Chapter X (2)

The Cretans were anciently much addicted to navigation, insomuch that it became a Greek proverb, (though omitted, I think, by the industrious Erasmus,) a _Cretan that does not know the sea_. Their neighbourhood gave them occasion of frequent commerce with the Phoenicians, that accursed people, who infected the western world with endless superstitions, and gross immoralities. From them it is probable that the Cretans learned this infamous passion, to which they were so much addicted, that Cicero remarks, in his book "_De Rep._" that it was "a disgrace for a young gentleman to be without lovers." Socrates, who was a great admirer of the Cretan constitutions, set his excellent wit to find out some good cause and use of this evil inclination, and therefore gives an account, wherefore beauty is to be loved, in the following passage; for I will not trouble the reader, weary perhaps already, with a long Greek quotation. "There is but one eternal, immutable, uniform beauty; in contemplation of which, our sovereign happiness does consist: and therefore a true lover considers beauty and proportion as so many steps and degrees, by which he may ascend from the particular to the general, from all that is lovely of feature, or regular in proportion, or charming in sound, to the general fountain of all perfection. And if you are so much transported with the sight of beautiful persons, as to wish neither to eat nor drink, but pass your whole life in their conversation; to what ecstasy would it raise you to behold the original beauty, not filled up with flesh and blood, or varnished with a fading mixture of colours, and the rest of mortal trifles and fooleries, but separate, unmixed, uniform, and divine," &c. Thus far Socrates, in a strain much beyond the "_Socrate Chrétien_" of Mr Balzac: and thus that admirable man loved his Phædon, his Charmides, and Theætetus; and thus Virgil loved his Alexander and Cebes, under the feigned name of Alexis: he received them illiterate, but returned them to their masters, the one a good poet, and the other an excellent grammarian. And, to prevent all possible misinterpretations, he warily inserted, into the liveliest episode in the whole "Æneïs," these words,

_Nisus amore pio pueri_----

and, in the sixth, "_Quique pii vates_." He seems fond of the words, _castus_, _pius_, _virgo_, and the compounds of it: and sometimes stretches the use of that word further than one would think he reasonably should have done, as when he attributes it to Pasiphaë herself.

Another vice he is taxed with, is avarice, because he died rich; and so indeed he did, in comparison of modern wealth. His estate amounts to near seventy-five thousand pounds of our money: but Donatus does not take notice of this as a thing extraordinary; nor was it esteemed so great a matter, when the cash of a great part of the world lay at Rome. Antony himself bestowed at once two thousand acres of land, in one of the best provinces of Italy, upon a ridiculous scribbler, who is named by Cicero and Virgil. A late cardinal used to purchase ill flattery at the expence of a hundred thousand crowns a year. But, besides Virgil's other benefactors, he was much in favour with Augustus, whose bounty to him had no limits, but such as the modesty of Virgil prescribed to it. Before he had made his own fortune, he settled his estate upon his parents and brothers; sent them yearly large sums, so that they lived in great plenty and respect; and, at his death, divided his estate betwixt duty and gratitude, leaving one half to his relations, and the other to Mæcenas, to Tucca, and Varius, and a considerable legacy to Augustus, who had introduced a politic fashion of being in every body's will; which alone was a fair revenue for a prince. Virgil shows his detestation of this vice, by placing in the front of the damned those who did not relieve their relations and friends; for the Romans hardly ever extended their liberality further; and therefore I do not remember to have met, in all the Latin poets, one character so noble as that short one in Homer:

#----Philos d' ên anthrôpoisi;
Pantas gar phileesken.#

On the other hand, he gives a very advanced place in Elysium to good patriots, &c. observing, in all his poem, that rule so sacred among the Romans, "That there should be no art allowed, which did not tend to the improvement of the people in virtue." And this was the principle too of our excellent Mr Waller, who used to say, that he would raze any line out of his poems, which did not imply some motive to virtue: but he was unhappy in the choice of the subject of his admirable vein in poetry. The Countess of Carlisle was the Helen of her country. There is nothing in Pagan philosophy more true, more just, and regular, than Virgil's ethics; and it is hardly possible to sit down to the serious perusal of his works, but a man shall rise more disposed to virtue and goodness, as well as most agreeably entertained; the contrary to which disposition may happen sometimes upon the reading of Ovid, of Martial, and several other second-rate poets. But of the craft and tricking part of life, with which Homer abounds, there is nothing to be found in Virgil; and therefore Plato, who gives the former so many good words, perfumes, crowns, but at last complimentally banishes him his commonwealth, would have entreated Virgil to stay with him, (if they had lived in the same age,) and entrusted him with some important charge in his government. Thus was his life as chaste as his style; and those who can critic his poetry, can never find a blemish in his manners; and one would rather wish to have that purity of mind, which the satirist himself attributes to him; that friendly disposition, and evenness of temper, and patience, which he was master of in so eminent a degree, than to have the honour of being author of the "Æneïs," or even of the "Georgics" themselves.

Having therefore so little relish for the usual amusements of the world, he prosecuted his studies without any considerable interruption, during the whole course of his life, which one may reasonably conjecture to have been something longer than fifty-two years; and therefore it is no wonder that he became the most general scholar that Rome ever bred, unless some one should except Varro. Besides the exact knowledge of rural affairs, he understood medicine, to which profession he was designed by his parents. A curious florist; on which subject one would wish he had writ, as he once intended: so profound a naturalist, that he has solved more phenomena of nature upon sound principles, than Aristotle in his Physics: he studied geometry, the most opposite of all sciences to a poetic genius, and beauties of a lively imagination; but this promoted the order of his narrations, his propriety of language, and clearness of expression, for which he was justly called the _pillar of the Latin tongue_. This geometrical spirit was the cause, that, to fill up a verse, he would not insert one superfluous word; and therefore deserves that character which a noble and judicious writer has given him, "That he never says too little, nor too much."[280] Nor could any one ever fill up the verses he left imperfect. There is one supplied near the beginning of the First Book. Virgil left the verse thus,

----_Hic illius arma,
Hic currus fuit_----

the rest is none of his.

He was so good a geographer, that he has not only left us the finest description of Italy that ever was, but, besides, was one of the few ancients who knew the true system of the earth, its being inhabited round about, under the torrid zone, and near the poles. Metrodorus, in his five books of the "Zones," justifies him from some exceptions made against him by astronomers. His rhetoric was in such general esteem, that lectures were read upon it in the reign of Tiberius, and the subject of declamations taken out of him. Pollio himself, and many other ancients, commented him. His esteem degenerated into a kind of superstition. The known story of Mr Cowley is an instance of it[281]. But the _sortes Virgilianæ_ were condemned by St Austin, and other casuists. Abienus, by an odd design, put all Virgil and Livy into iambic verse; and the pictures of those two were hung in the most honourable place of public libraries; and the design of taking them down, and destroying Virgil's works, was looked upon as one of the most extravagant amongst the many brutish phrenzies of Caligula.

FOOTNOTES:

[270] Knightly Chetwood, whom Dryden elsewhere terms "learned and every way excellent," (Vol. XIV. p. 49.) contributed to the Second Book of the Georgics those lines which contain the praises of Italy. Knightly Chetwood was born in 1652. He was a particular friend of Roscommon, and, being of Tory principles, he obtained high preferment in the church, and was nominated to the see of Bristol; but the Revolution prevented his instalment. In April 1707 he was made Dean of Gloucester, and died 11th. April, 1720.

The Life of Virgil has usually been ascribed to William Walsh, whose merits as a minor poet are now forgotten, but who still lives in the grateful strains of Pope, whose juvenile essays he encouraged, as well as in the encomium of Dryden, whom he patronised in age and adversity. I have left his name in possession of the Essay on the Pastorals, although it also was probably written by Dr Chetwood. See MALONE, Vol. III. p. 549.

[271] There is great justice in this observation. The prevalence of a system, founded in egotism and self-indulgence, which teaches, that pleasure was the greatest good, and pain the most intolerable evil, as surely indicates the downfal of the state, as the decay of morality.

[272] See _Suetonius_, Life of Octavius, chap. 94.

[273] Walsh might have found an hundred poets of his own time, who would have expressed themselves as warmly as Horace on a similar occasion. Our Dryden, for example:

Tell good Barzillai, thou canst sing no more;
And tell thy soul, she should have fled before.

But neither Horace nor Dryden expected to die a day the sooner for these ardent expressions; and, in extolling the gratitude of the ancients at the expence of the moderns, Walsh only gives another instance of the cant which distinguishes his compositions.

[274] An affected Gallicism, for proud of the services.

[275] Certainly there was no age in Britain, where, if a prince chose to hear an author read his works, and his lungs happened to fail him, the favourite, if present, and capable, would not have been happy to have continued the recitation. This is one of those hackneyed compliments to the manners of antiquity, which are often paid without the least foundation.

[276] Walsh seems to have been but a slender historian. Oliver's council well knew his private wishes, but were determined to counteract them.

[277] Many of these resemblances, and particularly the last, seem extremely fanciful. The same may be said of most of those which follow; but this comes of seeing too far into a mill-stone.

[278] All this charge is greatly overstrained. The critic, in censuring poor Dido and her sister, totally forgets their very reasonable ground of provocation.

[279] The critic should have considered, that Troy was not actually blazing when the old counsellor pronounced his panegyric upon Helen's beauty.

[280] "Essay on Poetry," by Sheffield, Marquis of Normanby, originally Earl of Mulgrave, and afterwards Duke of Buckingham.

[281] The _sortes Virgilianæ_ were a sort of augury, drawn by dipping at random into the volume, and applying the line to which chance directed the finger, as an answer to the doubt propounded. Cowley seems to have been a firm believer in this kind of sooth-saying. When at Paris, and secretary to Lord Jermin, he writes to Bennet his opinion concerning the probability of concluding a treaty with the Scottish nation; and adds, "And, to tell you the truth, which I take to be an argument above all the rest, Virgil has told the same thing to that purpose." There is a story, that Charles I. and Lord Faulkland tried this sort of divination at Oxford concerning the issue of the civil war, and that the former lighted upon this ominous response:

----_Jacet ingens littore truncus,
Avulsumque humeris caput, et sine nomine truncus._

Lord Faulkland drew an answer equally prophetic of his fate.

These follies seem to have been founded upon the vulgar idea still current at Naples, that Virgil was a magician. Gervas of Tilbury was an early propagator of this scandal, which was current during the middle ages, so that Naudæus thinks it necessary to apologize for Virgil, among other great men accused of necromancy. These legends formed the contents of a popular romance.

PASTORALS.

TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

HUGH,

LORD CLIFFORD,

BARON OF CHUDLEIGH.[282]

MY LORD,

I have found it not more difficult to translate Virgil, than to find such patrons as I desire for my translation. For, though England is not wanting in a learned nobility, yet such are my unhappy circumstances, that they have confined me to a narrow choice.[283] To the greater part I have not the honour to be known; and to some of them I cannot show at present, by any public act, that grateful respect which I shall ever bear them in my heart. Yet I have no reason to complain of fortune, since, in the midst of that abundance, I could not possibly have chosen better, than the worthy son of so illustrious a father. He was the patron of my manhood, when I flourished in the opinion of the world; though with small advantage to my fortune, till he awakened the remembrance of my royal master. He was that Pollio, or that Varus,[284] who introduced me to Augustus: and, though he soon dismissed himself from state affairs, yet, in the short time of his administration, he shone so powerfully upon me, that, like the heat of a Russian summer, he ripened the fruits of poetry in a cold climate, and gave me wherewithal to subsist, at least, in the long winter which succeeded. What I now offer to your lordship, is the wretched remainder of a sickly age, worn out with study, and oppressed by fortune; without other support than the constancy and patience of a Christian. You, my lord, are yet in the flower of your youth, and may live to enjoy the benefits of the peace which is promised Europe: I can only hear of that blessing; for years, and, above all things, want of health, have shut me out from sharing in the happiness. The poets, who condemn their Tantalus to hell, had added to his torments, if they had placed him in Elysium, which is the proper emblem of my condition. The fruit and the water may reach my lips, but cannot enter; and, if they could, yet I want a palate as well as a digestion. But it is some kind of pleasure to me, to please those whom I respect; and I am not altogether out of hope, that these Pastorals of Virgil may give your lordship some delight, though made English by one who scarce remembers that passion which inspired my author when he wrote them. These were his first essay in poetry, if the "Ceiris"[285] was not his: and it was more excusable in him to describe love when he was young, than for me to translate him when I am old. He died at the age of fifty-two; and I began this work in my great climacteric. But, having perhaps a better constitution than my author, I have wronged him less, considering my circumstances, than those who have attempted him before, either in our own, or any modern language. And, though this version is not void of errors, yet it comforts me, that the faults of others are not worth finding. Mine are neither gross nor frequent in those Eclogues, wherein my master has raised himself above that humble style in which pastoral delights, and which, I must confess, is proper to the education and converse of shepherds: for he found the strength of his genius betimes, and was, even in his youth, preluding to his "Georgics" and his "Æneïs." He could not forbear to try his wings, though his pinions were not hardened to maintain a long laborious flight; yet sometimes they bore him to a pitch as lofty as ever he was able to reach afterwards. But, when he was admonished by his subject to descend, he came down gently, circling in the air, and singing, to the ground; like a lark, melodious in her mounting, and continuing her song till she alights, still preparing for a higher flight at her next sally, and tuning her voice to better music. The fourth, the sixth, and the eighth Pastorals, are clear evidences of this truth. In the three first, he contains himself within his bounds: but, addressing to Pollio, his great patron, and himself no vulgar poet, he no longer could restrain the freedom of his spirit, but began to assert his native character, which is sublimity--putting himself under the conduct of the same Cumæan Sibyl, whom afterwards he gave for a guide to his Æneas. It is true, he was sensible of his own boldness; and we know it by the _paulo majora_, which begins his fourth Eclogue. He remembered, like young Manlius, that he was forbidden to engage; but what avails an express command to a youthful courage, which presages victory in the attempt?[286] Encouraged with success, he proceeds farther in the sixth, and invades the province of philosophy. And, notwithstanding that Phoebus had forewarned him of singing wars, as he there confesses, yet he presumed, that the search of nature was as free to him as to Lucretius, who, at his age, explained it according to the principles of Epicurus. In his eighth Eclogue, he has innovated nothing; the former part of it being the complaint and despair of a forsaken lover; the latter, a charm of an enchantress, to renew a lost affection. But the complaint perhaps contains some topics which are above the condition of his persons; and our author seems to have made his herdsmen somewhat too learned for their profession: the charms are also of the same nature; but both were copied from Theocritus, and had received the applause of former ages in their original.

There is a kind of rusticity in all those pompous verses; somewhat of a holiday shepherd strutting in his country buskins. The like may be observed both in the "Pollio" and the "Silenus," where the similitudes are drawn from the woods and meadows. They seem to me to represent our poet betwixt a farmer and a courtier, when he left Mantua for Rome, and drest himself in his best habit to appear before his patron, somewhat too fine for the place from whence he came, and yet retaining part of its simplicity. In the ninth Pastoral, he collects some beautiful passages, which were scattered in Theocritus, which he could not insert into any of his former Eclogues, and yet was unwilling they should be lost. In all the rest, he is equal to his Sicilian master, and observes, like him, a just decorum both of the subject and the persons; as particularly in the third Pastoral, where one of his shepherds describes a bowl, or mazer, curiously carved:

_In medio duo signa: Conon, et quis fuit alter,
Descripsit radio, totum qui gentibus orbem?_

He remembers only the name of Conon, and forgets the other on set purpose. Whether he means Anaximander, or Eudoxus, I dispute not; but he was certainly forgotten, to show his country swain was no great scholar.

After all, I must confess, that the boorish dialect of Theocritus has a secret charm in it, which the Roman language cannot imitate, though Virgil has drawn it down as low as possibly he could; as in the _cujum pecus_, and some other words, for which he was so unjustly blamed by the bad critics of his age, who could not see the beauties of that _merum rus_, which the poet described in those expressions. But Theocritus may justly be preferred as the original, without injury to Virgil, who modestly contents himself with the second place, and glories only in being the first who transplanted pastoral into his own country, and brought it there to bear as happily as the cherry-trees which Lucullus brought from Pontus.

Our own nation has produced a third poet in this kind, not inferior to the two former: for the "Shepherd's Kalendar" of Spenser is not to be matched in any modern language, not even by Tasso's "Aminta," which infinitely transcends Guarini's "Pastor Fido," as having more of nature in it, and being almost wholly clear from the wretched affectation of learning. I will say nothing of the "Piscatory Eclogues," because no modern Latin can bear criticism.[287] It is no wonder, that, rolling down, through so many barbarous ages, from the spring of Virgil, it bears along with it the filth and ordures of the Goths and Vandals. Neither will I mention Monsieur Fontenelle, the living glory of the French. It is enough for him to have excelled his master Lucian, without attempting to compare our miserable age with that of Virgil, or Theocritus. Let me only add, for his reputation,

----_Si Pergama dextrâ
Defendi possint, etiam hâc defensa fuissent._

But Spenser, being master of our northern dialect, and skilled in Chaucer's English, has so exactly imitated the Doric of Theocritus, that his love is a perfect image of that passion which God infused into both sexes, before it was corrupted with the knowledge of arts, and the ceremonies of what we call good manners.

My lord, I know to whom I dedicate; and could not have been induced, by any motive, to put this part of Virgil, or any other, into unlearned hands. You have read him with pleasure, and, I dare say, with admiration, in the Latin, of which you are a master. You have added to your natural endowments, which, without flattery, are eminent, the superstructures of study, and the knowledge of good authors. Courage, probity, and humanity, are inherent in you. These virtues have ever been habitual to the ancient house of Cumberland, from whence you are descended, and of which our chronicles make so honourable mention in the long wars betwixt the rival families of York and Lancaster. Your forefathers have asserted the party which they chose till death, and died for its defence in the fields of battle. You have, besides, the fresh remembrance of your noble father, from whom you never can degenerate:

----_Nec imbellem feroces
Progenerant aquilæ columbam._

It being almost morally impossible for you to be other than you are by kind, I need neither praise nor incite your virtue. You are acquainted with the Roman history, and know, without my information, that patronage and clientship always descended from the fathers to the sons, and that the same plebeian houses had recourse to the same patrician line which had formerly protected them, and followed their principles and fortunes to the last. So that I am your lordship's by descent, and part of your inheritance. And the natural inclination which I have to serve you, adds to your paternal right; for I was wholly yours from the first moment when I had the happiness and honour of being known to you. Be pleased therefore to accept the rudiments of Virgil's poetry, coarsely translated, I confess, but which yet retain some beauties of the author, which neither the barbarity of our language, nor my unskilfulness, could so much sully, but that they appear sometimes in the dim mirror which I hold before you. The subject is not unsuitable to your youth, which allows you yet to love, and is proper to your present scene of life. Rural recreations abroad, and books at home, are the innocent pleasures of a man who is early wise, and gives Fortune no more hold of him, than of necessity he must. It is good, on some occasions, to think before-hand as little as we can; to enjoy as much of the present as will not endanger our futurity; and to provide ourselves of the virtuoso's saddle, which will be sure to amble, when the world is upon the hardest trot. What I humbly offer to your lordship, is of this nature. I wish it pleasant, and am sure it is innocent. May you ever continue your esteem for Virgil, and not lessen it for the faults of his translator; who is, with all manner of respect and sense of gratitude,

My Lord,
Your Lordship's
Most humble and
Most obedient servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.

FOOTNOTES:

[282] This was the son of Lord Treasurer Clifford, a member of the Cabal administration, to whom our author dedicated "Amboyna." See Vol. V. p. 5. Hugh, Lord Clifford, died in 1730.

[283] Dryden alludes to his religion and politics. I presume, Hugh, Lord Clifford, was a Catholic, like his father, and entertained the hereditary attachment to the line of Stuart; thus falling within the narrow choice to which Dryden was limited.

[284] The well-known patrons of Virgil. It is disputed, which had the honour to present him to the emperor.

[285] One of the _Juvenilia_, or early poems, ascribed to Virgil.

[286] Manlius, contrary to the general orders of his father, Manlius Torquatus, engaged and slew the general of the Latins: his father caused his head to be struck off for disobedience.

[287] The author alludes to the Piscatoria of Sannazarius. They were published, with some other pieces of modern Latin poetry, by Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, in 1684. I do not pretend to judge of the purity of the style of Sannazarius, but surely the poetry is often beautiful. I doubt if Dryden was acquainted with the poems of Phineas Fletcher, whom honest Isaac Walton calls, "an excellent divine, and an excellent angler, and the author of excellent Piscatory Eclogues." They contain many passages fully equal to Spenser.