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If by this method I can furnish out a splendida farrago, according to the compliment lately paid me in a fine poem, published among the exercises of the last Oxford act, I have gained the end which I proposed to myself.

In my yesterday's paper, I shewed how the actions of our ancestors and forefathers should excite us to every thing that is great and virtuous. I shall here observe, that a regard to our posterity, and those who are to descend from us, ought to have the same kind of influence on a generous mind. A noble soul would rather die than commit an action that should make his children blush when he is in his grave, and be looked upon as a reproach to those who shall live a hundred years after him. On the contrary, nothing can be a more pleasing thought to a man of eminence, than to consider that posterity, who lie many removes from him, shall make their boasts of his virtues, and be honourable for his sake.

Virgil represents this consideration as an incentive of glory to Æneas, when after having shown him the race of heroes who were to descend from him, Anchises adds, with a noble warmth,

• Et dubitamus adhuc virtutem extendere factis ?

Æn. vi. 806.

⚫ And doubt we yet through dangers to pursue The paths of honour

DRYDEN.

Since I have mentioned this passage in Virgil, where Æneas was entertained with the view of his great descendants, I cannot forbear observing a particular beauty, which I do not know that any one has taken notice of. The list which he has there drawn

up was in general to do honour to the Roman name, but more particularly to compliment Augustus. For this reason Anchises, who shews Eneas most of the rest of his descendants in the same order that they were to make their appearance in the world, breaks his method for the sake of Augustus, whom he singles out immediately after having mentioned Romulus, as the most illustrious person who was to rise in that empire which the other had founded. He was impatient to describe his posterity raised to the utmost pitch of glory, and therefore passes over all the rest to come at this great man, whom by this means he implicitly represents as making the most conspicuous figure among them. By this artifice the poet did not only give his emperor the greatest praise he could bestow upon him; but hindered his reader from drawing a parallel which would have been disadvantageous to him had he been celebrated in his proper place, that is, after Pompey and Cæsar, who each of them eclipsed the other in military glory.

Though there have been finer things spoken of Augustus than any other man, all the wits of his age having tried to outrival one another on that subject; he never received a compliment, which, in my opinion, can be compared, for sublimity of thought, to that which the poet here makes him. The English, reader may see a faint shadow of it in Mr. Dryden's translation, for the original is inimitable.

'Hic vir, hic est, &c.'

'But next behold the youth of form divine,
Cæsar himself, exalted in his line;
Augustus, promis'd oft, and long foretold,
Sent to the realm that Saturn rul'd of old;
Born to restore a better age of gold.

Æn. vi. 791.

Afric, and India, shall his power obey,

He shall extend his propagated sway

Beyond the solar year, without the starry way,
Where Atlas turns the rolling heavens around,

And his broad shoulders with their light are crown'd.
At his foreseen approach, already quake
The Caspian kingdoms and Mæotian lake.
Their seers behold the tempest from afar;
And threatening oracles denounce the war.

Nile hears him knocking at his seven-fold gate;

And seeks his hidden spring, and fears his nephew's fate.
Nor Hercules more lands or labours knew,
Not though the brazen-footed hind he slew;
Freed Erymanthus from the foaming boar:
And dipp'd his arrows in Lernæan gore.
Nor Bacchus turning from his Indian war,
By tigers drawn triumphant in his car;
From Nisus top descending on the plains,
With curling vines around his purple reins.
And doubt we yet through dangers to pursue
The paths of honour?-

I could shew out of other poets the same kind of vision as this in Virgil, wherein the chief persons of the poem have been entertained with the sight of those who were to descend from them: but instead of that, I shall conclude with a rabbinical story which has in it the oriental way of thinking, and is therefore very amusing.

Adam, say the rabbins, a little after his creation, was presented with a view of all those souls who were to be united to human bodies, and take their turn after him upon the earth. Among others the vision set before him the soul of David. Our great ancestor was transported at the sight of so beautiful an apparition; but to his unspeakable grief was informed, that it was not to be conversant among men the space of one year.

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