VERSES TO MR. DRYDEN. ΤΟ MR. DRYDEN, ON HIS EXCELLENT TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL. WHENE'ER great Virgil's lofty verse I see, He, doubly thus oblig'd, must doubting stand, Alike with wonder and delight we view'd "O had Roscommon liv❜d to hail the day, For this great task our loud applause is due; [weight It long has been this sacred author's fate, To lie at every dull translator's will ; Long, long his Muse has groan'd beneath the Of mangling Ogleby's presumptuous quill. Dryden, at last, in his defence arose ; The father now is righted by the son : And while his Muse endeavours to disclose That poet's beauties, she declares her own. In your smooth, pompous numbers drest, each line, Each thought, betrays such a majestic touch; He could not, had he finish'd his design, Have wish'd it better, or have done so much. You, like his hero, though yourself were free, And disentangled from the war of wit; You, who secure might other dangers see, And safe from all malicious censures sit. Yet because sacred Virgil's noble Muse, O'erlay'd by fools, was ready to expire: To risk your fame again, you boldly chuse, Or to redeem, or perish with your sire. Ern first and last, we owe him half to you, For that his Æneids miss'd their threaten'd fate, Was that his friends by some prediction knew, Hereafter, who correcting should translate. But hold, my Muse, thy needless flight restrain, Unless, like him, thou couldst a verse indite: To think his faucy to describe is vain, Since nothing can discover light, but light. "Tis want of genius that does more deny : 'Tis fear my praise should make your glory less. And therefore, like the modest painter, I Must draw the veil, where I cannot express. HENRY GRAHME. TO MR. DRYDEN. No undisputed monarch govern'd yet With universal sway the realins of wit; Nature could never such expense afford; Each several province own'd a several lord, A poet then had his poetic wife, One Muse embrac'd, and married for his life. By the stale thing his appetite was cloy'd, TO MR. DRYDEN, ON HIS VIRGIL. H. ST. JOHN. 'Tis said that Phidias gave such living grace You pass'd that artist, sir, and all his powers, And did revolving destiny constrain To dress his thoughts in English o'er again, Himself could write no otherwise than thus. His old encomium never did appear So true as now; Romans and Greeks, submit, Something of late is in our language writ, More nobly great than the fam'd Iliads were. JA. WRIGHT WORKS OF VIRGIL. TRANSLATED BY DRYDEN. h I HAVE found it not more difficult to translate Virgil, than to find such patrons as I desire for my translation. For though England is not wanting in a learned nobility, yet such are my unhappy circumstances, that they have confined me to a narrow choice. To the greater part, I have not the honour to be known; and to some of them I cannot show at present, by any public act, that | grateful respect which I shall ever bear them in my heart. Yet I have no reason to complain of fortune, since, in the midst of that abundance I could not possibly have chosen better, than the worthy son of so illustrious a father. He was the patron of my manhood, when I flourished in the opinion of the world; though with small advantage to my fortune, till he awakened the remembrance of my royal master. He was that Pollio, or that Varus, who introduced me to Augustus: and though he soon dismissed himself from state-affairs yet in the short time of his administration he shone so powerfully upon me, that, like the heat of a Russian summer, he ripened the fruits of poetry in a cold climate; and gave me wherewithal to subsist at least, in the long winter which succeeded. What I now offer to your lordship is the wretched remainder of a sickly age, worn out with study, and oppressed by fortune: without other support than the constancy and patience of a Christian. You, my lord, are yet in the flower of your youth, and may live to enjoy the benefits of the peace which is promised Europe. I can only hear of that blossing: for years, and, above all things, And I am want of health, have shut me out from sharing in the happiness. The poets, who condemn their Tantalus to Hell, had added to his torments, if they had placed him in Elysium, which is the proper emblem of my condition. The fruit and the water may reach my lips, but cannot enter: and if they could, yet I want a palate as well as a digestion. But it is some kind of pleasure to me, to please those whom I respect. not altogether out of hope, that these Pastorals of Virgil may give your lordship some delight, though made English by one, who scarce remem. bers that passion which inspired my author when he wrote them. These were his first essay in poetry, (if the Ceiras was not his :) and it was more excuseable in him to describe love when he was young, than for me to translate him when I am old. He died at the age of fifty-two, and I begin this work in my great climacteric. But having perhaps a better constitution than my author, I have wronged him less, considering my circumstances, than those who have attempted him before, either in our own, or any modern language. And though this version is not void of errours, yet it comforts me that the faults of others are not worth finding. Mine are neither gross nor frequent, in those Eclogues, wherein my mster has raised himself above that humble style in which pastoral delights, and which I must confess is proper to the education and converse of shepherds: for he found the strength of his genius be times, and was even in his youth preluding to his Georgics, and his Æneis. He could not forbear to try his wings, though his pinions were not hardened to maintain a long laborious flight. Yet sometimes they bore him to a pitch as lofty, as ever he was able to reach afterwards. But when he was admonished by his subject to descend, he came down gently circling in the air, and singing |