Mœr.—You heard, no doubt—and so the story went;
But song, good Lycidas, avails as much,
When swords are drawn, as might the trembling dove
When on Dodona swoops the eagle down.
Nay—had I not been warned of woes to come—
Warned by a raven’s croak on my left hand
From out the hollow oak—why then, my friend,
You had lost your Mœris and his master too.”
Honest Lycidas expresses his horror at the narrow escape of the neighbourhood from such a catastrophe. What should they all have done for a poet, if they had lost Menalcas? who could compose such songs—and who could sing them? And he breaks out himself into fragmentary reminiscences which he has picked up by ear from his friend. Then Mœris too—who, being a poet’s farm-servant, has caught a little of the inspiration—repeats a few lines of his master’s. “As you hope for any blessings,” says Lycidas, “let me hear the rest of it.”
“So may your bees avoid the poisonous yew—
So may your cows bring full-swoln udders home—
If canst remember aught, begin at once. I too,
I am a poet, by the Muses’ grace: some songs
I have, mine own composing; and the swains
Call me their bard—but I were weak to heed them.
I cannot vie with masters of the art
Like Varius or like Cinna; my poor Muse
Is but a goose among the tuneful swans.”
Mœris can remember a scrap or two of his master’s verses. There was one in particular, which Lycidas had heard him singing one moonlight night, and would much like to hear again;—“I can remember the tune myself,” he says, “but I have forgotten the words.” Mœris will try. The compliment to Augustus with which the strain begins sufficiently marks the real poet who here figures as Menalcas.
“Why, Daphnis, why dost watch the constellations
Of the old order, now the new is born?
Lo! a new star comes forth to glad the nations,
Star of the Cæsars, filling full the corn.”[4]
But Mœris cannot remember much more. They must both wait, he says, until his master comes home again. So the pair walk on together towards Rome, cheating the long journey with singing as they go; and thus closes this pretty pastoral dialogue, the graceful ease of which, with its subdued comedy, it would be impossible for any translator to render adequately.
Another of these Eclogues relates the capture of Silenus, one of the old rural deities of very jovial reputation, by two young shepherds, while he lay sleeping off the effect of yesterday’s debauch. He is commonly represented—and he was rather a favourite subject with ancient artists—as a corpulent bald-headed old man, riding upon an ass, in a state of evident inebriety, carrying a capacious leather wine-bottle, and led and followed by a company of Nymphs and Bacchanals. He had the reputation, like the sea-god Proteus, of knowing the mysteries of nature and the secrets of the future; and there was a current story, upon which this Pastoral is founded, of his having been caught while asleep, like him, by some shepherds in Phrygia, and carried to King Midas, to whom, as the price of his release, he answered all questions in natural philosophy and ancient history—just as Proteus unfolded to Menelaus, under similar compulsion, the secret of his future fate.
The Pastoral into which Virgil introduces this story is addressed to his friend Varus—a man evidently of high rank—and seems meant as an apology for not complying with his request to write a poem on his exploits.
“I thought to sing how heroes fought and bled,
But that Apollo pinched my ear, and said—
‘Shepherds, friend Tityrus, I would have you know,
Feed their sheep high, and keep their verses low.’”
Then he goes on to tell his story:—