It is a tradition preserved by Servius, that Virgil began with writing a poem of the Alban and Roman affairs, which he found above his years, and descended, first to imitate Theocritus on rural subjects, and afterwards to copy Homer in heroic poetry.—Pope.
The second line of the couplet in the note was copied, as Mr. Carruthers points out, from Milton's Lycidas:
Phœbus replied, and touched my trembling ears.
The couplet in the text, with the variation of "great Maro" for "young Maro," was Pope's original version, but Dennis having asked whether he intended "to put that figure called a bull upon Virgil" by saying that he designed a work "to outlast immortality," the poet wrote in the margin of his manuscript "alter the seeming inconsistency," which he did, by substituting the lines in the note. In the last edition, he reinstated the "bull." The objection of Dennis was hypercritical. The phrase only expresses the double fact that the city was destroyed, and that its fame was durable. The manuscript supplies another various reading, which avoids both the alleged bull in the text, and the bad rhyme of the couplet in the note:
When first his voice the youthful Maro tried,
Ere Phœbus touched his ear and checked his pride.
And did his work to rules as strict confine.—Pope.
[103] Aristotle, born at Stagyra, B.C. 384.—Croker.
[104] In the manuscript a couplet follows which was added by Pope in the margin, when he erased the expression "a work t' outlast immortal Rome:"
"Arms and the Man," then rung the world around,
And Rome commenced immortal at the sound