scend from us, ought to have the same kind of influence on a generous mind. A noble soul would rather die than commit an action that should make his children blush when he is in his grave, and be looked upon as a reproach to those who shall live a hundred years after him. On the contrary, nothing can be a more pleasing thought to a man of eminence, than to consider that his posterity, who lie many removes from him, shall make their boasts of his virtues, and be honourable for his sake.

Virgil represents this consideration as an incentive of glory to Eneas, when after having shewn him the race of heroes who were to descend from him, Anchises adds, with a noble warmth,

DRYDEN.

Et dubitamus adhuc virtutem extendere factis ?-EN. vi. 806. And doubt we yet through dangers to pursue The paths of honour? Since I have mentioned this passage of Virgil, where Eneas was entertained with a view of his great descendants, I cannot forbear observing a particular beauty, which I do not know that any one has taken notice of. The list which he has there drawn up was in general to do honour to the Roman name, but more particularly to compliment Angustus. For this reason Anchises, who shews Æneas most of the rest of his descendants in the same order that they were to make their appearance in the world, breaks his method for the sake of Augustus, whom he singles out immediately after having mentioned Romulus, as the most illustrious person who was to rise in that empire which the other had founded. impatient to describe his posterity raised to the utmost pitch of glory, and therefore passes over all the rest to come at this great man, whom by this means he implicitly represents as making the most conspicuous figure among them. By this artifice the poet did not only give his emperor the greatest praise he could bestow upon him; but hindered his reader from drawing a parallel which would have been disadvantageous to him, had he been celebrated in his proper place, that is, after Pompey and Cæsar, who each of them eclipsed the other in military glory.

He was

Though there have been finer things spoken of Augustus than of any other man, all the wits of his age having tried to

outrival one another on that subject; he never received a compliment, which, in my opinion, can be compared, for sublimity of thought, to that which the poet here makes him. The English reader may see a faint shadow of it in Mr. Dryden's translation, for the original is inimitable:

Hic vir, hic est, &c.

EN. vi. 791.
But next behold the youth, of form divine,
Cæsar himself exalted in his line;
Augustus, promis'd oft, and long foretold,
Sent to the realm that Saturn rul'd of old;
Born to restore a better age of gold.
Afric and India shall his power obey,
He shall extend his propagated sway,

Beyond the solar year, without the starry way,
Where Atlas turns the rolling heavens around,

And his broad shoulders with their lights are crown'd.
At his foreseen approach, already quake

The Caspian kingdoms and Maotian lake.
Their seers behold the tempest from afar;

And threatening oracles denounce the war.

Nile hears him knocking at his sevenfold gate;

And seeks his hidden spring, and fears his nephew's fate:
Nor Hercules more lands or labours knew,
Not though the brazen-footed hind he slew;
Freed Erymanthus from the foaming boar;
And dipp'd his arrows in Lernæan gore.
Nor Bacchus turning from his Indian war,
By tigers drawn triumphant in his car;
From Nisus' top descending on the plains,
With curling vines around his purple reins.
And doubt we yet through dangers to pursue
The paths of honour?-

I could shew, out of other poets, the same kind of vision as this in Virgil, wherein the chief persons of the poem have been entertained with the sight of those who were to descend from them: but instead of that, I shall conclude with a rabbinical story, which has in it the oriental way of thinking, and is therefore very amusing.

Adam, say the rabbins, a little after his creation, was presented with a view of all those souls who were to be united to human bodies, and take their turn after him upon the earth. Among others, the vision set before him the soul of David. Our great ancestor was transported at the sight of so beautiful an apparition; but to his unspeakable grief was informed, that it was not to be conversant among men the space of one year.

Ostendent tereis hunc tantùm fata, neque ultrà
Esse sinent-

This youth (the blissful vision of a day)

EN. vi. 869.

Shall just be shewn on earth, and snatch'd away.-Dryden. Adam, to procure a longer life for so fine a piece of human nature, begged that threescore and ten years. (which he heard would be the age of man in David's time) might be taken out of his own life, and added to that of David. Accordingly, say the rabbins, Adam falls short of a thousand years, which was to have been the complete term of his life, by just so many years as make up the life of David. Adam having lived 930 years, and David 70.

This story was invented to shew the high opinion which the rabbins entertained of this man after God's own heart, whom the prophet, who was his own contemporary, could not mention without rapture, where he records the last poetical composition of David," of David the son of Jesse, of the man who was raised up on high, of the anointed of the God of Jacob, of the sweet Psalmist of Israel."

K

N° 139. THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 1713. -prisca fides facto, sed fama perennis.-VIRG. Æn. ix. 79. -The fact, thro' length of time obscure,

“I

Is hard to faith: yet shall the same endure.-DRYDEN.

"MOST VENERABLE NESTOR,

FIND that every body is very much delighted with the voice of your lion. His roarings against the tucer have been most melodious and emphatical. It is to be hoped, that the ladies will take warning by them, and not provoke him to greater outrages; for I observe, that your lion, as you yourself have told us, is made up of mouth and paws. For my own part, I have long considered with myself how I might express my gratitude to this noble animal that has so much the good of our country at his heart. After many thoughts on this subject, I have at length resolved to do honour to him, by compiling a history of his species, and extracting out of all authors whatever may redound to his reputation. In the prose cution of this design, I shall have no manner of regard to

what Esop has said upon the subject, whom I look upon to have been a republican by the unworthy treatment which he often gives to the king of beasts, and whom, if I had time, I could convict of falsehood and forgery, in almost every matter of fact which he has related of this generous animal. Your romance writers are likewise a set of men whose authority I shall build upon very little in this case. They all of them are born with a particular antipathy to lions, and give them no more quarter than they do giants, wherever they chance to meet them. There is not one of the seven champions, but when he has nothing else to do, encounters with a lion, and you may be sure always gets the better of him. In short, a knight-errant lives in a perpetual state of enmity with this noble creature, and hates him more than all things upon the earth, except a dragon. Had the stories recorded of them by these writers been true, the whole species would have been destroyed before now. After having thus renounced all fabulous authorities, I shall begin my memoirs of the lion with a story related of him by Aulus Gellius, and extracted by him out of Dion Cassius, an historian of undoubted veracity. It is the famous story of Androcles the Roman slave, which I premise for the sake of my learned reader, who needs go no farther in it, if he has read it already.

"Androcles was the slave of a noble Roman who was proconsul of Afric. He had been guilty of a fault, for which his master would have put him to death, had not he found an opportunity to escape out of his hands, and fled into the deserts of Numidia. As he was wandering among the barren sands, and almost dead with heat and hunger, he saw a cave in the side of a rock. He went into it, and finding at the farther end of it a place to sit down upon, rested there for some time. At length, to his great surprise, a huge overgrown lion entered at the mouth of the cave, and seeing a man at the upper end of it, immediately made towards him. Androcles gave himself* for gone; but the lion, instead of treating him as he expected, laid his paw upon his lap, and with a complaining kind of voice fell a licking his hand. Androcles, after having recovered himself a little from the fright he was in, observed the lion's paw to be exceedingly swelled by a * Up for lost.

large thorn that stuck in it. He immediately pulled it out, and by squeezing the paw very gently made a great deal of corrupt matter run out of it, which probably freed the lion from the great anguish he had felt some time' before. The lion left him upon receiving this good office from him, and soon after returned with a fawn which he' had just killed. This he laid down at the feet of his benefactor, and went off again in pursuit of his prey. An-. drocles, after having sodden the flesh of it by the sun, subsisted upon it until the lion had supplied him with another. He lived many days in this frightful solitude, the lion catering for him with great assiduity. Being tired at length with this savage society, he was resolved to deliver himself up into his master's hands, and suffer the worst effects of his displeasure, rather than be thus driven out from mankind. His master, as was customary for the proconsuls of Africa, was at that time getting together a present of the largest lions that could be found in the country, in order to send them to Rome, that they might' furnish out a show to the Roman people. Upon his poor' slave's surrendering himself into his hands, he ordered him to be carried away to Rome as soon as the lions were in readiness to be sent, and that for his crime he should be exposed to fight with one of the lions in the amphitheatre,' as usual, for the diversion of the people. This was all performed accordingly. Androcles, after such a strange run of fortune, was now in the area of the theatre amidst thousands of spectators, expecting every moment when his antagonist would come out upon him. At length a huge monstrous lion leaped out from the place where he had been kept hungry for the show. He advanced with: great rage towards the man, but on a sudden, after having regarded him a little wistfully, fell to the ground, and crept towards his feet with all the signs of blandishment and caress. Androcles, after a short pause, discovered that it was his old Numidian friend, and immediately renewed his acquaintance with him. Their mutual congratulations were very surprising to the beholders, who, upon hearing an account of the whole matter from Androcles, ordered him to be pardoned, and the lion to be given up into his possession. Androcles returned at Rome the civilities which he had received from him in the deserts of Afric.

Q