of his care; for he pictures nature in disorder, with which the study
and choice of words is inconsistent. This is the proper wit of dialogue
or discourse, and consequently of the drama, where all that is said is
to be supposed the effect of sudden thought; which, though it excludes
not the quickness of wit in repartees, yet admits not a too curious
election of words, too frequent allusions, or use of tropes, or, in
fine, anything that shows remoteness of thought or labour in the writer.
On the other side, Virgil speaks not so often to us in the person of
another, like Ovid, but in his own: he relates almost all things as from
himself, and thereby gains more liberty than the other, to express his
thoughts with all the graces of elocution, to write more figuratively,
and to confess as well the labour as the force of his imagination.
Though he describes his Dido well and naturally, in the violence of her
passions, yet he must yield in that to the Myrrha, the Biblis, the
Althæa, of Ovid; for as great an admirer of him as I am, I must
acknowledge, that if I see not more of their souls than I see of Dido's,
at least I have a greater concernment for them: and that convinces me
that Ovid has touched those tender strokes more delicately than Virgil
could. But when action or persons are to be described, when any such
image is to be set before us, how bold, how masterly are the strokes of
Virgil! We see the objects he presents us with in their native figures,
in their proper motions; but so we see them, as our own eyes could never
have beheld them so beautiful in themselves. We see the soul of the
poet, like that universal one of which he speaks, informing and moving
through all his pictures:

--Totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem, et magno so corpore miscet.