VIRGIL
BY THE REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A.
AUTHOR OF
‘ETONIANA,’ ‘THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS,’ ETC.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXX
CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |||
| INTRODUCTION, | [1] | ||
| THE POET, | [8] | ||
| THE PASTORALS, | [13] | ||
| THE GEORGICS, | [28] | ||
| THE ÆNEID,— | |||
| CHAP. | [I.] | THE SHIPWRECK ON THE COAST OF CARTHAGE, | [41] |
| " | [II.] | ÆNEAS RELATES THE FALL OF TROY, | [53] |
| " | [III.] | ÆNEAS CONTINUES HIS NARRATIVE, | [64] |
| " | [IV.] | DIDO, | [71] |
| " | [V.] | THE FUNERAL GAMES, | [85] |
| " | [VI.] | THE SIBYL AND THE SHADES, | [105] |
| " | [VII.] | THE TROJANS LAND IN LATIUM, | [128] |
| " | [VIII.] | THE MUSTER OF THE LATIN TRIBES, | [137] |
| " | [IX.] | ÆNEAS MAKES ALLIANCE WITH EVANDER, | [145] |
| " | [X.] | TURNUS ATTACKS THE TROJAN ENCAMPMENT, | [153] |
| " | [XI.] | THE DEATH OF PALLAS, | [161] |
| " | [XII.] | THE DEATH OF CAMILLA, | [167] |
| " | [XIII.] | THE LAST COMBAT, | [171] |
| " | [XIV.] | CONCLUDING REMARKS, | [180] |
ADVERTISEMENT.
This volume of the Series was to have been undertaken by the late Mr Conington. None can be more sensible than the present writer of the loss which all readers have sustained in the substitution rendered necessary by his lamented death.
The Editor begs to acknowledge the courteous permission of Mr Conington’s representatives and publishers to make full extracts from his admirable version of the Æneid.
INTRODUCTION.
Virgil has always been, for one reason or other, the most popular of all the old classical writers. His poems were a favourite study with his own countrymen, even in his own generation; within fifty years of his death they were admitted to the very questionable honour, which they have retained ever since, of serving as a text-book for schoolboys. The little Romans studied their Æneid, from their master’s dictation, as regularly, and probably with quite as much appreciation of its beauties, as the fourth form of an English public school, and wrote “declamations” of some kind upon its heroes. In the middle ages, when Greek literature had become almost a deserted field, and Homer in the original was a sealed book even to those who considered themselves and were considered scholars, Virgil was still the favourite with young and old. The monks in their chronicles, philosophers in their secular studies, enlivened their pages with quotations from the one author with whom no man of letters would venture to confess himself wholly unacquainted. The works of Virgil had passed through above forty editions in Europe before the first printed edition of Homer appeared from the Florence press in 1448. He has been translated, imitated, and parodied in all the chief European languages. The fate of Dido, of Pallas, and of Euryalus, has drawn tears from successive generations of which the poet never dreamed.