PASSAGE IN VIRGIL.
(Vol. iv., pp. 24. 88.)
Permit me to make a few remarks on the passage of Virgil, "Viridesque secant," &c., and its attempted elucidation, Vol. iv., pp. 88, 89.
It is stated that the translation is not correct, and also that Servius was a very illiterate, ignorant, and narrow-minded man, &c.
In the short notice of Servius and his works in the Penny Cyclopædia, we have a very different character of him. Which is to be believed, for both cannot be right?
Harles, in his Introd. in Notitiam Lit. Rom., speaks thus of the Commentaries of Servius:
"Quæ in libris Virgilii sub nomine Servii circumferuntur Scholia, eorum minima pars pertinet ad illum; sed farrago est ex antiquioribus commentariis Cornuti, Donati, &c., et aliorum; immo vero ex recentioris ætatis interpretibus multa adjecta sunt et interpolata."
Thus condemning the interpolations, but leaving intact the matter really belonging to Servius.
For a refutation of the impertinent comparison with a Yorkshire hedge schoolmaster, and the erroneous appreciation of the Commentaries, I must refer to the above-mentioned notice in the Penny Cyclopædia.
In the next place, with respect to the meaning of the passage:—the word seco, when applied to the movements of ships, is usually rendered by "sulco;" e.g.:
"Jamque fretum Minyæ Pegasæâ puppe secabant."