APPENDIX, 177 



leflen or greaten any thing. Strong and glowing colours are 

 the juft refemblances of bold metaphors, but both mutt be 

 judicioully applied; for there is a difference betwixt Daring 

 and Fool-hardinefs. Lucan and Statius often ventured them 

 too far ; our Virgil never. But the great defeat of the Phar- 

 falia and the 'Thebals was. in the defign - y if that had been 

 more perfect, we might have forgiven many of their bold 

 ftrokes in the colouring, or at leaft excufed them; yet fome 

 of them are fuch as Demofthenes or Cicero could not have de- 

 fended* Virgil, if he could have feen the firft verfes of the 

 Sylvte, would have thought Statius mad in his fuftian defcrip- 

 iion of the Statue on the Brazen Horfe : But that Poet was 

 always in a foam at his fetting out, even before the motion of 

 the race had warmed him. The fobernefs of Virgil whom he 

 read, it feems to little purpofe, might hsve fhewn him the 

 difference betwixt '. " Arm a virumque cano, and Magnanimum 

 seacidem, formidatamque tonanti progeniem." But Virgil knew 

 how to rife by degrees in his expreffions : Statius was in his 

 towering heights at the firft ftretch of his pinions. The de- 

 fcription of his running horfe, juft ftarting in the funeral 

 games for Archemorus, though the verfes are wonderfully 

 fine, are the true image of their author : 

 Stare adeo nefcit, pereunt veftigia mille 

 Ante fugam $ abfentemque ferit gravis ungula campum. 

 Which would coft me an hour, if I had the leifure to tranflate 

 them, there is fo much of beauty in the original. Virgil, as 

 he better knew his colours, fo he knew better how and where 

 to place them. In as much hafte as I am, I cannot forbear 

 giving one example.: It is faid of him, that he read the fecond, 

 fourth, and fixth books of his ^Eneis to Auguftus Casfar. In 

 the fixth (which we are fare he read, becaufe we know Oc- 



Z tavia 



