The fixtb Book of the EN EI D. 51 



life, or that he was fo while employed upon the Eneid. The 

 duties of religion, and the fuperintending care of providence, 

 are by no other Pagan author fo warmly enforced as in this 

 poem ; and the energy with which, in the fixth book, and in 

 one pafTage of the eighth, (v. 666.) he afTerts a future retribu- 

 tion, feems to prove, that he was fo far in earned with regard 

 to this matter, as to believe, that it was not, as the Epicureans 

 affirmed, either abfurd or improbable. 



Let it be remarked, in the third place, that no poet ever 

 thought of fo prepoderous a method of pleafing and indructing 

 his readers, as firft to employ all his {kill in adorning his fable, 

 and then tell them, that they ought not to believe a word of it. 

 The true poet's aim is very different. He adapts himfelf to the 

 opinions that prevail among the people for whom he writes, 

 that they may the more eafily acquiefce in his narrative ; or he 

 is careful, at lead, to make his fable confident with itfelf, in 

 order to give it as much as poffible the appearance of ferioufnefs 

 and truth. We know, that the fcenery of the fixth book is 

 wholly fictitious ; but the Romans did not certainly know how 

 far it might be fo : founded as it was on ancient tradition, 

 which no hidory they had could overturn ; and on philofophi- 

 cal opinions, which they had never heard confuted, and which, 

 where Revelation was unknown, might feem refpectable, on 

 account of the abilities of Pythagoras, Plato, and other 

 great men who had taught them. 



To which I may add, 4^/y, as an argument decifive of the 

 prefent quedion, That if Virgil wifhed his countrymen to be- 

 lieve him to have been not in earned in what he had told them of 

 a pre-exident and future date, he mud alfo have wifhed them to 

 underdand, that the compliments he had been paying to the 

 mod favourite characters among their ancedors were equally 

 infincere ; and that what he had faid of the virtues of Camil- 

 t lus, Brutus, Cato, Scipio, and even Augustus himfelf, 

 was altogether vifionary, and had as good a right to a pafTage 



G 2 through 



