On the other side, the pains and
diligence of ill poets is but thrown away when they want the genius
to invent and feign agreeably. But if the fictions be delightful
(which they always are if they be natural) if they be of a piece; if
the beginning, the middle, and the end be in their due places, and
artfully united to each other, such works can never fail of their
deserved success. And such is Virgil's episode of Dido and AEneas,
where the sourest critic must acknowledge that if he had deprived
his "AEneis" of so great an ornament, because he found no traces of
it in antiquity, he had avoided their unjust censure, but had wanted
one of the greatest beauties of his poem.
I shall say more of this in the next article of their charge against
him, which is--want of invention. In the meantime I may affirm, in
honour of this episode, that it is not only now esteemed the most
pleasing entertainment of the "AEneis," but was so accounted in his
own age, and before it was mellowed into that reputation which time
has given it; for which I need produce no other testimony than that
of Ovid, his contemporary:-
"Nec pars ulla magis legitur de corpore toto,
Quam non legitimo faedere junctus amor.
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