Notwithstanding all the high encomiums and mutual gratulations which they give one another, (for I am far from censuring the whole of that illustrious society, to which the learned world is much obliged,) after all those golden dreams at the Louvre, that their pieces will be as much valued, ten or twelve ages hence, as the ancient Greek or Roman, I can no more get it into my head that they will last so long, than I could believe the learned Dr H----k [of the Royal Society,] if he should pretend to show me a butterfly, that had lived a thousand winters. When M. Fontenelle wrote his Eclogues, he was so far from equalling Virgil, or Theocritus, that he had some pains to take before he could understand in what the principal beauty and graces of their writings do consist. _Cum mortuis non nisi larvæ luctantur._ FOOTNOTES: [288] There is a great deal of cant in this; there was just the same distinction in manners and knowledge between the clowns of Mantua and the courtiers of Augustus, as there is between persons of the same rank in modern times. [289] Hunting was as much an exercise of the Roman youths as of our own; and this might be easily proved from Virgil, were it not a well known fact. It was the sport with which Dido entertained the Trojans; and the wish of Ascanius upon the occasion, was worthy of a Frank, or any other German. [290] This is indistinctly expressed; but if the critic means to say, that the terms of hunting were put into French as the most fashionable language, he is mistaken. The hunting phrases still in use, are handed down to us from the Anglo-Norman barons, in whose time French was the only language spoken among those who were entitled to participate in an amusement to which the nobility claimed an exclusive privilege. [291] The Duke of Shrewsbury. [292] Most readers will be of opinion, that Walsh has rendered this celebrated passage not only flatly, but erroneously. His translation seems to infer, that the gods were in danger of dying, had they not _meanly_ complied with the conqueror. At any rate, the real compliment to Cato, which consists in weighing his sense of justice against that of the gods themselves, totally evaporates. Perhaps the following lines may express Lucan's meaning, though without the concise force of the original: The victor was the care of partial Heaven, But to the conquered cause was Cato's suffrage given. [293] Livy. [294] Essay of Poetry. PASTORAL I. OR, _TITYRUS AND MELIBOEUS_. ARGUMENT.