Take breath, sir. Virgil said well—
"Adde tot egregias urbes operumque laborem."
SEWARD.
Allow me one other word. Virgil—in the vivid lines quoted with admiration by Mr Alison—lauds his beloved Italy for the absence of wild beasts and serpents—and he magnifies the whole race of serpents by his picture of One—the Serpent King—yet with subjects all equal in size to himself in our imagination. The Serpent is in the Poetry, but he is not in Italy. Is this a false artifice of composition—a vain ornament? Oh, no! He describes the Saturnian Land—the mother of corn and of men—bounteous, benign, golden, maternal Italy. The negation has the plenitude of life, which the fabulous absence of noxious reptiles has for the sacred Island of Ierne.
BULLER.
Erin-go-bragh!
SEWARD.
Suddenly he sees another vision—not of what is absent but present; and then comes the line arraigned and condemned—followed by lines as great—
"Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem,
Tot congesta manu præruptis oppida saxis,
Fluminaque antiquos subter labentia muros."