well to all the world, as the sweetness of his disposition, his humanity, his easiness of access, and desire of obliging those who stand in need of his protection, are known to all who have approached him, and to me in particular, who have formerly had the honour of his conversation. Whoever has given the world the translation of part of the third Georgic, which he calls The Power of Love, has put me to sufficient pains to make my own not inferior to his; as my lord Roscommon's Silenus had formerly given me the same trouble. The most ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford has also been as troublesome to me as the other two, and on the same account. After his Bees, my latter swarm is scarcely worth the hiving. Mr. Cowley's Praise of a Country Life is excellent, but is rather an imitation of Virgil, than a version. That I have recovered in some measure the health which I had lost by too much application to this work, is owing, next to God's mercy, to the skill and care of Dr. Guibbons and Dr. Hobbs, the two ornaments of their profession, whom I can only pay by this acknowledgment. The whole faculty has always been ready to oblige me: and the only one of them, who endeavoured to defame me, had it not in his power. I desire pardon from my readers for saying so much in relation to myself which concerns not them; and, with my acknowledgments to all my subscribers, have only to add, that the few Notes which follow, are par manière d' acquit, because I

had obliged myself by articles to do somewhat of that kind. These scattering observations are rather guesses at my author's meaning in some passages, than proofs that so he meant. The unlearned may have recourse to any poetical dictionary in English, for the names of persons, places, or fables, which the learned need not: but that little which I say, is either new or necessary; and the first of these qualifications never fails to invite a reader, if not to please him.

NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

ON

VIRGIL'S WORKS

IN

ENGLISH.

PASTORAL I. Line 60.

There first the youth of heav'nly birth I view'd.

Virgil means Octavius Cæsar, heir to Julius; who perhaps had not arrived to his twentieth year, when Virgil saw him first. Vide his Life. Of heavenly birth, or heavenly blood; because the Julian family was derived from Iülus, son to Æneas, and grand-son to Venus.

PASTORAL II. Line 65.

The short narcissus

That is, of short continuance.

PASTORAL III. Line 95.

For him, the god of shepherds and their sheep. Phoebus, not Pan, is here called the god of shepherds. The poet alludes to the same story which he touches in

the beginning of the second Georgic, where he calls Phoebus the Amphrysian shepherd, because he fed the sheep and oxen of Admetus (with whom he was in love) on the hill Amphrysus.

Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem, &c.

that the

I have translated the passage to this sense infant, smiling on his mother, singles her out from the rest of the company about him. Erythræus, Bembus, and Joseph Scaliger, are of this opinion. Yet they and I may be mistaken: for, immediately after, we find these words, cui non risere parentes, which imply another sense, as if the parents smiled on the new-born infant; and that the babe on whom they vouchsafed not to smile, was born to ill fortune: for they tell a story, that when Vulcan, the only son of Jupiter and Juno, came into the world, he was so hard-favoured, that both his parents frowned on him, and Jupiter threw him out of heaven: he fell on the island Lemnos, and was lame ever afterwards. The last line of the Pastoral seems to justify this sense,

Nec Deus bunc mensä, Dea nec dignata cubili est.

For, though he married Venus, yet his mother Juno was not present at the nuptials to bless them; as appears by his wife's incontinence. They say also, that he was banished from the banquets of the gods. If so, that punishment could be of no long continuance; for Homer makes him present at their feasts, and composing a quarrel betwixt his parents with a bowl of nectar. The matter is of no great consequence; and therefore I adhere to my