RECOMMENDATORY POEMS.
TO
MR DRYDEN,
ON HIS EXCELLENT
TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL.
Whene'er great Virgil's lofty verse I see,
The pompous scene charms my admiring eye.
There different beauties in perfection meet;
The thoughts as proper, as the numbers sweet;
And, when wild Fancy mounts a daring height,
Judgment steps in, and moderates her flight.
Wisely he manages his wealthy store,
Still says enough, and yet implies still more:
For, though the weighty sense be closely wrought,
The reader's left to improve the pleasing thought.
Hence we despaired to see an English dress
Should e'er his nervous energy express;
For who could that in fettered rhyme inclose,
Which, without loss, can scarce be told in prose?
But you, great Sir, his manly genius raise,
And make your copy share an equal praise.
Oh! how I see thee, in soft scenes of love,
Renew those passions he alone could move!
Here Cupid's charms are with new art exprest,
And pale Eliza leaves her peaceful rest—
Leaves her Elysium, as if glad to live, }
To love, and wish, to sigh, despair, and grieve, }
And die again for him that would again deceive. }
Nor does the mighty Trojan less appear
Than Mars himself, amidst the storms of war.
Now his fierce eyes with double fury glow,
And a new dread attends the impending blow:
The Daunian chiefs their eager rage abate,
And, though unwounded, seem to feel their fate.
Long the rude fury of an ignorant age,
With barbarous spite, profaned his sacred page.
The heavy Dutchmen, with laborious toil,
Wrested his sense, and cramped his vigorous style.
No time, no pains, the drudging pedants spare,
But still his shoulders must the burden bear;
While, through the mazes of their comments led,
We learn, not what he writes, but what they read.
Yet, through these shades of undistinguished night,
Appeared some glimmering intervals of light;
Till mangled by a vile translating sect,
Like babes by witches in effigie rackt:
Till Ogleby, mature in dulness, rose,
And Holbourn doggrel, and low chiming prose,
His strength and beauty did at once depose.
But now the magic spell is at an end,
Since even the dead, in you, have found a friend.
You free the bard from rude oppressors' power,
And grace his verse with charms unknown before.
He, doubly thus obliged, must doubting stand,
Which chiefly should his gratitude command—
Whether should claim the tribute of his heart,
The patron's bounty, or the poet's art.
Alike with wonder and delight we viewed
The Roman genius in thy verse renewed:
We saw thee raise soft Ovid's amorous fire,
And fit the tuneful Horace to thy lyre:
We saw new gall embitter Juvenal's pen,
And crabbed Persius made politely plain.
Virgil alone was thought too great a task—
What you could scarce perform, or we durst ask;
A task, which Waller's Muse could ne'er engage;
A task, too hard for Denham's stronger rage.
Sure of success, they some slight sallies tried;
But the fenced coast their bold attempts defied:
With fear, their o'ermatched forces back they drew,
Quitting the province Fate reserved for you.
In vain thus Philip did the Persians storm;
A work his son was destined to perform.
O! had Roscommon[269] lived to hail the day,
And sing loud Pæans through the crowded way,
When you in Roman majesty appear,
Which none know better, and none come so near;
The happy author would with wonder see,
His rules were only prophecies of thee:
And, were he now to give translators light,
He'd bid them only read thy work, and write.
For this great task, our loud applause is due;
We own old favours, but must press for new:
Th' expecting world demands one labour more;
And thy loved Homer does thy aid implore,
To right his injured works, and set them free
From the lewd rhymes of grovelling Ogleby.
Then shall his verse in graceful pomp appear,
Nor will his birth renew the ancient jar:
On those Greek cities we shall look with scorn,
And in our Britain think the poet born.
TO
MR DRYDEN,
ON HIS
TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL.
I.
We read, how dreams and visions heretofore
The prophet and the poet could inspire,
And make them in unusual rapture soar,
With rage divine, and with poetic fire.
II.
O could I find it now!—Would Virgil's shade
But for a while vouchsafe to bear the light,
To grace my numbers, and that Muse to aid,
Who sings the poet that has done him right.
III.
It long has been this sacred author's fate,
To lie at every dull translator's will:
Long, long his Muse has groaned beneath the weight
Of mangling Ogleby's presumptuous quill.
IV.
Dryden, at last, in his defence arose:
The father now is righted by the son;
And, while his Muse endeavours to disclose
That poet's beauties, she declares her own.
V.
In your smooth pompous numbers drest, each line,
Each thought, betrays such a majestic touch,
He could not, had he finished his design,
Have wished it better, or have done so much.
VI.
You, like his hero, though yourself were free,
And disentangled from the war of wit—
You, who secure might others' danger see,
And safe from all malicious censure sit—
VII.
Yet, because sacred Virgil's noble Muse,
O'erlaid by fools, was ready to expire,
To risk your fame again, you boldly chuse,
Or to redeem, or perish with your sire.
VIII.
Even first and last, we owe him half to you:
For, that his Æneids missed their threatened fate,
Was—that his friends by some prediction knew,
Hereafter, who, correcting, should translate.
IX.
But hold, my Muse! thy needless flight restrain,
Unless, like him, thou could'st a verse indite:
To think his fancy to describe, is vain,
Since nothing can discover light, but light.
X.
'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.
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 Phœnicians, 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:
——Φιλος δ' ἦν ανθρωποισι;
Παντας γαρ φιλεεσκεν.
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 Phœbus 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.
PREFACE
TO THE
PASTORALS,
WITH
A SHORT DEFENCE
OF
VIRGIL,
AGAINST SOME OF THE REFLECTIONS OF
MONSIEUR FONTENELLE.
BY WILLIAM WALSH, Esq.
As the writings of greatest antiquity are in verse, so, of all sorts of poetry, pastorals seem the most ancient; being formed upon the model of the first innocence and simplicity, which the moderns, better to dispense themselves from imitating, have wisely thought fit to treat as fabulous, and impracticable. And yet they, by obeying the unsophisticated dictates of nature, enjoyed the most valuable blessings of life; a vigorous health of body, with a constant serenity and freedom of mind; whilst we, with all our fanciful refinements, can scarcely pass an autumn without some access of a fever, or a whole day, not ruffled by some unquiet passion. He was not then looked upon as a very old man, who reached to a greater number of years, than in these times an ancient family can reasonably pretend to; and we know the names of several, who saw and practised the world for a longer space of time, than we can read the account of in any one entire body of history. In short, they invented the most useful arts, pasturage, tillage, geometry, writing, music, astronomy, &c. whilst the moderns, like extravagant heirs made rich by their industry, ungratefully deride the good old gentleman who left them the estate. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that pastorals are fallen into disesteem, together with that fashion of life, upon which they were grounded. And methinks I see the reader already uneasy at this part of Virgil, counting the pages, and posting to the "Æneïs:" so delightful an entertainment is the very relation of public mischief and slaughter now become to mankind. And yet Virgil passed a much different judgment on his own works: he valued most this part, and his "Georgics," and depended upon them for his reputation with posterity; but censures himself in one of his letters to Augustus, for meddling with heroics, the invention of a degenerating age. This is the reason that the rules of pastoral are so little known, or studied. Aristotle, Horace, and the Essay of Poetry, take no notice of it; and Monsieur Boileau, one of the most accurate of the moderns, because he never loses the ancients out of his sight, bestows scarce half a page on it.
It is the design therefore of the few following pages, to clear this sort of writing from vulgar prejudices; to vindicate our author from some unjust imputations; to look into some of the rules of this sort of poetry, and enquire what sort of versification is most proper for it; in which point we are so much inferior to the ancients, that this consideration alone were enough to make some writers think as they ought, that is meanly, of their own performances.
As all sorts of poetry consist in imitation, pastoral is the imitation of a Shepherd, considered under that character. It is requisite therefore to be a little informed of the condition and qualification of these shepherds.
One of the ancients has observed truly, but satirically enough, that, "Mankind is the measure of every thing." And thus, by a gradual improvement of this mistake, we come to make our own age and country the rule and standard of others, and ourselves at last the measure of them all. We figure the ancient countrymen like our own, leading a painful life in poverty and contempt, without wit, or courage, or education. But men had quite different notions of these things, for the first four thousand years of the world. Health and strength were then in more esteem than the refinements of pleasure; and it was accounted a great deal more honourable to till the ground, or keep a flock of sheep, than to dissolve in wantonness and effeminating sloth.[288] Hunting has now an idea of quality joined to it, and is become the most important business in the life of a gentleman; anciently it was quite otherways.[289] Mr Fleury has severely remarked, that this extravagant passion for hunting is a strong proof of our Gothic extraction, and shews an affinity of humour with the savage Americans. The barbarous Franks and other Germans, (having neither corn nor wine of their own growth,) when they passed the Rhine, and possessed themselves of countries better cultivated, left the tillage of the land to the old proprietors; and afterwards continued to hazard their lives as freely for their diversion, as they had done before for their necessary subsistence. The English gave this usage the sacred stamp of fashion; and from hence it is that most of our terms of hunting are French.[290] The reader will, I hope, give me his pardon for my freedom on this subject, since an ill accident, occasioned by hunting, has kept England in pain, these several months together, for one of the best and greatest peers[291] which she has bred for some ages; no less illustrious for civil virtues and learning, than his ancestors were for all their victories in France.
But there are some prints still left of the ancient esteem for husbandry, and their plain fashion of life, in many of our surnames, and in the escutcheons of the most ancient families, even those of the greatest kings, the roses, the lilies, the thistle, &c. It is generally known, that one of the principal causes of the deposing of Mahomet the Fourth, was, that he would not allot part of the day to some manual labour, according to the law of Mahomet, and ancient practice of his predecessors. He that reflects on this, will be the less surprised to find that Charlemagne, eight hundred years ago, ordered his children to be instructed in some profession; and, eight hundred years yet higher, that Augustus wore no clothes but such as were made by the hands of the empress and her daughters; and Olympias did the same for Alexander the Great. Nor will he wonder, that the Romans, in great exigency, sent for their dictator from the plough, whose whole estate was but of four acres; too little a spot now for the orchard, or kitchen-garden, of a private gentleman. It is commonly known, that the founders of three the most renowned monarchies in the world were shepherds; and the subject of husbandry has been adorned by the writings and labour of more than twenty kings. It ought not therefore to be matter of surprise to a modern writer, that kings, the shepherds of the people in Homer, laid down their first rudiments in tending their mute subjects; nor that the wealth of Ulysses consisted in flocks and herds, the intendants over which were then in equal esteem with officers of state in latter times. And therefore Eumæus is called διος ὑφορβος in Homer; not so much because Homer was a lover of a country life, to which he rather seems averse, but by reason of the dignity and greatness of his trust, and because he was the son of a king, stolen away, and sold by the Phœnician pirates; which the ingenious Mr Cowley seems not to have taken notice of. Nor will it seem strange, that the master of the horse to king Latinus, in the ninth Æneïd, was found in the homely employment of cleaving blocks, when news of the first skirmish betwixt the Trojans and Latins was brought to him.
Being therefore of such quality, they cannot be supposed so very ignorant and unpolished: the learning and good-breeding of the world was then in the hands of such people. He who was chosen by the consent of all parties to arbitrate so delicate an affair as, which was the fairest of the three celebrated beauties of heaven—he who had the address to debauch away Helen from her husband, her native country, and from a crown—understood what the French call by the too soft name of galanterie; he had accomplishments enough, how ill use soever he made of them. It seems, therefore, that M. Fontenelle had not duly considered the matter, when he reflected so severely upon Virgil, as if he had not observed the laws of decency in his Pastorals, in making shepherds speak to things beside their character, and above their capacity. He stands amazed, that shepherds should thunder out, as he expresses himself, the formation of the world, and that too according to the system of Epicurus. "In truth," says he, page [176], "I cannot tell what to make of this whole piece, (the sixth Pastoral.) I can neither comprehend the design of the author, nor the connection of the parts. First come the ideas of philosophy, and presently after those incoherent fables, &c." To expose him yet more, he subjoins, "It is Silenus himself who makes all this absurd discourse. Virgil says indeed, that he had drank too much the day before; perhaps the debauch hung in his head when he composed this poem," &c. Thus far M. Fontenelle, who, to the disgrace of reason, as himself ingenuously owns, first built his house, and then studied architecture; I mean, first composed his Eclogues, and then studied the rules. In answer to this, we may observe, first, that this very pastoral which he singles out to triumph over, was recited by a famous player on the Roman theatre, with marvellous applause; insomuch that Cicero, who had heard part of it only, ordered the whole to be rehearsed, and, struck with admiration of it, conferred then upon Virgil the glorious title of
Magnæ spes altera Romæ.
Nor is it old Donatus only who relates this; we have the same account from another very credible and ancient author; so that here we have the judgment of Cicero, and the people of Rome, to confront the single opinion of this adventurous critic. A man ought to be well assured of his own abilities, before he attacks an author of established reputation. If Mr Fontenelle had perused the fragments of the Phœnician antiquity, traced the progress of learning through the ancient Greek writers, or so much as consulted his learned countryman Huetius, he would have found, (which falls out unluckily for him,) that a Chaldæan shepherd discovered to the Egyptians and Greeks the creation of the world. And what subject more fit for such a pastoral, than that great affair which was first notified to the world by one of that profession? Nor does it appear, (what he takes for granted,) that Virgil describes the original of the world according to the hypothesis of Epicurus. He was too well seen in antiquity to commit such a gross mistake; there is not the least mention of chance in that whole passage, nor of the clinamen principiorum, so peculiar to Epicurus's hypothesis. Virgil had not only more piety, but was of too nice a judgment to introduce a god denying the power and providence of the Deity, and singing a hymn to the atoms and blind chance. On the contrary, his description agrees very well with that of Moses; and the eloquent commentator Dacier, who is so confident that Horace had perused the sacred history, might with greater reason have affirmed the same thing of Virgil; for, besides that famous passage in the sixth Æneïd, (by which this may be illustrated,) where the word principio is used in the front of both by Moses and Virgil, and the seas are first mentioned, and the spiritus intus alit, which might not improbably, as M. Dacier would suggest, allude to the "Spirit moving upon the face of the waters;" but, omitting this parallel place, the successive formation of the world is evidently described in these words,
Rerum paulatim sumere formas:
And it is hardly possible to render more literally that verse of Moses, "Let the waters be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear," than in this of Virgil,
Jam durare solum, et discludere Nerea ponto.
After this, the formation of the sun is described, (exactly in the Mosaical order,) and, next, the production of the first living creatures, and that too in a small number, (still in the same method,)
Rara per ignotos errent animalia montes.
And here the foresaid author would probably remark, that Virgil keeps more exactly to the Mosaic system, than an ingenious writer, who will by no means allow mountains to be coeval with the world. Thus much will make it probable at least, that Virgil had Moses in his thoughts rather than Epicurus, when he composed this poem. But it is further remarkable, that this passage was taken from a song attributed to Apollo, who himself, too, unluckily had been a shepherd; and he took it from another yet more ancient, composed by the first inventor of music, and at that time a shepherd too; and this is one of the noblest fragments of Greek antiquity. And, because I cannot suppose the ingenious M. Fontenelle one of their number, who pretend to censure the Greeks, without being able to distinguish Greek from Ephesian characters, I shall here set down the lines from which Virgil took this passage, though none of the commentators have observed it:
——ερατη δ' ὁι ἑσπετο φωνη,
Κραινων αθανατους τε θεους, και γαιαν ερεμνην,
Ὡς τα πρωτα γενοντο, και ὡς λαχε μοιραν ἑκαστος, &c.
Thus Linus too began his poem, as appears by a fragment of it preserved by Diogenes Laertius; and the like may be instanced in Musæus himself; so that our poet here, with great judgment, as always, follows the ancient custom of beginning their more solemn songs with the creation, and does it too most properly under the person of a shepherd. And thus the first and best employment of poetry was, to compose hymns in honour of the great Creator of the universe.
Few words will suffice to answer his other objections. He demands why those several transformations are mentioned in that poem:—And is not fable then the life and soul of poetry? Can himself assign a more proper subject of pastoral than the Saturnia regna, the age and scene of this kind of poetry? What theme more fit for the song of a god, or to imprint religious awe, than the omnipotent power of transforming the species of creatures at their pleasure? Their families lived in groves, near the clear springs; and what better warning could be given to the hopeful young shepherds, than that they should not gaze too much into the liquid dangerous looking-glass, for fear of being stolen by the water-nymphs, that is, falling and being drowned, as Hylas was? Pasiphaë's monstrous passion for a bull is certainly a subject enough fitted for bucolics. Can M. Fontenelle tax Silenus for fetching too far the transformation of the sisters of Phaëton into trees, when perhaps they sat at that very time under the hospitable shade of those alders and poplars—or the metamorphosis of Philomela into that ravishing bird, which makes the sweetest music of the groves? If he had looked into the ancient Greek writers, or so much as consulted honest Servius, he would have discovered, that, under the allegory of this drunkenness of Silenus, the refinement and exaltation of men's minds by philosophy was intended. But, if the author of these reflections can take such flights in his wine, it is almost pity that drunkenness should be a sin, or that he should ever want good store of burgundy and champaign. But indeed he seems not to have ever drank out of Silenus's tankard, when he composed either his Critique or Pastorals.
His censure on the fourth seems worse grounded than the other. It is entitled, in some ancient manuscripts, the "History of the Renovation of the World." He complains, that he "cannot understand what is meant by those many figurative expressions:" but, if he had consulted the younger Vossius's dissertation on this Pastoral, or read the excellent oration of the emperor Constantine, made French by a good pen of their own, he would have found there the plain interpretation of all those figurative expressions; and, withal, very strong proofs of the truth of the Christian religion; such as converted heathens, as Valerianus, and others. And, upon account of this piece, the most learned of all the Latin fathers calls Virgil a Christian, even before Christianity. Cicero takes notice of it in his books of Divination; and Virgil probably had put it in verse a considerable time before the edition of his Pastorals. Nor does he appropriate it to Pollio, or his son, but complimentally dates it from his consulship; and therefore some one, who had not so kind thoughts of M. Fontenelle as I, would be inclined to think him as bad a Catholic as critic in this place.
But, in respect to some books he has wrote since, I pass by a great part of this, and shall only touch briefly some of the rules of this sort of poem.
The first is, that an air of piety, upon all occasions, should be maintained in the whole poem. This appears in all the ancient Greek writers, as Homer, Hesiod, Aratus, &c. And Virgil is so exact in the observation of it, not only in this work, but in his "Æneïs" too, that a celebrated French writer taxes him for permitting Æneas to do nothing without the assistance of some god. But by this it appears, at least, that M. St Evremont is no Jansenist.
M. Fontenelle seems a little defective in this point: he brings in a pair of shepherdesses disputing very warmly, whether Victoria be a goddess or a woman. Her great condescension and compassion, her affability and goodness, (none of the meanest attributes of the divinity,) pass for convincing arguments, that she could not possibly be a goddess.
Les Déesses, toûjours fières et méprisantes,
Ne rassureroient point les bergères tremblantes
Par d'obligeans discours, des souris gracieux.
Mais tu l'as vu: cette auguste personne,
Qui vient de paroître en ces lieux,
Prend soin de rassurer au moment qu'elle étonne;
Sa bonté descendant sans peine jusqu' à nous.
In short, she has too many divine perfections to be a deity, and therefore she is a mortal; which was the thing to be proved. It is directly contrary to the practice of all ancient poets, as well as to the rules of decency and religion, to make such odious preferences. I am much surprised, therefore, that he should use such an argument as this:
Cloris, as-tu vu des déesses
Avoir un air si facile et si doux?
Was not Aurora, and Venus, and Luna, and I know not how many more of the heathen deities, too easy of access to Tithonus, to Anchises, and to Endymion? Is there any thing more sparkish and better-humoured than Venus's accosting her son in the deserts of Libya? or than the behaviour of Pallas to Diomedes, one of the most perfect and admirable pieces of all the Iliads; where she condescends to raillé him so agreeably; and, notwithstanding her severe virtue, and all the ensigns of majesty with which she so terribly adorns herself, condescends to ride with him in his chariot? But the Odysseys are full of greater instances of condescension than this.
This brings to mind that famous passage of Lucan, in which he prefers Cato to all the gods at once:
Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni—
which Brebœuf has rendered so flatly, and which may be thus paraphrased:
Heaven meanly with the conqueror did comply;
But Cato, rather than submit, would die.[292]
It is an unpardonable presumption in any sort of religion, to compliment their princes at the expence of their deities.
But, letting that pass, this whole Eclogue is but a long paraphrase of a trite verse in Virgil, and Homer;
Nec vox hominem sonat: O Dea certe!
So true is that remark of the admirable Earl of Roscommon, if applied to the Romans, rather, I fear, than to the English, since his own death:
----one sterling line,
Drawn to French wire, would through whole pages shine.
Another rule is, that the characters should represent that ancient innocence, and unpractised plainness, which was then in the world. P. Rapin has gathered many instances of this out of Theocritus and Virgil; and the reader can do it as well as himself. But M. Fontenelle transgressed this rule, when he hid himself in the thicket to listen to the private discourse of the two shepherdesses. This is not only ill breeding at Versailles; the Arcadian shepherdesses themselves would have set their dogs upon one for such an unpardonable piece of rudeness.
A third rule is, that there should be some ordonnance, some design, or little plot, which may deserve the title of a pastoral scene. This is everywhere observed by Virgil, and particularly remarkable in the first Eclogue, the standard of all pastorals. A beautiful landscape presents itself to your view; a shepherd, with his flock around him, resting securely under a spreading beech, which furnished the first food to our ancestors; another in a quite different situation of mind and circumstances; the sun setting; the hospitality of the more fortunate shepherd, &c. And here M. Fontenelle seems not a little wanting.
A fourth rule, and of great importance in this delicate sort of writing, is, that there be choice diversity of subjects; that the Eclogue, like a beautiful prospect, should charm by its variety. Virgil is admirable in this point, and far surpasses Theocritus, as he does everywhere, when judgment and contrivance have the principal part. The subject of the first Pastoral is hinted above.
The Second contains the love of Corydon for Alexis, and the seasonable reproach he gives himself, that he left his vines half pruned, (which, according to the Roman rituals, derived a curse upon the fruit that grew upon it,) whilst he pursued an object undeserving his passion.
The Third, a sharp contention of two shepherds for the prize of poetry.
The Fourth contains the discourse of a shepherd comforting himself, in a declining age, that a better was ensuing.
The Fifth, a lamentation for a dead friend, the first draught of which is probably more ancient than any of the pastorals now extant; his brother being at first intended; but he afterwards makes his court to Augustus, by turning it into an apotheosis of Julius Cæsar.
The Sixth is the Silenus.
The Seventh, another poetical dispute, first composed at Mantua.
The Eighth is the description of a despairing lover, and a magical charm.
He sets the Ninth after all these, very modestly, because it was particular to himself; and here he would have ended that work, if Gallus had not prevailed upon him to add one more in his favour.
Thus curious was Virgil in diversifying his subjects. But M. Fontenelle is a great deal too uniform: begin where you please, the subject is still the same. We find it true what he says of himself,
Toûjours, toûjours de l'amour.
He seems to take pastorals and love-verses for the same thing. Has human nature no other passion? Does not fear, ambition, avarice, pride, a capriccio of honour, and laziness itself, often triumph over love? But this passion does all, not only in pastorals, but in modern tragedies too. A hero can no more fight, or be sick, or die, than he can be born, without a woman. But dramatics have been composed in compliance to the humour of the age, and the prevailing inclination of the great, whose example has a more powerful influence, not only in the little court behind the scenes, but on the great theatre of the world. However, this inundation of love-verses is not so much an effect of their amorousness, as of immoderate self-love; this being the only sort of poetry, in which the writer can, not only without censure, but even with commendation, talk of himself. There is generally more of the passion of Narcissus, than concern for Chloris and Corinna, in this whole affair. Be pleased to look into almost any of those writers, and you shall meet everywhere that eternal Moi, which the admirable Pascal so judiciously condemns. Homer can never be enough admired for this one so particular quality, that he never speaks of himself, either in the Iliad or the Odysseys: and, if Horace had never told us his genealogy, but left it to the writer of his life, perhaps he had not been a loser by it. This consideration might induce those great critics, Varius and Tucca, to raze out the four first verses of the "Æneïs," in great measure, for the sake of that unlucky Ille ego. But extraordinary geniuses have a sort of prerogative, which may dispense them from laws, binding to subject wits. However, the ladies have the less reason to be pleased with those addresses, of which the poet takes the greater share to himself. Thus the beau presses into their dressing-room; but it is not so much to adore their fair eyes, as to adjust his own steenkirk and peruke, and set his countenance in their glass.
A fifth rule (which one may hope will not be contested) is, that the writer should show in his compositions some competent skill of the subject matter, that which makes the character of persons introduced. In this, as in all other points of learning, decency, and œconomy of a poem, Virgil much excels his master Theocritus. The poet is better skilled in husbandry than those that get their bread by it. He describes the nature, the diseases, the remedies, the proper places, and seasons, of feeding, of watering their flocks; the furniture, diet, the lodging and pastimes, of his shepherds. But the persons brought in by M. Fontenelle are shepherds in masquerade, and handle their sheep-hook as aukwardly as they do their oaten reed. They saunter about with their chers moutons; but they relate as little to the business in hand, as the painter's dog, or a Dutch ship, does to the history designed. One would suspect some of them, that, instead of leading out their sheep into the plains of Mont-Brison and Marcilli, to the flowery banks of Lignon, or the Charante, they are driving directly à la boucherie, to make money of them. I hope hereafter M. Fontenelle will chuse his servants better.
A sixth rule is, that, as the style ought to be natural, clear, and elegant, it should have some peculiar relish of the ancient fashion of writing. Parables in those times were frequently used, as they are still by the eastern nations; philosophical questions, ænigmas, &c.; and of this we find instances in the sacred writings, in Homer, contemporary with king David, in Herodotus, in the Greek tragedians. This piece of antiquity is imitated by Virgil with great judgment and discretion. He has proposed one riddle, which has never yet been solved by any of his commentators. Though he knew the rules of rhetoric as well as Cicero himself, he conceals that skill in his Pastorals, and keeps close to the character of antiquity. Nor ought the connections and transitions to be very strict and regular; this would give the Pastorals an air of novelty; and of this neglect of exact connections, we have instances in the writings of the ancient Chineses, of the Jews and Greeks, in Pindar, and other writers of dithyrambics, in the choruses of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. If M. Fontenelle and Ruæus had considered this, the one would have spared his critique of the sixth, and the other, his reflections upon the ninth Pastoral. The over-scrupulous care of connections makes the modern compositions oftentimes tedious and flat: and by the omission of them it comes to pass, that the Pensées of the incomparable M. Pascal, and perhaps of M. Bruyère, are two of the most entertaining books which the modern French can boast of. Virgil, in this point, was not only faithful to the character of antiquity, but copies after Nature herself. Thus a meadow, where the beauties of the spring are profusely blended together, makes a more delightful prospect, than a curious parterre of sorted flowers in our gardens: and we are much more transported with the beauty of the heavens, and admiration of their Creator, in a clear night, when we behold stars of all magnitudes promiscuously moving together, than if those glorious lights were ranked in their several orders, or reduced into the finest geometrical figures.
Another rule omitted by P. Rapin, as some of his are by me, (for I do not design an entire treatise in this preface,) is, that not only the sentences should be short and smart, (upon which account he justly blames the Italian and French, as too talkative,) but that the whole piece should be so too. Virgil transgressed this rule in his first Pastorals, (I mean those which he composed at Mantua,) but rectified the fault in his riper years. This appears by the Culex, which is as long as five of his Pastorals put together. The greater part of those he finished have less than a hundred verses; and but two of them exceed that number. But the "Silenus," which he seems to have designed for his master-piece, in which he introduces a god singing, and he, too, full of inspiration, (which is intended by that ebriety, which M. Fontenelle so unreasonably ridicules,) though it go through so vast a field of matter, and comprises the mythology of near two thousand years, consists but of fifty lines; so that its brevity is no less admirable, than the subject matter, the noble fashion of handling it, and the deity speaking. Virgil keeps up his characters in this respect too, with the strictest decency: for poetry and pastime was not the business of men's lives in those days, but only their seasonable recreation after necessary labours. And therefore the length of some of the modern Italian and English compositions is against the rules of this kind of poesy.
I shall add something very briefly, touching the versification of Pastorals, though it be a mortifying consideration to the moderns. Heroic verse, as it is commonly called, was used by the Greeks in this sort of poem, as very ancient and natural; lyrics, iambics, &c. being invented afterwards: but there is so great a difference in the numbers of which it may be compounded, that it may pass rather for a genus, than species, of verse. Whosoever shall compare the numbers of the three following verses, will quickly be sensible of the truth of this observation:
Tityre, tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi—
the first of the Georgics,
Quid faciat lætas segetes, quo sidere terram—
and of the Æneïs,
Arma, virumque cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris.
The sound of the verses is almost as different as the subjects. But the Greek writers of Pastoral usually limited themselves to the example of the first; which Virgil found so exceedingly difficult, that he quitted it, and left the honour of that part to Theocritus. It is indeed probable, that what we improperly call rhyme, is the most ancient sort of poetry; and learned men have given good arguments for it; and therefore a French historian commits a gross mistake, when he attributes that invention to a king of Gaul, as an English gentleman does, when he makes a Roman emperor the inventor of it. But the Greeks, who understood fully the force and power of numbers, soon grew weary of this childish sort of verse, as the younger Vossius justly calls it, and therefore those rhyming hexameters, which Plutarch observes in Homer himself, seem to be the remains of a barbarous age. Virgil had them in such abhorrence, that he would rather make a false syntax, than what we call a rhyme. Such a verse as this,
Vir, precor, uxori, frater succurre sorori,
was passable in Ovid; but the nicer ears in Augustus's court could not pardon Virgil for
At regina pyrâ....
so that the principal ornament of modern poetry was accounted deformity by the Latins and Greeks. It was they who invented the different terminations of words, those happy compositions, those short monosyllables, those transpositions for the elegance of the sound and sense, which are wanting so much in modern languages. The French sometimes crowd together ten or twelve monosyllables into one disjointed verse. They may understand the nature of, but cannot imitate, those wonderful spondees of Pythagoras, by which he could suddenly pacify a man that was in a violent transport of anger; nor those swift numbers of the priests of Cybele, which had the force to enrage the most sedate and phlegmatic tempers. Nor can any modern put into his own language the energy of that single poem of Catullus,
Super alta vectus Atys, &c.
Latin is but a corrupt dialect of Greek; and the French, Spanish, and Italian, a corruption of Latin; and therefore a man might as well go about to persuade me that vinegar is a nobler liquor than wine, as that the modern compositions can be as graceful and harmonious as the Latin itself. The Greek tongue very naturally falls into iambics, and therefore the diligent reader may find six or seven-and-twenty of them in those accurate orations of Isocrates. The Latin as naturally falls into heroic; and therefore the beginning of Livy's History is half a hexameter, and that of Tacitus an entire one. The Roman historian[293], describing the glorious effort of a colonel to break through a brigade of the enemy's, just after the defeat at Cannæ, falls, unknowingly, into a verse not unworthy Virgil himself—
Hæc ubi dicta dedit, stringit gladium, cuneoque
Facto, per medios.... &c.
Ours and the French can at best but fall into blank verse, which is a fault in prose. The misfortune indeed is common to us both; but we deserve more compassion, because we are not vain of our barbarities. As age brings men back into the state and infirmities of childhood, upon the fall of their empire, the Romans doted into rhyme, as appears sufficiently by the hymns of the Latin church; and yet a great deal of the French poetry does hardly deserve that poor title. I shall give an instance out of a poem which had the good luck to gain the prize in 1685; for the subject deserved a nobler pen:
Tous les jours ce grand roy, des autres roys l' exemple,
S'ouvre un nouveau chemin au faîte de ton temple, &c.
The judicious Malherbe exploded this sort of verse near eighty years ago. Nor can I forbear wondering at that passage of a famous academician, in which he, most compassionately, excuses the ancients for their not being so exact in their compositions as the modern French, because they wanted a dictionary, of which the French are at last happily provided. If Demosthenes and Cicero had been so lucky as to have had a dictionary, and such a patron as cardinal Richelieu, perhaps they might have aspired to the honour of Balzac's legacy of ten pounds, Le prix de l'éloquence.
On the contrary, I dare assert, that there are hardly ten lines in either of those great orators, or even in the catalogue of Homer's ships, which are not more harmonious, more truly rhythmical, than most of the French or English sonnets; and therefore they lose, at least, one half of their native beauty by translation.
I cannot but add one remark on this occasion,—that the French verse is oftentimes not so much as rhyme, in the lowest sense; for the childish repetition of the same note cannot be called music. Such instances are infinite, as in the forecited poem:
épris trophée caché
mépris Orphée cherché.
M. Boileau himself has a great deal of this μονοτονια, not by his own neglect, but purely by the faultiness and poverty of the French tongue. M. Fontenelle at last goes into the excessive paradoxes of M. Perrault, and boasts of the vast number of their excellent songs, preferring them to the Greek and Latin. But an ancient writer, of as good credit, has assured us, that seven lives would hardly suffice to read over the Greek odes; but a few weeks would be sufficient, if a man were so very idle as to read over all the French. In the mean time, I should be very glad to see a catalogue of but fifty of theirs with
Exact propriety of word and thought.[294]
Notwithstanding all the high encomiums and mutual gratulations which they give one another, (for I am far from censuring the whole of that illustrious society, to which the learned world is much obliged,) after all those golden dreams at the Louvre, that their pieces will be as much valued, ten or twelve ages hence, as the ancient Greek or Roman, I can no more get it into my head that they will last so long, than I could believe the learned Dr H——k [of the Royal Society,] if he should pretend to show me a butterfly, that had lived a thousand winters.
When M. Fontenelle wrote his Eclogues, he was so far from equalling Virgil, or Theocritus, that he had some pains to take before he could understand in what the principal beauty and graces of their writings do consist.
Cum mortuis non nisi larvæ luctantur.
FOOTNOTES:
[288] There is a great deal of cant in this; there was just the same distinction in manners and knowledge between the clowns of Mantua and the courtiers of Augustus, as there is between persons of the same rank in modern times.
[289] Hunting was as much an exercise of the Roman youths as of our own; and this might be easily proved from Virgil, were it not a well known fact. It was the sport with which Dido entertained the Trojans; and the wish of Ascanius upon the occasion, was worthy of a Frank, or any other German.
[290] This is indistinctly expressed; but if the critic means to say, that the terms of hunting were put into French as the most fashionable language, he is mistaken. The hunting phrases still in use, are handed down to us from the Anglo-Norman barons, in whose time French was the only language spoken among those who were entitled to participate in an amusement to which the nobility claimed an exclusive privilege.
[291] The Duke of Shrewsbury.
[292] Most readers will be of opinion, that Walsh has rendered this celebrated passage not only flatly, but erroneously. His translation seems to infer, that the gods were in danger of dying, had they not meanly complied with the conqueror. At any rate, the real compliment to Cato, which consists in weighing his sense of justice against that of the gods themselves, totally evaporates. Perhaps the following lines may express Lucan's meaning, though without the concise force of the original:
The victor was the care of partial Heaven,
But to the conquered cause was Cato's suffrage given.
[293] Livy.
[294] Essay of Poetry.
PASTORAL I.
OR,
TITYRUS AND MELIBŒUS.
ARGUMENT.
The occasion of the First Pastoral was this: When Augustus had settled himself in the Roman empire, that he might reward his veteran troops for their past service, he distributed among them all the lands that lay about Cremona and Mantua; turning out the right owners for having sided with his enemies. Virgil was a sufferer among the rest, who afterwards recovered his estate by Mæcenas's intercession; and, as an instance of his gratitude, composed the following Pastoral, where he sets out his own good fortune in the person of Tityrus, and the calamities of his Mantuan neighbours in the character of Melibœus.
MELIBŒUS.
Beneath the shade which beechen boughs diffuse,
You, Tityrus, entertain your sylvan muse.
Round the wide world in banishment we roam,
Forced from our pleasing fields and native home;
While, stretched at ease, you sing your happy loves,
And Amaryllis fills the shady groves.
TITYRUS.
These blessings, friend, a deity bestowed;
For never can I deem him less than God.
The tender firstlings of my woolly breed
Shall on his holy altar often bleed.
He gave my kine to graze the flowery plain,
And to my pipe renewed the rural strain.
MELIBŒUS.
I envy not your fortune, but admire,
That, while the raging sword and wasteful fire
Destroy the wretched neighbourhood around,
No hostile arms approach your happy ground.
Far different is my fate; my feeble goats
With pains I drive from their forsaken cotes:
And this, you see, I scarcely drag along,
Who, yeaning, on the rocks has left her young,
The hope and promise of my failing fold.
My loss, by dire portents, the gods foretold;
For, had I not been blind, I might have seen:—
Yon riven oak, the fairest of the green,
And the hoarse raven, on the blasted bough,
By croaking from the left, presaged the coming blow.
But tell me, Tityrus, what heavenly power
Preserved your fortunes in that fatal hour?
TITYRUS.
Fool that I was, I thought imperial Rome }
Like Mantua, where on market-days we come, }
And thither drive our tender lambs from home. }
So kids and whelps their sires and dams express,
And so the great I measured by the less.
But country towns, compared with her, appear
Like shrubs, when lofty cypresses are near.
MELIBŒUS.
What great occasion called you hence to Rome?
TITYRUS.
Freedom, which came at length, though slow to come.
Nor did my search of liberty begin,
Till my black hairs were changed upon my chin;
Nor Amaryllis would vouchsafe a look,
Till Galatea's meaner bonds I broke.
Till then a helpless, hopeless, homely swain,
I sought not freedom, nor aspired to gain:
Though many a victim from my folds was bought,
And many a cheese to country markets brought,
Yet all the little that I got, I spent,
And still returned as empty as I went.
MELIBŒUS.
We stood amazed to see your mistress mourn,
Unknowing that she pined for your return;
We wondered why she kept her fruit so long,
For whom so late the ungathered apples hung.
But now the wonder ceases, since I see
She kept them only, Tityrus, for thee;
For thee the bubbling springs appeared to mourn,
And whispering pines made vows for thy return.
TITYRUS.
What should I do?—While here I was enchained,
No glimpse of godlike liberty remained;
Nor could I hope, in any place but there,
To find a god so present to my prayer.
There first the youth of heavenly birth I viewed,[295]
For whom our monthly victims are renewed.
He heard my vows, and graciously decreed
My grounds to be restored, my former flocks to feed.
MELIBŒUS.
O fortunate old man! whose farm remains— }
For you sufficient—and requites your pains; }
Though rushes overspread the neighbouring plains, }
Though here the marshy grounds approach your fields,
And there the soil a stony harvest yields.
Your teeming ewes shall no strange meadows try,
Nor fear a rot from tainted company.
Behold! yon bordering fence of sallow trees
Is fraught with flowers, the flowers are fraught with bees;
The busy bees, with a soft murmuring strain,
Invite to gentle sleep the labouring swain.
While, from the neighbouring rock, with rural songs,
The pruner's voice the pleasing dream prolongs,
Stock-doves and turtles tell their amorous pain,
And, from the lofty elms, of love complain.
TITYRUS.
The inhabitants of seas and skies shall change,
And fish on shore, and stags in air, shall range,
The banished Parthian dwell on Arar's brink,
And the blue German shall the Tigris drink,
Ere I, forsaking gratitude and truth,
Forget the figure of that godlike youth.
MELIBŒUS.
But we must beg our bread in climes unknown,
Beneath the scorching or the freezing zone;
And some to far Oaxis shall be sold,
Or try the Libyan heat, or Scythian cold;
The rest among the Britons be confined,
A race of men from all the world disjoined.
O! must the wretched exiles ever mourn,
Nor, after length of rolling years, return?
Are we condemned by fate's unjust decree,
No more our houses and our homes to see?
Or shall we mount again the rural throne,
And rule the country kingdoms, once our own?
Did we for these barbarians plant and sow? }
On these, on these, our happy fields bestow? }
Good heaven! what dire effects from civil discord flow! }
Now let me graff my pears, and prune the vine;
The fruit is theirs, the labour only mine.
Farewell, my pastures, my paternal stock,
My fruitful fields, and my more fruitful flock!
No more, my goats, shall I behold you climb
The steepy cliffs, or crop the flowery thyme!
No more, extended in the grot below,
Shall see you browzing on the mountain's brow
The prickly shrubs; and after on the bare,
Lean down the deep abyss, and hang in air.
No more my sheep shall sip the morning dew; }
No more my song shall please the rural crew: }
Adieu, my tuneful pipe! and all the world, adieu! }
TITYRUS.
This night, at least, with me forget your care;
Chesnuts, and curds and cream, shall be your fare:
The carpet-ground shall be with leaves o'erspread,
And boughs shall weave a covering for your head.
For see yon sunny hill the shade extends,
And curling smoke from cottages ascends.
FOOTNOTES:
[295] Virgil means Octavius Cæsar, heir to Julius, who perhaps had not arrived to his twentieth year, when Virgil saw him first. Vide his Life. Of heavenly birth, or heavenly blood, because the Julian family was derived from Iülus, son to Æneas, and grandson to Venus.
PASTORAL II.
OR,
ALEXIS.
ARGUMENT.
The commentators can by no means agree on the person of Alexis, but are all of opinion that some beautiful youth is meant by him, to whom Virgil here makes love, in Corydon's language and simplicity. His way of courtship is wholly pastoral: he complains of the boy's coyness; recommends himself for his beauty and skill in piping; invites the youth into the country, where he promises him the diversions of the place, with a suitable present of nuts and apples. But when he finds nothing will prevail, he resolves to quit his troublesome amour, and betake himself again to his former business.
Young Corydon, the unhappy shepherd swain,
The fair Alexis loved, but loved in vain;
And underneath the beechen shade, alone,
Thus to the woods and mountains made his moan:—
Is this, unkind Alexis, my reward?
And must I die unpitied, and unheard?
Now the green lizard in the grove is laid,
The sheep enjoy the coolness of the shade,
And Thestylis wild thyme and garlic beats
For harvest hinds, o'erspent with toil and heats;
While in the scorching sun I trace in vain
Thy flying footsteps o'er the burning plain.
The creaking locusts with my voice conspire,
They fried with heat, and I with fierce desire.
How much more easy was it to sustain
Proud Amaryllis, and her haughty reign,
The scorns of young Menalcas, once my care,
Though he was black, and thou art heavenly fair.
Trust not too much to that enchanting face;
Beauty's a charm, but soon the charm will pass.
White lilies lie neglected on the plain,
While dusky hyacinths for use remain.
My passion is thy scorn; nor wilt thou know
What wealth I have, what gifts I can bestow;
What stores my dairies and my folds contain—
A thousand lambs, that wander on the plain;
New milk, that all the winter never fails,
And all the summer overflows the pails.
Amphion sung not sweeter to his herd,
When summoned stones the Theban turrets reared.
Nor am I so deformed; for late I stood
Upon the margin of the briny flood:
The winds were still; and, if the glass be true,
With Daphnis I may vie, though judged by you.
O leave the noisy town! O come and see
Our country cots, and live content with me!
To wound the flying deer, and from their cotes
With me to drive a-field the browzing goats;
To pipe and sing, and, in our country strain,
To copy, or perhaps contend with Pan.
Pan taught to join with wax unequal reeds;
Pan loves the shepherds, and their flocks he feeds.
Nor scorn the pipe: Amyntas, to be taught,
With all his kisses would my skill have bought.
Of seven smooth joints a mellow pipe I have,
Which with his dying breath Damœtas gave,
And said,—"This, Corydon, I leave to thee;
For only thou deserv'st it after me."
His eyes Amyntas durst not upward lift;
For much he grudged the praise, but more the gift.
Besides, two kids, that in the valley strayed,
I found by chance, and to my fold conveyed:
They drain two bagging udders every day;
And these shall be companions of thy play;
Both fleck'd with white, the true Arcadian strain,
Which Thestylis had often begged in vain:
And she shall have them, if again she sues,
Since you the giver and the gift refuse.
Come to my longing arms, my lovely care!
And take the presents which the nymphs prepare.
White lilies in full canisters they bring,
With all the glories of the purple spring.
The daughters of the flood have searched the mead
For violets pale, and cropp'd the poppy's head,
The short narcissus[296] and fair daffodil,
Pancies to please the sight, and cassia sweet to smell;
And set soft hyacinths with iron blue,
To shade marsh marigolds of shining hue;
Some bound in order, others loosely strowed,
To dress thy bower, and trim thy new abode.
Myself will search our planted grounds at home,
For downy peaches and the glossy plum;
And thrash the chesnuts in the neighbouring grove,
Such as my Amaryllis used to love.
The laurel and the myrtle sweets agree,
And both in nosegays shall be bound for thee.
Ah, Corydon! ah, poor unhappy swain!
Alexis will thy homely gifts disdain:
Nor, should'st thou offer all thy little store,
Will rich Iolas yield, but offer more.
What have I done, to name that wealthy swain?
So powerful are his presents, mine so mean!
The boar, amidst my crystal streams, I bring;
And southern winds to blast my flowery spring.
Ah, cruel creature! whom dost thou despise?
The gods, to live in woods, have left the skies;
And godlike Paris, in the Idæan grove,
To Priam's wealth preferred Œnone's love.
In cities, which she built, let Pallas reign;
Towers are for gods, but forests for the swain.
The greedy lioness the wolf pursues,
The wolf the kid, the wanton kid the browze;
Alexis, thou art chased by Corydon:
All follow several games, and each his own.
See, from afar, the fields no longer smoke;
The sweating steers, unharnessed from the yoke,
Bring, as in triumph, back the crooked plough;
The shadows lengthen as the sun goes low;
Cool breezes now the raging heats remove:
Ah, cruel heaven, that made no cure for love!
I wish for balmy sleep, but wish in vain;
Love has no bounds in pleasure, or in pain.
What frenzy, shepherd, has thy soul possessed?
Thy vineyard lies half pruned, and half undressed.
Quench, Corydon, thy long unanswered fire!
Mind what the common wants of life require;
On willow twigs employ thy weaving care,
And find an easier love, though not so fair.
FOOTNOTES:
[296] That is, of short continuance.
PASTORAL III.
OR,
PALÆMON.
MENALCAS, DAMŒTAS, PALÆMON.
ARGUMENT.
Damœtas and Menalcas, after some smart strokes of country raillery, resolve to try who has the most skill at song; and accordingly make their neighbour, Palæmon, judge of their performances; who, after a full hearing of both parties, declares himself unfit for the decision of so weighty a controversy, and leaves the victory undetermined.
MENALCAS.
Ho, swain! what shepherd owns those ragged sheep?
DAMŒTAS.
Ægon's they are: he gave them me to keep.
MENALCAS.
Unhappy sheep, of an unhappy swain! }
While he Neæra courts, but courts in vain, }
And fears that I the damsel shall obtain. }
Thou, varlet, dost thy master's gains devour;
Thou milk'st his ewes, and often twice an hour;
Of grass and fodder thou defraud'st the dams,
And of their mothers' dugs the starving lambs.
DAMŒTAS.
Good words, young catamite, at least to men.
We know who did your business, how, and when;
And in what chapel too you played your prize, }
And what the goats observed with leering eyes: }
The nymphs were kind, and laughed; and there your safety lies. }
MENALCAS.
Yes, when I cropt the hedges of the leys,
Cut Micon's tender vines, and stole the stays!
DAMŒTAS.
Or rather, when, beneath yon ancient oak,
The bow of Daphnis, and the shafts, you broke,
When the fair boy received the gift of right;
And, but for mischief, you had died for spite.
MENALCAS.
What nonsense would the fool, thy master, prate,
When thou, his knave, canst talk at such a rate!
Did I not see you, rascal, did I not,
When you lay snug to snap young Damon's goat?
His mongrel barked; I ran to his relief,
And cried,—"There, there he goes! stop, stop the thief!"
Discovered, and defeated of your prey,
You skulked behind the fence, and sneaked away.
DAMŒTAS.
An honest man may freely take his own:
The goat was mine, by singing fairly won.
A solemn match was made; he lost the prize. }
Ask Damon, ask, if he the debt denies. }
I think he dares not; if he does, he lies. }
MENALCAS.
Thou sing with him? thou booby!—Never pipe
Was so profaned to touch that blubbered lip.
Dunce at the best! in streets but scarce allowed
To tickle, on thy straw, the stupid crowd.
DAMŒTAS.
To bring it to the trial, will you dare
Our pipes, our skill, our voices, to compare?
My brinded heifer to the stake I lay;
Two thriving calves she suckles twice a day,
And twice besides her beestings never fail
To store the dairy with a brimming pail.
Now back your singing with an equal stake.
MENALCAS.
That should be seen, if I had one to make.
You know too well, I feed my father's flock;
What can I wager from the common stock?
A stepdame too I have, a cursed she,
Who rules my hen-peck'd sire, and orders me.
Both number twice a day the milky dams;
And once she takes the tale of all the lambs.
But, since you will be mad, and since you may
Suspect my courage, if I should not lay,
The pawn I proffer shall be full as good:
Two bowls I have, well turned, of beechen wood;
Both by divine Alcimedon were made;
To neither of them yet the lip is laid.
The lids are ivy; grapes in clusters lurk
Beneath the carving of the curious work.
Two figures on the sides embossed appear— }
Conon, and what's his name who made the sphere, }
And shewed the seasons of the sliding year, }
Instructed in his trade the labouring swain,
And when to reap, and when to sow the grain?
DAMŒTAS.
And I have two, to match your pair, at home;
The wood the same; from the same hand they come,
(The kimbo handles seem with bear's foot carved,)
And never yet to table have been served;
Where Orpheus on his lyre laments his love,
With beasts encompassed, and a dancing grove.
But these, nor all the proffers you can make,
Are worth the heifer which I set to stake.
MENALCAS.
No more delays, vain boaster, but begin!
I prophesy before-hand, I shall win.
Palæmon shall be judge how ill you rhyme:
I'll teach you how to brag another time.
DAMŒTAS.
Rhymer, come on! and do the worst you can;
I fear not you, nor yet a better man.
With silence, neighbour, and attention, wait;
For 'tis a business of a high debate.
PALÆMON.
Sing then; the shade affords a proper place,
The trees are clothed with leaves, the fields with grass,
The blossoms blow, the birds on bushes sing,
And Nature has accomplished all the spring.
The challenge to Damœtas shall belong;
Menalcas shall sustain his under-song;
Each in his turn your tuneful numbers bring,
By turns the tuneful Muses love to sing.
DAMŒTAS.
From the great father of the gods above
My Muse begins; for all is full of Jove:
To Jove the care of heaven and earth belongs;
My flocks he blesses, and he loves my songs.
MENALCAS.
Me Phœbus loves; for he my Muse inspires,
And in her songs the warmth he gave requires.
For him, the god of shepherds and their sheep,[297]
My blushing hyacinths and my bays I keep.
DAMŒTAS.
My Phyllis me with pelted apples plies; }
Then tripping to the woods the wanton hies, }
And wishes to be seen before she flies. }
MENALCAS.
But fair Amyntas comes unasked to me, }
And offers love, and sits upon my knee. }
Not Delia to my dogs is known so well as he. }
DAMŒTAS.
To the dear mistress of my love-sick mind,
Her swain a pretty present has designed:
I saw two stock-doves billing, and ere long
Will take the nest, and hers shall be the young.
MENALCAS.
Ten ruddy wildings in the wood I found,
And stood on tip-toes, reaching from the ground:
I sent Amyntas all my present store;
And will, to-morrow, send as many more.
DAMŒTAS.
The lovely maid lay panting in my arms,
And all she said and did was full of charms.
Winds! on your wings to heaven her accents bear;
Such words as heaven alone is fit to hear.
MENALCAS.
Ah! what avails it me, my love's delight,
To call you mine, when absent from my sight?
I hold the nets, while you pursue the prey,
And must not share the dangers of the day.
DAMŒTAS.
I keep my birth-day; send my Phyllis home;
At shearing-time, Iolas, you may come.
MENALCAS.
With Phyllis I am more in grace than you; }
Her sorrow did my parting steps pursue: }
"Adieu, my dear!" she said, "a long adieu!" }
DAMŒTAS.
The nightly wolf is baneful to the fold,
Storms to the wheat, to buds the bitter cold;
But, from my frowning fair, more ills I find,
Than from the wolves, and storms, and winter-wind.
MENALCAS.
The kids with pleasure browze the bushy plain;
The showers are grateful to the swelling grain;
To teeming ewes the sallow's tender tree;
But, more than all the world, my love to me.
DAMŒTAS.
Pollio my rural verse vouchsafes to read:
A heifer, Muses, for your patron breed.
MENALCAS.
My Pollio writes himself:—a bull be bred,
With spurning heels, and with a butting head.
DAMŒTAS.
Who Pollio loves, and who his Muse admires,
Let Pollio's fortune crown his full desires.
Let myrrh instead of thorn his fences fill,
And showers of honey from his oaks distil.
MENALCAS.
Who hates not living Bavius, let him be
(Dead Mævius!) damn'd to love thy works and thee!
The same ill taste of sense would serve to join
Dog-foxes in the yoke, and shear the swine.
DAMŒTAS.
Ye boys, who pluck the flowers, and spoil the spring,
Beware the secret snake that shoots a sting.
MENALCAS.
Graze not too near the banks, my jolly sheep;
The ground is false, the running streams are deep:
See, they have caught the father of the flock,
Who dries his fleece upon the neighbouring rock.
DAMŒTAS.
From rivers drive the kids, and sling your hook;
Anon I'll wash them in the shallow brook.
MENALCAS.
To fold, my flock!—when milk is dried with heat,
In vain the milkmaid tugs an empty teat.
DAMŒTAS.
How lank my bulls from plenteous pasture come!
But love, that drains the herd, destroys the groom.
MENALCAS.
My flocks are free from love, yet look so thin,
Their bones are barely covered with their skin.
What magic has bewitched the woolly dams,
And what ill eyes beheld the tender lambs?
DAMŒTAS.
Say, where the round of heaven, which all contains, }
To three short ells on earth our sight restrains: }
Tell that, and rise a Phœbus for thy pains. }
MENALCAS.
Nay, tell me first, in what new region springs
A flower, that bears inscribed the names of kings;
And thou shalt gain a present as divine
As Phœbus' self; for Phyllis shall be thine.
So nice a difference in your singing lies,
That both have won, or both deserved the prize.
Rest equal happy both; and all who prove
The bitter sweets, and pleasing pains, of love.
Now dam the ditches, and the floods restrain;
Their moisture has already drenched the plain.
FOOTNOTES:
[297] Phœbus, not Pan, is here called the god of shepherds. The poet alludes to the same story which he touches in the beginning of the Second Georgic, where he calls Phœbus the Amphrysian shepherd, because he fed the sheep and oxen of Admetus, with whom he was in love, on the hill Amphrysus.
PASTORAL IV. OR,
POLLIO.
ARGUMENT.
The Poet celebrates the birth-day of Saloninus, the son of Pollio, born in the consulship of his father, after the taking of Salonæ, a city in Dalmatia. Many of the verses are translated from one of the Sibyls, who prophesied of our Saviour's birth.
Sicilian Muse, begin a loftier strain!
Though lowly shrubs, and trees that shade the plain,
Delight not all; Sicilian Muse, prepare
To make the vocal woods deserve a consul's care.
The last great age, foretold by sacred rhymes,
Renews its finished course: Saturnian times
Roll round again; and mighty years, begun
From their first orb, in radiant circles run.
The base degenerate iron offspring ends;
A golden progeny from heaven descends.
O chaste Lucina! speed the mother's pains;
And haste the glorious birth! thy own Apollo reigns!
The lovely boy, with his auspicious face, }
Shall Pollio's consulship and triumph grace; }
Majestic months set out with him to their appointed race. }
The father banished virtue shall restore,
And crimes shall threat the guilty world no more.
The son shall lead the life of gods, and be
By gods and heroes seen, and gods and heroes see.
The jarring nations he in peace shall bind,
And with paternal virtues rule mankind.
Unbidden earth shall wreathing ivy bring, }
And fragrant herbs, (the promises of spring,) }
As her first offerings to her infant king. }
The goats with strutting dugs shall homeward speed,
And lowing herds secure from lions feed.
His cradle shall with rising flowers be crowned:
The serpent's brood shall die; the sacred ground
Shall weeds and poisonous plants refuse to bear;
Each common bush shall Syrian roses wear.
But when heroic verse his youth shall raise,
And form it to hereditary praise,
Unlaboured harvests shall the fields adorn,
And clustered grapes shall blush on every thorn;
The knotted oaks shall showers of honey weep;
And through the matted grass the liquid gold shall creep.
Yet, of old fraud some footsteps shall remain;
The merchant still shall plough the deep for gain,
Great cities shall with walls be compassed round,
And sharpened shares shall vex the fruitful ground;
Another Tiphys shall new seas explore;
Another Argo land the chiefs upon the Iberian shore;
Another Helen other wars create,
And great Achilles urge the Trojan fate.
But when to ripened manhood he shall grow,
The greedy sailor shall the seas forego;
No keel shall cut the waves for foreign ware,
For every soil shall every product bear.
The labouring hind his oxen shall disjoin; }
No plough shall hurt the glebe, no pruning-hook the vine; }
Nor wool shall in dissembled colours shine; }
But the luxurious father of the fold,
With native purple, and unborrowed gold,
Beneath his pompous fleece shall proudly sweat;
And under Tyrian robes the lamb shall bleat.
The Fates, when they this happy web have spun,
Shall bless the sacred clue, and bid it smoothly run.
Mature in years, to ready honours move,
O of celestial seed! O foster-son of Jove!
See, labouring Nature calls thee to sustain
The nodding frame of heaven, and earth, and main!
See to their base restored, earth, seas, and air;
And joyful ages, from behind, in crowding ranks appear.
To sing thy praise, would heaven my breath prolong,
Infusing spirits worthy such a song,
Not Thracian Orpheus should transcend my lays,
Nor Linus crowned with never-fading bays;
Though each his heavenly parent should inspire;
The Muse instruct the voice, and Phœbus tune the lyre.
Should Pan contend in verse, and thou my theme,
Arcadian judges should their god condemn.
Begin, auspicious boy! to cast about
Thy infant eyes, and, with a smile, thy mother single out.[298]
Thy mother well deserves that short delight,
The nauseous qualms of ten long months and travail to requite.
Then smile! the frowning infant's doom is read;
No god shall crown the board, nor goddess bless the bed.
FOOTNOTES:
[298] In Latin thus,
Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem, &c.
I have translated the passage to this sense—that the infant, smiling on his mother, singles her out from the rest of the company about him. Erythræus, Bembus, and Joseph Scaliger, are of this opinion. Yet they and I may be mistaken; for, immediately after, we find these words, cui non risere parentes, which imply another sense, as if the parents smiled on the new-born infant; and that the babe on whom they vouchsafed not to smile, was born to ill fortune: for they tell a story, that, when Vulcan, the only son of Jupiter and Juno, came into the world, he was so hard-favoured, that both his parents frowned on him, and Jupiter threw him out of heaven: he fell on the island Lemnos, and was lame ever afterwards. The last line of the Pastoral seems to justify this sense:
Nec Deus hunc mensâ, Dea nec dignata cubili est.
For, though he married Venus, yet his mother Juno was not present at the nuptials to bless them; as appears by his wife's incontinence. They say also, that he was banished from the banquets of the gods. If so, that punishment could be of no long continuance; for Homer makes him present at their feasts, and composing a quarrel betwixt his parents, with a bowl of nectar. The matter is of no great consequence; and therefore I adhere to my translation, for these two reasons: first, Virgil has his following line,
Matri longa decem tulerunt fastidia menses,
as if the infant's smiling on his mother was a reward to her for bearing him ten months in her body, four weeks longer than the usual time. Secondly, Catullus is cited by Joseph Scaliger, as favouring this opinion, in his Epithalamium of Manlius Torquatus:
Torquatus, volo, parvolus,
Matris e gremio suæ
Porrigens teneras manus,
Dulce rideat ad patrem, &c.
What if I should steer betwixt the two extremes, and conclude, that the infant, who was to be happy, must not only smile on his parents, but also they on him? For Scaliger notes, that the infants who smiled not at their birth, were observed to be αγελαστοι, or sullen, (as I have translated it,) during all their life; and Servius, and almost all the modern commentators, affirm, that no child was thought fortunate, on whom his parents smiled not at his birth. I observe, farther, that the ancients thought the infant, who came into the world at the end of the tenth month, was born to some extraordinary fortune, good or bad. Such was the birth of the late prince of Condé's father, of whom his mother was not brought to bed, till almost eleven months were expired after his father's death; yet the college of physicians at Paris concluded he was lawfully begotten. My ingenious friend, Anthony Henley, Esq. desired me to make a note on this passage of Virgil; adding, (what I had not read,) that the Jews have been so superstitious, as to observe not only the first look or action of an infant, but also the first word which the parent, or any of the assistants, spoke after the birth; and from thence they gave a name to the child, alluding to it.
PASTORAL V.
OR,
DAPHNIS.
ARGUMENT.
Mopsus and Menalcas, two very expert shepherds at a song, begin one by consent to the memory of Daphnis, who is supposed by the best critics to represent Julius Cæsar. Mopsus laments his death; Menalcas proclaims his divinity; the whole eclogue consisting of an elegy and an apotheosis.
MENALCAS.
Since on the downs our flocks together feed,
And since my voice can match your tuneful reed,
Why sit we not beneath the grateful shade,
Which hazles, intermixed with elms, have made?
MOPSUS.
Whether you please that sylvan scene to take,
Where whistling winds uncertain shadows make;
Or will you to the cooler cave succeed,
Whose mouth the curling vines have overspread?
MENALCAS.
Your merit and your years command the choice;
Amyntas only rivals you in voice.
MOPSUS.
What will not that presuming shepherd dare,
Who thinks his voice with Phœbus may compare?
MENALCAS.
Begin you first; if either Alcon's praise,
Or dying Phyllis, have inspired your lays;
If her you mourn, or Codrus you commend,
Begin, and Tityrus your flock shall tend.
MOPSUS.
Or shall I rather the sad verse repeat,
Which on the beeches bark I lately writ?
I writ, and sung betwixt. Now bring the swain,
Whose voice you boast, and let him try the strain.
MENALCAS.
Such as the shrub to the tall olive shows,
Or the pale swallow to the blushing rose;
Such is his voice, if I can judge aright,
Compared to thine, in sweetness and in height.
MOPSUS.
No more, but sit and hear the promised lay;
The gloomy grotto makes a doubtful day.
The nymphs about the breathless body wait
Of Daphnis, and lament his cruel fate.
The trees and floods were witness to their tears;
At length the rumour reached his mother's ears.
The wretched parent, with a pious haste,
Came running, and his lifeless limbs embraced.
She sighed, she sobbed; and, furious with despair, }
She rent her garments, and she tore her hair, }
Accusing all the gods, and every star. }
The swains forgot their sheep, nor near the brink
Of running waters brought their herds to drink.
The thirsty cattle, of themselves, abstained
From water, and their grassy fare disdained.
The death of Daphnis woods and hills deplore; }
They cast the sound to Libya's desert shore; }
The Libyan lions hear, and hearing roar. }
Fierce tigers Daphnis taught the yoke to bear,
And first with curling ivy dressed the spear.
Daphnis did rites to Bacchus first ordain,
And holy revels for his reeling train.
As vines the trees, as grapes the vines adorn,
As bulls the herds, and fields the yellow corn;
So bright a splendour, so divine a grace,
The glorious Daphnis cast on his illustrious race.
When envious Fate the godlike Daphnis took,
Our guardian gods the fields and plains forsook;
Pales no longer swelled the teeming grain,
Nor Phœbus fed his oxen on the plain;
No fruitful crop the sickly fields return,
But oats and darnel choke the rising corn;
And where the vales with violets once were crowned,
Now knotty burrs and thorns disgrace the ground.
Come, shepherds, come, and strow with leaves the plain;
Such funeral rites your Daphnis did ordain.
With cypress-boughs the crystal fountains hide,
And softly let the running waters glide.
A lasting monument to Daphnis raise,
With this inscription to record his praise:—
"Daphnis, the fields' delight, the shepherds' love,
Renowned on earth, and deified above;
Whose flock excelled the fairest on the plains,
But less than he himself surpassed the swains."
MENALCAS.
O heavenly poet! such thy verse appears,
So sweet, so charming to my ravished ears,
As to the weary swain, with cares opprest,
Beneath the sylvan shade, refreshing rest;
As to the feverish traveller, when first
He finds a crystal stream to quench his thirst.
In singing, as in piping, you excel;
And scarce your master could perform so well.
O fortunate young man! at least your lays
Are next to his, and claim the second praise.
Such as they are, my rural songs I join,
To raise our Daphnis to the powers divine;
For Daphnis was so good, to love whate'er was mine.
MOPSUS.
How is my soul with such a promise raised!
For both the boy was worthy to be praised,
And Stimicon has often made me long
To hear, like him, so soft, so sweet a song.
MENALCAS.
Daphnis, the guest of heaven, with wondering eyes,
Views, in the milky way, the starry skies,
And far beneath him, from the shining sphere,
Beholds the moving clouds, and rolling year.
For this with cheerful cries the woods resound, }
The purple spring arrays the various ground, }
The nymphs and shepherds dance, and Pan himself is crowned. }
The wolf no longer prowls for nightly spoils,
Nor bird's the springes fear, nor stags the toils;
For Daphnis reigns above, and deals from thence
His mother's milder beams, and peaceful influence.
The mountain-tops unshorn, the rocks, rejoice;
The lowly shrubs partake of human voice.
Assenting Nature, with a gracious nod,
Proclaims him, and salutes the new-admitted god.
Be still propitious, ever good to thine!
Behold! four hallowed altars we design;
And two to thee, and two to Phœbus rise;
On both is offered annual sacrifice.
The holy priests, at each returning year,
Two bowls of milk, and two of oil, shall bear;
And I myself the guests with friendly bowls will cheer.
Two goblets will I crown with sparkling wine, }
The generous vintage of the Chian vine: }
These will I pour to thee, and make the nectar thine. }
In winter shall the genial feast be made
Before the fire; by summer, in the shade.
Damœtas shall perform the rites divine,
And Lyctian Ægon in the song shall join.
Alphesibœus, tripping, shall advance,
And mimic Satyrs in his antic dance.
When to the nymphs our annual rites we pay,
And when our fields with victims we survey;
While savage boars delight in shady woods,
And finny fish inhabit in the floods;
While bees on thyme, and locusts feed on dew—
Thy grateful swains these honours shall renew.
Such honours as we pay to powers divine,
To Bacchus and to Ceres, shall be thine.
Such annual honours shall be given; and thou
Shalt hear, and shalt condemn thy suppliants to their vow.
MOPSUS.
What present, worth thy verse, can Mopsus find?
Not the soft whispers of the southern wind,
That play through trembling trees, delight me more;
Nor murmuring billows on the sounding shore,
Nor winding streams, that through the valley glide,
And the scarce-covered pebbles gently chide.
MENALCAS.
Receive you first this tuneful pipe, the same
That played my Corydon's unhappy flame;
The same that sung Neæra's conquering eyes,
And, had the judge been just, had won the prize.
MOPSUS.
Accept from me this sheep-hook in exchange;
The handle brass, the knobs in equal range.
Antigenes, with kisses, often tried }
To beg this present, in his beauty's pride, }
When youth and love are hard to be denied. }
But what I could refuse to his request,
Is yours unasked, for you deserve it best.
PASTORAL VI.
OR,
SILENUS.
ARGUMENT.
Two young shepherds, Chromis and Mnasylus, having been often promised a song by Silenus, chance to catch him asleep in this Pastoral; where they bind him hand and foot, and then claim his promise. Silenus, finding they would be put off no longer, begins his song, in which he describes the formation of the universe, and the original of animals, according to the Epicurean philosophy; and then runs through the most surprising transformations which have happened in Nature since her birth. This Pastoral was designed as a compliment to Syron the Epicurean, who instructed Virgil and Varus in the principles of that philosophy. Silenus acts as tutor, Chromis and Mnasylus as the two pupils.[299]
I first transferred to Rome Sicilian strains;
Nor blushed the Doric Muse to dwell on Mantuan plains.
But when I tried her tender voice, too young,
And fighting kings and bloody battles sung,
Apollo checked my pride, and bade me feed
My fattening flocks, nor dare beyond the reed.
Admonished thus, while every pen prepares
To write thy praises, Varus, and thy wars,
My pastoral Muse her humble tribute brings,
And yet not wholly uninspired she sings;
For all who read, and, reading, not disdain
These rural poems, and their lowly strain,
The name of Varus oft inscribed shall see }
In every grove, and every vocal tree, }
And all the sylvan reign shall sing of thee: }
Thy name, to Phœbus and the Muses known, }
Shall in the front of every page be shown; }
For he, who sings thy praise, secures his own. }
Proceed, my Muse!—Two Satyrs, on the ground,
Stretched at his ease, their sire Silenus found.
Dozed with his fumes, and heavy with his load, }
They found him snoring in his dark abode, }
And seized with youthful arms the drunken god. }
His rosy wreath was dropt not long before,
Borne by the tide of wine, and floating on the floor.
His empty can, with ears half worn away,
Was hung on high, to boast the triumph of the day.
Invaded thus, for want of better bands,
His garland they unstring, and bind his hands;
For, by the fraudful god deluded long,
They now resolve to have their promised song.
Ægle came in, to make their party good—
The fairest Naïs of the neighbouring flood—
And, while he stares around with stupid eyes,
His brows with berries, and his temples, dyes.
He finds the fraud, and, with a smile, demands,
On what design the boys had bound his hands.
"Loose me," he cried, "'twas impudence to find
A sleeping god; 'tis sacrilege to bind.
To you the promised poem I will pay;
The nymph shall be rewarded in her way."
He raised his voice; and soon a numerous throng
Of tripping Satyrs crowded to the song;
And sylvan Fauns, and savage beasts, advanced;
And nodding forests to the numbers danced.
Not by Hæmonian hills the Thracian bard, }
Nor awful Phœbus was on Pindus heard }
With deeper silence, or with more regard. }
He sung the secret seeds of Nature's frame;
How seas, and earth, and air, and active flame,
Fell through the mighty void, and, in their fall,
Were blindly gathered in this goodly ball.
The tender soil then, stiffening by degrees,
Shut from the bounded earth the bounding seas.
Then earth and ocean various forms disclose,
And a new sun to the new world arose;
And mists, condensed to clouds, obscure the sky;
And clouds, dissolved, the thirsty ground supply.
The rising trees the lofty mountains grace; }
The lofty mountains feed the savage race, }
Yet few, and strangers, in the unpeopled place. }
From thence the birth of man the song pursued,
And how the world was lost, and how renewed;
The reign of Saturn, and the golden age;
Prometheus' theft, and Jove's avenging rage;
The cries of Argonauts for Hylas drowned,
With whose repeated name the shores resound;
Then mourns the madness of the Cretan queen,—
Happy for her if herds had never been.
What fury, wretched woman, seized thy breast?
The maids of Argos, (though, with rage possessed,
Their imitated lowings filled the grove,)
Yet shunned the guilt of thy preposterous love,
Nor sought the youthful husband of the herd, }
Though labouring yokes on their own necks they feared, }
And felt for budding horns on their smooth foreheads reared. }
Ah, wretched queen! you range the pathless wood,
While on a flowery bank he chews the cud,
Or sleeps in shades, or through the forest roves,
And roars with anguish for his absent loves.
"Ye nymphs, with toils his forest-walk surround,
And trace his wandering footsteps on the ground.
But, ah! perhaps my passion he disdains,
And courts the milky mothers of the plains.
We search the ungrateful fugitive abroad,
While they at home sustain his happy load."
He sung the lover's fraud; the longing maid,
With golden fruit, like all the sex, betrayed;
The sisters mourning for their brother's loss;
Their bodies hid in barks, and furred with moss;
How each a rising alder now appears,
And o'er the Po distils her gummy tears:
Then sung, how Gallus, by a Muse's hand,
Was led and welcomed to the sacred strand;
The senate rising to salute their guest;
And Linus thus their gratitude expressed:—
"Receive this present, by the Muses made,
The pipe on which the Ascræan pastor played;
With which of old he charmed the savage train,
And called the mountain-ashes to the plain.
Sing thou, on this, thy Phœbus; and the wood
Where once his fane of Parian marble stood:
On this his ancient oracles rehearse,
And with new numbers grace the god of verse."
Why should I sing the double Scylla's fate?
The first by love transformed, the last by hate—
A beauteous maid above; but magic arts
With barking dogs deformed her nether parts:
What vengeance on the passing fleet she poured,
The master frighted, and the mates devoured.
Then ravished Philomel the song exprest;
The crime revealed; the sisters' cruel feast:
And how in fields the lapwing Tereus reigns,
The warbling nightingale in woods complains;
While Procne makes on chimney-tops her moan,
And hovers o'er the palace once her own.
Whatever songs besides the Delphian god
Had taught the laurels, and the Spartan flood,
Silenus sung: the vales his voice rebound,
And carry to the skies the sacred sound.
And now the setting sun had warned the swain }
To call his counted cattle from the plain: }
Yet still the unwearied sire pursues the tuneful strain, }
Till, unperceived, the heavens with stars were hung,
And sudden night surprised the yet unfinished song.
FOOTNOTES:
[299] My Lord Roscommon's notes on this Pastoral are equal to his excellent translation of it; and thither I refer the reader.
The Eighth and Tenth Pastorals are already translated, to all manner of advantage, by my excellent friend Mr Stafford. So is the episode of Camilla, in the Eleventh Æneïd.
PASTORAL VII.
OR,
MELIBŒUS.
ARGUMENT.
Melibœus here gives us the relation of a sharp poetical contest between Thyrsis and Corydon, at which he himself and Daphnis were present; who both declared for Corydon.
Beneath a holm, repaired two jolly swains,
(Their sheep and goats together grazed the plains,)
Both young Arcadians, both alike inspired
To sing, and answer as the song required.
Daphnis, as umpire, took the middle seat,
And fortune thither led my weary feet;
For, while I fenced my myrtles from the cold,
The father of my flock had wandered from the fold.
Of Daphnis I inquired: he, smiling, said,
"Dismiss your fear;" and pointed where he fed:
"And, if no greater cares disturb your mind,
Sit here with us, in covert of the wind.
Your lowing heifers, of their own accord,
At watering time will seek the neighbouring ford.
Here wanton Mincius winds along the meads,
And shades his happy banks with bending reeds.
And see, from yon old oak that mates the skies,
How black the clouds of swarming bees arise."
What should I do? nor was Alcippe nigh,
Nor absent Phyllis could my care supply,
To house, and feed by hand my weaning lambs,
And drain the strutting udders of their dams.
Great was the strife betwixt the singing swains;
And I preferred my pleasure to my gains.
Alternate rhyme the ready champions chose:
These Corydon rehearsed, and Thyrsis those.
CORYDON.
Ye Muses, ever fair, and ever young,
Assist my numbers, and inspire my song.
With all my Codrus, O! inspire my breast;
For Codrus, after Phœbus, sings the best.
Or, if my wishes have presumed too high,
And stretched their bounds beyond mortality,
The praise of artful numbers I resign,
And hang my pipe upon the sacred pine.
THYRSIS.
Arcadian swains, your youthful poet crown
With ivy-wreaths; though surly Codrus frown:
Or, if he blast my Muse with envious praise,
Then fence my brows with amulets of bays,
Lest his ill arts, or his malicious tongue,
Should poison, or bewitch my growing song.
CORYDON.
These branches of a stag, this tusky boar
(The first essay of arms untried before)
Young Micon offers, Delia, to thy shrine:
But, speed his hunting with thy power divine;
Thy statue then of Parian stone shall stand;
Thy legs in buskins with a purple band.
THYRSIS.
This bowl of milk, these cakes, (our country fare,) }
For thee, Priapus, yearly we prepare, }
Because a little garden is thy care; }
But, if the falling lambs increase my fold,
Thy marble statue shall be turned to gold.
CORYDON.
Fair Galatea, with thy silver feet,
O, whiter than the swan, and more than Hybla sweet!
Tall as a poplar, taper as the bole!
Come, charm thy shepherd, and restore my soul!
Come, when my lated sheep at night return,
And crown the silent hours, and stop the rosy morn!
THYRSIS.
May I become as abject in thy sight,
As sea-weed on the shore, and black as night;
Rough as a bur; deformed like him who chaws
Sardinian herbage to contract his jaws;
Such and so monstrous let thy swain appear,
If one day's absence looks not like a year.
Hence from the field, for shame! the flock deserves
No better feeding while the shepherd starves.
CORYDON.
Ye mossy springs, inviting easy sleep,
Ye trees, whose leafy shades those mossy fountains keep,
Defend my flock! The summer heats are near,
And blossoms on the swelling vines appear.
THYRSIS.
With heapy fires our cheerful hearth is crowned;
And firs for torches in the woods abound:
We fear not more the winds, and wintry cold,
Than streams the banks, or wolves the bleating fold.
CORYDON.
Our woods, with juniper and chesnuts crowned,
With falling fruits and berries paint the ground;
And lavish Nature laughs, and strows her stores around:
But, if Alexis from our mountains fly,
Even running rivers leave their channels dry.
THYRSIS.
Parched are the plains, and frying is the field,
Nor withering vines their juicy vintage yield:
But, if returning Phyllis bless the plain,
The grass revives, the woods are green again,
And Jove descends in showers of kindly rain.
CORYDON.
The poplar is by great Alcides worn;
The brows of Phœbus his own bays adorn;
The branching vine the jolly Bacchus loves;
The Cyprian queen delights in myrtle groves;
With hazle Phyllis crowns her flowing hair; }
And, while she loves that common wreath to wear, }
Nor bays, nor myrtle boughs, with hazle shall compare. }
THYRSIS.
The towering ash is fairest in the woods;
In gardens pines, and poplars by the floods:
But, if my Lycidas will ease my pains,
And often visit our forsaken plains,
To him the towering ash shall yield in woods,
In gardens pines, and poplars by the floods.
MELIBŒUS.
These rhymes I did to memory commend,
When vanquished Thyrsis did in vain contend;
Since when, 'tis Corydon among the swains:
Young Corydon without a rival reigns.
PASTORAL VIII.[300]
OR,
PHARMACEUTRIA.
ARGUMENT.
This Pastoral contains the Songs of Damon and Alphesibœus. The first of them bewails the loss of his mistress, and repines at the success of his rival Mopsus. The other repeats the charms of some enchantress, who endeavoured, by her spells and magic, to make Daphnis in love with her.
The mournful muse of two despairing swains,
The love rejected, and the lovers' pains;
To which the savage lynxes listening stood,
The rivers stood on heaps, and stopped the running flood;
The hungry herd the needful food refuse—
Of two despairing swains, I sing the mournful muse.
Great Pollio! thou, for whom thy Rome prepares
The ready triumph of thy finished wars,
Whether Timavus or the Illyrian coast,
Whatever land or sea, thy presence boast;
Is there an hour in fate reserved for me,
To sing thy deeds in numbers worthy thee?
In numbers like to thine, could I rehearse
Thy lofty tragic scenes, thy laboured verse,
The world another Sophocles in thee,
Another Homer should behold in me.
Amidst thy laurels let this ivy twine:
Thine was my earliest muse; my latest shall be thine.
Scarce from the world the shades of night withdrew,
Scarce were the flocks refreshed with morning dew,
When Damon, stretched beneath an olive shade,
And, wildly staring upwards, thus inveighed
Against the conscious gods, and cursed the cruel maid:
"Star of the morning, why dost thou delay?
Come, Lucifer, drive on the lagging day,
While I my Nisa's perjured faith deplore,—
Witness, ye powers, by whom she falsely swore!
The gods, alas! are witnesses in vain;
Yet shall my dying breath to heaven complain.
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.
"The pines of Mænalus, the vocal grove,
Are ever full of verse, and full of love:
They hear the hinds, they hear their god complain,
Who suffered not the reeds to rise in vain
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.
"Mopsus triumphs; he weds the willing fair.
When such is Nisa's choice, what lover can despair?
Now griffons join with mares; another age
Shall see the hound and hind their thirst assuage,
Promiscuous at the spring. Prepare the lights,
O Mopsus! and perform the bridal rites.
Scatter thy nuts among the scrambling boys:
Thine is the night, and thine the nuptial joys.
For thee the sun declines: O happy swain!
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.
"O Nisa! justly to thy choice condemned!
Whom hast thou taken, whom hast thou contemned?
For him, thou hast refused my browzing herd,
Scorned my thick eye brows, and my shaggy beard.
Unhappy Damon sighs and sings in vain, }
While Nisa thinks no god regards a lover's pain. }
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain. }
"I viewed thee first, (how fatal was the view!)
And led thee where the ruddy wildings grew,
High on the planted hedge, and wet with morning dew.
Then scarce the bending branches I could win;
The callow down began to clothe my chin.
I saw; I perished; yet indulged my pain.
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.
"I know thee, Love! in deserts thou wert bred,
And at the dugs of savage tigers fed;
Alien of birth, usurper of the plains!
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strains.
"Relentless Love the cruel mother led
The blood of her unhappy babes to shed:
Love lent the sword; the mother struck the blow;
Inhuman she; but more inhuman thou:
Alien of birth, usurper of the plains!
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strains.
"Old doting Nature, change thy course anew,
And let the trembling lamb the wolf pursue;
Let oaks now glitter with Hesperian fruit,
And purple daffodils from alder shoot;
Fat amber let the tamarisk distil,
And hooting owls contend with swans in skill;
Hoarse Tityrus strive with Orpheus in the woods,
And challenge famed Arion on the floods.
Or, oh! let Nature cease, and Chaos reign!
Begin with me, my flute, the sweet Mænalian strain.
"Let earth be sea; and let the whelming tide
The lifeless limbs of luckless Damon hide:
Farewell, ye secret woods, and shady groves,
Haunts of my youth, and conscious of my loves!
From yon high cliff I plunge into the main; }
Take the last present of thy dying swain; }
And cease, my silent flute, the sweet Mænalian strain." }
Now take your turns, ye Muses, to rehearse
His friend's complaints, and mighty magic verse:
"Bring running water; bind those altars round
With fillets, and with vervain strow the ground:
Make fat with frankincense the sacred fires,
To re-inflame my Daphnis with desires.
'Tis done: we want but verse.—Restore, my charms,
My lingering Daphnis to my longing arms.
"Pale Phœbe, drawn by verse, from heaven descends;
And Circe changed with charms Ulysses' friends.
Verse breaks the ground, and penetrates the brake,
And in the winding cavern splits the snake:
Verse fires the frozen veins.—Restore, my charms,
My lingering Daphnis to my longing arms.
"Around his waxen image first I wind
Three woollen fillets, of three colours joined;
Thrice bind about his thrice-devoted head,
Which round the sacred altar thrice is led.
Unequal numbers please the gods.—My charms,
Restore my Daphnis to my longing arms.
"Knit with three knots the fillets; knit them strait;
Then say, 'These knots to love I consecrate.'
Haste, Amaryllis, haste!—Restore, my charms,
My lovely Daphnis to my longing arms.
"As fire this figure hardens, made of clay,
And this of wax with fire consumes away;
Such let the soul of cruel Daphnis be—
Hard to the rest of women, soft to me.
Crumble the sacred mole of salt and corn:
Next in the fire the bays with brimstone burn;
And, while it crackles in the sulphur, say,
'This I for Daphnis burn; thus Daphnis burn away!
This laurel is his fate.'—Restore, my charms,
My lovely Daphnis to my longing arms.
"As when the raging heifer, through the grove,
Stung with desire, pursues her wandering love;
Faint at the last, she seeks the weedy pools,
To quench her thirst, and on the rushes rolls,
Careless of night, unmindful to return;
Such fruitless fires perfidious Daphnis burn,
While I so scorn his love!—Restore, my charms,
My lingering Daphnis to my longing arms.
"These garments once were his, and left to me,
The pledges of his promised loyalty,
Which underneath my threshold I bestow:
These pawns, O sacred earth! to me my Daphnis owe.
As these were his, so mine is he.—My charms,
Restore their lingering lord to my deluded arms.
"These poisonous plants, for magic use designed,
(The noblest and the best of all the baneful kind,)
Old Mœris brought me from the Politic strand,
And culled the mischief of a bounteous land.
Smeared with these powerful juices, on the plain,
He howls a wolf among the hungry train;
And oft the mighty necromancer boasts,
With these, to call from tombs the stalking ghosts,
And from the roots to tear the standing corn,
Which, whirled aloft, to distant fields is borne:
Such is the strength of spells.—Restore, my charms,
My lingering Daphnis to my longing arms.
"Bear out these ashes; cast them in the brook;
Cast backwards o'er your head; nor turn your look:
Since neither gods nor godlike verse can move,
Break out, ye smothered fires, and kindle smothered love.
Exert your utmost power, my lingering charms;
And force my Daphnis to my longing arms.
"See while my last endeavours I delay,
The walking ashes rise, and round our altars play!
Run to the threshold, Amaryllis,—hark!
Our Hylax opens, and begins to bark.
Good heaven! may lovers what they wish believe?
Or dream their wishes, and those dreams deceive?
No more! my Daphnis comes! no more, my charms!
He comes, he runs, he leaps, to my desiring arms."
FOOTNOTES:
[300] This Eighth Pastoral is copied by our author from two Bucolics of Theocritus. Spenser has followed both Virgil and Theocritus in the charms which he employs for curing Britomartis of her love. But he had also our poet's Ceiris in his eye; for there not only the enchantments are to be found, but also the very name of Britomartis.—Dryden.
PASTORAL IX.[301]
OR,
LYCIDAS AND MŒRIS.
ARGUMENT.
When Virgil, by the favour of Augustus, had recovered his patrimony near Mantua, and went in hope to take possession, he was in danger to be slain by Arius the centurion, to whom those lands were assigned by the Emperor, in reward of his service against Brutus and Cassius. This Pastoral therefore is filled with complaints of his hard usage; and the persons introduced are the bailiff of Virgil, Mœris, and his friend Lycidas.
LYCIDAS.
Ho, Mœris! whither on thy way so fast?
This leads to town.
MŒRIS.
O Lycidas! at last
The time is come, I never thought to see,
(Strange revolution for my farm and me!)
When the grim captain in a surly tone
Cries out, "Pack up, ye rascals, and be gone."
Kicked out, we set the best face on't we could; }
And these two kids, t'appease his angry mood, }
I bear,—of which the Furies give him good! }
LYCIDAS.
Your country friends were told another tale,—
That, from the sloping mountain to the vale,
And doddered oak, and all the banks along,
Menalcas saved his fortune with a song.
MŒRIS.
Such was the news, indeed; but songs and rhymes
Prevail as much in these hard iron times,
As would a plump of trembling fowl, that rise
Against an eagle sousing from the skies.
And, had not Phœbus warned me, by the croak
Of an old raven from a hollow oak,
To shun debate, Menalcas had been slain,
And Mœris not survived him, to complain.
LYCIDAS.
Now heaven defend! could barbarous rage induce
The brutal son of Mars t'insult the sacred Muse?
Who then should sing the nymphs? or who rehearse
The waters gliding in a smoother verse?
Or Amaryllis praise that heavenly lay,
That shortened, as we went, our tedious way,—
"O Tityrus, tend my herd, and see them fed;
To morning pastures, evening waters, led;
And 'ware the Libyan ridgil's butting head."
MŒRIS.
Or what unfinished he to Varus read:—
"Thy name, O Varus, (if the kinder powers
Preserve our plains, and shield the Mantuan towers,
Obnoxious by Cremona's neighbouring crime,)
The wings of swans, and stronger-pinioned rhyme,
Shall raise aloft, and soaring bear above—
The immortal gift of gratitude to Jove."
LYCIDAS.
Sing on, sing on; for I can ne'er be cloyed.
So may thy swarms the baleful yew avoid;
So may thy cows their burdened bags distend,
And trees to goats their willing branches bend.
Mean as I am, yet have the Muses made
Me free, a member of the tuneful trade:
At least the shepherds seem to like my lays;
But I discern their flattery from their praise:
I nor to Cinna's ears, nor Varus,' dare aspire,
But gabble, like a goose, amidst the swan-like choir.
MŒRIS.
'Tis what I have been conning in my mind;
Nor are they verses of a vulgar kind.
"Come, Galatea! come! the seas forsake!
What pleasures can the tides with their hoarse murmurs make?
See, on the shore inhabits purple spring,
Where nightingales their love-sick ditty sing:
See, meads with purling streams, with flowers the ground, }
The grottoes cool, with shady poplars crowned, }
And creeping vines on arbours weaved around. }
Come then, and leave the waves' tumultuous roar;
Let the wild surges vainly beat the shore."
LYCIDAS.
Or that sweet song I heard with such delight;
The same you sung alone one starry night.
The tune I still retain, but not the words.
MŒRIS.
"Why, Daphnis, dost thou search in old records,
To know the seasons when the stars arise?
See, Cæsar's lamp is lighted in the skies,—
The star, whose rays the blushing grapes adorn,
And swell the kindly ripening ears of corn.
Under this influence, graft the tender shoot;
Thy children's children shall enjoy the fruit."
The rest I have forgot; for cares and time
Change all things, and untune my soul to rhyme.
I could have once sung down a summer's sun;
But now the chime of poetry is done:
My voice grows hoarse; I feel the notes decay,
As if the wolves had seen me first to-day.
But these, and more than I to mind can bring,
Menalcas has not yet forgot to sing.
LYCIDAS.
Thy faint excuses but inflame me more:
And now the waves roll silent to the shore;
Husht winds the topmost branches scarcely bend,
As if thy tuneful song they did attend:
Already we have half our way o'ercome;
Far off I can discern Bianor's tomb.
Here, where the labourer's hands have formed a bower
Of wreathing trees, in singing waste an hour.
Rest here thy weary limbs; thy kids lay down:
We've day before us yet to reach the town;
Or if, ere night, the gathering clouds we fear,
A song will help the beating storm to bear.
And, that thou may'st not be too late abroad,
Sing, and I'll ease thy shoulders of thy load.
MŒRIS.
Cease to request me;, let us mind our way:
Another song requires another day.
When good Menalcas comes, if he rejoice,
And find a friend at court, I'll find a voice.
FOOTNOTES:
[301] In the Ninth Pastoral, Virgil has made a collection of many scattering passages, which he had translated from Theocritus; and here he has bound them into a nosegay.—Dryden.
PASTORAL X.
OR,
GALLUS.
ARGUMENT.
Gallus, a great patron of Virgil, and an excellent poet, was very deeply in love with one Cytheris, whom he calls Lycoris, and who had forsaken him for the company of a soldier. The poet therefore supposes his friend Gallus retired, in his height of melancholy, into the solitudes of Arcadia, (the celebrated scene of pastorals,) where he represents him in a very languishing condition, with all the rural deities about him, pitying his hard usage, and condoling his misfortune.
Thy sacred succour, Arethusa, bring,
To crown my labour, ('tis the last I sing,)
Which proud Lycoris may with pity view:— }
The Muse is mournful, though the numbers few. }
Refuse me not a verse, to grief and Gallus due, }
So may thy silver streams beneath the tide,
Unmixed with briny seas, securely glide.
Sing then my Gallus, and his hopeless vows;
Sing, while my cattle crop the tender browze.
The vocal grove shall answer to the sound,
And echo, from the vales, the tuneful voice rebound.
What lawns or woods with-held you from his aid, }
Ye nymphs, when Gallus was to love betrayed, }
To love, unpitied by the cruel maid? }
Not steepy Pindus could retard your course,
Nor cleft Parnassus, nor the Aonian source:
Nothing, that owns the Muses, could suspend
Your aid to Gallus:—Gallus is their friend.
For him the lofty laurel stands in tears,
And hung with humid pearls the lowly shrub appears.
Mænalian pines the godlike swain bemoan, }
When, spread beneath a rock, he sighed alone; }
And cold Lycæus wept from every dropping stone. }
The sheep surround their shepherd, as he lies:
Blush not, sweet poet, nor the name despise.
Along the streams, his flock Adonis fed;
And yet the queen of beauty blest his bed.
The swains and tardy neat-herds came, and last
Menalcas, wet with beating winter mast.
Wondering, they asked from whence arose thy flame.
Yet more amazed, thy own Apollo came.
Flushed were his cheeks, and glowing were his eyes:
"Is she thy care? is she thy care?" he cries.
"Thy false Lycoris flies thy love and thee, }
And, for thy rival, tempts the raging sea, }
The forms of horrid war, and heaven's inclemency." }
Silvanus came: his brows a country crown
Of fennel, and of nodding lilies, drown.
Great Pan arrived; and we beheld him too,
His cheeks and temples of vermilion hue.
"Why, Gallus, this immoderate grief?" he cried,
"Think'st thou that love with tears is satisfied?
The meads are sooner drunk with morning dews,
The bees with flowery shrubs, the goats with browze."
Unmoved, and with dejected eyes, he mourned:
He paused, and then these broken words returned:—
"'Tis past; and pity gives me no relief:
But you, Arcadian swains, shall sing my grief,
And on your hills my last complaints renew:
So sad a song is only worthy you.
How light would lie the turf upon my breast,
If you my sufferings in your songs exprest!
Ah! that your birth and business had been mine—
To pen the sheep, and press the swelling vine!
Had Phyllis or Amyntas caused my pain,
Or any nymph or shepherd on the plain,
(Though Phyllis brown, though black Amyntas were,
Are violets not sweet, because not fair?)
Beneath the sallows and the shady vine,
My loves had mixed their pliant limbs with mine:
Phyllis with myrtle wreaths had crowned my hair,
And soft Amyntas sung away my care.
Come, see what pleasures in our plains abound;
The woods, the fountains, and the flowery ground.
As you are beauteous, were you half so true,
Here could I live, and love, and die with only you.
Now I to fighting fields am sent afar,
And strive in winter camps with toils of war;
While you, (alas, that I should find it so!) }
To shun my sight, your native soil forego, }
And climb the frozen Alps, and tread the eternal snow. }
Ye frosts and snows, her tender body spare!
Those are not limbs for icicles to tear.
For me, the wilds and deserts are my choice;
The Muses, once my care; my once harmonious voice.
There will I sing, forsaken, and alone:
The rocks and hollow caves shall echo to my moan.
The rind of every plant her name shall know;
And, as the rind extends, the love shall grow.
Then on Arcadian mountains will I chase
(Mixed with the woodland nymphs) the savage race;
Nor cold shall hinder me, with horns and hounds
To thrid the thickets, or to leap the mounds.
And now methinks o'er steepy rocks I go,
And rush through sounding woods, and bend the Parthian bow;
As if with sports my sufferings I could ease,
Or by my pains the god of love appease.
My frenzy changes: I delight no more
On mountain tops to chase the tusky boar:
No game but hopeless love my thoughts pursue:
Once more, ye nymphs, and songs, and sounding woods, adieu!
Love alters not for us his hard decrees,
Not though beneath the Thracian clime we freeze,
Or Italy's indulgent heaven forego,
And in mid-winter tread Sithonian snow;
Or, when the barks of elms are scorched, we keep
On Meroë's burning plains the Libyan sheep.
In hell, and earth, and seas, and heaven above,
Love conquers all; and we must yield to Love."
My Muses, here your sacred raptures end:
The verse was what I owed my suffering friend.
This while I sung, my sorrows I deceived,
And bending osiers into baskets weaved.
The song, because inspired by you, shall shine;
And Gallus will approve, because 'tis mine—
Gallus, for whom my holy flames renew,
Each hour, and every moment rise in view;
As alders, in the spring, their boles extend,
And heave so fiercely, that the bark they rend.
Now let us rise; for hoarseness oft invades
The singer's voice, who sings beneath the shades.
From juniper unwholesome dews distil, }
That blast the sooty corn, the withering herbage kill. }
Away, my goats, away! for you have browzed your fill. }
END OF THE THIRTEENTH VOLUME.
Edinburgh, Printed by James Ballantyne & Co.
Transcriber's Notes:
Simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors were corrected.
Punctuation normalized.
Anachronistic and non-standard spellings retained as printed.