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Blackwell 6-30-25 12021

N. B. THE READER is earnestly requested to notice, and to correct, the following errata, before he enters upon the work.

PREFACE.

THE following work aspires to determine a question, not unimportant to history and religion, namely, the true nature, design, and import, of Virgil's Fourth Eclogue; by shewing, that it was written in honour of the birth-day of OCTAVIUS, afterwards AUGUSTUS CESAR, when he had recently laid the first solid foundation of sovereign power, upon which he shortly after erected THE IMPERIAL MÓNARCHY OF ROME. The argument, establishing this fact, will be found interesting in its progress, and momentous in its issue.

The first chapter of the work being, in effect, an introduction to the general matter of the argument, I shall detain the reader in

this preface, only by making some short preliminary observations relative to its form and arrangement.

To the original poem, which is prefixed for the accommodation of the classical scholar, I have subjoined, for the English reader, a new poetical translation, as nearly literal as I could render it. This I preferred to a prose translation, although the latter might certainly be rendered more exactly literal, because I wished to endeavour to convey, together with the strict sense of the original, some notion also of its spirit and poetical character; an object not to be attained by any translation in prose. For the further benefit of the English reader, to whom I was anxious to render this treatise as intelligible and interesting, if possible, as to the classical scholar, versions are added of all quotations occurring in the work.

The work itself is divided into seven chapters. The FIRST chapter, takes a gene