And monstrous crimes in every shape are crowned. } The peaceful peasant to the wars is pressed; The fields lie fallow in inglorious rest; The plain no pasture to the flock affords; The crooked scythes are straightened into swords: And there Euphrates her soft offspring arms, And here the Rhine rebellows with alarms; The neighbouring cities range on several sides, } Perfidious Mars long-plighted leagues divides, } And o'er the wasted world in triumph rides. } So four fierce coursers, starting to the race, Scour through the plain, and lengthen every pace; Nor reins, nor curbs, nor threatening cries, they fear, But force along the trembling charioteer. FOOTNOTES: [4] The poetry of this book is more sublime than any part of Virgil, if I have any taste. And if ever I have copied his majestic style, it is here. The compliment he makes Augustus, almost in the beginning, is ill imitated by his successors, Lucan and Statius. They dedicated to tyrants; and their flatteries are gross and fulsome. Virgil's address is both more lofty and more just. In the three last lines of this Georgic, I think I have discovered a secret compliment to the emperor, which none of the commentators have observed. Virgil had just before described the miseries which Rome had undergone betwixt the triumvirs and the commonwealth party: in the close of all, he seems to excuse the crimes committed by his patron Cæsar, as if he were constrained, against his own temper, to those violent proceedings, by the necessity of the times in general, but more particularly by his two partners, Antony and Lepidus, _Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas_. They were the head-strong horses, who hurried Octavius, the trembling charioteer, along, and were deaf to his reclaiming them. I observe, farther, that the present wars, in which all Europe, and part of Asia, are engaged at present, are waged in the same places here described: _Hinc movet Euphrates, illinc Germania, bellum, &c._ as if Virgil had prophesied of this age. [5] Dr Carey reads _ear_. I have not disturbed the text, though his conjecture is ingenious. [6] Restored by Dr Carey. The first and second editions have _other_. [7] First edit. Argos; restored by Dr Carey. [8] _Southern,_ according to the earlier editions; but, as Dr Carey observes, this must be a mistake of the pen or press. [9] Dr Carey places a comma after skies, and thus makes _come_ the preterite participle, instead of the verb in the present tense. But I have followed Dryden's punctuation, which gives a plain meaning. [10] Dr Carey reads _serenely_, but there is no occasion to disturb the text. The word _securely_, though bold, is poetical, and implies the reliance which the husbandman places upon the steady and serene radiance of the sun. GEORGICS, BOOK II. ARGUMENT.