The image on the medal plac'd,

With its bright round of titles grac'd,
And ftampt on British coins fhall live,
To richest ores the value give,
Or, wrought within the curious mold,
Shape and adorn the running gold.
To bear this form, the genial fun
Has daily fince his courfe begun
Rejoic'd the metal to refine,
And ripen'd the Peruvian mine.

Thou, Kneller, long with noble pride,
The foremost of thy art, haft vy'd
With nature in a generous ftrife,
And touch'd the canvas into life.

Thy pencil has, by monarchs fought,
From reign to reign in ermine wrought,
And, in the robes of state array'd,

The kings of half an age difplay'd.

Here swarthy Charles appears, and there
His brother with dejected air:
Triumphant Nassau here we find,
And with him bright Maria join'd;
There Anna, great as when she fent
Her armies through the continent,
Ere yet her Hero was disgrac'd :
O may fam'd Brunswick be the laft,
(Though heaven fhould with my wish agree,
And long preferve thy art in thee)
The laft, the happieft British king,

Whom thou fhalt paint, or I fhall fing!

Wife Phidias thus, his skill to prove,
Through many a god advanc'd to Jove,
And taught the polisht rocks to fhine
With airs and lineaments divine;

Till Greece, amaz'd, and half-afraid,
Th' affembled deities survey'd.

Great Pan, who wont to chace the fair,
And lov'd the spreading oak, was there;
Old Saturn too with upcaft eyes
Beheld his abdicated skies;

And mighty Mars, for war renown'd,
In adamantine armour frown'd;
By him the childless goddess rose,
Minerva, ftudious to compose

Her twisted threads; the web fhe ftrung,
And o'er a loom of marble hung:
Thetis the troubled ocean's queen,
Match'd with a mortal, next was feen,
Reclining on a funeral urn,

Her fhort-liv'd darling fon to mourn.
The last was he, whofe thunder flew
The Titan-race, a rebel crew,
That from a hundred hills ally'd
In impious leagues their king defy'd.
This wonder of the sculptor's hand
Produc'd, his art was at a stand:
For who would hope new fame to raise,
Or risk his well-establish'd praise,
That, his high genius to approve,

I drawn a George, or carv'd a Jove?

PRO

PROLOGUE

TO SMITH'S PHÆDRA AND HIPPOLITUS.

SPOKEN BY Mr. WILKS.

ONG has a race of heroes fill'd the stage,

LONG hast by not, and through the gamut rage;

In fongs and airs exprefs their martial fire,
Combat in trills, and in a fuge expire:

While, lull'd by found, and undisturb'd by wit,
Calm and ferene you indolently fit,

And, from the dull fatigue of thinking free,
Hear the facetious fiddles repartee:

Our home-fpun authors must forfake the field,
And Shakespeare to the soft Scarletti yield.
To your new tafte the poet of this day

Was by a friend advis'd to form his play ;
Had Valentini, musically coy,

Shunn'd Phædra's arms, and fcorn'd the proffer'd joy

It had not mov'd your wonder to have feen

An eunuch fly from an enamour'd queen :

How would it please, should fhe in English speak,
And could Hippolitus reply in Greek!

But be, a ftranger to your modish way,

By your
old rules must stand or fall to-day,
And hopes you will your foreign taste command,
To bear, for once, with what you understand.

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PRO

if the reader would see what fuccefs he had, he may find it at large in Scaliger.

But Virgil feems no where fo well pleased, as when he is got among his bees in the Fourth Georgic: and ennobles the actions of fo trivial a creature, with metaphors drawn from the most important concerns of mankind. His verfes are not in a greater noise and hurry in the battles of Æneas and Turnus, than in the engagement of two fwarms. And as in his Aneis he compares the labours of his Trojans to thofe of bees and pifmires, here he compares the labours of the bees to those of the Cyclops. In short, the laft Georgic was a good prelude to the Æneis; and very well fhewed what the Poet could do in the description of what was really great, by his describing the mock-grandeur of an infect with fo good a grace. There is more pleasantnefs in the little platform of a garden, which he gives us about the middle of this Book, than in all the fpacious walks and water-works of Rapin. The speech of Proteus at the end can never be enough admired, and was indeed very fit to conclude fo divine a work.

After this particular account of the beauties in the Georgics, I fhould in the next place endeavour to point out its imperfections, if it has any. But though I think there are fome few parts in it that are not fo beautiful as the reft, I fhall not prefume to name them; as rather suspecting my own judgment, than I can believe a fault to be in that Poem, which lay fo long under Virgil's correction, and had his last hand

put

put to it. The first Georgic was probably burlefqed in the author's lifetime; for we ftill find in the fcholiafts a verfe that ridicules part of a line tranflated from Hefiod, "Nudus ara, fere nudus"-And we may easily guefs at the judgment of this extraordinary critic, whoever he was, from his cenfuring this particular precept. We may be fure Virgil would not have tranflated it from Hefiod, had he not discovered fome beauty in it; and indeed the beauty of it is what I have before obferved to be frequently met with in Virgil, the delivering the precept so indirectly, and fingling out the particular circumstance of sowing and plowing naked, to fuggeft to us that these employments are proper only in the hot season of the year.

I fhall not here compare the style of the Georgics with that of Lucretius, which the reader may fee already done in the preface to the fecond volume of Mifcellany Poems*; but fhall conclude this Poem to be the most complete, elaborate, and finished piece of all antiquity. The Æneis indeed is of a nobler kind, but the Georgic is more perfect in its kind. The Aneis has a greater variety of beauties in it, but thofe of the Georgic are more exquifite. In fhort, the Georgic has all the perfection that can be expected in a poem written by the greatest Poet in the flower of his age, when his invention was ready, his imagination warm, his judgment fettled, and all his faculties in their full vigour and maturity.

The Collection publifhed by Mr. Dryden.

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MIS