Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/55

Solomon hath told us, there is no­thing new beneath the Sun. Who then can pass for an Inventor, if Homer, as well as Virgil must be depriv'd of that Glory? Is Versailles the less a New Building, because the Architect of that Palace has imita­ted others which were built before it? Walls, Doors and Windows, Apartments, Offices, Rooms of convenience and Magnificence, are in all great Houses. So Descriptions, Figures, Fables, and the rest, must be in all Heroick Poems: they are the common Materials of Poetry, furnish'd from the Magazin of Nature; every Poet has as much right to them, as every Man has to Air or Water. Quid prohibetis aquas? Ʋsus communis aquarum est. But the Argument of the Work, that is to say, its principal Action, the Oeconomy and Disposition of it; these are the things which distinguish Copies from Originals. The Poet, who borrows nothing from others, is yet to be Born; he and the Jews Messias will come together. There are parts of the Æneis, which re­semble some parts both of the Ilias and of the Odysses: as for Example, Æneas descended into Hell, and Ulysses had been there before him: Æneas lov'd Dido, and Ulysses lov'd Calypso: In few words, Virgil has imi­tated Homer's Odysses in his first six Books, and in his six last the Ilias. But from hence can we infer, that the two Poets write the same History? Is there no invention in some other parts of Virgil's Æneis? The disposition of so many various Matters, is not that his own? From what Book of Homer had Virgil his Episode of Nysus and Euryalus, of Mezentius and Lausus? From whence did he borrow his Design of Bringing Æneas into Italy?, of Establishing the Roman Empire on the Foundations of a Trojan Colony: to say nothing of the Honour he did his Patron, not only in his descent from Venus, but in making him so like her in his best Features, that the Goddess might have mistaken Augustus for her Son. He