TRAPP.

  MELIBAEUS.

  Beneath the shade which beechen-boughs diffuse,
  You, Tityrus, entertain your Silvan muse: 
  Round the wide world in banishment we roam,
  Forc’d from our pleasing fields, and native home: 
  While stretch’d at ease you sing your happy loves: 
  And Amaryllis fills the shady groves.

  TITYRUS.

  These blessings, friend, a deity bestow’d: 
  For never can I deem him less than God. 
  The tender firstlings of my woolly breed
  Shall on his holy altar often bleed. 
  He gave my kine to graze the flowry plain: 
  And to my pipe renew’d the rural strain.

DRYDEN.

Dr. Trapp towards the conclusion of his Preface to the Aeneid, has treated Dryden with less reverence, than might have been expected from a man of his understanding, when speaking of so great a genius.  The cause of Trapp’s disgust to Dryden, seems to have been this:  Dryden had a strong contempt for the priesthood, which we have from his own words,

  “Priests of all professions are the same.”

and takes every opportunity to mortify the usurping superiority of spiritual tyrants.  Trapp, with all his virtues (for I think it appears he possessed many) had yet much of the priest in him, and for that very reason, perhaps, has shewn some resentment to Dryden; but if he has with little candour of criticism treated Mr. Dryden, he has with great servility flattered Mr. Pope; and has insinuated, as if the Palm of Genius were to be yielded to the latter.  He observes in general, that where Mr. Dryden shines most, we often see the least of Virgil.  To omit many other instances, the description of the Cyclops forging Thunder for Jupiter, and Armour for Aeneas, is elegant and noble to the last degree in the Latin; and it is so to a great degree in the English.  But then is the English a translation of the Latin?

  Hither the father of the fire by night,
  Thro’ the brown air precipitates his flight: 
  On their eternal anvil, here he found
  The brethren beating, and the blows go round.

The lines are good, and truely poetical; but the two first are set to render

  Hoc tunc ignipotens caelo descendit ab alto.

There is nothing of caelo ab alto in the version; nor by night, brown air, or precipitates his sight, in the original.  The two last are put in the room of

  Ferrum exercebant vasto Cylopes in antro,
  Brontesque, Steropesque, & nudus membra Pyraemon.

Vasto in antro, in the first of these lines, and the last line is entirely left out in the translation.  Nor is there any thing of eternal anvils, or hers he found, in the original, and the brethren beating, and the blows go round, is but a loose version of Ferrum exercebant. Dr. Trapp has allowed, however, that though Mr. Dryden is often distant from the original, yet he sometimes rises to a more excellent height, by throwing out implied graces, which none but so great a poet was capable of.  Thus in the 12th book, after the last speech of Saturn,