by 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 Æneïs in the original, unblemished by my rude translation. It is in the first book, 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 Cymothoë were heaving the ships from off the quick-sands, 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, cæloque invectus aperto, Flectit equos, currûque 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.[66] These are the criticisms of most moment which have been made against the Æneïs 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,[67] and 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.