In the Georgics of Virgil, though esteemed the most finished work of that author, the parts are ill connected, and the transitions far from being sweet and easy. In the first book[9] he deviates from his subject to give a description of the five zones. The want of connection here is remarkable, as well as in the description of the prodigies that accompanied the death of Cæsar, with which the same book is concluded. A digression upon the praises of Italy in the second book[10], is not more happily introduced. And in the midst of a declamation upon the pleasures of husbandry, that makes part of the same book[11], the author appears personally upon the stage without the slightest connection. The two prefaces of Sallust look as if they had been prefixed by some blunder to his two histories. They will suit any other history as well, or any subject as well as history. Even the members of these prefaces are but loosely connected. They look more like a number of maxims or observations than a connected discourse. An episode in a narrative poem being in effect an accessory, demands not that strict union with the principal subject which is requisite betwixt a whole and its constituent parts. The relation however of principal and accessory being pretty intimate, an episode loosely connected with the principal subject will never be graceful. I give for an example the descent of Æneas into hell, which employs the sixth book of the Æneid. The reader is not prepared for this important event. No cause is assigned, that can make it appear necessary or even natural, to suspend, for so long a time, the principal action in its most interesting period. To engage Æneas to wander from his course in search of an adventure so extraordinary, the poet can find no better pretext, than the hero’s longing to visit the ghost of his father recently dead. In the mean time the story is interrupted, and the reader loses his ardor. An episode so extremely beautiful is not at any rate to be dispensed with. It is pity however, that it doth not arise more naturally from the subject. I must observe at the same time, that full justice is done to this incident, by considering it to be an episode; for if it be a constituent part of the principal action, the connection ought to be still more intimate. The same objection lies against that elaborate description of Fame in the Æneid[12]. Any other book of that heroic poem, or of any heroic poem, has as good a title to that description as the book where it is placed.