Tentanda via eft, &c. VIRG.

WHAT fhall I do to be for ever known,

[a]

And make the age to come my own?

Hence all the flattering vanities, that lay

Nets of roses in the way.

Hence the defire of honours, or estate;

And'all, that is not above fate.

Hence love himself, that tyrant of my days,
Which intercepts my coming praise.

[a] Some lines of the original are left out.

Come,

Come, my best friends, my books, and lead me on ; 'Tis time that I were gone.

Welcome, great Stagirite, and teach me now

All I was born to know.

Thy fcholar's vict'ries thou doft far out-do:

He conquer'd th' earth; the whole world, you [b].* Welcome, learn'd Cicero, whofe bleft tongue and wit Preferves Rome's greatnefs yet.

Thou art the first of orators; only he,

Who beft can praise thee, next must be [c]. Welcome the Mantuan fwan, Virgil the wife, Whose verse walks higheft, but not flies [d].

[b] He conquer'd th' earth; the whole world, you.] Earth, means this habitable globe; world, the fyftem of univerfal nature. But the compliment is not a little extravagant! like that of Mr. Pope to Newton

"God faid, Let Newton be, and all was light" -for which the Poet is very juffly reprehended by his

Who beft can praife thee, next must be.] i. e. he must be only next; for none but Cicero himself was equal to the fubject. The poet glances at what Livy faid of the great Roman orator- .“vir magnus, acer, memòrabilis, et in cujus landès fequendas Cicerone laudatore opus fuerit." Ą fragment, preferved by the elder Seneca.

[d] Whofe verfe walks higheft, but not flies.] i. e. which keeps within the limits of nature, and is fublime without

Who

Who brought green poefy to her perfect age;
And made that art, which was a rage,
Tell me, ye mighty three, what fhall I do
To be like one of you.

But ye have climb'd the mountain's top, there fit
On the cabin flourishing head of i§,.

And, whilft with wearied fteps we upward go,
See us, and clouds below.

TELL me, O tell, what kind of thing is wit,

Thou, who mafter art of it.

being extravagant. Virgil's epic Mufe is here juftly cha racterized the Lyric, is a fwan of another fpecies, of which the poet fays nobly, elsewhere—

"Le, how th' obfequious wind and swelling, air
"The Theban fwan does upwards bear
"Into the walks of clouds, where he does play,
And with extended wings opens his liquid way.

Pindaric, Odes. The praife of Pindar.

For

For the first matter loves variety less;
Lefs women love't, either in love or drefs [*].
A thousand different shapes it bears,
Comely in thousand fhapes appears.
Yonder we faw it plain; and here 'tis now,
Like spirits in a place, we know not how.

2.

London, that vents of false ware fo much ftore,
In no ware deceives us more.

For men, led by the colour and the fhape,
Like Zeuxes' birds, fly to the painted grape;

Some things do through our judgement pass,
As through a multiplying glass.

And sometimes, if the object be too far,
We take a falling meteor for a star.

3.

Hence 'tis, a wit, that greatest word of fame,
Grows fuch a common name.

[e] We should now fay, to avoid the difagreeable con

traction,

"Lefs women love it, or in love, or drefs.”

-But our poet affected these contractions, and, if we may believe the writer of his life, fancied they gave a ftrength and energy to his verfe. The truer reafon for his ufe of them was, that he found them in fashion.

And