that are not so beautiful as the rest, I shall not presume to name them, as rather suspecting my own judgment, than I can believe a fault to be in that poem, which lay so long under Virgil's correction, and had his last hand put to it. The first Georgic was probably burlesqued in the author's life-time; for we still find in the scholiasts a verse that ridicules part of a line translated from Hesiod. Nudus ara, sede nudus-And we may easily guess at the judgment of this extraordinary critic, whoever he was, from his censuring this particular precept. We may be sure Virgil would not have translated it from Hesiod, had he not discovered some beauty in it; and indeed the beauty of it is what I have before observed to be frequently met with in Virgil, the delivering the precept so indirectly, and singling out the particular circumstance of sowing and plowing naked, to suggest to us that these employments are proper only in the hot season of the year.

I shall not here compare the style of the Georgics with that of Lucretius, which the reader may see already done in the preface to the second volume of Miscellany Poems; but shall conclude this poem to be the most complete, elaborate, and finished piece of all antiquity. The Eneis, indeed, is of a nobler kind, but the Georgic is more perfect in its kind. The Eneis has a greater variety of beauties in it, but those of the Georgic are more exquisite. In short, 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 settled, and all his faculties in their full vig. our and maturity.

A DISCOURSE

ON

ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING.

[Originally printed in 1789 from a MSS. that had belonged to Lord Somerset.]

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

[THIS Discourse is not in Tickell's edition, a somewhat remarkable cır. cumstance, when we consider the pains he took to procure the Essay on the Georgics. Hurd attributes it to Addison by the internal evidence. The subject was probably suggested by the dispute started by Temple's essay, which was still fresh in every body's memory, and which was followed by the still memorable controversy between Bentley and Boyle.— G.]

THE present age seems to have a very true taste of polite learning, and perhaps takes the beauties of an ancient author, as much as 'tis possible for it at so great a distance of time. It may, therefore, be some entertainment to us to consider what pleasure the cotemporaries and countrymen of our old writers found in their works, which we at present are not capable of; and whether at the same time the moderns may not have some advantages peculiar to themselves, and discover several graces that arise merely from the antiquity of an author.

There can be no doubt of the genuineness of this piece. The internal marks of its author are many and unequivocal; as must, I think, appear to every attentive reader who has any acquaintance with Mr. Addison's style and manner. But I should guess that it was drawn up by him in his younger days, and that it was not retouched, or at least finished by him. The reason might be, that he had afterwards worked up the princi pal observations of this piece into his critical papers on Milton.

And here the first and most general advantage the ancients had over us, was, that they knew all the secret history of a composure what was the occasion of such a discourse or poem, whom such a sentence aimed at, what person lay disguised in such a character: for by this means they could see their author in a variety of lights, and receive several different entertainments from the same passage. We, on the contrary, can only please ourselves with the wit or good sense of a writer, as it stands stripped of all those accidental circumstances that at first helped to set it off; we have him but in a single view, and only discover such essential standing beauties as no time or years can possibly deface.

I do not question but Homer, who in the diversity of his characters has far excelled all other heroic poets, had an eye on some real persons who were then living, in most of them. The description of Thersites is so spiteful and particular, that I cannot but think it one of his own, or his country's enemies in disguise, as on the contrary his Nestor looks like the figure of some ancient and venerable patriot: an effeminate fop, perhaps, of those times lies hid in Paris, and a crafty statesman in Ulysses: Patroclus may be a compliment on a celebrated friend, and Agamemnon the description of a majestic prince. Ajax, Hector, and Achilles, are all of them valiant, but in so different a manner as perhaps has characterized the different kinds of heroism that Homer had observed in some of his great cotemporaries. Thus far we learn from the poet's life, that he endeavoured to gain favour and patronage by his verse; and it is very probable he thought of this method of ingratiating himself with particular persons, as he has made the drift of the whole poem a compli ment on his country in general.

And to shew us, that this is not a bare conjecture only, we are told in the account that is left us of Homer, that he inserted

the very names of some of his cotemporaries. Tychius and Mentor in particular are very neatly celebrated in him. The first of these was an honest cobler, who had been very kind and ser viceable to the poet, and is therefore advanced in his poem, to be Ajax's shield-maker. The other was a great man in Ithica, who for his patronage and wisdom has gained a very honourable post in the Odysses, where he accompanies his great countryman in his travels, and gains such a reputation for his prudence, that Minerva took his shape upon her when she made herself visible. Themius was the name of Homer's schoolmaster, but the poet has certainly drawn his own character under, when he sets him forth as a favourite of Apollo, that was deprived of his sight, and used to sing the noble exploits of the Grecians.

Virgil too may well be supposed to give several hints in his poem, which we are not able to take, and to have lain many bye designs and under-plots, which are too remote for us to look into distinctly at so great a distance: but as for the characters of such as lived in his own time, I have not so much to say of him as Homer. He is indeed very barren in this part of his poem, and has but little varied the manners of the principal persons in it. His Æneas is a compound of valour and piety, Achates calls himself his friend, but takes no occasion of shewing himself so; Mnesteus, Sergestus, Gyas, and Cloanthus, are all of them men of the same stamp and character.

-Fortemq; Gyan, fortemq; Cloanthum.

Besides, Virgil was so very nice and delicate a writer, that probably he might not think his compliment to Augustus so great, or so artfully concealed, if he had scattered his praises

To have lain. The perfect participle of lay is laid, not lain, which is the perfect participle of the verb lie. The same blunder occurs in his notes on Ovid, "-till he had lain aside the circle of rays"-speaking of Phœbus in the story of Phaeton. But see the note on that place.

more promiscuously, and made his court to others in the same poem. Had he entertained any such design, Agrippa must in justice have challenged the second place, and if Agrippa's representative had been admitted, Æneas would have had very little to do; which would not have redounded much to the honour of his emperor. If, therefore, Virgil has shadowed any great persons besides Augustus in his characters, they are to be found only in the meaner actors of his poem, among the disputers for a petty victory in the fifth book, and perhaps in some few other places. I shall only mention Iopas the philosophical musician at Dido's banquet, where I cannot but fancy some celebrated master complimented, for methinks the epithet Crinitus is so wholly foreign to the purpose, that it perfectly points at some particular person; who, perhaps, (to pursue a wandering guess) was one of the Grecian performers, then in Rome, for besides that they were the best musicians and philosophers, the termination of the name belongs to their language, and the epithet is the same [KapηkopóvTes] that Homer gives to his countrymen in general.

Now that we may have a right notion of the pleasure we have lost on this account, let us only consider the different entertainment we of the present age meet with in Mr. Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, from what an English reader will find an hundred years hence, when the figures of the persons concerned are not so lively and fresh in the minds of posterity. Nothing can be more delightful than to see two characters facing each other all along and running parallel through the whole piece, to compare feature with feature, to find out the nice resemblance in every touch, and to see where the copy fails, and where it comes up to the original. The reader cannot but be pleased to have an acquaintance thus rising by degrees in his imagination, for whilst the mind is busy in applying every particular, and adjusting the several parts of the description, it is not a little delighted with