Few words will suffice to answer his other objections. He demands why those several transformations are mentioned in that poem:--And is not fable then the life and soul of poetry? Can himself assign a more proper subject of pastoral than the _Saturnia regna_, the age and scene of this kind of poetry? What theme more fit for the song of a god, or to imprint religious awe, than the omnipotent power of transforming the species of creatures at their pleasure? Their families lived in groves, near the clear springs; and what better warning could be given to the hopeful young shepherds, than that they should not gaze too much into the liquid dangerous looking-glass, for fear of being stolen by the water-nymphs, that is, falling and being drowned, as Hylas was? Pasiphaë's monstrous passion for a bull is certainly a subject enough fitted for bucolics. Can M. Fontenelle tax Silenus for fetching too far the transformation of the sisters of Phaëton into trees, when perhaps they sat at that very time under the hospitable shade of those alders and poplars--or the metamorphosis of Philomela into that ravishing bird, which makes the sweetest music of the groves? If he had looked into the ancient Greek writers, or so much as consulted honest Servius, he would have discovered, that, under the allegory of this drunkenness of Silenus, the refinement and exaltation of men's minds by philosophy was intended. But, if the author of these reflections can take such flights in his wine, it is almost pity that drunkenness should be a sin, or that he should ever want good store of burgundy and champaign. But indeed he seems not to have ever drank out of Silenus's tankard, when he composed either his Critique or Pastorals. His censure on the fourth seems worse grounded than the other. It is entitled, in some ancient manuscripts, the "History of the Renovation of the World." He complains, that he "cannot understand what is meant by those many figurative expressions:" but, if he had consulted the younger Vossius's dissertation on this Pastoral, or read the excellent oration of the emperor Constantine, made French by a good pen of their own, he would have found there the plain interpretation of all those figurative expressions; and, withal, very strong proofs of the truth of the Christian religion; such as converted heathens, as Valerianus, and others. And, upon account of this piece, the most learned of all the Latin fathers calls Virgil a Christian, even before Christianity. Cicero takes notice of it in his books of Divination; and Virgil probably had put it in verse a considerable time before the edition of his Pastorals. Nor does he appropriate it to Pollio, or his son, but complimentally dates it from his consulship; and therefore some one, who had not so kind thoughts of M. Fontenelle as I, would be inclined to think him as bad a Catholic as critic in this place.