from flying, let them lay down Virgil, and take up Ovid de Ponto in his stead. My master needed not the assistance of that preliminary poet to prove his claim: his own majestick mien discovers him to be the King amidst a thousand courtiers. It was a superfluous office, and therefore I would not set those verses in the front of Virgil; but have rejected them to my own Preface:

I, who before, with shepherds in the groves,
Sung to my oaten pipe their rural loves,

And issuing thence, compell'd the neighb'ring field
A plenteous crop of rising corn to yield;
Manur'd the glebe, and stock'd the fruitful plain,
(A poem grateful to the greedy swain,) &c.

If there be not a tolerable line in all these six, the Prefacer gave me no occasion to write better. This is a just apology in this place: but I have done great wrong to Virgil in the whole translation. Want of time, the inferiority of our language, the inconvenience of rhyme, and all the other excuses I have made, may alleviate my fault, but cannot justify the boldness of my undertaking. What avails it me to acknowledge freely, that I have not been able to do him right in any line? For even my own confession makes against me; and it will always be returned upon me,-why then did you attempt it? To which no other answer can be made, than that I have done him less injury than any of his former libellers.

What they called his picture, had been drawn at length so many times by the daubers of almost

all nations, and still so unlike him, that I snatched up the pencil with disdain; being satisfied beforehand that I could make some small resemblance of him, though I must be content with a worse likeness. A sixth Pastoral, a Pharmaceutria, a single Orpheus, and some other features, have been exactly taken: but those holiday-authors writ for pleasure; and only shewed us what they could have done, if they would have taken pains to perform the whole.

Be pleased, my Lord, to accept with your wonted goodness this unworthy present which I make you. I have taken off one trouble from you, of defending it, by acknowledging its imperfections. And though some part of them are covered in the verse, (as Ericthonius rode always in a chariot to hide his lameness,)* such of them as cannot be concealed, you will please to connive at, though in the strictness of your judgment you cannot pardon. If Homer was allowed to nod sometimes, in so long a work it will be no wonder if I often fall asleep. You took my AURENGZEBE into your protection, with all his faults; and I hope here cannot be so many, because I translate an author who gives me such examples of correctness. What my Jury may be, I know not; but it is good for a criminal to plead before a favourable judge: if I had said partial, would your Lordship have for

* See Virg. Geo. iii. 113.

9 The tragedy of AURENGZEBE was dedicated to Lord Mulgrave.

It

given me? Or will you give me leave to acquaint the world, that I have many times been obliged to your bounty since the Revolution. Though I never was reduced to beg a charity, nor ever had the impudence to ask one, either of your Lordship, or your noble kinsman,' the Earl of Dorset, much less of any other; yet when I least expected it, you have both remembered me: so inherent it is in your family, not to forget an old servant. looks rather like ingratitude on my part, that where I have been so often obliged, I have appeared so seldom, to return my thanks; and where I was also so sure of being well received. Somewhat of laziness was in the case, and somewhat too of modesty but nothing of disrespect or of unthankfulness. I will not say that your Lordship has encouraged me to this presumption, lest, if my labours meet with no success in publick, I may expose your judgment to be censured. As for my own enemies, I shall never think them worth an answer; and if your Lordship has any, they will not dare to arraign you for want of knowledge in this art, till they can produce somewhat better of their own than your ESSAY ON POETRY. It was on this consideration that I have drawn out my Preface to so great a length. Had

The Marquis of Normanby's mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, by his first wife; the mother of Charles, Earl of Dorset, was Frances, daughter of the same nobleman, by a second wife.

I not addressed to a poet, and a critick of the first magnitude, I had myself been taxed for want of judgment, and shamed my patron for want of understanding. But neither will you, my Lord, so soon be tired as any other, because the discourse is on your art; neither will the learned reader think it tedious, because it is ad Clerum :a at least, when he begins to be weary, the church doors are open. That I may pursue the allegory with a short prayer, after a long sermon,

May you live happily and long, for the service of your country, the encouragement of good letters, and the ornament of poetry; which cannot be wished more earnestly by any man, than by

Your Lordship's most humble,

Most obliged, and most

obedient servant,

JOHN DRYDEN.

2 i. e. addressed to the learned. A Latin sermon preached before the Clergy assembled in Convocation, or in the Universities for degrees in divinity, is entitled Concio ad Clerum.

WHAT Virgil wrote in the vigour of his

age, in plenty and at ease,* I have undertaken to translate in my declining years; struggling with wants, oppressed by sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I write ; and my judges, if they are not very equitable, already prejudiced against me by the lying character which has been given them of my morals. Yet steady to my principles, and not dispirited with my afflictions, I have, by the blessing of GoD on my endeavours, overcome all difficulties; and, in some measure, acquitted myself of the debt which I owed the publick, when I undertook this work. In the first place, therefore, I thankfully acknowledge to the Almighty Power the assistance he has given me in the beginning, the prosecution, and conclusion of my present studies, which are more happily performed than I could have promised to myself, when I laboured under such discouragements. For what I have done, imperfect as it is, for want of health and leisure to correct it, will be judged in afterages, and possibly in the present, to be no dis

* Virgil died possessed of upward of eighty thousand pounds, sterling, Sept. 22d, A. U. C. 735, in the fifty-first year of his age; leaving his great work, to which he had devoted eleven years, unfinished.