DEDICATION OF THE GEORGICS. TO THE RIGHT HON. PHILIP, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD 1, &c. MY LORD, I CANNOT begin my address to your lordship, better than in the words of Virgil, -Quod optanti divům promittere nemo Auderet, volvenda dies, en, attulit ultro. Seven years together I have concealed the longing which I had to appear before you: a time as tedious as Æneas passed in his wandering voyage, before he reached the promised Italy. But I considered, that nothing which my meanness could produce, was worthy of your patronage. At last this happy 1 Born in 1634, and died in 1713. He was accessary in forwarding the Restoration, and had held several courtly employments; but resigned them in 1685, and lived the remainder of his days in respectable retirement. occasion offered, of presenting to you the best poem of the best poet. If I balked this opportunity, I was in despair of finding such another; and, if I took it, I was still uncertain whether you would vouchsafe to accept it from my hands. It was a bold venture which I made, in desiring your permission to lay my unworthy labours at your feet. But my rashness has succeeded beyond my hopes; and you have been pleased not to suffer an old man to go discontented out of the world, for want of that protection, of which he had been so long ambitious. I have known a gentleman in disgrace, and not daring to appear before king Charles the Second, though he much desired it: at length he took the confidence to attend a fair lady to the court, and told his majesty, that, under her protection, he had presumed to wait on him. With the same humble confidence, I present myself before your lordship and, attending on Virgil, hope a gracious reception. The gentleman succeeded, because the powerful lady was his friend; but I have too much injured my great author, to expect he should intercede for me. I would have translated him; but, according to the literal French and Italian phrases, I fear I have traduced him. It is the fault of many a well-meaning man, to be officious in a wrong place, and do a prejudice where he had endeavoured to do a service. Virgil wrote his Georgics in the full strength and vigour of his age, when his judgment was at the height, and before his fancy was declining. He had (according to our homely saying) his full swing at this poem; beginning it about the age of thirty-five, and scarce concluding it before he arrived at forty. It is observed, both of him and Horace (and I believe it will hold in all great poets), that, though they wrote before with a certain heat of genius which inspired them, yet that heat was not perfectly digested. There is required a continuance of warmth to ripen the best and noblest fruits. Thus Horace, in his first and second book of Odes, was still rising, but came not to his meridian till the third; after which, his judgment was an overpoise to his imagination: he grew too cautions to be bold enough; for he descended in his fourth by slow degrees, and, in his Satires and Epistles, was more a philosopher and a critic, than a poet. In the beginning of summer, the days are almost at a stand, with little variation of length or shortness, because at that time the diurnal motion of the sun partakes more of a right line than of a spiral; the same is the method of nature in the frame of man. He seems at forty to be fully in his summer tropic; somewhat before, and somewhat after, he finds in his soul but small increases or decays. From fifty to threescore, the balance generally holds even, in our colder climates: for he loses not much in fancy; and judgment, which is the effect of observation, still increases. His succeeding years afford him little more than the stubble of his own harvest : yet, if his constitution be healthful, his mind may still retain a decent vigour; and the gleanings of that Ephraim, in comparison with others, will surpass the vintage of Abiezer. I have called this somewhere, by a bold metaphor, ' a green old age;' but Virgil has given me his authority for the figure- Jam senior; sed cruda Deo, viridisque senectus. Among those few who enjoy the advantage of a latter spring, your lordship is a rare example; who being now arrived at your great climacteric, yet give no proof of the least decay of your excellent judgment and comprehension of all things which are within the compass of human understanding. Your conversation is as easy as it is instructive; and I could never observe the least vanity or the least assuming in any thing you said, but a natural unaffected modesty, full of good sense, and well digested a clearness of notion, expressed in ready and unstudied words. No man has complained, or ever can, that you have discoursed too long on any subject; for you leave us in an eagerness of learning more; pleased with what we hear, but not satisfied; because you will not speak so much as we could wish. I dare not excuse your lordship from this fault; for, though it is none in you, it is one to all who have the happiness of being known to you. I must confess, the critics make it one of Virgil's beauties, that, having said what he thought convenient, he always left somewhat for the imagi. nation of his readers to supply; that they might gratify their fancies, by finding more in what he had written than at first they could; and think they had added to his thought, when it was all there beforehand, and he only saved himself the expense of words. However it was, I never went from your lordship, but with a longing to return, or without a hearty curse to him who invented ceremonies in the world, and put me on the necessity of withdrawing when it was my interest, as well as my desire, to have given you a much longer trouble. I cannot imagine (if your lordship will give me leave to speak my thoughts) but you have had a more than |