this book, can scarce be of Virgil's mind in preferring even the life of a philofopher to it. We e may, I think, read the Poet's clime in his defcription, for he feems to have been in a fweat at the writing of it. O quis me gelidis fub montibus Hami Siftat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra! And is every where mentioning among his chief pleafures, the coolnefs of his fhades and rivers, vales and grottoes, which a more Northern Poet would have omitted for the defcription of a funny hill, and firefide. The Third Georgic feems to be the most laboured of them all; there is a wonderful vigour and spirit in the defcription of the horse and chariot-race. The force of love is reprefented in noble inftances, and very fublime expreffions. The Scythian winter-piece appears fo very cold and bleak to the eye, that a man can scarce look on it without fhivering. The murrain at the end has all the expressiveness that words can give. It was here that the Poet ftrained hard to out-do Lucretius in the defcription of his plague, and if the reader would fee what fuccefs he had, he may find it at large in Scaliger. But Virgil seems no where fo well pleased, as when he is got among his bees in the Fourth Georgic: and ennobles the actions of fo trivial a creature, with metaphors drawn from the most important concerns of mankind. His verfes are not in a greater noise and hurry in the battle of Eneas and Turnus, than in the engagement of two fwarms. And as in his Eneis he com pares pares the labours of his Trojans to thofe of bees and pifinires, here he compares the labours of the bees to thofe of the Cyclops. In short, the laft Georgic was a good prelude to the Æneis; and very well fhewed what the Poet could do in the defcription of what was really great, by his defcribing the mock-grandeur of an infect with fo good a grace. There is more pleafantnefs in the little plat-form of a garden, which he gives us about the middle of this book, than in all the fpacious walks and water-works of Rapin. The fpeech of Proteus at the end can never be enough admired, and was indeed very fit to conclude fo divine a work. After this particular account of the beauties in the Georgics, I fhould in the next place endeavour to point out its imperfections, if it has any. But though I think there are fome few parts in it that are not fo beautiful as the reft, I fhall not prefume to name them, as rather fufpecting my own judgment, than I can believe a fault to be in that Poem, which lay fo long under Virgil's correction, and had his last hand put to it. The firft Georgic was probably burlefqued in the author's lifetime; for we ftill find in the Scholiafts a verse that ridicules part of a line tranflated from Hefiod. Nudus ara, fere nudus --And we may eafily guess at the judgment of this extraordinary critic, whoever he was, from his cenfuring this particular precept. We may be fure Virgil would not have tranflated it from Hefiod, had he not difcovered fome beauty in it; and indeed the beauty of it is what I have often before obferved to be fo frequently met with in Virgil, the delivering the precept fo indirectly, and fingling out the particular circumftance of fowing and plowing naked, to suggest to us us that thefe employments are proper only in the hot season of the year. I shall not here compare the ftyle of the Georgics with that of Lucretius, which the reader may fee already done in the preface of the fecond volume of Mifcellany Poems; but fhall conclude this Poem to be the most complete, elaborate, and finished piece of all antiquity. The Eneis indeed is of a nobler kind, but the Georgic is more perfect in its kind. The Eneis has a greater thofe of the Georgic are variety of beauties in it, but more exquisite. In fhort, the Georgic has all the perfection that can be expected in a Poem written by the greatest Poet in the flower of his age, when his invention was ready, his imagination warm, his judgment fettled, and all his faculties in their full vigour and maturity. The End of the FIRST Volume. in Dame Street, oppofite Caftle-Market Steps, the following Useful and Entertaining Books for Children may now be had. TH HE Renowned Hiftory of Giles Gingerbread; a little Boy who lived upon Learning. Price Two-pence, bound, gilt, and adorned with cuts, 2 Tom Thumb's Folio; or a new twopenny Plaything for Little Giants. 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