He was constitutionally pensive and melancholy, and so distrustful of his own poems, that Augustus could not persuade him to send an unfinished portion of the Æneid to him for perusal. “As to my Æneas,” he writes to the emperor,[[546]] when absent on his Cantabrian campaign, “if I had anything worth your reading I would send it with pleasure, but the work is only just begun, and I even blame my folly for venturing upon so vast a task. But you know that I shall apply fresh and increased diligence to carrying out my design.” It was with real reluctance that he subsequently read the sixth book to the Emperor and Octavia. In his last moments he was anxious to burn the whole manuscript; and in his will he directed his executors, Varius and Tucca, either to improve it or commit it to the flames.[[547]] He was open-hearted and generous, but not extravagant in the expenditure of his wealth, for he bequeathed to his brother, his friends, and the Emperor, a considerable property.
It is said that Virgil’s earliest poetical essay was an epic poem, the subject of which was the Roman wars; but that the impossibility of introducing Roman names in hexameter verse caused him to desist from the task almost as soon as he had commenced it. The minor poems which are still extant, were probably his first works. These are the Culex, Ciris, Moretum, Copa, and the shorter pieces in lyric, elegiac, and iambic metres,[[548]] commonly known by the name of Catalecta. The “Culex” (Gnat) is a bucolic poem, with something of a mock-heroic colouring, of which the argument is as follows:[[549]] A shepherd, overcome with the heat, falls asleep beneath the shade of a tree, and a venomous serpent from a neighbouring marsh stealthily approaches. A gnat flies to his rescue, and stings him on the brow. The shepherd, awoke by the smart, crushes his rescuer, but sees the serpent and kills it. The ghost of the gnat appears, reproaches him with his ingratitude, and describes the adventures he has met with in the regions of the dead. The shepherd erects a monument in his honour, and indites the following epigram:—
Parve culex, pecudum custos tibi tale merenti
Funeris officium vitæ pro munere reddit.
Poor insect, thou a shepherd’s life didst save;
Thou gavest a life, he gives thee but a grave.
The “Ciris,” which some have attributed to Corn. Gallus, is the Greek legend of Scylla, who was changed into a fish, and her father Nisus into an eagle. Great use has been made by Spenser of this poem in the conversation between Britomart and her nurse Glauce, and also in Glauce’s incantations.[[550]] The “Moretum,” was intended to trace the employments of the agricultural labourer through the day; but it only describes the commencement of them, and the preparation of a dish of olla podrida of garden herbs called moretum. It contains an ingenious description of a cottager’s kitchen garden. The “Copa,” is an elegiac poem, not unlike in jovial spirit the scolia or drinking songs of the Greeks: it represents a female waiter at a tavern, begging for custom by a tempting display of the accommodations and comforts prepared for strangers. It describes the careless enjoyment of rural festivity: the simple luxuries of grapes and mulberries, the fragrant roses, the cheerful grasshoppers, and timid little lizards of Italy. Nor are the excitements of the dice, the joys of wine, the blandishments of love unsung. Dull care is banished far, and the enjoyment of the present hour inculcated:—
Pereant qui crastina curant
Mors aurem vellens Vivite, ait, venio.
Amongst the lyric poems of Virgil is a very elegant one on the villa of his instructor in philosophy, Syron.