rag on their blazing lengths behind: Nor, as we think, do they at random rove, But, in determin'd times, through long ellipses move. And tho' sometimes they near approach the sun, Sometimes beyond our system's orbit run; Throughout their race they act their Maker's will, His pow'r declare, his purposes fulfil.

III. Of those preceptive poems that treat of the business and pleasures of mankind, Virgil's Georgics claim our first and principal attention. In these he has laid down the rules of husbandry in all its branches with the utmost exactness and perspicuity, and at the same time embellished them with all the beauties and graces of poetry. Though his subject was husbandry, he has delivered his precepts, as Mr Addison observes, not with the simplicity of a ploughman, but with the address of a poet: the meanest of his rules are laid