tion of a picture, which charmed the miftrefs of the world.*

• I would be underflood to propose the conjecture with the greatest diffidence-but might not our poet, during the course of the games in general, have had the Ludi Seculares in view? They were celebrated, while AUGUSTUS held the reins; and VIRGIL's prefumed allusion to them muft have been particularly flattering to his patron, and the people.-VIRGIL dy'd in the year of Rome 735; and the fecular games were exhibited in the following year. It must be concluded that the defign of AUGUSTUS was publicly known at Rome, when the poet wrote, or at least when he had given his corrections to the first fix books of the Eneid, which his death intervening permitted not to the last,

V

The END.

HE lamentations of VIRGIL's criti

Tcal admirers over the Gates of Sleep

(an aukward excrefcence, which injures the form of the Sixth Book) have always reminded me of the Sibyl's obfervation to ENEAS;

"Facilis defcenfus Averni; "Sed revocare gradum, fuperafq; evadere ad auras, "Hoc opus, hic labor est.”

The poet has with due majesty introduCed his hero to the infernal regions, but the manner of his return from them bas been found effentially defective.

And

And here I would not be understood to include the critic of paradoxes in the list of: VIRGIL's admirers, as he can only be confidered an admirer of himself. His myfle-rious demonftration of this book, fringed with a mafs of quotations from ancient authors, which too frequently make not for him, and not uncommonly against him, prove this to a real demonftration; and his conftruction of the paffage in question: is glaringly wrefted to protect a wild hypothefis.*

There

The friends of the Roman are concerned, that he should overfet an elegant fyftem, which he had put together, and embellished with no ímall pains; the friends, not the flatterers of Dr. WARBURTON, may as fincerely grieve, that he fhould waste a torrent of learning on a subject, which (if he had read the whole, before he had criticised it) he would have obferved his author to declare a dream, and a falfehood.

The (1) explanation of falfa' by fhadowy ie at belt a fhadowy' amendment. The word

moreover

1) See WARBURTON's Differtations.