ot in your
favour, obtained part of their renown; Virgil, in particular: and yet I
am far from disagreeing with you on his subject in general. There is
such a dearth of invention in the Aeneid (and when he did invent, it was
often so foolishly), so little good sense, so little variety, and so
little power over the passions, that I have frequently said, from
contempt for his matter, and from the charm of his harmony, that I
believe I should like his poem better, if I was to hear it repeated, and
did not understand Latin. On the other hand, he has more than harmony:
whatever he utters is said gracefully, and he ennobles his images,
especially in the Georgics; or, at least, it is more sensible there,
from the humility of the subject. A Roman farmer might not understand
his diction in agriculture; but he made a Roman courtier understand
farming, the farming of that age, and could captivate a lord of
Augustus's bedchamber, and tempt him to listen to themes of rusticity.
On the contrary, Statius and Claudian, though talking of war, would
make a soldier despise them as bullies. That graceful manner of thinking
in Virgil seems to me to be more than style, if I do not refine too
much: and I admire, I confess, Mr. Addison's phrase, that Virgil "tossed
about his dung with an air of majesty." A style may be excellent without
grace: for instance, Dr. Swift's. Eloquence may bestow an immortal
style, and one of more dignity; yet eloquence may want that ease, that
genteel air that flows from or constitutes grace. Addison himself was
master of that grace, even in his pieces of humour, and which do not owe
their merit to style; and from that combined secret he excels all men
that ever lived; but Shakspeare, in humour,[1] by never dropping into an
approach towards burlesque and buffoonery, when even his humour
descended to characters that in other hands would have been vulgarly
low. Is not it clear that Will Wimble was a gentleman, though he always
lived at a distance from good company? Fielding had as much humour,
perhaps, as Addison; but, having no idea of grace, is perpetually
disgusting. His innkeepers and parsons are the grossest of their
profession; and his gentlemen are awkward when they should be at their
ease.

[Footnote 1: "_Addison's humour._" Undoubtedly there is much
gentlemanlike humour in Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley; but to say that
he "excels all men that ever lived" in that quality is an exaggeration
hardly to be und