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.