could never have beheld them fo beautiful in them- felves. We fee the Soul of the Poet, like that univer- fal one of which he (peaks, informing and moving through all bis Pictures,
-Totamque infufi per artus Mens agitat molem, & magno fe corpore mifcet;
we behold him embellishing bis Images, as he makes Venus breathing beauty upon her Son Æneas.
-lumenque juventa Purpuseum, & lætos oculis affârat honores: Quale manus addunt Ebori decus, aut ubi flavo Argentum, Pariufve lapis circundatur auro.
See his Tempeft, his Funeral Sports, his Combat of Turnus and Æneas; and in his Georgicks, which I efteem the Divineft part of all his Writings, the Plague, the Country, the Battel of Bulls, the Labour of the Bees, and thofe many other excellent Images of Nature, moft of which are neither great in themfelves, ner have any natural Ornament to bear them up: But the Words wherewith he defcribes them are fo ex- cellent, that it might be well applied to him which was faid by Ovid, Materiam fuperabat opus: The very Sound of his Words has often fomewhat that is connatural to the Subject, and while we read him, we fit, as in a Play, beholding the Scenes of what he reprefents. To perform this, he made frequent use of Tropes, which you know change the nature of a known Word, by applying it to fome other fignification; and this is it which Horace means in his Epistle to the Pifo's.
Dixeris egregie, notum fi callida verbum Reddiderit junctura novum.
But I am fenfible have prefum'd too far to en-
tertain you with a rude Difcourfe of that Art, which