THE PREFACE. THE Georgics of Virgil were considered by Dryden and Addison to be the most complete, elaborate, and finished piece of all antiquity; and the Poetry of the First Book more sublime than any other part. They contain a vast mass of agricultural, of astronomical, and mythological knowledge, the attainment of which would not only require the genius and taste of Virgil, -but in some measure the prosecution of the same studies and the same modes of life. Even many of those who lived near his own time found fault with his positions, because they themselves did not sufficiently comprehend the relevancy of their different allusions, and applications. Both Seneca and Pliny assert, that many of his observations were more calculated to delight, than instruct his readers: but Seneca and Pliny were cultivators of philosophy, and not cultivators of land: and his scientific maxims and precepts, especially those alluded to by these writers, were well established in his own age by practical experience, and by no means invalidated by the partial expositions of those who were not so well acquainted with the subject. Columella was a great admirer of Virgil's agricultural science; and being himself a skilful farmer was enabled a |