VIRGILS GNAT. LONG SINCE DEDICATED TO THE MOST NOBLE AND EXCELLENT LORD, THE EARLE OF LEICESTER, LATE DECEASED. 1591. LONG SINCE DEDICATED TO THE MOST NOBLE AND EXCELLENT LORD, THE EARLE OF LEICESTER, LATE DECEASED. WRONG'D, yet not daring to expreffe my paine, To you (great Lord) the causer of my care, In clowdie teares my cafe I thus complaine Unto your felfe, that onely privie are. But if that any Edipus unware Shall chaunce, through power of fome divining fpright, To reade the fecrete of this riddle rare, And know the purporte of my evill plight; But what fo by my felfe may not be showen, Ver. 1. Wrong'd, &c.] See the Life of the Poet. TODD. A a 4 WE We now have playde, Auguftus, wantonly, Tuning our fong unto a tender Mufe, Ver. 1. We now have playde, &c.] Spenfer should not have undertaken to translate the Culex. His verfion is in many places wrong, and in fome fenfelefs; nor is it any wonder; for the original is fo corrupted, that no sense can be made of many lines in it, without having recourse to conjecture; and, where it is not corrupted, it is often very intricate and obfcure. Scaliger has done much, in his excellent notes, towards settling and illuftrating it: but, after all, the commentary is better than the text; and we may fay of Scaliger's Culex, what Scaliger faid of Cafaubon's Perfius: "La fauce vaut mieux que le poiffon." I know not how to believe that Virgil is the author of that poem, though Scaliger is fully perfuaded of it. JORTIN. Spenfer's Culex is a vague and arbitrary paraphrase of a poem not properly belonging to Virgil. From the teftimony of many early Latin writers it may be justly concluded, that Virgil wrote an elegant poem with this title. Nor is it improbable that, in the Culex at present attributed to Virgil, fome very few of the original phrafes, and even verfes, may remain, under the accumulated incruftation of criticks, imitators, interpolators, and paraphrafts; which corrupts what it conceals. But the texture, the character, and fubstance, of the genuine poem is almost entirely loft. T. WARTON. Profeffor Heyne, in his edition of Virgil, has very ingeniously endeavoured to reftore the violated beauty of this little poem; and has accordingly fubjoined, to the Culex ufually attributed to the bard of Mantua, "CULEX probabiliter reftitutus, cum notatione interpolationum." In the proemium to this poem, the learned critick makes this remark on Spenfer's tranflation of it. "Patrio fermone, octonis verfibus in ftrophas coëuntibus, redditum eft hoc carmen a Spenfero, poëta nobili Britanno, in ejus Opp. Nec fine voluptate illud facile perlegas. Adeo nihi vel hoc exemplo patuit, quanto expeditius effet poëtam carmine vernaculo reddere, quam verba |