fent you from a place where I have not fo much as the converse of any seaman. Yet though the trouble I had in writing it was great, it was no more than recompensed by the pleasure. I found myself so warm in celebrating the praises of military men, two fuch especially as the prince and general, that it is no wonder if they inspired me with thoughts above my ordinary level. And I am well fatisfied, that, as they are incomparably the best subject I ever had, excepting only the royal family, fo alfo, that this I have written of them is much better than what I have performed on any other. I have been forced to help out other arguments; but this has been bountiful to me: they have been low and barren of praise, and I have exalted them, and made them fruitful; but here-" Omnia fponte fua “reddit justissima tellus." I have had a large, a fair, and a pleafant field; fo fertile, that without my cultivating, it has given me two harvests in a fummer, and in both oppreffed the reaper. All other greatness in subjects is only counterfeit: it will not endure the test of danger; the greatness of arms is only real: other greatness burdens a nation with its weight; this fupports it with its strength. And as it is the happiness of the age, fo it is the peculiar goodness of the best of kings, that we may praise his fubjects without offending him. Doubtless it proceeds from a juft confidence of his own virtue, which the luftre of no other can be fo great as to darken in him; for the good or the valiant are never fafely praised under a bad or a degenerate prince. But to return from this digreffion to a farther account of

my poem; I must crave leave to tell you, that as I have endeavoured to adorn it with noble thoughts, fo much more to exprefs thofe thoughts with elocution. The composition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit; and wit in the poet, or wit-writing (if you will give me leave to use a school-diftinction) is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it springs the quarry it hunted after: or, without metaphor, which fearches over all the memory for the fpecies or ideas of those things which it defigns to reprefent. Wit written is that which is well defined, the happy refult of thought, or product of imagination. But to proceed from wit, in the general notion of it, to the proper wit of an heroic or historical poem; I judge it chiefly to confift in the delightful imaging of perfons, actions, paffions, cr things. It is not the jerk or fting of an epigram, nor the feeming contradiction of a poor antithefis (the de- } light of an ill-judging audience in a play of rhyme), nor the gingle of a more poor Paranomafia; neither is it fo much the morality of a grave sentence, affected by Lucan, but more sparingly used by Virgil; but it is fome lively and apt defcription, dreffed in fuch colours of fpeech, that it fets before your eyes the absent object, as perfectly, and more delightfully than nature. So then the first happinefs of the poet's imagination is properly invention or finding of the thought; the fecond is fancy, or the variation, deriving or moulding of that thought as the judgment reprefents it proper to

the fubject; the third is elocution, or the art of cloathing and adorning that thought, fo found and varied, in apt, fignificant, and founding words: the quickness of the imagination is feen in the invention, the fertility in the fancy, and the accuracy in the expreffion. For the two first of these, Ovid is famous amongst the poets; for the latter, Virgil. Ovid images more often the movements and affections of the mind, either combating between two contrary paffions, or extremely difcomposed by one. His words therefore are the leaft part of his care; for he pictures nature in diforder, with which the ftudy and choice of words is inconfiftent. This is the proper wit of dialogue or discourse, and confequently of the drama, where all that is faid is to be fuppofed the effect of fudden thought; which, though it excludes not the quickness of wit in repartees, yet admits not a too curious election of words, too frequent allufions, or use of tropes, or in fine any thing that fhews remoteness of thought or labour in the writer. On the other fide, Virgil speaks not so often to us in the perfon of another, like Ovid, but in his own: he relates almost all things as from himself, and thereby gains more liberty than the other, to express his thoughts with all the graces of elocution, to write more figuratively, and to confefs as well the labour as the force of his imagination. Though he defcribes his Dido well and naturally, in the violence of her paffions, yet he must yield in that to the Myrrha, the Biblis, the Althaea, of Ovid; for, as great an admirer of him as I am, I must acknowledge, that if I fee not more of

their fouls than I fee of Dido's, at least I have a greater concernment for them: and that convinces me, that Ovid has touched those tender ftrokes more delicately than Virgil could. But when action or perfons are to be described, when any fuch image is to be set before us, how bold, how mafterly are the strokes of Virgil ! We fee the objects he prefents us with in their native figures, in their proper motions; but so we see them, as our own eyes could never have beheld them fo beautiful in themselves. We fee the foul of the poet, like that univerfal one of which he speaks, informing and moving through all his pictures:

Totamque infufa per artus

"Mens agitat molem, & magno fe corpore mifcet." We behold him embellishing his images, as he makes Venus breathing beauty upon her fon Æneas."

"Purpureum, & lætos oculis afflârat honores :
66 Quale manus addunt ebori decus, aut ubi flavo
"Argentum Pariufve lapis circumdatur auro."

See his Tempest, his Funeral Sports, his Combat of Turnus and Æneas: and in his Georgics, which I efteem the divineft part of all his writings, the Plague, the Country, the Battle of the Bulls, the Labour of the Bees, and those many other excellent images of nature, most of which are neither great in themfelves, nor have any natural ornament to bear them up: but the words wherewith he defcribes them are fo excellent, that it might be well applied to him, which was faid by Ovid,

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"Materiem fuperabat opus:" the very found of his words has often fomewhat that is connatural to the subject; and while we read him, we fit, as in a play, beholding the fcenes of what he represents. To perform this, he made frequent use of tropes, which you know change the nature of a known word, by applying it to some other fignification; and this is it which Horace means in his epistle to the Pifo's:

“Dixeris egregiè, notum fi callida verbum

"Reddiderit jun&tura novum

But I am fenfible I have prefumed too far to entertain you with a rude discourse of that art which you both know fo well, and put into practice with fo much happiness. Yet, before I leave Virgil, I muft own the vanity to tell you, and by you the world, that he has been my master in this poem: I have followed him every where, I know not with what fuccefs, but I am fure with diligence enough: my images are many of them copied from him, and the reft are imitations of him. My expreffions alfo are as near as the idioms of the two languages would admit of in tranflation. And this, fir, I have done with that boldnefs, for which I will ftand accountable to any of our little critics, who, perhaps, are no better acquainted with him than I am. Upon your first perufal of this poem, you have taken notice of fome words, which I have innovated (if it be too bold for me to fay refined) upon his Latin; which, as I offer not to introduce into English profe, fo I hope they are neither improper, nor altogether inelegant in verfe; and, in this, Horace will again defend me.

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