No undisputed monarch govern'd yet,
With universal sway, the realms of wit :
Nature could never such expense afford;
Each several province own'd a several lord.
A poet then had his poetic wife,
One Muse embraced, and married for his life.
By the stale thing his appetite was cloy'd,
His fancy lessen'd and his fire destroy'd :
But Nature, grown extravagantly kind,
With all her treasures did adorn your mind;
The different powers were then united found,
And you wit's universal monarch crown'd.
Your mighty sway your great desert secures ;
And every Muse and every Grace is yours.
To none confined, by turns you all enjoy :
Sated with this, you to another fly,
So, sultan-like, in your Seraglio stand,
While wishing Muses wait for your command;
Thus no decay, no want of vigour, find;
Sublime your fancy, boundless is your mind.
Not all the blasts of Time can do you wrong-
Young, spite of age-in spite of weakness, strong.
Time, like Alcides, strikes you to the ground;
You, like Antæus, from each fall rebound.
'Tis said, that Phidias gave such living grace
To the carved image of a beauteous face,
That the cold marble might even seem to be
The life and the true life, the imagery.
You pass that artist, Sir, and all his powers,
Making the best of Roman poets ours,
With such effect, we know not which to call
The imitation, which the original.
What Virgil lent, you pay in equal weight;
The charming beauty of the coin no less;
And such the majesty of your impress,
You seem the very author you translate.
'Tis certain, were he now alive with us, And did revolving destiny constrain
To dress his thoughts in English o'er again, Himself could write no otherwise than thus.
His old encomium never did appear
So true as now: "Romans and Greeks, submit! Something of late is in our language writ, More nobly great than the famed Iliads were."
As flowers, transplanted from a southern sky,
But hardly bear, or in the raising die,
Missing their native sun,―at best retain
But a faint odour, and but live with pain;
So Roman poetry, by moderns taught,
Wanting the warmth with which its author wrote,
Is a dead image, and a worthless draught.
While we transfuse, the nimble spirit flies,
Escapes unseen, evaporates, and dies.
Who then attempts to shew the ancients' wit,
Must copy with the genius that they writ:
Whence we conclude from thy translated song,
So just, so warm, so smooth, and yet so strong,
Thou heavenly charmer! soul of harmony!
That all their geniuses revived in thee.
Thy trumpet sounds: the dead are raised to light;
New-born they rise, and take to heaven their flight;
Deck'd in thy verse, as clad with rays, they shine,
All glorified, immortal, and divine.
As Britain, in rich soil abounding wide,
Furnish'd for use, for luxury, and pride,
Yet spreads her wanton sails on every shore,
For foreign wealth, insatiate still of more;
To her own wool, the silks of Asia joins,
And to her plenteous harvests, Indian mines.
So Dryden, not contented with the fame
Of his own works, though an immortal name-
To lands remote he sends his learned Muse,
The noblest seeds of foreign wit to chuse.
Feasting our sense so many various ways,
Say, is't thy bounty, or thy thirst of praise,
That, by comparing others, all might see,
Who most excell'd, are yet excell'd by thee?
VIRGIL was born at Mantua, which city was built no less than three hundred years before Rome, and was the capital of the New Hetruria, as himself,
Knightly Chetwood, whom Dryden elsewhere terms "learned and every way excellent," (Vol. XIV. p. 49.) contributed to the Second Book of the Georgics those lines which contain the praises of Italy. Knightly Chetwood was born in 1652. He was a particular friend of Roscommon, and, being of Tory principles, he obtained high preferment in the church, and was nominated to the see of Bristol; but the Revolution prevented his instalment. In April 1707 he was made Dean of Gloucester, and died 11th April 1720.
The Life of Virgil has usually been ascribed to William Walsh, whose merits as a minor poet are now forgotten, but who still lives in the grateful strains of Pope, whose juvenile essays he encouraged, as well as in the encomium of Dryden, whom he patronized in age and adversity. I have left his name in possession of the Essay on the Pastorals, although it also was probably written by Dr Chetwood. See MALONE, Vol. III. p. 549.
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