by Virgil, in deriving them from Troy; an ancestry which they affected. We and the French are of the same humor: they would be thought to descend from a son, I think, of Hector; and we would have our Britain both nam'd and planted by a descendant of Eneas. Spenser favors this opinion what he can. His Prince Arthur, or whoever he intends by him, is a Trojan. Thus the hero of Homer was a Grecian, of Virgil a Roman, of Tasso an Italian.

I have transgress'd my bounds, and gone farther than the moral led me. But, if your Lordship is not tir'd, I am safe enough.

Thus far, I think, my author is defended. But, as Augustus is still shadow'd in the person of Æneas, (of which I shall say more when I come to the manners which the poet gives his hero,) I must prepare that subject by shewing how dext'rously he manag'd both the prince and people, so as to displease neither, and to do good to both; which is the part of a wise and an honest man, and proves that it is possible for a courtier not to be a knave. I shall continue still to speak my thoughts like a free-born subject, as I am; tho' such things, perhaps, as no Dutch commentator could, and I am sure no Frenchman durst. I have already told your Lord

ship my opinion of Virgil, that he was no arbitrary man. Oblig'd he was to his master for his bounty; and he repays him with good counsel, how to behave himself in his new monarchy, so as to gain the affections of his subjects, and deserve to be call'd the father of his country. From this consideration it is that he chose, for the groundwork of his poem, one empire destroy'd, and another rais'd from the ruins of it. This was just the parallel. Æneas could not pretend to be Priam's heir in a lineal succession; for Anchises, the hero's father, was only of the second branch of the royal family; and Helenus, a son of Priam, was yet surviving, and might lawfully claim before him. It may be Virgil mentions him on that account. Neither has he forgotten Priamus, in the Fifth of his Eneis, the son of Polites, youngest son of Priam, who was slain by Pyrrhus, in the Second Book. Æneas had only married Creüsa, Priam's daughter, and by her could have no title while any of the male issue were remaining. In this case the poet gave him the next title, which is that of an elective king. The remaining Trojans chose him to lead them forth, and settle them in some foreign country. Ilioneus, in his speech to Dido, calls him expressly by the name of king. Our poet, who all this while had Augustus in his eye, had no desire he should seem to succeed by any right of inheritance deriv'd from Julius Cæsar, (such a title being but one degree remov'd from conquest,) for what was introduc'd by force, by force may be remov'd. 'T was better for the people that they should give, than he should take; since that gift was indeed no more at bottom than a trust. Virgil gives us an example of this in the person of Mezentius: he govern'd arbitrarily; he was expell'd, and came to the deserv'd end of all tyrants. Our author shews us another sort of kingship, in the person of Latinus. He was descended from Saturn, and, as I remember, in the third degree. He is describ'd a just and gracious prince, solicitous for the welfare of his people, always consulting with his senate to promote the common good. We find him at the head of them, when he enters into the council hall, speaking first, but still demanding their advice, and steering by it, as far as the iniquity of the times would suffer him. And this is the proper char