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.