That
which cures the manners by alterative physic, as I said before, must
proceed by insensible degrees; but that which purges the passions
must do its business all at once, or wholly fail of its effect--at
least, in the present operation--and without repeated doses. We
must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.
Thus, my lord, you pay the fine of my forgetfulness,; and yet the
merits of both causes are where they were, and undecided, till you
declare whether it be more for the benefit of mankind to have their
manners in general corrected, or their pride and hard-heartedness
removed.
I must now come closer to my present business, and not think of
making more invasive wars abroad, when, like Hannibal, I am called
back to the defence of my own country. Virgil is attacked by many
enemies; he has a whole confederacy against him; and I must
endeavour to defend him as well as I am able. But their principal
objections being against his moral, the duration or length of time
taken up in the action of the poem, and what they have to urge
against the manners of his hero, I shall omit the rest as mere
cavils of grammarians--at the worst but casual slips of a great
man's pen, or inconsiderable faults of an admirable poem, which the
author had not leisure to review before his death.
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