oppressors of their liberty, revenged themselves, without form of law, on their private enemies. Sylla, in his turn, proscribed the heads of the adverse party: he too had nothing but liberty and reformation in his mouth (for the cause of religion is but a modern motive to rebellion, invented by the Christian priesthood, refining on the heathen!) Sylla, to be sure, meant no more good to the Roman people than Marius before, whatever he declared; but sacrificed the lives and took the estates of all his enemies, to gratify those who brought him into power. Such was the reformation of the government by both parties. The senate and the commons were the two bases on which it stood; and the two champions of either faction each destroyed the foundations of the other side: so the fabric, of consequence, must fall between them; and tyranny must be built on their ruins. This comes of altering fundamental laws and constitutions-like him who, being in good health, lodged himself in a physician's house, and was over-persuaded by his landlord to take physic (of which he died), for the benefit of his doctor. "Stavo ben" (was written on his monument) "ma, per star meglio, sto quì."

After the death of those two usurpers the commonwealth seemed to recover, and held up its head for a little time. But it was all the while in a deep consumption, which is a flattering disease. Pompey, Crassus, and Cæsar, had found the sweets of arbitrary power; and, each being a check to the other's growth, struck up a false friendship among themselves, and divided the government between 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 looked 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, overpowered him in the senate, and caused many unjust decrees to pass against him. Cæsar, thus injured, 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 prevailed; and, heaven declaring for him, he became a providential monarch, under the title of perpetual dictator. He being murdered by his own son, whom I' neither dare commend, nor can justly blame (though Dante, in his Inferno, has put him and Cassius, and Judas Iscariot between them, into the great devil's mouth), the commonwealth popped up its head for the third time, under Brutus and Cassius, and then sunk forever.

Thus the Roman people were grossly gulled twice or thrice

over, and as often enslaved in one century, and under the same pretence of reformation. At last the two battles of Philippi gave the decisive stroke against liberty; and, not long after, the commonwealth was turned into a monarchy, by the conduct and goodfortune of Augustus. It 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, besides, that the commonwealth was lost without resource; the heads of it destroyed; the senate new moulded, grown degenerate, and either bought off, or thrusting their own necks into the yoke, out of fear of being forced. 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 his heart.

Secretosque pios, 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 Eneid. If he had not well studied his patron's temper, it might have ruined him with another prince. But Augustus was not discontented, at least that we can find, that Cato was placed, by his own poet, in Elysium, and there giving laws to the holy souls who deserved 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 governed not without a senate;-that Romulus was no hereditary prince; and though, after his death, he received divine honours for the good he did on earth, yet he was but a god of their own making;-that the last Tarquin was expelled justly for overt acts of tyranny, and mal-administration; 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 received from his ancestors, and under which himself was born; though at the same time he confessed 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 pleased to have been born an Englishman.

But to return from my long rambling-I say that Virgil having maturely weighed the condition of the times in which he lived -that an entire liberty was not to be retrieved; 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 enriched, esteemed, and cherished; that this conqueror, though of bad kind, was the very best of it; that the arts of peace

flourished under him; that all men might be happy, if they would be quiet; that, now he was in possession of the whole, yet he shared a great part of his authority with the senate; that he would be chosen into the ancient offices of the commonwealth, and ruled by the power which he derived from them, and prorogued his government from time to time, still, as it were, threatening to dismiss himself from public cares, which he exercised more for the common good than any delight he took in greatness; these things, I say, being considered by the poet, he concluded it to be the interest of his country to be so governed; 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; honourable to the emperor, whom he derives from a divine extraction; and reflecting part of that honour 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 received opinion that the Romans were descended from the Trojans, and Julius Cæsar from Iulus the son of Eneas, was enough for Virgil; though perhaps he thought not so himself, or that Æneas ever was in Italy; which Bochartus manifestly proves. Homer, where he says that Jupiter hated the house of Priam, and was resolved 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 them selves 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 (though they were all graven after his death), as a note that he was deified. I doubt not but one reason why Augustus should be so passionately concerned for the preservation of the Æneid, which its author had condemned 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 honour; that a work should not be lost, where his divine original was celebrated in verse which had the character of immortality stamped on it.

And

Neither were the great Roman families which flourished in his time less obliged by him than the emperor. Your lordship knows with what address he makes mention of them, as captairs of ships, or leaders in the war; and even some of Italian extraction are not forgotten. These are the single stars which are 'sprinkled through the Eneid: but there are whole constellations of them in the fifth book. And I could not but take notice, when I translated it, of some favourite families to which he gives the victory, and awards the prizes, in the person of his hero, at the funeral names which were celebrated in honour of Anchises.

insist not on their names; but am pleased to find the Memmii among them, derived from Mnestheus, because Lucretius dedicates to one of that family, a branch of which destroyed Corinth. I likewise either found or formed an image to myself of the contrary kind; that those who lost the prizes were such as disobliged 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 thoroughly provoked he will do himself justice, however dear it cost him; "animainque in vulnere ponit." I think these are not bare imaginations of my own, though 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 obliged by Virgil, in deriving them from Troy; an ancestry which they affected. We and the French are of the same humour: they would be thought to descend from a son, I think, of Hector; and we would have our Britain both named and planted by a descendant of Æneas. Spenser favours 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 transgressed my bounds, and gone further than the moral led me but if your lordship is not tired, I am safe enough.

Thus far, I think, my author is defended. But, as Augustus is still shadowed 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 showing how dexterously he managed 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: though such things, perhaps, as no Dutch commentator could, and I am sure no Frenchman durst. I have already told your lordship my opinion of Virgil; that he was no arbitrary man. Obliged 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 called the father of his country. From this consideration it is, that he chose for the ground-work of his poem one empire destroyed, and another raised 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 ac count. Neither has he forgotten Priamus, in the fifth of his

Eneid, the son of Polites, youngest son of Priam, who wa slain by Pyrrhus, in the second book. Æneas had only married Creusa, 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 derived from Julius Cæsar (such a title being but one degree removed from conquest); for what was introduced by force, by force may be removed. It 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 governed arbitrarily: he was expelled, and came to the deserved end of all tyrants. Our author shows 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 described 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 character of a king by inheritance, who is born a father of his country. Æneas, though he married the heiress of the crown, yet claimed no title to it during the life of his father-in-law. "Pater arma Latinus habeto," &c. are Virgil's words. As for himself, he was contented to take care of his country gods, who were not those of Latium: wherein our divine author seems to relate to the after-practice of the Romans, which was to adopt the gods of those they conquered, or received as members of the commonwealth. Yet, withal, he plainly touches at the office of the high-priesthood, with which Augustus was invested, and which made his person more sacred and inviolable than even the tribunitial power. It was not therefore for nothing that the most judicious of all poets made that office vacant by the death of Panthus, in the second book of the Eneid, for his hero to succeed in it, and consequently for Augustus to enjoy. I know not that any of the commentators have taken notice of that passage. If they have not, I am sure they ought and if they have, I am not indebted to them for the observation. The words of Virgil are very plain

Sacra, suosque tibi commendat Troja Penates.

As for Augustus or his uncle Julius claiming by descent from