Essays on Theodicy

OF MR. LEIBNIZ.

A 3

of Livy, are undoubtedly suited to that age, original: "(a)" for whom the brevity of Sallust and the Oracles of Tacitus—so beautiful in a more advanced age—are then dangerous models. As for Virgil, equally fit to warm the frozen imagination of the elderly and to restrain the fiery imagination of the young, he is suitable for all ages, and it is not surprising that he pleased Mr. Leibniz. He read him with such application, reread him so often, and engraved him so deeply in his memory, that even in his old age he could still recite whole Books from start to finish. The Gentlemen of the Leipzig Journals original: "(b)" add that he benefited so much from this reading that he was able to compose a poem of three hundred verses in a single day, in which he did not allow himself a single elision An elision is the dropping of a vowel at the end of a word when the next word begins with a vowel to fit the rhythm of a verse; avoiding them is a difficult technical constraint.. But let us instead take this feat as a wit's game—difficult though it may be—rather than a remarkable fruit of reading Virgil. One would certainly have to be born with strange dispositions to draw a taste as singular, and I dare say as bizarre, as that for these laborious trifles from poems whose Author is primarily admirable for his constant disdain for everything that was not solidly beautiful.

(a) Quintilian, Book 2, Institutes of Oratory, chapter 17.

(b) The Acts of the Learned original: "Acta Eruditorum", Year 1717, page 323.