are so absurd, that I cannot, if I would, believe them. I think a future state demonstrable even by natural arguments; at least, to take away rewards and punishments, is only a pleasing prospect to a man, who resolves beforehand not to live morally. But on the other side, the thought of being nothing after death is a burthen insupportable to a virtuous man, even though a heathen. We naturally aim at happiness, and cannot bear to have it confined to the shortness of our present being, especially when we consider, that virtue is generally unhappy in this world, and vice fortunate: so that 't is hope of futurity alone that makes this life tolerable, in expectation of a better. Who would not commit all the excesses, to which he is prompted by his natural inclinations, if he may do them with security while he is alive, and be incapable of punishment after he is dead? If he be cunning and secret enough to avoid the laws, there is no band of morality to restrain him: for fame and reputation are weak ties: many men have not the least sense of them: powerful men are only awed by them, as they conduce to their interest, and that not always, when a passion is predominant and no man will be contained within the bounds of duty, when he may safely transgress them. These are my thoughts abstractedly, and without entering into the notions of our Christain faith, which is the proper business of divines.

But there are other arguments in this poem (which I have turned into English) not belonging to the mortality of the soul, which are strong enough to a reasonable man, to make him less in love with life, and consequently in less apprehensions of death. Such as are the natural satiety proceeding from a perpetual enjoyment of the same things; the inconveniences of old age, which make him incapable of corporeal pleasures; the decay of understanding and memory, which render him contemptible, and useless to others. These, and many other reasons, so pathetically urged, so beautifully expressed, so adorned with examples, and so admirably raised by the Prosopopeia of Nature, who is brought in speaking to her children, with so much authority and vigour, deserve the pains I have taken with them, which I hope have not been unsuccessful, or unworthy of my author; at least I must take the liberty to own, that I was pleased with my own endeavours, which but rarely happens to me; and that I am not dissatisfied upon the review of any thing I have done in this author.

It is true, there is something, and that of some moment, to be objected against my Englishing the Nature of Love,* from the fourth Omitted in the present edition.

book of Lucretius; and I can less easily answer why I translated it, than why I thus translated it. The objection arises from the obscenity of the subject; which is aggravated by the too lively and alluring delicacy of the verses. In the first place, without the least formality of an excuse [ own it pleased me; and let my enemies make the worst they can of this confession; I am not yet so secure from that passion, but that I want my author's antidotes against it. He has given the truest and most philosophical account both of the disease and remedy, which I ever found in any author: for which reasons I translated him. But it will be asked why I turned him into this luscious English? for I will not give it a worse word. Instead of an answer, I would ask again of my supercilious adversaries, whether I am not bound, when I translate an author, to do him all the right I can, and to translate him to the best advantage? If, to mince his meaning, which I am satisfied was honest and instructive, I had either omited some part of what he said, or taken from the strength of his expression, I certainly had wronged him; and that freeness of thought and words being thus cashiered in my hands, he had no longer been Lucretius. If nothing of this kind be to be read, physicians must not study nature, anatomies must not be seen, and somewhat I could say of particular passages in books, which, to avoid profaneness, I do not name. But the intention qualifies the act; and both mine and my author's were to instruct as well as please. It is most certain that barefaced bawdry is the poorest pretence to wit imaginable. If I should say otherwise, I should have two great authorities against me. The one is the Essay on Poetry which I publicly valued before I knew the author of it, and with the commendation of which my Lord Roscommon so happily begins his Essay on Translated Verse: the other is no less than our admired Cowley, who says the same thing in other words: for in his Ode concerning Wit, he writes thus of it:

Much less can that have any place,
At which a virgin hides her face:
Such dross the fire must purge away; 'tis just
The author blush, there, where the reader must.

Here indeed Mr. Cowley goes farther than the Essay; for he asserts plainly, that obscenity has no place in wit: the other only says, 't is a poor pretence to it, or an ill sort of wit, which has nothing more to support it than barefaced ribaldry; which is both unmannerly in itself, and fulsome to the reader. But neither of these will reach my case: for in the first place, I am only the translator, not the inventor; so that the heaviest part of the censure fails upon

Lucretius, before it reaches me; in the next place, neither he nor I have used the grossest words, but the cleanest metaphors we could find, to palliate the broadness of the meaning; and, to conclude, have carried the poetical part no farther, than the philosphical exacted.

There are a sort of blundering half-witted people, who make a great deal of noise about a verbal slip; though Horace would instruct them better in true criticism:

-non ego paucis

Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,
Aut humana parum cavit natura

True judgment in poetry, like that in painting, takes a view of the whole together, whether it be good or not; and where the beauties are more than the faults, concludes for the poet against the little judge. It is a sign that malice is hard driven, when it is forced to lay hold on a word or syllable: to arraign a man is one thing, and to cavil at him is another. In the midst of an ill-natured generation of scribblers, there is always justice enough left in mankind to protect good writers: and they too are obliged, both by humanity and interest, to espouse each other's cause against false critics, who are the common enemies.

This last consideration puts me in mind of what I owe to the ingenious and learned translator of Lucretius. I have not here designed to rob him of any part of that commendation which he has so justly acquired by the whole author, whose fragments only fall to my portion. What I have now performed, is no more than I intended above twenty years ago. The ways of our translation are very different; he follows him more closely than I have done, which became an interpreter of the whole Poem: I take more liberty, because it best suited with my design, which was to make him as pleasing as I could. He had been too voluminous, had he used my method in so long a work; and I had certainly taken his, had I made it my business to translate the whole. The preference then is justly his: and I join with Mr. Evelyn in the confession of it, with this additional advantage to him, that his reputation is already established in this Poet, mine is to make its fortune in the world. If I have been any where obscure, in following our common author, or if Lucretius himself is to be condemned, I refer myself to his excellent annotations, which I have often read, and always with some new pleasure.

My preface begins already to swell upon me, and looks as if I were afraid of my reader, by so tedious a bespeaking of him: and yet I have Horace and Theocritus upon my hands; but he Greek gentleman, shall quickly be disVOL. 1.-12

patched, becuase I have more business with the Roman.

That which distingushes Theocritus from all other Poets, both Greek and Latin, and which raises him even above Virgil in his Eclogues, is the inimitable tenderness of his passions, and the natural expression of them in words so becoming of a pastoral. A simplicity shines through all he writes: he shows his art and learning by disguising both. His shepherds never rise above their country education in their complaints of love. There is the same dif ference betwixt him and Virgil, as there is betwixt Tasso's Aminta and the Pastor Fido of Guarini. Virgil's shepherds are too well read in the philosophy of Epicurus and of Plato, and Guarini's seem to have been bred in courts. but Theocritus and Tasso have taken theirs from cottages and plains. It was said of Tasso, in relation to his similitudes, mai esce del bosco; that he never departed from the woods, that is, all his comparisons were taken from the country. The same may be said of our Theocritus. He is softer than Ovid; he touches the passions more delicately, and performs all this out of his own fund, without diving into the arts and sciences for a supply. Even his Doric dialect has an incomparable sweetness in its clownishness, like a fair shepherdess in her country russet, talking in a Yorkshire tone. This was impossible for Virgil to imitate; because the severity of the Roman Language denied him that advantage. Spenser has endeavoured it in his Shepherd's Kalendar; but neither will it succeed in English; for which reason I forebore to attempt it. For Theocritus writ to Sicilians, who spoke that dialect; and I direct this part of my translations to our ladies, who neither understand nor will take pleasure in such homely expressions. I proceed to Horace. Take him in parts, and he is chiefly to be considered in his three different talents, as he was a Critic, a Satirist,and a Writer of Odes. His morals are uniform, and run through all of them: for let his Dutch commentators say what they will, his philosophy was Epicurean and he made use of gods and providence only to serve a turn in Poetry. But since neither his Criticisms, which are the most instructive of any that are written in this art, nor his Satires, which are incomparably beyond Juvenal's, (if to laugh and rally is to be preferred to railing and declaiming,) are no part of my present undertaking, I confine myself wholly to his Odes. These are also of several sorts: some of them are panegyrical, others moral, the rest jovial, or (if I may so call them) Bacchanalian. As difficult as he makes it, and as indeed it is, to

imitate Pindar, yet, in his most elevated flights, and in the sudden changes of his subject with almost imperceptible connexions, that Theban Poet is his master. But Horace is of the more bounded stanza, and confines himself strictly to one sort of verse, or fancy, every Ode. That which will distinguish his style from all other poets, is the elegance of his words, and the numerousness of his verse. There is nothing so delicately turned in all the Roman language. There appears in every part of his diction, or, to speak English, in all his expressions, a kind of noble and bold purity. His words are chosen with as much exactness as Virgil's; but there seems to be a greater spirit in them. There is a secret happiness attends his choice, which in Petronius is called Curiosa Felicitas, and which I suppose he had from the feliciter audere of Horace himself. But the most distinguishing part of all his character seems to me to be his briskness, his jollity, and his good humour; and those I have chiefly endeavoured to copy. His other excellencies, I confess, are above my imitation. One Ode, which infinitely pleased me in the reading, I have attempted to translate in Pindaric Verse: it is that which is inscribed to the present Earl of Rochester, to whom I nave particular obligations, which this small testimony of my gratitude can never pay. It is his darling in the Latin, and I have taken some pains to make it my masterpiece in English; for which reason I took this kind of verse, which allows more latitude than any other. Every one knows it was introduced into our language, in this age, by the happy genius of Mr. Cowley. The seeming easiness of it has made it spread: but it has not been considered enough, to be so well cultivated. It languishes in almost every hand but his, and some very few, whom, to keep the rest in countenance, I do not name. He, indeed, has brought it as near perfection as was possible in so a short a time. But if I may be allowed to speak my mind modestly, and without injury to his sacred ashes, somewhat of the purity of the English, somewhat of more equal thoughts, somewhat of sweetness in the numbers, in one word, somewhat of a finer turn, and more Lyrical Verse, is yet wanting. As for the soul of it, which consists in the warmth and vigour of fancy, the masterly figures, and the copiousness of imagiation, he has excelled all others in this kind. Yet, if the kind itself be capable of more perfection, though rather in the ornamental parts of it, than the essential, what rules of morality or respect have I broken, in naming the defects, that they may hereafter be amended? Imitation is a nice point, and there are few Poets who

deserve to be models in all they write. Mil ton's Paradise Lost is admirable; but am I therefore bound to maintain, that there are no flats amongst his elevations, when 't is evident he creeps along sometimes, for above a hundred lines together. Cannot I admire the height of his invention, and the strength of his expressions, without defending his antiquated words, and the perpetual harshness of their sound? It is as much commendation as a man can bear, to own him excellent; all beyond it is idolatry.

Since Pindar was the prince of Lyric Poets, let me have leave to say, that, in imitating him, our numbers should, for the most part, be Lyrical. For variety, or rather where the majesty of thought requires it, they may be stretched to the English Heroic of five feet, and to the French Alexandrine of six. But the ear must preside and direct the judgment to the choice of numbers. Without the nicety of this, the harmony of Pindaric Verse can never be complete: the cadency of one line must be a rule to that of the next; and the sound of the former must slide gently into that which follows; without leaping from one extreme into another. It must be done like the shadowings of a picture, which fall by degrees into a darker colour. I shall be glad, if I have so explained myself as to be understood; but if I have not, quod nequeo dicere, et sentio tantum, must be my excuse.

There remains much more to be said on this subject; but, to avoid envy, I will be silent. What I have said is the general opinion of the best judges, and in a manner has been forced from me, by seeing a noble sort of Poetry so happily restored by one man, and so grossly copied by almost all the rest. A musical ear, and a great genius, if another Mr. Cowley could arise, in another age may bring it to perfection. In the mean time,

-Fungar vice cotis, acutum

Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi. I hope it will not be expected from me that should say any thing of my fellow undertakers in this Miscellany. Some of them are too nearly related to me, to be commended without suspicion of partiality: others, I am sure, need it not; and the rest I have not perused.

To conclude, I am sensible that I have written this too hastily and too loosely: I fear I have been tedious, and, which is worse, it comes out from the first draught, and uncorrected. This I grant is no excuse; for it may be reasonably urged, why he did not write with more leisure, or if he had it not (which was certainly my case,) why did he attempt to write on so nice a subject?

The objection is unanswerable; but in part of recompense, let me assure the reader, that, in hasty productions, he is sure to meet with an author's present sense, which cooler thoughts would possibly have disguised. There is undoubtedly more of spirit, though not of judgment, in these uncorrect Essays, and consequently, though my hazard be the greater, yet the reader's pleasure is not the less.

JOHN DRYDEN.

TRANSLATIONS FROM THEO

CRITUS.

AMARYLLIS;

OR, THE THIRD IDYLLIUM OF THEOCRITUS PARAPHRASED.

To Amaryllis love compels my way
My browzing goats upon the mountain stray :
O Tityrus, tend them well, and see them fed
In pastures fresh, and to their watering led;
And 'ware the ridgling with his budding head.
Ah, beauteous nymph! can you forget your love,
The conscious grottos, and the shady grove;
Where stretch'd at ease your tender limbs
were laid,

Your nameless beauties nakedly display'd?
Then I was call'd your darling, your desire,
With kisses such as set my soul on fire :
But you are chang'd, yet I am still the same;
My heart maintains for both a double flame;
Griev'd, but unrnov'd, and patient of your scorn:
So faithful I, ard you so much forsworn!
I die, and death will finish all my pain;
Yet, eie I die, behold me once again:
Am I so much deform'd, so chang'd of late?
What partial judges are our love and hate!
Ten wildings have I gather'd for my dear;
How ruddy like your lips their streaks appear!
Far off you view'd them with a longing eye
Upon the topmost branch (the tree was high :)
Yet nimbly up, from bough to bough I swerv'd,
And for to-morrow have ten more reserv'd.
Look on me kindly, and some pity show,
Or give me leave at least to look on you.
Some god transform me by his heavenly power
E'en to a bee to buzz within your bower,
The winding ivy-chaplet to invade,

And folded fern, that your fair forehead shade.
Now to my cost the force of love I find;
The heavy hand it bears on humankind.

The milk of tigers was his infant food,
Taught from his tender years the taste of blood;
His brother whelps and he ran wild about the
wood.

Ah nymph, train'd up in his tyrannic court,
To make the sufferings of your slaves your
Unheeded ruin! treacherous delight! [sport!
O polish'd hardness, soften'd to the sight!
Whose radiant eyes your ebon brows adorn,
Like midnight those, and these like break of
morn!

Smile once again, revive me with your charms:
And let me die contented in your arms.
I would not ask to live another day,
Might I but sweetly kiss my soul away.
Ah why am I from empty joys debarr'd?
For kisses are but empty when compar'd.
I rave, and in my raging fit shall tear
The garland which I wove for you to wear,
Of parsley, with a wreath of ivy bound,
And border'd with a rosy edging round.
What pangs I feel, unpitied and unheard!
Since I must die, why is my fate deferr'd!
I strip my body of my shepherd's frock:
Behold that dreadful downfall of a rock, [high.
Where yon old fisher views the waves from
"T is that convenient leap I mean to try.
You would be pleas'd to see me plunge to shore,
But better pleas'd if I should rise no more.
I might have read my fortune long ago,
When, seeking my success in love to know,
I tried the infallible prophetic way,
A poppy-leaf upon my palm to lay :

I struck, and yet no lucky crack did follow;
Yet I struck hard, and yet the leaf lay hollow:
And, which was worse, if any worse could
prove,
[love.
The withering leaf foreshow'd your withering
Yet farther (ah, how far a lover dares!)
My last recourse I had to sieve and sheers;
And told the witch Agreo my disease:
(Agreo, that in harvest us'd to lease:
But harvest done, to char-work did aspire;
Meat, drink, and twopence was her daily hire,)
To work she went, her charms she mutter'd o'er,
And yet the resty sieve wagg'd ne'er the more;
I wept for woe, the testy beldame swore,
And, foaming with her god, foretold my fate;
That I was doom'd to love, and you to hate.
A milk-white goat for you I did provide ;
Two milk-white kids run frisking by her side,
For which the nut-brown lass, Erithacis,
Full often offer'd many a savoury kiss.
Hers they shall be, since you refuse the price:
What madman would o'erstand his market
twice!

My right eye itches, some good luck is near, Perhaps my Amaryllis may appear;