No. XCIX.

Sudden she storms ! she raves! you tip the wink:
But spare your censure; Silia does not drink.

POPE

IN

Madam,

You

In one of your former papers you were pleased to point out to us some latent beauties in Virgil, which I confess never occurred to me till I saw them illuminated by your pen. have given us a noble example, in searching into the hidden treasures of a classic author, who never can be admired too much, or read too often. If the Roman poet has been blamed for the improper sullen conduct of Dido, he has also undergone very severe censures for his treatment of queen Amata, the wife of the good Latinus, and mother of the fair Lavinia. "What an ignominious death," exclaims the critic, "has Virgil assigned the queen of Latium? She hangs herself. Where was the bowl of poison, or the golden-hilted dagger? either of which might have sustained her royal character, and sent her with dignity to the lower world. Master Cotton of the Peake has humorously ridiculed the catastrophe of Amata,

by sending the celebrated queen of Carthage, in the same manner, to the mansions of the dead:"

Thus, thus (quoth she) to shades of night

I go, and thus I take my flight.

With that she from the table swung

And happy 'twas the rope was strong.

I should never be forgiven by the admirers of this species of wit, if I here omitted to give the lines which describe the release of Dido from the fatal noose, by the many-coloured maid:

O Dido! thus I let thee loose

From twitch of suffocating noose;

Which said, and tossing high her blade,

With great dexterity, the maid,

O wonderful! even at one side blow

Spoil'd a good rope, and down dropp'd Dido.

But to all outcries of the critics, and to all such poor attempts as those of Cotton, Scarron,

and all the buffoon writers that have already

appeared or ever shall exist, give me leave to answer by asserting, that their whole force united can never in the least degree wound the fame or sully the brightness of Virgil. But their fate will be the same as that rash fool, who by shooting his arrows frequently at the sun, soon became so blind that he could not distinguish day-light.

The low, inconsiderate, hasty manner, in which Amata puts an end to her own life, seem's to carry in it as fine a moral, and as delicate satire, as ever was conceived in poetry. Let us consider the character of that queen, and we must then allow, that the meanest catastrophe suited her, and was almost the inevitable consequence of her ill conduct. Let me not offend your delicacy, Mrs.

*

nor the delicacy of your fair readers, if I affirm that the chief characteristic of Amata, and the only particular very distinguishable in her, is her devotion to the jolly god; her majesty seldom appears but under the full influence of his inspiration, and is generally, to use the language of inferior mortals, half seas over. The imperceptible progress of this detestable failing (I wish to give it the mildest appellation) is described distantly,

(

but most exactly, by the Swan of Mantua, in the picture which he gives us of Alecto; an immortal being, whom I really suppose to be the true and genuine goddess of drams:

Unfelt the monster glides through every vest,
And breathes the secret poison in her breast;
Now like a fillet round her temples roll'd.

PITT.

Can there be a more exact, or a more pointed description of the effects of the liquor? It slides down her throat into her bosom, and from thence rises into her head. You will permit me, madam, to quote Pitt or Dryden, as I deem either of them most answerable to the original, or clearest in conveying what I suppose to have been Virgil's original intent.

When Amata has swallowed down enough of the poison to give her courage, and not a sufficient quantity to take away her speech, she attacks her easy husband, and, if I may make use of a very low but very expressive phrase, "she gives him his own :"

At first the silent venom slid with ease,
And seiz'd the cooler senses by degrees;

Then, ere th' infected mass was fir'd too far,
In plaintive accents she began the war,

And thus bespoke her husband.

DRYDEN.

Talking gave, as indeed it never fails to give, new force and vigour to the liquor. I have known several of my friends, by the help only of two glasses of wine, talk themselves into a state of ebriety. Liquids have the same consequences, I presume, madam, in your sex, as in ours. Effects never deviate from their causes: and the intoxicated Amata, who began in a maudlin manner, soon rose into a more furious strain; but I will not trouble you with too many quotations. The Latian queen, finding that what she said rather moved the grief than roused the anger of Latinus, quitted him, and rushed franticly into the street, having, in all probability, stopped a moment at the favourite royal cabinet, to which, for the sake of dignity, I dare not give the appellation of a corner cupboard:

But now the spreading poison fir'd the whole,
Ev'n to the last recesses of her soul.

In her wild thoughts a thousand horrors rise,

And fierce and madding through the streets she flies.

PITT.

Then follows a simile, which if it were not a most apt allusion to Amata's wild state of mind, might not indeed appear sufficiently exalted for an epic poem: