[53] The vulgar, to use Gay's account, believe, How if on Swithin's feast the welkin lowers, And every pent-house streams with hasty showers; Twice twenty days shall clouds their fleeces drain, And wash the pavements with incessant rain. [54] The son of Sir Walter Moyle, an accomplished scholar, whom Dryden elsewhere mentions with esteem. He died in 1621. [55] It is agreeable to see, from this and other passages, that, notwithstanding an intervening rupture, our author, at the latter end of his life, was on good terms with his brother-in-law, to whom he was so much indebted at the commencement of his poetical career. [56] Author of the "True Intellectual System of the Universe," folio, 1678. [57] Milbourne is very severe on our author for crediting this story, of Virgil having condemned the Æneïd to the flames. But it is sanctioned by the Elder Pliny. "_D. Augustus carmina Virgilii cremari contra testamenti ejus verecundiam, vetuit; majusque ita vati testimonium contigit, quam si ipse sua probasset._"--HIST. NAT. vii. 30. [58] I am afraid, this passage, given as a just description of love, serves to confirm what is elsewhere stated, that Dryden's ideas of the female sex and of the passion were very gross and malicious. [59] "_Legatus est vir bonus, peregrè missus ad mentiendum reipublicæ causa_;" a sentence which Sir Henry wrote in the _Album_ of Christopher Flecamore, as he passed through Germany, when he went as ambassador to Venice. These words, says his biographer, Isaac Walton, "he could have been content should have been thus Englished: _An ambassador is an honest man, sent to_ lie _abroad for the good of his country_: but the word _mentiendum_ not admitting of a double meaning, like _lie_, (which at that time signified to _sojourn_, as well as to utter criminal falshood,) this pleasantry brought my Lord Ambassador into some trouble; Jasper Scioppius, a Romanist, about eight years afterwards, asserting in one of his works, that this was an acknowledged principle of the religion professed by King James, and those whom he employed as his representatives in foreign countries." See the Life of Sir Henry Wotton, p. 38. edit. 1670.--MALONE, p. 486. Note. [60] See the "Translation of Dido's Epistle to Æneas," Vol. xii. p. 34. [61]: The emperor Augustus divorced Scribonia, his second wife, in order to make room for his marriage with Livia. But the argument of our author from the Æneïd seems far-fetched. [62] This original and expressive word for a poet was long retained in Scotland.--See Dunbar's Lament for the Death of the Makyrs. [63] Mr Malone reads--_so strong_; but _strange_ here seems to signify _alarming_, or _startling_. [64] Dacier. [65] I fear there is something in this objection. Virgil, who lived in a peaceful court, does not draw his battles with the animation and reality of Homer, who, if he was not himself a warrior, was the poet of a rude and warlike age.