Chapter X (1)

'Tis want of genius that does more deny;
'Tis fear my praise should make your glory less;
And, therefore, like the modest painter, I
Must draw the veil, where I cannot express.

HENRY GRAHME.

TO

MR DRYDEN.

No undisputed monarch governed yet,
With universal sway, the realms of wit:
Nature could never such expence afford;
Each several province owned a several lord.
A poet then had his poetic wife,
One Muse embraced, and married for his life.
By the stale thing his appetite was cloyed,
His fancy lessened, and his fire destroyed.
But Nature, grown extravagantly kind,
With all her treasures did adorn your mind;
The different powers were then united found,
And you wit's universal monarch crowned.
Your mighty sway your great desert secures;
And every Muse and every Grace is yours.
To none confined, by turns you all enjoy:
Sated with this, you to another fly,
So, sultan-like, in your seraglio stand,
While wishing Muses wait for your command;
Thus no decay, no want of vigour, find:
Sublime your fancy, boundless is your mind.
Not all the blasts of Time can do you wrong--
Young, spite of age--in spite of weakness, strong.
Time, like Alcides, strikes you to the ground;
You, like Antæus, from each fall rebound.

H. ST. JOHN.

TO

MR DRYDEN,

ON

_HIS VIRGIL_.

'Tis said, that Phidias gave such living grace
To the carved image of a beauteous face,
That the cold marble might even seem to be
The life--and the true life, the imagery.

You pass that artist, Sir, and all his powers,
Making the best of Roman poets ours,
With such effect, we know not which to call
The imitation, which the original.

What Virgil lent, you pay in equal weight;
The charming beauty of the coin no less;
And such the majesty of your impress,
You seem the very author you translate.

'Tis certain, were he now alive with us,
And did revolving destiny constrain
To dress his thoughts in English o'er again,
Himself could write no otherwise than thus.

His old encomium never did appear
So true as now: "Romans and Greeks, submit!
Something of late is in our language writ,
More nobly great than the famed Iliads were."

JA. WRIGHT.

TO

MR DRYDEN,

ON

_HIS TRANSLATIONS_.

As flowers, transplanted from a southern sky,
But hardly bear, or in the raising die,
Missing their native sun,--at best retain
But a faint odour, and but live with pain;
So Roman poetry, by moderns taught, }
Wanting the warmth with which its author wrote, }
Is a dead image, and a worthless draught. }
While we transfuse, the nimble spirit flies,
Escapes unseen, evaporates, and dies.
Who then attempts to shew the ancients' wit,
Must copy with the genius that they writ:
Whence we conclude from thy translated song,
So just, so warm, so smooth, and yet so strong,
Thou heavenly charmer! soul of harmony!
That all their geniuses revived in thee.
Thy trumpet sounds: the dead are raised to light;
New-born they rise, and take to heaven their flight;
Deck'd in thy verse, as clad with rays, they shine,
All glorified, immortal, and divine.
As Britain, in rich soil abounding wide,
Furnished for use, for luxury, and pride,
Yet spreads her wanton sails on every shore,
For foreign wealth, insatiate still of more;
To her own wool, the silks of Asia joins,
And to her plenteous harvests, Indian mines;
So Dryden, not contented with the fame
Of his own works, though an immortal name----
To lands remote he sends his learned Muse,
The noblest seeds of foreign wit to chuse.
Feasting our sense so many various ways,
Say, is't thy bounty, or thy thirst of praise,
That, by comparing others, all might see,
Who most excelled, are yet excelled by thee?

GEORGE GRANVILLE.

FOOTNOTES:

[269] Essay of Translated Verse, p. 26.

THE

LIFE

OF

PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS MARO,

BY KNIGHTLY CHETWOOD, D.D.[270]

Virgil was born at Mantua, which city was built no less than three hundred years before Rome, and was the capital of the New Hetruria, as himself, no less antiquary than poet, assures us. His birth is said to have happened in the first consulship of Pompey the Great, and Licinius Crassus: but, since the relater of this presently after contradicts himself, and Virgil's manner of addressing to Octavius implies a greater difference of age than that of seven years, as appears by his First Pastoral, and other places, it is reasonable to set the date of it something backward; and the writer of his Life having no certain memorials to work upon, seems to have pitched upon the two most illustrious consuls he could find about that time, to signalize the birth of so eminent a man. But it is beyond all question, that he was born on or near the 15th of October, which day was kept festival in honour of his memory by the Latin, as the birth-day of Homer was by the Greek poets. And so near a resemblance there is betwixt the lives of these two famous epic writers, that Virgil seems to have followed the fortune of the other, as well as the subject and manner of his writing. For Homer is said to have been of very mean parents, such as got their bread by day-labour; so is Virgil. Homer is said to be base-born; so is Virgil. The former to have been born in the open air, in a ditch, or by the bank of a river; so is the latter. There was a poplar planted near the place of Virgil's birth, which suddenly grew up to an unusual height and bulk, and to which the superstitious neighbourhood attributed marvellous virtue: Homer had his poplar too, as Herodotus relates, which was visited with great veneration. Homer is described by one of the ancients to have been of a slovenly and neglected mien and habit; so was Virgil. Both were of a very delicate and sickly constitution; both addicted to travel, and the study of astrology; both had their compositions usurped by others; both envied and traduced during their lives. We know not so much as the true names of either of them with any exactness; for the critics are not yet agreed how the word _Virgil_ should be written, and of Homer's name there is no certainty at all. Whosoever shall consider this parallel in so many particulars, (and more might be added,) would be inclined to think, that either the same stars ruled strongly at the nativities of them both; or, what is a great deal more probable, that the Latin grammarians, wanting materials for the former part of Virgil's life, after the legendary fashion, supplied it out of Herodotus; and, like ill face-painters, not being able to hit the true features, endeavoured to make amends by a great deal of impertinent landscape and drapery.

Without troubling the reader with needless quotations now, or afterwards, the most probable opinion is, that Virgil was the son of a servant, or assistant, to a wandering astrologer, who practised physic: for _medicus_, _magus_, as Juvenal observes, usually went together; and this course of life was followed by a great many Greeks and Syrians, of one of which nations it seems not improbable that Virgil's father was. Nor could a man of that profession have chosen a fitter place to settle in, than that most superstitious tract of Italy, which, by her ridiculous rites and ceremonies, as much enslaved the Romans, as the Romans did the Hetrurians by their arms. This man, therefore, having got together some money, which stock he improved by his skill in planting and husbandry, had the good fortune, at last, to marry his master's daughter, by whom he had Virgil: and this woman seems, by her mother's side, to have been of good extraction; for she was nearly related to Quintilius Varus, whom Paterculus assures us to have been of an illustrious, though not patrician, family; and there is honourable mention made of it in the history of the second Carthaginian war. It is certain, that they gave him very good education; to which they were inclined, not so much by the dreams of his mother, and those presages which Donatus relates, as by the early indications which he gave of a sweet disposition and excellent wit. He passed the first seven years of his life at Mantua, not seventeen, as Scaliger miscorrects his author; for the _initia ætatis_ can hardly be supposed to extend so far. From thence he removed to Cremona, a noble Roman colony, and afterwards to Milan; in all which places, he prosecuted his studies with great application. He read over all the best Latin and Greek authors; for which he had convenience by the no remote distance of Marseilles, that famous Greek colony, which maintained its politeness and purity of language in the midst of all those barbarous nations amongst which it was seated; and some tincture of the latter seems to have descended from them down to the modern French. He frequented the most eminent professors of the Epicurean philosophy, which was then much in vogue, and will be always, in declining and sickly states.[271] But, finding no satisfactory account from his master Syron, he passed over to the Academic school; to which he adhered the rest of his life, and deserved, from a great emperor, the title of--_The Plato of Poets_. He composed at leisure hours a great number of verses on various subjects; and, desirous rather of a great than early fame, he permitted his kinsman and fellow-student, Varus, to derive the honour of one of his tragedies to himself. Glory, neglected in proper time and place, returns often with large increase: and so he found it; for Varus afterwards proved a great instrument of his rise. In short, it was here that he formed the plan, and collected the materials, of all those excellent pieces which he afterwards finished, or was forced to leave less perfect by his death. But, whether it were the unwholesomeness of his native air, of which he somewhere complains; or his too great abstinence, and night-watchings at his study, to which he was always addicted, as Augustus observes; or possibly the hopes of improving himself by travel--he resolved to remove to the more southern tract of Italy; and it was hardly possible for him not to take Rome in his way, as is evident to any one who shall cast an eye on the map of Italy. And therefore the late French editor of his works is mistaken, when he asserts, that he never saw Rome till he came to petition for his estate. He gained the acquaintance of the master of the horse to Octavius, and cured a great many diseases of horses, by methods they had never heard of. It fell out, at the same time, that a very fine colt, which promised great strength and speed, was presented to Octavius; Virgil assured them, that he came of a faulty mare, and would prove a jade: Upon trial, it was found as he had said. His judgment proved right in several other instances; which was the more surprising, because the Romans knew least of natural causes of any civilized nation in the world; and those meteors and prodigies, which cost them incredible sums to expiate, might easily have been accounted for by no very profound naturalist. It is no wonder, therefore, that Virgil was in so great reputation, as to be at last introduced to Octavius himself. That prince was then at variance with Marc Antony, who vexed him with a great many libelling letters, in which he reproaches him with the baseness of his parentage, that he came of a scrivener, a rope-maker, and a baker, as Suetonius tells us. Octavius finding that Virgil had passed so exact a judgment upon the breed of dogs and horses, thought that he possibly might be able to give him some light concerning his own. He took him into his closet, where they continued in private a considerable time. Virgil was a great mathematician; which, in the sense of those times, took in astrology; and, if there be any thing in that art, (which I can hardly believe,) if that be true which the ingenious De la Chambre asserts confidently, that, from the marks on the body, the configuration of the planets at a nativity may be gathered, and the marks might be told by knowing the nativity, never had one of those artists a fairer opportunity to show his skill than Virgil now had; for Octavius had moles upon his body, exactly resembling the constellation called _Ursa Major_. But Virgil had other helps; the predictions of Cicero and Catulus,[272] and that vote of the senate had gone abroad, that no child, born at Rome in the year of his nativity, should be bred up, because the seers assured them that an emperor was born that year. Besides this, Virgil had heard of the Assyrian and Egyptian prophecies, (which, in truth, were no other but the Jewish,) that about that time a great king was to come into the world. Himself takes notice of them, (Æn. VI.) where he uses a very significant word, now in all liturgies, _hujus in adventu_; so in another place, _adventu propiore Dei_.

At his foreseen approach already quake
Assyrian kingdoms, and Mæotis' lake;
Nile hears him knocking at his seven-fold gate.

Every one knows whence this was taken. It was rather a mistake than impiety in Virgil, to apply these prophecies, which belonged to the Saviour of the world, to the person of Octavius; it being a usual piece of flattery, for near a hundred years together, to attribute them to their emperors and other great men. Upon the whole matter, it is very probable, that Virgil predicted to him the empire at this time. And it will appear yet the more, if we consider, that he assures him of his being received into the number of the gods, in his First Pastoral, long before the thing came to pass; which prediction seems grounded upon his former mistake. This was a secret not to be divulged at that time; and therefore it is no wonder that the slight story in Donatus was given abroad to palliate the matter. But certain it is, that Octavius dismissed him with great marks of esteem, and earnestly recommended the protection of Virgil's affairs to Pollio, then lieutenant of the Cisalpine Gaul, where Virgil's patrimony lay. This Pollio, from a mean original, became one of the most considerable persons of his time; a good general, orator, statesman, historian, poet, and favourer of learned men; above all, he was a man of honour in those critical times. He had joined with Octavius and Antony in revenging the barbarous assassination of Julius Cæsar; when they two were at variance, he would neither follow Antony, whose courses he detested, nor join with Octavius against him, out of a grateful sense of some former obligations. Augustus, who thought it his interest to oblige men of principles, notwithstanding this, received him afterwards into favour, and promoted him to the highest honours. And thus much I thought fit to say of Pollio, because he was one of Virgil's greatest friends. Being therefore eased of domestic cares, he pursues his journey to Naples. The charming situation of that place, and view of the beautiful villas of the Roman nobility, equaling the magnificence of the greatest kings; the neighbourhood of Baiæ, whither the sick resorted for recovery, and the statesman when he was politicly sick; whither the wanton went for pleasure, and witty men for good company; the wholesomeness of the air, and improving conversation, the best air of all, contributed not only to the re-establishing his health, but to the forming of his style, and rendering him master of that happy turn of verse, in which he much surpasses all the Latins, and, in a less advantageous language, equals even Homer himself. He proposed to use his talent in poetry, only for scaffolding to build a convenient fortune, that he might prosecute, with less interruption, those nobler studies to which his elevated genius led him, and which he describes in these admirable lines:

_Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musæ,
Quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore,
Accipiant; cælique vias, et sidera, monstrent,
Defectus Solis varios, Lunæque labores;
Unde tremor terris_, &c.

But the current of that martial age, by some strange antiperistasis, drove so violently towards poetry, that he was at last carried down with the stream; for not only the young nobility, but Octavius, and Pollio, Cicero in his old age, Julius Cæsar, and the stoical Brutus, a little before, would needs be tampering with the Muses. The two latter had taken great care to have their poems curiously bound, and lodged in the most famous libraries; but neither the sacredness of those places, nor the greatness of their names, could preserve ill poetry. Quitting therefore the study of the law, after having pleaded but one cause with indifferent success, he resolved to push his fortune this way, which he seems to have discontinued for some time; and that may be the reason why the _Culex_, his first pastoral now extant, has little besides the novelty of the subject, and the moral of the fable, which contains an exhortation to gratitude, to recommend it. Had it been as correct as his other pieces, nothing more proper and pertinent could have at that time been addressed to the young Octavius; for, the year in which he presented it, probably at Baiæ, seems to be the very same in which that prince consented (though with seeming reluctance) to the death of Cicero, under whose consulship he was born, the preserver of his life, and chief instrument of his advancement. There is no reason to question its being genuine, as the late French editor does; its meanness, in comparison of Virgil's other works, (which is that writer's only objection,) confutes himself; for Martial, who certainly saw the true copy, speaks of it with contempt; and yet that pastoral equals, at least, the address to the Dauphin, which is prefixed to the late edition. Octavius, to unbend his mind from application to public business, took frequent turns to Baiæ, and Sicily, where he composed his poem called _Sicelides_, which Virgil seems to allude to in the pastoral beginning _Sicelides Musæ_. This gave him opportunity of refreshing that prince's memory of him; and about that time he wrote his _Ætna_. Soon after he seems to have made a voyage to Athens, and at his return presented his _Ceiris_, a more elaborate piece, to the noble and eloquent Messala. The forementioned author groundlessly taxes this as supposititious; for, besides other critical marks, there are no less than fifty or sixty verses, altered, indeed, and polished, which he inserted in the Pastorals, according to his fashion; and from thence they were called _Eclogues_, or _Select Bucolics_: we thought fit to use a title more intelligible, the reason of the other being ceased; and we are supported by Virgil's own authority, who expressly calls them _carmina pastorum_. The French editor is again mistaken, in asserting, that the _Ceiris_ is borrowed from the ninth of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_: he might have more reasonably conjectured it to be taken from Parthenius, the Greek poet, from whom Ovid borrowed a great part of his work. But it is indeed taken from neither, but from that learned, unfortunate poet, Apollonius Rhodius, to whom Virgil is more indebted than to any other Greek writer, excepting Homer. The reader will be satisfied of this, if he consults that author in his own language; for the translation is a great deal more obscure than the original.

Whilst Virgil thus enjoyed the sweets of a learned privacy, the troubles of Italy cut off his little subsistence; but, by a strange turn of human affairs, which ought to keep good men from ever despairing, the loss of his estate proved the effectual way of making his fortune. The occasion of it was this: Octavius, as himself relates, when he was but nineteen years of age, by a masterly stroke of policy, had gained the veteran legions into his service, and, by that step, outwitted all the republican senate. They grew now very clamorous for their pay; the treasury being exhausted, he was forced to make assignments upon land; and none but in Italy itself would content them. He pitched upon Cremona, as the most distant from Rome; but that not sufficing, he afterwards threw in part of the state of Mantua. Cremona was a rich and noble colony, settled a little before the invasion of Hannibal. During that tedious and bloody war, they had done several important services to the commonwealth; and, when eighteen other colonies, pleading poverty and depopulation, refused to contribute money, or to raise recruits, they of Cremona voluntarily paid a double quota of both. But past services are a fruitless plea; civil wars are one continued act of ingratitude. In vain did the miserable mothers, with their famishing infants in their arms, fill the streets with their numbers, and the air with lamentations; the craving legions were to be satisfied at any rate. Virgil, involved in the common calamity, had recourse to his old patron, Pollio; but he was, at this time, under a cloud; however, compassionating so worthy a man, not of a make to struggle through the world, he did what he could, and recommended him to Mæcenas, with whom he still kept a private correspondence. The name of this great man being much better known than one part of his character, the reader, I presume, will not be displeased if I supply it in this place.

Though he was of as deep reach, and easy dispatch of business, as any in his time, yet he designedly lived beneath his true character. Men had oftentimes meddled in public affairs, that they might have more ability to furnish for their pleasures: Mæcenas, by the honestest hypocrisy that ever was, pretended to a life of pleasure, that he might render more effectual service to his master. He seemed wholly to amuse himself with the diversions of the town, but, under that mask, was the greatest minister of his age. He would be carried in a careless, effeminate posture through the streets in his chair, even to the degree of a proverb; and yet there was not a cabal of ill-disposed persons which he had not early notice of, and that too in a city as large as London and Paris, and perhaps two or three more of the most populous, put together. No man better understood that art so necessary to the great--the art of declining envy. Being but of a gentleman's family, not patrician, he would not provoke the nobility by accepting invidious honours, but wisely satisfied himself, that he had the ear of Augustus, and the secret of the empire. He seems to have committed but one great fault, which was, the trusting a secret of high consequence to his wife; but his master, enough uxorious himself, made his own frailty more excusable, by generously forgiving that of his favourite: he kept, in all his greatness, exact measures with his friends; and, chusing them wisely, found, by experience, that good sense and gratitude are almost inseparable. This appears in Virgil and Horace. The former, besides the honour he did him to all posterity, re-toured his liberalities at his death; the other, whom Mæcenas recommended with his last breath, was too generous to stay behind, and enjoy the favour of Augustus; he only desired a place in his tomb, and to mingle his ashes with those of his deceased benefactor. But this was seventeen hundred years ago.[273] Virgil, thus powerfully supported, thought it mean to petition for himself alone, but resolutely solicits the cause of his whole country, and seems, at first, to have met with some encouragement; but, the matter cooling, he was forced to sit down contented with the grant of his own estate. He goes therefore to Mantua, produces his warrant to a captain of foot, whom he found in his house. Arius, who had eleven points of the law, and fierce[274] of the services he had rendered to Octavius, was so far from yielding possession, that, words growing betwixt them, he wounded him dangerously, forced him to fly, and at last to swim the river Mincius to save his life. Virgil, who used to say, that no virtue was so necessary as patience, was forced to drag a sick body half the length of Italy, back again to Rome, and by the way, probably, composed his Ninth Pastoral, which may seem to have been made up in haste, out of the fragments of some other pieces; and naturally enough represents the disorder of the poet's mind, by its disjointed fashion, though there be another reason to be given elsewhere of its want of connection. He handsomely states his case in that poem, and, with the pardonable resentments of injured innocence, not only claims Octavius's promise, but hints to him the uncertainty of human greatness and glory. All was taken in good part by that wise prince; at last effectual orders were given. About this time, he composed that admirable poem, which is set first, out of respect to Cæsar; for he does not seem either to have had leisure, or to have been in the humour of making so solemn an acknowledgment, till he was possessed of the benefit. And now he was in so great reputation and interest, that he resolved to give up his land to his parents, and himself to the court. His Pastorals were in such esteem, that Pollio, now again in high favour with Cæsar, desired him to reduce them into a volume. Some modern writer, that has a constant flux of verse, would stand amazed, how Virgil could employ three whole years in revising five or six hundred verses, most of which, probably, were made some time before; but there is more reason to wonder, how he could do it so soon in such perfection. A coarse stone is presently fashioned; but a diamond, of not many carats, is many weeks in sawing, and, in polishing, many more. He who put Virgil upon this, had a politic good end in it.

The continued civil wars had laid Italy almost waste; the ground was uncultivated and unstocked; upon which ensued such a famine and insurrection, that Cæsar hardly escaped being stoned at Rome; his ambition being looked upon by all parties as the principal occasion of it. He set himself therefore with great industry to promote country improvements; and Virgil was serviceable to his design, as the good Keeper of the Bees, Georg. iv.

_Tinnitusque cie, et Matris quate cymbala circum,
Ipsæ consident._

That emperor afterwards thought it matter worthy a public inscription--

REDIIT CULTUS AGRIS--

which seems to be the motive that induced Mæcenas to put him upon writing his Georgics, or books of husbandry: a design as new in Latin verse, as pastorals, before Virgil, were in Italy: which work took up seven of the most vigorous years of his life; for he was now, at least, thirty-four years of age; and here Virgil shines in his meridian. A great part of this work seems to have been rough-drawn before he left Mantua; for an ancient writer has observed, that the rules of husbandry, laid down in it, are better calculated for the soil of Mantua, than for the more sunny climate of Naples; near which place, and in Sicily, he finished it. But, lest his genius should be depressed by apprehensions of want, he had a good estate settled upon him, and a house in the pleasantest part of Rome; the principal furniture of which was a well-chosen library, which stood open to all comers of learning and merit: and what recommended the situation of it most, was the neighbourhood of his Mæcenas; and thus he could either visit Rome, or return to his privacy at Naples, through a pleasant road, adorned on each side with pieces of antiquity, of which he was so great a lover, and, in the intervals of them, seemed almost one continued street of three days' journey.

Cæsar, having now vanquished Sextus Pompeius, (a spring-tide of prosperities breaking in upon him, before he was ready to receive them as he ought,) fell sick of the _imperial evil_, the desire of being thought something more than man. Ambition is an infinite folly; when it has attained to the utmost pitch of human greatness, it soon falls to making pretensions upon heaven. The crafty Livia would needs be drawn in the habit of a priestess by the shrine of the new god; and this became a fashion not to be dispensed with amongst the ladies. The devotion was wonderous great amongst the Romans; for it was their interest, and, which sometimes avails more, it was the mode. Virgil, though he despised the heathen superstitions, and is so bold as to call Saturn and Janus by no better a name than that of _old men_, and might deserve the title of subverter of superstitions, as well as Varro, thought fit to follow the maxim of Plato his master, that every one should serve the gods after the usage of his own country; and therefore was not the last to present his incense, which was of too rich a composition for such an altar; and, by his address to Cæsar on this occasion, made an unhappy precedent to Lucan and other poets which came after him.--_Georg. i._ and _iii._ And this poem being now in great forwardness, Cæsar, who, in imitation of his predecessor Julius, never intermitted his studies in the camp, and much less in other places, refreshing himself by a short stay in a pleasant village of Campania would needs be entertained with the rehearsal of some part of it. Virgil recited with a marvellous grace, and sweet accent of voice, but his lungs failing him, Mæcenas himself supplied his place for what remained. Such a piece of condescension would now be very surprising; but it was no more than customary amongst friends, when learning passed for quality.[275] Lælius, the second man of Rome in his time, had done as much for that poet, out of whose dross Virgil would sometimes pick gold, as himself said, when one found him reading Ennius; (the like he did by some verses of Varro, and Pacuvius, Lucretius, and Cicero, which he inserted into his works.) But learned men then lived easy and familiarly with the great: Augustus himself would sometimes sit down betwixt Virgil and Horace, and say jestingly, that he sat betwixt sighing and tears, alluding to the asthma of one, and rheumatic eyes of the other. He would frequently correspond with them, and never leave a letter of theirs unanswered; nor were they under the constraint of formal superscriptions in the beginning, nor of violent superlatives at the close, of their letter: the invention of these is a modern refinement; in which this may be remarked, in passing, that "_humble servant_" is respect, but "_friend_" an affront; which notwithstanding implies the former, and a great deal more. Nor does true greatness lose by such familiarity; and those who have it not, as Mæcenas and Pollio had, are not to be accounted proud, but rather very discreet, in their reserves. Some playhouse beauties do wisely to be seen at a distance, and to have the lamps twinkle betwixt them and the spectators.

But now Cæsar, who, though he were none of the greatest soldiers, was certainly the greatest traveller, of a prince, that had ever been, (for which Virgil so dexterously compliments him, Æneid, vi.) takes a voyage to Egypt, and, having happily finished the war, reduces that mighty kingdom into the form of a province, over which he appointed Gallus his lieutenant. This is the same person to whom Virgil addresses his Tenth Pastoral; changing, in compliance to his request, his purpose of limiting them to the number of the Muses. The praises of this Gallus took up a considerable part of the Fourth Book of the Georgics, according to the general consent of antiquity: but Cæsar would have it put out; and yet the seam in the poem is still to be discerned; and the matter of Aristæus's recovering his bees might have been dispatched in less compass, without fetching the causes so far, or interesting so many gods and goddesses in that affair. Perhaps some readers may be inclined to think this, though very much laboured, not the most entertaining part of that work; so hard it is for the greatest masters to paint against their inclination. But Cæsar was contented, that he should be mentioned in the last Pastoral, because it might be taken for a satirical sort of commendation; and the character he there stands under, might help to excuse his cruelty, in putting an old servant to death for no very great crime.

And now having ended, as he begins his Georgics, with solemn mention of Cæsar, (an argument of his devotion to him,) he begins his _Æneïs_, according to the common account, being now turned of forty. But that work had been, in truth, the subject of much earlier meditation. Whilst he was working upon the first book of it, this passage, so very remarkable in history, fell out, in which Virgil had a great share.

Cæsar, about this time, either cloyed with glory, or terrified by the example of his predecessor, or to gain the credit of moderation with the people, or possibly to feel the pulse of his friends, deliberated whether he should retain the sovereign power, or restore the commonwealth. Agrippa, who was a very honest man, but whose view was of no great extent, advised him to the latter; but Mæcenas, who had thoroughly studied his master's temper, in an eloquent oration gave contrary advice. That emperor was too politic to commit the oversight of Cromwell, in a deliberation something resembling this. Cromwell had never been more desirous of the power, than he was afterwards of the title, of king; and there was nothing in which the heads of the parties, who were all his creatures, would not comply with him; but, by too vehement allegation of arguments against it, he, who had outwitted every body besides, at last outwitted himself by too deep dissimulation; for his council, thinking to make their court by assenting to his judgment, voted unanimously for him against his inclination; which surprised and troubled him to such a degree, that, as soon as he had got into his coach, he fell into a swoon.[276] But Cæsar knew his people better; and, his council being thus divided, he asked Virgil's advice. Thus a poet had the honour of determining the greatest point that ever was in debate, betwixt the son-in-law and favourite of Cæsar. Virgil delivered his opinion in words to this effect:

"The change of a popular into an absolute government has generally been of very ill consequence; for, betwixt the hatred of the people and injustice of the prince, it, of necessity, comes to pass, that they live in distrust, and mutual apprehensions. But, if the commons knew a just person, whom they entirely confided in, it would be for the advantage of all parties, that such a one should be their sovereign; wherefore, if you shall continue to administer justice impartially, as hitherto you have done, your power will prove safe to yourself, and beneficial to mankind." This excellent sentence, which seems taken out of Plato, (with whose writings the grammarians were not much acquainted, and therefore cannot reasonably be suspected of forgery in this matter,) contains the true state of affairs at that time: for the commonwealth maxims were now no longer practicable; the Romans had only the haughtiness of the old commonwealth left, without one of its virtues. And this sentence we find, almost in the same words, in the First Book of the "Æneïs," which at this time he was writing; and one might wonder that none of his commentators have taken notice of it. He compares a tempest to a popular insurrection, as Cicero had compared a sedition to a storm, a little before:

_Ac veluti, magno in populo, cum sæpe coorta est
Seditio, sævitque animis ignobile vulgus,
Jamque faces, et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat:
Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem
Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant:
Ille regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet._

Piety and merit were the two great virtues which Virgil every where attributes to Augustus, and in which that prince, at least politicly, if not so truly, fixed his character, as appears by the _Marmor Ancyr._ and several of his medals. Franshemius, the learned supplementor of Livy, has inserted this relation into his history; nor is there any good reason, why Ruæus should account it fabulous. The title of a poet in those days did not abate, but heighten, the character of the gravest senator. Virgil was one of the best and wisest men of his time, and in so popular esteem, that one hundred thousand Romans rose when he came into the theatre, and paid him the same respect they used to Cæsar himself, as Tacitus assures us. And, if Augustus invited Horace to assist him in writing his letters, (and every body knows that the "_Rescripta Imperatorum_" were the laws of the empire,) Virgil might well deserve a place in the cabinet-council.

And now he prosecutes his "Æneïs," which had anciently the title of the "Imperial Poem," or "Roman History," and deservedly: for, though he were too artful a writer to set down events in exact historical order, for which Lucan is justly blamed; yet are all the most considerable affairs and persons of Rome comprised in this poem. He deduces the history of Italy from before Saturn to the reign of King Latinus; and reckons up the successors of Æneas, who reigned at Alba, for the space of three hundred years, down to the birth of Romulus; describes the persons and principal exploits of all the kings, to their expulsion, and the settling of the commonwealth. After this, he touches promiscuously the most remarkable occurrences at home and abroad, but insists more particularly upon the exploits of Augustus; insomuch that, though this assertion may appear at first a little surprising, he has in his works deduced the history of a considerable part of the world from its original, through the fabulous and heroic ages, through the monarchy and commonwealth of Rome, for the space of four thousand years, down to within less than forty of our Saviour's time, of whom he has preserved a most illustrious prophecy. Besides this, he points at many remarkable passages of history under feigned names: the destruction of Alba and Veii, under that of Troy; the star Venus, which, Varro says, guided Æneas in his voyage to Italy, in that verse,

_Matre deâ monstrante viam._

Romulus's lance taking root, and budding, is described in that passage concerning Polydorus, Æneïd, iii.

----_Confixum ferrea texit
Telorum seges, et jaculis increvit acutis_--

The stratagem of the Trojans boring holes in their ships, and sinking them, lest the Latins should burn them, under that fable of their being transformed into sea-nymphs; and therefore the ancients had no such reason to condemn that fable as groundless and absurd. Cocles swimming the river Tyber, after the bridge was broken down behind him, is exactly painted in the four last verses of the ninth book, under the character of Turnus: Marius hiding himself in the morass of Minturnæ, under the person of Sinon:

_Limosoque lacu per noctem obscurus in ulvâ
Delitui_.[277]

Those verses in the second book concerning Priam,

----_jacet ingens littore truncus, &c._

seem originally made upon Pompey the Great. He seems to touch the imperious and intriguing humour of the Empress Livia, under the character of Juno. The irresolute and weak Lepidus is well represented under the person of King Latinus; Augustus with the character of _Pont. Max._ under that of Æneas; and the rash courage (always unfortunate in Virgil) of Marc Antony, in Turnus; the railing eloquence of Cicero in his "Philippics" is well imitated in the oration of Drances; the dull faithful Agrippa, under the person of Achates; accordingly this character is flat: Achates kills but one man, and himself receives one slight wound, but neither says nor does any thing very considerable in the whole poem. Curio, who sold his country for about two hundred thousand pounds, is stigmatized in that verse,--

_Vendidit hic auro patriam, dominumque potentem
Imposuit._

Livy relates, that, presently after the death of the two Scipios in Spain, when Martius took upon him the command, a blazing meteor shone around his head, to the astonishment of his soldiers. Virgil transfers this to Æneas:

_Lætasque vomunt duo tempora flammas._

It is strange, that the commentators have not taken notice of this. Thus the ill omen which happened a little before the battle of Thrasymen, when some of the centurions' lances took fire miraculously, is hinted in the like accident which befel Acestes, before the burning of the Trojan fleet in Sicily. The reader will easily find many more such instances. In other writers, there is often well-covered ignorance; in Virgil, concealed learning.

His silence of some illustrious persons is no less worth observation. He says nothing of Scævola, because he attempted to assassinate a king, though a declared enemy; nor of the younger Brutus; for he effected what the other endeavoured; nor of the younger Cato, because he was an implacable enemy of Julius Cæsar; nor could the mention of him be pleasing to Augustus; and that passage,

_His dantem jura Catonem_----

may relate to his office, as he was a very severe censor. Nor would he name Cicero, when the occasion of mentioning him came full in his way, when he speaks of Catiline; because he afterwards approved the murder of Cæsar, though the plotters were too wary to trust the orator with their design. Some other poets knew the art of speaking well; but Virgil, beyond this, knew the admirable secret, of being eloquently silent. Whatsoever was most curious in Fabius Pictor, Cato the elder, Varro, in the Egyptian antiquities, in the form of sacrifice, in the solemnities of making peace and war, is preserved in this poem. Rome is still above ground, and flourishing in Virgil. And all this he performs with admirable brevity. The "Æneïs" was once near twenty times bigger than he left it; so that he spent as much time in blotting out, as some moderns have done in writing whole volumes. But not one book has his finishing strokes. The sixth seems one of the most perfect, the which, after long entreaty, and sometimes threats, of Augustus, he was at last prevailed upon to recite. This fell out about four years before his own death: that of Marcellus, whom Cæsar designed for his successor, happened a little before this recital: Virgil therefore, with his usual dexterity, inserted his funeral panegyric in those admirable lines, beginning,

_O nate, ingentem luctum ne quære tuorum, &c._

His mother, the excellent Octavia, the best wife of the worst husband that ever was, to divert her grief, would be of the auditory. The poet artificially deferred the naming Marcellus, till their passions were raised to the highest; but the mention of it put both her and Augustus into such a passion of weeping, that they commanded him to proceed no further. Virgil answered, that he had already ended that passage. Some relate, that Octavia fainted away; but afterwards she presented the poet with two thousand one hundred pounds, odd money: a round sum for twenty-seven verses; but they were Virgil's. Another writer says, that, with a royal magnificence, she ordered him massy plate, unweighed, to a great value.

And now he took up a resolution of travelling into Greece, there to set the last hand to this work; proposing to devote the rest of his life to philosophy, which had been always his principal passion. He justly thought it a foolish figure for a grave man to be overtaken by death, whilst he was weighing the cadence of words, and measuring verses, unless necessity should constrain it, from which he was well secured by the liberality of that learned age. But he was not aware, that, whilst he allotted three years for the revising of his poem, he drew bills upon a failing bank: for, unhappily meeting Augustus at Athens, he thought himself obliged to wait upon him into Italy; but, being desirous to see all he could of the Greek antiquities, he fell into a languishing distemper at Megara. This, neglected at first, proved mortal. The agitation of the vessel (for it was now autumn, near the time of his birth,) brought him so low, that he could hardly reach Brindisi. In his sickness, he frequently, and with great importunity, called for his scrutoir, that he might burn his "Æneïs:" but, Augustus interposing by his royal authority, he made his last will, (of which something shall be said afterwards;) and, considering probably how much Homer had been disfigured by the arbitrary compilers of his works, obliged Tucca and Varius to add nothing, nor so much as fill up the breaks he left in his poem. He ordered that his bones should be carried to Naples, in which place he had passed the most agreeable part of his life. Augustus, not only as executor and friend, but according to the duty of the _Pontifex Maximus_, when a funeral happened in his family, took care himself to see the will punctually executed. He went out of the world with all that calmness of mind with which the ancient writer of his life says he came into it; making the inscription of his monument himself; for he began and ended his poetical compositions with an epitaph. And this he made, exactly according to the law of his master Plato on such occasions, without the least ostentation:

I sung flocks, tillage, heroes; Mantua gave
Me life, Brundusium death, Naples a grave.

A SHORT

ACCOUNT

OF HIS

PERSON, MANNERS, AND FORTUNE.

He was of a very swarthy complexion, which might proceed from the southern extraction of his father; tall and wide-shouldered, so that he may be thought to have described himself under the character of Musæus, whom he calls the best of poets--

----_Medium nam plurima turba
Hunc habet, atque humeris extantem suspicit altis._

His sickliness, studies, and the troubles he met with, turned his hair gray before the usual time. He had a hesitation in his speech, as many other great men; it being rarely found that a very fluent elocution, and depth of judgment, meet in the same person: his aspect and behaviour rustic and ungraceful; and this defect was not likely to be rectified in the place where he first lived, nor afterwards, because the weakness of his stomach would not permit him to use his exercises. He was frequently troubled with the head-ach, and spitting of blood; spare of diet, and hardly drank any wine. Bashful to a fault; and, when people crowded to see him, he would slip into the next shop, or by-passage, to avoid them. As this character could not recommend him to the fair sex, he seems to have as little consideration for them as Euripides himself. There is hardly the character of one good woman to be found in his poems: he uses the word _mulier_ but once in the whole "Æneïs," then too by way of contempt, rendering literally a piece of a verse out of Homer. In his "Pastorals," he is full of invectives against love: in the "Georgics," he appropriates all the rage of it to the females. He makes Dido, who never deserved that character, lustful and revengeful to the utmost degree, so as to die devoting her lover to destruction; so changeable, that the Destinies themselves could not fix the time of her death; but Iris, the emblem of inconstancy, must determine it. Her sister is something worse.[278] He is so far from passing such a compliment upon Helen, as the grave old counsellor in Homer does, after nine years' war, when, upon the sight of her, he breaks out into this rapture, in the presence of king Priam:

None can the cause of these long wars despise;
The cost bears no proportion to the prize:
Majestic charms in every feature shine;
Her air, her port, her accent, is divine.
However, let the fatal beauty go, &c.

Virgil is so far from this complaisant humour, that his hero falls into an unmanly and ill-timed deliberation, whether he should not kill her in a church;[279] which directly contradicts what Deiphobus says of her, Æneid vi., in that place where every body tells the truth. He transfers the dogged silence of Ajax's ghost to that of Dido; though that be no very natural character to an injured lover, or a woman. He brings in the Trojan matrons setting their own fleet on fire, and running afterwards, like witches on their _sabbat_, into the woods. He bestows indeed some ornaments on the character of Camilla; but soon abates his favour, by calling her _aspera_ and _horrenda virgo_: he places her in the front of the line for an ill omen of the battle, as one of the ancients has observed. We may observe, on this occasion, it is an art peculiar to Virgil, to intimate the event by some preceding accident. He hardly ever describes the rising of the sun, but with some circumstance which fore-signifies the fortune of the day. For instance, when Æneas leaves Africa and Queen Dido, he thus describes the fatal morning:

_Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile._

[And, for the remark, we stand indebted to the curious pencil of Pollio.] The Mourning Fields (Æneid vi.) are crowded with ladies of a lost reputation: hardly one man gets admittance; and that is Cæneus, for a very good reason. Latinus's queen is turbulent and ungovernable, and at last hangs herself: and the fair Lavinia is disobedient to the oracle, and to the king, and looks a little flickering after Turnus. I wonder at this the more, because Livy represents her as an excellent person, and who behaved herself with great wisdom in her regency during the minority of her son; so that the poet has done her wrong, and it reflects on her posterity. His goddesses make as ill a figure: Juno is always in a rage, and the Fury of heaven; Venus grows so unreasonably confident, as to ask her husband to forge arms for her bastard son, which were enough to provoke one of a more phlegmatic temper than Vulcan was. Notwithstanding all this raillery of Virgil's, he was certainly of a very amorous disposition, and has described all that is most delicate in the passion of love: but he conquered his natural inclination by the help of philosophy, and refined it into friendship, to which he was extremely sensible. The reader will admit of or reject the following conjecture, with the free leave of the writer, who will be equally pleased either way. Virgil had too great an opinion of the influence of the heavenly bodies: and, as an ancient writer says, he was born under the sign of Virgo; with which nativity he much pleased himself, and would exemplify her virtues in his life. Perhaps it was thence that he took his name of _Virgil_ and _Parthenias_, which does not necessarily signify _base-born_. Donatus and Servius, very good grammarians, give a quite contrary sense of it. He seems to make allusion to this original of his name in that passage,

_Illo Virgilium me tempore dulcis alebat
Parthenope._

And this may serve to illustrate his compliment to Cæsar, in which he invites him into his own constellation,

Where, in the void of heaven, a place is free,
Betwixt the Scorpion and the maid, for thee--

thus placing him betwixt Justice and Power, and in a neighbour mansion to his own; for Virgil supposed souls to ascend again to their proper and congenial stars. Being therefore of this humour, it is no wonder that he refused the embraces of the beautiful Plotia, when his indiscreet friend almost threw her into his arms.

But however he stood affected to the ladies, there is a dreadful accusation brought against him for the most unnatural of all vices, which, by the malignity of human nature, has found more credit in latter times than it did near his own. This took not its rise so much from the "Alexis," in which pastoral there is not one immodest word, as from a sort of ill-nature, that will not let any one be without the imputation of some vice; and principally because he was so strict a follower of Socrates and Plato. In order, therefore, to his vindication, I shall take the matter a little higher.