INTRODUCTORY REMARKS TO THE ESSAY ON THE GEORGICS. THIS piece was originally published as a preface to Dryden's Transla tion, with a compliment to the "ingenious" author, who had requested that his name should be concealed. Tickell republished it in his edition, with a very ill-timed hint that Dryden meant to take the credit of it to himself (v. Tickell's Preface, p. -). Steele, who was watching for an opportunity to fall upon Tickell, immediately took up the cudgel for Dryden in his epistle to Congreve, and very easily showed that the great poet had done every thing that the occasion required and Addison would let him. And there the question remained. Still this little piece was destined to be the subject of further discussion, or rather of contradictory opinions. The ground only was changed. Tickell calls it an exquisite piece of criticism." Johnson says, "It is juvenile, superficial, and uninstructive, without much either of the scholar's learning or the critic's penetration. (v. Johnson's Addison, p. 72). Ogle, after telling us that this difference of opinion "is a lesson of warning to those who either allow the predilections of friendship to overrule the judgment, or permit their opinions of the works of others to be formed by the fiat of an individual critic, whatever may be his charac ter," gravely concludes that "Perhaps the truth is to be found between these conflicting opinions.” (Ogle's Life of Addison, pp. 16, 17). Miss Aikin is more decided:-"The Essay on the Georgics, though interesting almost solely as the trial piece of Addison in a kind of writing of which he afterwards became so eminent a master, has nothing, however, in the style to mark it as a juvenile composition. The diction is very elegant, but rather tame. The tone of the remarks is calm, judicious, and tasteful; and though the piece exhibits no depth of thought or of learning, it answers the most valuable end of popular criticism: that of recom mending and pointing out to the observation of inexperienced readers the characteristic excellences of a great master and a noble work." The last opinion is probably the nearest to the truth. The remarks in this Essay are judicious and suggestive, if not profound, and prepare you to enter with pleasure upon the perusal of the poem. The style shows how carefully Addison had cultivated the art of writing, and it will always be read with interest as the earliest printed specimen of his prose.-G AN ESSAY ON VIRGIL'S GEORGICS. VIRGIL may be reckoned the first who introduced three new kinds of poetry among the Romans, which he copied after three of the greatest masters of Greece. Theocritus and Homer have still disputed for the advantage over him in pastoral and heroics, but I thing all are unanimous in giving him the precedence to Hesiod in his Georgics. The truth of it is, the sweetness and rusticity of a pastoral cannot be so well expressed in any other tongue as in the Greek, when rightly mixed and qualified with the Doric dialect; nor can the majesty of an heroic poem any where appear so well as in this language, which has a natural greatness in it, and can be often rendered more deep and sonorous by the pronunciation of the Ionians. But in the middle style, where the writers in both tongues are on a level, we see how far Virgil has excelled all who have written in the same way with him. There has been abundance of criticism spent on Virgil's Pas a It is to be observed, that this agreeable essay was written so early as 1693, that is, when the author, at most, was but in his one-and-twentieth year; yet the style is so exact, that it wants but little of being absolutely faultless. One or two words have, indeed, lost the grace, and, in some degree, the sense which they had in the writer's days: and in one, or two expressions, there is some degree of inaccuracy.-But I leave it to the reader, as an exercise of his taste, to discover these instances. torals and Æneids, but the Georgics are a subject which none of the critics have sufficiently taken into their consideration, most of them passing it over in silence, or casting it under the same head with pastoral; a division by no means proper, unless we suppose the style of a husbandman ought to be imitated in a Georgic, as that of a shepherd is in pastoral. But though the scene of both these poems lies in the same place; the speakers in them are of a quite different character, since the precepts of husbandry are not to be delivered with the simplicity of a plowman, but with the address of a poet. No rules, therefore, that relate to pastoral, can any way affect the Georgics, since they fall under that class of poetry, which consists in giving plain and direct instructions to the reader; whether they be moral duties, as those of Theognis and Pythagoras; or philosophical speculations, as those of Aratus and Lucretius; or rules of practice, as those of Hesiod and Virgil. Among these different kinds of subjects, that which the Georgics go upon, is I think the meanest and least improving, but the most pleasing and delightful. Precepts of morality, besides the natural corruption of our tempers, which makes us averse to them, are so abstracted from ideas of sense, that they seldom give an opportunity for those beautiful descriptions and images which are the spirit and life of poetry. Natural philosophy has indeed sensible objects to work upon, but then it often puzzles the reader with the intricacy of its notions, and perplexes him with the multitude of its disputes. But this kind of poetry I am now speaking of, addresses itself wholly to the imagination: it is altogether conversant among the fields and woods, and has the most delightful part of nature for its province. It raises in our minds a pleasing variety of scenes and landscapes, whilst it teaches us; and makes the dryest of its precepts look like a de scription. A Georgic, therefore, is some part of the science of husbandry put into a pleasing dress, and set off with all the beauties and embellishments of poetry. Now since this science of husbandry is of a very large extent, the poet shews his skill in singling out such precepts to proceed on, as are useful, and at the same time most capable of ornament. Virgil was so well acquainted with this secret, that to set off his first Georgic, he has run into a set of precepts, which are almost foreign to his subject, in that beautiful account he gives us of the signs in nature, which precede the changes of the weather. And if there be so much art in the choice of fit precepts, there is much more required in the treating of them; that they may fall in after each other by a natural unforced method, and shew themselves in the best and most advantageous light. They should all be so finely wrought together in the same piece, that no coarse seam may discover where they join; as in a curious brede of needle-work, one colour falls away by such just degrees, and another rises so insensibly, that we see the variety, without being able to distinguish the total vanishing of the one from the first appearance of the other. Nor is it sufficient to range and dispose this body of precepts into a clear and easy method, unless they are delivered to us in the most pleasing and agreeable manner: for there are several ways of conveying the same truth to the mind of man; and to chuse the pleasantest of these ways, is that which chiefly distinguishes poetry from prose, and makes Virgil's rules of husbandry pleasanter to read than Varro's. Where the prose-writer tells us plainly what ought to be done, the poet often conceals the precept in a description, and represents his countryman performing the action in which he would instruct his reader. Where the one sets out as fully and distinctly as he can, all the parts of the truth, which he would communicate to us; the other singles out the most pleasing circumstance of this truth, and so conveys the whole in a more di. verting manner to the understanding. I shall give one instance, out of a multitude of this nature that might be found in the Georgics, where the reader may see the different ways Virgil has taken to express the same thing, and how much pleasanter every manner of expression is, than the plain and direct mention of it would have been. It is in the second Georgic, where he tells us what trees will bear grafting on each other. Et sæpe alterius ramos impune videmus Castaneæ fagos, ornusque incanuit albo Exiit ad cælum ramis felicibus arbos; Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma. Here we see the poet considered all the effects of this union between trees of different kinds, and took notice of that effect which had the most surprise, and by consequence, the most delight in it, to express the capacity that was in them of being thus united. This way of writing is every where much in use among the poets, and is particularly practised by Virgil, who loves to suggest a truth indirectly, and without giving us a full and open view of it, to let us see just so much as will naturally lead the imagination into all the parts that lie concealed. This is wonderfully diverting to the understanding, thus to receive a precept, that enters as it were through a by-way, and to apprehend an idea that draws a whole train after it. For here the mind, which is always delighted with its own discoveries, only takes the hint from the poet, and seems to work out the rest by the strength of her own faculties. But since the inculcating precept upon precept, will at length prove tiresome to the reader, if he meets with no entertainment, |