some apt similitude which illustrates his subject and yet palls not his audience. I need give your lordship but one example of this kind, and leave the rest to your observation when next you review the whole “Æneis” in the original, unblemished by my rude translation; it is in the first hook, where the poet describes Neptune composing the ocean, on which Æolus had raised a tempest without his permission. He had already chidden the rebellious winds for obeying the commands of their usurping master; he had warned them from the seas; he had beaten down the billows with his mace; dispelled the clouds, restored the sunshine, while Triton and Cymothoe were heaving the ships from off the quicksands, before the poet would offer at a similitude for illustration:— “_Ac_, _veluti magno in populo cum sæpe coorta est_ _Seditio_, _sævitque animis ignobile vulgus_; _Jamque faces_, _et saxa volant_; _furor arma ministrat_; _Tum_, _pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem_ _Conspexere_, _silent_, _arrectisque auribus adstant_: _Ille regit dictis animos_, _et pectora mulcet_: _Sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor_, _æquora postquam_ _Prospiciens genitor_, _coeloque invectus aperto_ _Flectit equos_, _curruque volans dat lora secundo_.” This is the first similitude which Virgil makes in this poem, and one of the longest in the whole, for which reason I the rather cite it. While the storm was in its fury, any allusion had been improper; for the poet could have compared it to nothing more impetuous than itself; consequently he could have made no illustration. If he could have illustrated, it had been an ambitious ornament out of season, and would have diverted our concernment (_nunc non erat his locus_), and therefore he deferred it to its proper place. These are the criticisms of most moment which have been made against the “Æneis” by the ancients or moderns. As for the particular exceptions against this or that passage, Macrobius and Pontanus have answered them already. If I desired to appear more learned than I am, it had been as easy for me to have taken their objections and solutions as it is for a country parson to take the expositions of the Fathers out of Junius and Tremellius, or not to have named the authors from whence I had them; for so Ruæus (otherwise a most judicious commentator on Virgil’s works) has used Pontanus, his greatest benefactor, of whom he is very silent, and I do not remember that he once cites him.