own fophifms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practises on others: in converfation we naturally diffufe our thoughts, and in writing we contract them; method is the excellence of writing, and unconstraint the grace of conversation.

To read, write, and converfe in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters. For all these there is not often equal opportunity; excellence, therefore, is not often attainable; and moft men fail in one or other of the ends propofed, and are full without readiness, or ready without exactness. Some deficiency must be forgiven all, because all are men; and more must be allowed to pass uncensured in the greater part of the world, because none can confer upon himself abilities, and few have the choice of fituations proper for the improvement of those which nature has beftowed: it is however, reasonable, to have perfection in our eye; that we may always advance towards it, though we know it never can be reached.

NUMB. 92. SATURDAY, September 22, 1753.

N the papers of criticifm which you have given

I remarked lpirit

dour and love of truth, equally remote from bigotry and captiousness; a just distribution of praise amongst the ancients and the moderns; a fober deference to reputation long established, without a blind adoration. of antiquity; and a willingness to favour later performances, without a light or puerile fondness for novelty.

I fhall, therefore, venture to lay before you, fuch obfervations as have rifen to my mind in the confideration of Virgil's pastorals, without any inquiry how far my fentiments deviate from established rules or common opinions.

If we furvey the ten paftorals in a general view, it will be found that Virgil can derive from them very little claim to the praise of an inventor. To fearch into the antiquity of this kind of poetry, is not my present purpofe; that it has long fubfifted in the caft, the Sacred Writings fufficiently inform us; and

we may conjecture, with great probability, that it was fometimes the devotion, and sometimes the entertainment of the first generations of mankind. Theocritus united elegance with fimplicity; and taught his fhepherds to fing with fo much ease and harmony, that his countrymen defpairing to excel, forbore to imitate him; and the Greeks, however vain or ambitious, left him in quiet poffeffion of the garlands which the wood-nymphs had beftowed upon him.

Virgil, however, taking advantage of another language ventured to copy or to rival the Sicilian bard: he has written with greater fplendor of diction, and elevation of fentiment: but as the magnificence of his performances was more, the fimplicity was lefs; and, perhaps, where he excels Theocritus, he fometimes obtains his fuperority by deviating from the pastoral character, and performing what Theocritas never attempted.

Yet, though I would willingly pay to Theocritus the honour which is always due to an original author, I am far from intending to depreciate Virgil; of whom Horace juftly declares, that the rural mufes have appropriated to him their elegance and fweetnefs, and who, as he copied Theocritus in his defign, has resembled him likewife in his fuccefs; for, if we except Calphurnius, an obfcure author of the lower ages, I know not that a single paftoral was written after him by any poet, till the revival of lite

rature.

But though his general merit has been univerfally acknowledged, I am far from thinking all the productions of his rural Thalia equally excellent: there

is, indeed, in all his paftorals a ftrain of verfification which it is vain to feek in any other poet; but if we except the first and the tenth, they seem liable either wholly or in part to confiderable objections.

The fecond, though we fhould forget the great charge against it, which I am afraid can never be refuted, might, I think, have perished, without any diminution of the praise of its author; for I know not that it contains one affecting fentiment or pleafing de→ scription, or one paffage that ftrikes the imagination or awakens the paffions.

The third contains a conteft between two fhepherds, begun with a quarrel of which fome particulars might well be fpared, carried on with fprightlinefs and elegance, and terminated at last in a reconciliation: but, furely, whether the invectives with which they attack each other be true or false, they are too much degraded from the dignity of paftoral innocence; and inftead of rejoicing that they are both victorious, I fhould not have grieved could they have been both defeated.

The poem to Pollio is, indeed, of another kind: it is filled with images at once fplendid and pleafing, and is elevated with grandeur of language worthy of the first of Roman poets; but I am not able to reconcile myself to the difproportion, between the performance and the occafion that produced it: that the golden age fhould return because Pollio had a fon, appears fo wild a fiction, that I am ready to fufpect the poet of having written, for fome other purpofe, what he took this opportunity of producing to the publick.

The

The fifth contains a celebration of Daphnis, which has ftood to all fucceeding ages as the model of pastoral elegies. To deny praife to a performance which fo many thousands have laboured to imitate, would be to judge with too little deference for the opinion of mankind: yet whoever fhall read it with impartiality, will find that most of the images are of the mythological kind, and therefore, eafily invented; and that there are few fentiments of rational praise or natural lamentation.

In the Silenus he again rifes to the dignity of philofophick sentiments, and heroick poetry. The addrefs to Varus is eminently beautiful: but fince the compliment paid to Gallus fixes the tranfaction to his own time, the fiction of Silenus feems injudicious: nor has any fufficient reafon yet been found, to juftify his choice of those fables that make the fubject of the fong.

The feventh exhibits another conteft of the tuneful fhepherds and, furely, it is not without fome reproach to his inventive power, that of ten paftorals Virgil has written two upon the fame plan. One of the fhepherds now gains an acknowledged victory, but without any apparent fuperiority, and the reader, when he fees the prize adjudged, is not able to difcover how it was deferved.

Of the eighth pastoral, fo little is properly the work of Virgil, that he has no claim to other praife or blame than that of a tranflator.

Of the ninth, it is fcarce poffible to discover the design or tendency; it is faid, I know not upon what authority, to have been compofe from frag

ments