But I've already troubled you too long,
Nor dare attempt a more adventurous song.
My humble verse demands a softer theme,
A painted meadow, or a purling stream:
Unfit for heroes; whom immortal lays
And lines like Virgil's, or like yours, should praise.
[186] It is observable that our author finishes this poem with the first line of his Pastorals, as Virgil closed his Georgics with the first line of his Eclogues. The preceding couplet scarcely rises to mediocrity, and seems modelled from Dryden's version of the passage imitated:
Whilst I at Naples pass my peaceful days,
Affecting studies of less noisy praise.—Wakefield.
The conclusion is feeble and flat. The whole should have ended with the speech of Thames.—Warton.