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RECOMMENDATORY POEMS.


TO

MR DRYDEN,

ON HIS EXCELLENT

_TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL_.

Whene'er great Virgil's lofty verse I see,
The pompous scene charms my admiring eye.
There different beauties in perfection meet;
The thoughts as proper, as the numbers sweet;
And, when wild Fancy mounts a daring height,
Judgment steps in, and moderates her flight.
Wisely he manages his wealthy store,
Still says enough, and yet implies still more:
For, though the weighty sense be closely wrought,
The reader's left to improve the pleasing thought.
Hence we despaired to see an English dress
Should e'er his nervous energy express;
For who could that in fettered rhyme inclose,
Which, without loss, can scarce be told in prose?
But you, great Sir, his manly genius raise,
And make your copy share an equal praise.
Oh! how I see thee, in soft scenes of love,
Renew those passions he alone could move!
Here Cupid's charms are with new art exprest,
And pale Eliza leaves her peaceful rest--
Leaves her Elysium, as if glad to live, }
To love, and wish, to sigh, despair, and grieve, }
And die again for him that would again deceive. }
Nor does the mighty Trojan less appear
Than Mars himself, amidst the storms of war.
Now his fierce eyes with double fury glow,
And a new dread attends the impending blow:
The Daunian chiefs their eager rage abate,
And, though unwounded, seem to feel their fate.
Long the rude fury of an ignorant age,
With barbarous spite, profaned his sacred page.
The heavy Dutchmen, with laborious toil,
Wrested his sense, and cramped his vigorous style.
No time, no pains, the drudging pedants spare,
But still his shoulders must the burden bear;
While, through the mazes of their comments led,
We learn, not what he writes, but what they read.
Yet, through these shades of undistinguished night,
Appeared some glimmering intervals of light;
Till mangled by a vile translating sect,
Like babes by witches _in effigie_ rackt:
Till Ogleby, mature in dulness, rose,
And Holbourn doggrel, and low chiming prose,
His strength and beauty did at once depose.
But now the magic spell is at an end,
Since even the dead, in you, have found a friend.
You free the bard from rude oppressors' power,
And grace his verse with charms unknown before.
He, doubly thus obliged, must doubting stand,
Which chiefly should his gratitude command--
Whether should claim the tribute of his heart,
The patron's bounty, or the poet's art.
Alike with wonder and delight we viewed
The Roman genius in thy verse renewed:
We saw thee raise soft Ovid's amorous fire,
And fit the tuneful Horace to thy lyre:
We saw new gall embitter Juvenal's pen,
And crabbed Persius made politely plain.
Virgil alone was thought too great a task--
What you could scarce perform, or we durst ask;
A task, which Waller's Muse could ne'er engage;
A task, too hard for Denham's stronger rage.
Sure of success, they some slight sallies tried;
But the fenced coast their bold attempts defied:
With fear, their o'ermatched forces back they drew,
Quitting the province Fate reserved for you.
In vain thus Philip did the Persians storm;
A work his son was destined to perform.
O! had Roscommon[269] lived to hail the day,
And sing loud Pæans through the crowded way,
When you in Roman majesty appear,
Which none know better, and none come so near;
The happy author would with wonder see,
His rules were only prophecies of thee:
And, were he now to give translators light,
He'd bid them only read thy work, and write.
For this great task, our loud applause is due;
We own old favours, but must press for new:
Th' expecting world demands one labour more;
And thy loved Homer does thy aid implore,
To right his injured works, and set them free
From the lewd rhymes of grovelling Ogleby.
Then shall his verse in graceful pomp appear,
Nor will his birth renew the ancient jar:
On those Greek cities we shall look with scorn,
And in our Britain think the poet born.


TO

MR DRYDEN,

ON HIS

_TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL_.

I.

We read, how dreams and visions heretofore
The prophet and the poet could inspire,
And make them in unusual rapture soar,
With rage divine, and with poetic fire.

II.

O could I find it now! --Would Virgil's shade
But for a while vouchsafe to bear the light,
To grace my numbers, and that Muse to aid,
Who sings the poet that has done him right.

III.

It long has been this sacred author's fate,
To lie at every dull translator's will:
Long, long his Muse has groaned beneath the weight
Of mangling Ogleby's presumptuous quill.

IV.

Dryden, at last, in his defence arose:
The father now is righted by the son;
And, while his Muse endeavours to disclose
That poet's beauties, she declares her own.

V.

In your smooth pompous numbers drest, each line,
Each thought, betrays such a majestic touch,
He could not, had he finished his design,
Have wished it better, or have done so much.

VI.

You, like his hero, though yourself were free,
And disentangled from the war of wit--
You, who secure might others' danger see,
And safe from all malicious censure sit--

VII.

Yet, because sacred Virgil's noble Muse,
O'erlaid by fools, was ready to expire,
To risk your fame again, you boldly chuse,
Or to redeem, or perish with your sire.

VIII.

Even first and last, we owe him half to you:
For, that his Æneids missed their threatened fate,
Was--that his friends by some prediction knew,
Hereafter, who, correcting, should translate.

IX.

But hold, my Muse! thy needless flight restrain,
Unless, like him, thou could'st a verse indite:
To think his fancy to describe, is vain,
Since nothing can discover light, but light.

X.

'Tis want of genius that does more deny;
'Tis fear my praise should make your glory less;
And, therefore, like the modest painter, I
Must draw the veil, where I cannot express.

HENRY GRAHME.


TO

MR DRYDEN.

No undisputed monarch governed yet,
With universal sway, the realms of wit:
Nature could never such expence afford;
Each several province owned a several lord.
A poet then had his poetic wife,
One Muse embraced, and married for his life.
By the stale thing his appetite was cloyed,
His fancy lessened, and his fire destroyed.
But Nature, grown extravagantly kind,
With all her treasures did adorn your mind;
The different powers were then united found,
And you wit's universal monarch crowned.
Your mighty sway your great desert secures;
And every Muse and every Grace is yours.
To none confined, by turns you all enjoy:
Sated with this, you to another fly,
So, sultan-like, in your seraglio stand,
While wishing Muses wait for your command;
Thus no decay, no want of vigour, find:
Sublime your fancy, boundless is your mind.
Not all the blasts of Time can do you wrong--
Young, spite of age--in spite of weakness, strong.
Time, like Alcides, strikes you to the ground;
You, like Antæus, from each fall rebound.

H. ST. JOHN.


TO

MR DRYDEN,

ON

_HIS VIRGIL_.
'Tis said, that Phidias gave such living grace
To the carved image of a beauteous face,
That the cold marble might even seem to be
The life--and the true life, the imagery.

You pass that artist, Sir, and all his powers,
Making the best of Roman poets ours,
With such effect, we know not which to call
The imitation, which the original.

What Virgil lent, you pay in equal weight;
The charming beauty of the coin no less;
And such the majesty of your impress,
You seem the very author you translate.

'Tis certain, were he now alive with us,
And did revolving destiny constrain
To dress his thoughts in English o'er again,
Himself could write no otherwise than thus.

His old encomium never did appear
So true as now: "Romans and Greeks, submit!
Something of late is in our language writ,
More nobly great than the famed Iliads were. "

JA. WRIGHT.


TO

MR DRYDEN,

ON

_HIS TRANSLATIONS_.

As flowers, transplanted from a southern sky,
But hardly bear, or in the raising die,
Missing their native sun,--at best retain
But a faint odour, and but live with pain;
So Roman poetry, by moderns taught, }
Wanting the warmth with which its author wrote, }
Is a dead image, and a worthless draught. }
While we transfuse, the nimble spirit flies,
Escapes unseen, evaporates, and dies.
Who then attempts to shew the ancients' wit,
Must copy with the genius that they writ:
Whence we conclude from thy translated song,
So just, so warm, so smooth, and yet so strong,
Thou heavenly charmer! soul of harmony!
That all their geniuses revived in thee.
Thy trumpet sounds: the dead are raised to light;
New-born they rise, and take to heaven their flight;
Deck'd in thy verse, as clad with rays, they shine,
All glorified, immortal, and divine.
As Britain, in rich soil abounding wide,
Furnished for use, for luxury, and pride,
Yet spreads her wanton sails on every shore,
For foreign wealth, insatiate still of more;
To her own wool, the silks of Asia joins,
And to her plenteous harvests, Indian mines;
So Dryden, not contented with the fame
Of his own works, though an immortal name----
To lands remote he sends his learned Muse,
The noblest seeds of foreign wit to chuse.
Feasting our sense so many various ways,
Say, is't thy bounty, or thy thirst of praise,
That, by comparing others, all might see,
Who most excelled, are yet excelled by thee?

GEORGE GRANVILLE.

FOOTNOTES:

[269] Essay of Translated Verse, p. 26.




THE

LIFE

OF

PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS MARO,


BY KNIGHTLY CHETWOOD, D. D. [270]

Virgil was born at Mantua, which city was built no less than three
hundred years before Rome, and was the capital of the New Hetruria, as
himself, no less antiquary than poet, assures us. His birth is said to
have happened in the first consulship of Pompey the Great, and Licinius
Crassus: but, since the relater of this presently after contradicts
himself, and Virgil's manner of addressing to Octavius implies a
greater difference of age than that of seven years, as appears by
his First Pastoral, and other places, it is reasonable to set the
date of it something backward; and the writer of his Life having no
certain memorials to work upon, seems to have pitched upon the two
most illustrious consuls he could find about that time, to signalize
the birth of so eminent a man. But it is beyond all question, that he
was born on or near the 15th of October, which day was kept festival
in honour of his memory by the Latin, as the birth-day of Homer was
by the Greek poets. And so near a resemblance there is betwixt the
lives of these two famous epic writers, that Virgil seems to have
followed the fortune of the other, as well as the subject and manner
of his writing. For Homer is said to have been of very mean parents,
such as got their bread by day-labour; so is Virgil. Homer is said to
be base-born; so is Virgil. The former to have been born in the open
air, in a ditch, or by the bank of a river; so is the latter. There
was a poplar planted near the place of Virgil's birth, which suddenly
grew up to an unusual height and bulk, and to which the superstitious
neighbourhood attributed marvellous virtue: Homer had his poplar too,
as Herodotus relates, which was visited with great veneration. Homer
is described by one of the ancients to have been of a slovenly and
neglected mien and habit; so was Virgil. Both were of a very delicate
and sickly constitution; both addicted to travel, and the study of
astrology; both had their compositions usurped by others; both envied
and traduced during their lives. We know not so much as the true names
of either of them with any exactness; for the critics are not yet
agreed how the word _Virgil_ should be written, and of Homer's name
there is no certainty at all. Whosoever shall consider this parallel
in so many particulars, (and more might be added,) would be inclined
to think, that either the same stars ruled strongly at the nativities
of them both; or, what is a great deal more probable, that the Latin
grammarians, wanting materials for the former part of Virgil's life,
after the legendary fashion, supplied it out of Herodotus; and, like
ill face-painters, not being able to hit the true features, endeavoured
to make amends by a great deal of impertinent landscape and drapery.

Without troubling the reader with needless quotations now, or
afterwards, the most probable opinion is, that Virgil was the son of a
servant, or assistant, to a wandering astrologer, who practised physic:
for _medicus_, _magus_, as Juvenal observes, usually went together; and
this course of life was followed by a great many Greeks and Syrians,
of one of which nations it seems not improbable that Virgil's father
was. Nor could a man of that profession have chosen a fitter place
to settle in, than that most superstitious tract of Italy, which, by
her ridiculous rites and ceremonies, as much enslaved the Romans, as
the Romans did the Hetrurians by their arms. This man, therefore,
having got together some money, which stock he improved by his skill
in planting and husbandry, had the good fortune, at last, to marry his
master's daughter, by whom he had Virgil: and this woman seems, by her
mother's side, to have been of good extraction; for she was nearly
related to Quintilius Varus, whom Paterculus assures us to have been of
an illustrious, though not patrician, family; and there is honourable
mention made of it in the history of the second Carthaginian war. It
is certain, that they gave him very good education; to which they were
inclined, not so much by the dreams of his mother, and those presages
which Donatus relates, as by the early indications which he gave of
a sweet disposition and excellent wit. He passed the first seven
years of his life at Mantua, not seventeen, as Scaliger miscorrects
his author; for the _initia ætatis_ can hardly be supposed to extend
so far. From thence he removed to Cremona, a noble Roman colony, and
afterwards to Milan; in all which places, he prosecuted his studies
with great application. He read over all the best Latin and Greek
authors; for which he had convenience by the no remote distance of
Marseilles, that famous Greek colony, which maintained its politeness
and purity of language in the midst of all those barbarous nations
amongst which it was seated; and some tincture of the latter seems to
have descended from them down to the modern French. He frequented the
most eminent professors of the Epicurean philosophy, which was then
much in vogue, and will be always, in declining and sickly states. [271]
But, finding no satisfactory account from his master Syron, he passed
over to the Academic school; to which he adhered the rest of his
life, and deserved, from a great emperor, the title of--_The Plato
of Poets_. He composed at leisure hours a great number of verses on
various subjects; and, desirous rather of a great than early fame,
he permitted his kinsman and fellow-student, Varus, to derive the
honour of one of his tragedies to himself. Glory, neglected in proper
time and place, returns often with large increase: and so he found it;
for Varus afterwards proved a great instrument of his rise. In short,
it was here that he formed the plan, and collected the materials,
of all those excellent pieces which he afterwards finished, or was
forced to leave less perfect by his death. But, whether it were the
unwholesomeness of his native air, of which he somewhere complains;
or his too great abstinence, and night-watchings at his study, to
which he was always addicted, as Augustus observes; or possibly the
hopes of improving himself by travel--he resolved to remove to the
more southern tract of Italy; and it was hardly possible for him not
to take Rome in his way, as is evident to any one who shall cast an
eye on the map of Italy. And therefore the late French editor of his
works is mistaken, when he asserts, that he never saw Rome till he
came to petition for his estate. He gained the acquaintance of the
master of the horse to Octavius, and cured a great many diseases of
horses, by methods they had never heard of. It fell out, at the same
time, that a very fine colt, which promised great strength and speed,
was presented to Octavius; Virgil assured them, that he came of a
faulty mare, and would prove a jade: Upon trial, it was found as he
had said. His judgment proved right in several other instances; which
was the more surprising, because the Romans knew least of natural
causes of any civilized nation in the world; and those meteors and
prodigies, which cost them incredible sums to expiate, might easily
have been accounted for by no very profound naturalist. It is no
wonder, therefore, that Virgil was in so great reputation, as to be at
last introduced to Octavius himself. That prince was then at variance
with Marc Antony, who vexed him with a great many libelling letters,
in which he reproaches him with the baseness of his parentage, that he
came of a scrivener, a rope-maker, and a baker, as Suetonius tells us.
Octavius finding that Virgil had passed so exact a judgment upon the
breed of dogs and horses, thought that he possibly might be able to
give him some light concerning his own. He took him into his closet,
where they continued in private a considerable time. Virgil was a great
mathematician; which, in the sense of those times, took in astrology;
and, if there be any thing in that art, (which I can hardly believe,)
if that be true which the ingenious De la Chambre asserts confidently,
that, from the marks on the body, the configuration of the planets at
a nativity may be gathered, and the marks might be told by knowing the
nativity, never had one of those artists a fairer opportunity to show
his skill than Virgil now had; for Octavius had moles upon his body,
exactly resembling the constellation called _Ursa Major_. But Virgil
had other helps; the predictions of Cicero and Catulus,[272] and that
vote of the senate had gone abroad, that no child, born at Rome in the
year of his nativity, should be bred up, because the seers assured them
that an emperor was born that year. Besides this, Virgil had heard of
the Assyrian and Egyptian prophecies, (which, in truth, were no other
but the Jewish,) that about that time a great king was to come into the
world. Himself takes notice of them, (Æn. VI. ) where he uses a very
significant word, now in all liturgies, _hujus in adventu_; so in
another place, _adventu propiore Dei_.

At his foreseen approach already quake
Assyrian kingdoms, and Mæotis' lake;
Nile hears him knocking at his seven-fold gate.

Every one knows whence this was taken. It was rather a mistake than
impiety in Virgil, to apply these prophecies, which belonged to the
Saviour of the world, to the person of Octavius; it being a usual piece
of flattery, for near a hundred years together, to attribute them to
their emperors and other great men. Upon the whole matter, it is very
probable, that Virgil predicted to him the empire at this time. And it
will appear yet the more, if we consider, that he assures him of his
being received into the number of the gods, in his First Pastoral, long
before the thing came to pass; which prediction seems grounded upon
his former mistake. This was a secret not to be divulged at that time;
and therefore it is no wonder that the slight story in Donatus was
given abroad to palliate the matter. But certain it is, that Octavius
dismissed him with great marks of esteem, and earnestly recommended
the protection of Virgil's affairs to Pollio, then lieutenant of the
Cisalpine Gaul, where Virgil's patrimony lay. This Pollio, from a mean
original, became one of the most considerable persons of his time;
a good general, orator, statesman, historian, poet, and favourer of
learned men; above all, he was a man of honour in those critical times.
He had joined with Octavius and Antony in revenging the barbarous
assassination of Julius Cæsar; when they two were at variance, he
would neither follow Antony, whose courses he detested, nor join
with Octavius against him, out of a grateful sense of some former
obligations. Augustus, who thought it his interest to oblige men of
principles, notwithstanding this, received him afterwards into favour,
and promoted him to the highest honours. And thus much I thought fit to
say of Pollio, because he was one of Virgil's greatest friends. Being
therefore eased of domestic cares, he pursues his journey to Naples.
The charming situation of that place, and view of the beautiful villas
of the Roman nobility, equaling the magnificence of the greatest kings;
the neighbourhood of Baiæ, whither the sick resorted for recovery, and
the statesman when he was politicly sick; whither the wanton went for
pleasure, and witty men for good company; the wholesomeness of the air,
and improving conversation, the best air of all, contributed not only
to the re-establishing his health, but to the forming of his style,
and rendering him master of that happy turn of verse, in which he much
surpasses all the Latins, and, in a less advantageous language, equals
even Homer himself. He proposed to use his talent in poetry, only for
scaffolding to build a convenient fortune, that he might prosecute,
with less interruption, those nobler studies to which his elevated
genius led him, and which he describes in these admirable lines:

_Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musæ,
Quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore,
Accipiant; cælique vias, et sidera, monstrent,
Defectus Solis varios, Lunæque labores;
Unde tremor terris_, &c.

But the current of that martial age, by some strange antiperistasis,
drove so violently towards poetry, that he was at last carried down
with the stream; for not only the young nobility, but Octavius, and
Pollio, Cicero in his old age, Julius Cæsar, and the stoical Brutus, a
little before, would needs be tampering with the Muses. The two latter
had taken great care to have their poems curiously bound, and lodged
in the most famous libraries; but neither the sacredness of those
places, nor the greatness of their names, could preserve ill poetry.
Quitting therefore the study of the law, after having pleaded but one
cause with indifferent success, he resolved to push his fortune this
way, which he seems to have discontinued for some time; and that may be
the reason why the _Culex_, his first pastoral now extant, has little
besides the novelty of the subject, and the moral of the fable, which
contains an exhortation to gratitude, to recommend it. Had it been as
correct as his other pieces, nothing more proper and pertinent could
have at that time been addressed to the young Octavius; for, the year
in which he presented it, probably at Baiæ, seems to be the very same
in which that prince consented (though with seeming reluctance) to the
death of Cicero, under whose consulship he was born, the preserver
of his life, and chief instrument of his advancement. There is no
reason to question its being genuine, as the late French editor does;
its meanness, in comparison of Virgil's other works, (which is that
writer's only objection,) confutes himself; for Martial, who certainly
saw the true copy, speaks of it with contempt; and yet that pastoral
equals, at least, the address to the Dauphin, which is prefixed to the
late edition. Octavius, to unbend his mind from application to public
business, took frequent turns to Baiæ, and Sicily, where he composed
his poem called _Sicelides_, which Virgil seems to allude to in the
pastoral beginning _Sicelides Musæ_. This gave him opportunity of
refreshing that prince's memory of him; and about that time he wrote
his _Ætna_. Soon after he seems to have made a voyage to Athens, and
at his return presented his _Ceiris_, a more elaborate piece, to the
noble and eloquent Messala. The forementioned author groundlessly taxes
this as supposititious; for, besides other critical marks, there are
no less than fifty or sixty verses, altered, indeed, and polished,
which he inserted in the Pastorals, according to his fashion; and from
thence they were called _Eclogues_, or _Select Bucolics_: we thought
fit to use a title more intelligible, the reason of the other being
ceased; and we are supported by Virgil's own authority, who expressly
calls them _carmina pastorum_. The French editor is again mistaken,
in asserting, that the _Ceiris_ is borrowed from the ninth of Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_: he might have more reasonably conjectured it to be
taken from Parthenius, the Greek poet, from whom Ovid borrowed a great
part of his work. But it is indeed taken from neither, but from that
learned, unfortunate poet, Apollonius Rhodius, to whom Virgil is more
indebted than to any other Greek writer, excepting Homer. The reader
will be satisfied of this, if he consults that author in his own
language; for the translation is a great deal more obscure than the
original.

Whilst Virgil thus enjoyed the sweets of a learned privacy, the
troubles of Italy cut off his little subsistence; but, by a strange
turn of human affairs, which ought to keep good men from ever
despairing, the loss of his estate proved the effectual way of making
his fortune. The occasion of it was this: Octavius, as himself
relates, when he was but nineteen years of age, by a masterly stroke
of policy, had gained the veteran legions into his service, and, by
that step, outwitted all the republican senate. They grew now very
clamorous for their pay; the treasury being exhausted, he was forced
to make assignments upon land; and none but in Italy itself would
content them. He pitched upon Cremona, as the most distant from Rome;
but that not sufficing, he afterwards threw in part of the state of
Mantua. Cremona was a rich and noble colony, settled a little before
the invasion of Hannibal. During that tedious and bloody war, they
had done several important services to the commonwealth; and, when
eighteen other colonies, pleading poverty and depopulation, refused to
contribute money, or to raise recruits, they of Cremona voluntarily
paid a double quota of both. But past services are a fruitless plea;
civil wars are one continued act of ingratitude. In vain did the
miserable mothers, with their famishing infants in their arms, fill
the streets with their numbers, and the air with lamentations; the
craving legions were to be satisfied at any rate. Virgil, involved in
the common calamity, had recourse to his old patron, Pollio; but he
was, at this time, under a cloud; however, compassionating so worthy a
man, not of a make to struggle through the world, he did what he could,
and recommended him to Mæcenas, with whom he still kept a private
correspondence. The name of this great man being much better known
than one part of his character, the reader, I presume, will not be
displeased if I supply it in this place.

Though he was of as deep reach, and easy dispatch of business, as any
in his time, yet he designedly lived beneath his true character. Men
had oftentimes meddled in public affairs, that they might have more
ability to furnish for their pleasures: Mæcenas, by the honestest
hypocrisy that ever was, pretended to a life of pleasure, that he
might render more effectual service to his master. He seemed wholly
to amuse himself with the diversions of the town, but, under that
mask, was the greatest minister of his age. He would be carried in a
careless, effeminate posture through the streets in his chair, even to
the degree of a proverb; and yet there was not a cabal of ill-disposed
persons which he had not early notice of, and that too in a city as
large as London and Paris, and perhaps two or three more of the most
populous, put together. No man better understood that art so necessary
to the great--the art of declining envy. Being but of a gentleman's
family, not patrician, he would not provoke the nobility by accepting
invidious honours, but wisely satisfied himself, that he had the ear of
Augustus, and the secret of the empire. He seems to have committed but
one great fault, which was, the trusting a secret of high consequence
to his wife; but his master, enough uxorious himself, made his own
frailty more excusable, by generously forgiving that of his favourite:
he kept, in all his greatness, exact measures with his friends;
and, chusing them wisely, found, by experience, that good sense and
gratitude are almost inseparable. This appears in Virgil and Horace.
The former, besides the honour he did him to all posterity, re-toured
his liberalities at his death; the other, whom Mæcenas recommended with
his last breath, was too generous to stay behind, and enjoy the favour
of Augustus; he only desired a place in his tomb, and to mingle his
ashes with those of his deceased benefactor. But this was seventeen
hundred years ago. [273] Virgil, thus powerfully supported, thought
it mean to petition for himself alone, but resolutely solicits the
cause of his whole country, and seems, at first, to have met with
some encouragement; but, the matter cooling, he was forced to sit
down contented with the grant of his own estate. He goes therefore to
Mantua, produces his warrant to a captain of foot, whom he found in
his house. Arius, who had eleven points of the law, and fierce[274]
of the services he had rendered to Octavius, was so far from yielding
possession, that, words growing betwixt them, he wounded him
dangerously, forced him to fly, and at last to swim the river Mincius
to save his life. Virgil, who used to say, that no virtue was so
necessary as patience, was forced to drag a sick body half the length
of Italy, back again to Rome, and by the way, probably, composed his
Ninth Pastoral, which may seem to have been made up in haste, out of
the fragments of some other pieces; and naturally enough represents the
disorder of the poet's mind, by its disjointed fashion, though there
be another reason to be given elsewhere of its want of connection.
He handsomely states his case in that poem, and, with the pardonable
resentments of injured innocence, not only claims Octavius's promise,
but hints to him the uncertainty of human greatness and glory. All was
taken in good part by that wise prince; at last effectual orders were
given. About this time, he composed that admirable poem, which is set
first, out of respect to Cæsar; for he does not seem either to have
had leisure, or to have been in the humour of making so solemn an
acknowledgment, till he was possessed of the benefit. And now he was in
so great reputation and interest, that he resolved to give up his land
to his parents, and himself to the court. His Pastorals were in such
esteem, that Pollio, now again in high favour with Cæsar, desired him
to reduce them into a volume. Some modern writer, that has a constant
flux of verse, would stand amazed, how Virgil could employ three whole
years in revising five or six hundred verses, most of which, probably,
were made some time before; but there is more reason to wonder, how he
could do it so soon in such perfection. A coarse stone is presently
fashioned; but a diamond, of not many carats, is many weeks in sawing,
and, in polishing, many more. He who put Virgil upon this, had a
politic good end in it.

The continued civil wars had laid Italy almost waste; the ground
was uncultivated and unstocked; upon which ensued such a famine and
insurrection, that Cæsar hardly escaped being stoned at Rome; his
ambition being looked upon by all parties as the principal occasion of
it. He set himself therefore with great industry to promote country
improvements; and Virgil was serviceable to his design, as the good
Keeper of the Bees, Georg. iv.

_Tinnitusque cie, et Matris quate cymbala circum,
Ipsæ consident. _

That emperor afterwards thought it matter worthy a public inscription--

REDIIT CULTUS AGRIS--

which seems to be the motive that induced Mæcenas to put him upon
writing his Georgics, or books of husbandry: a design as new in Latin
verse, as pastorals, before Virgil, were in Italy: which work took up
seven of the most vigorous years of his life; for he was now, at least,
thirty-four years of age; and here Virgil shines in his meridian.
A great part of this work seems to have been rough-drawn before he
left Mantua; for an ancient writer has observed, that the rules of
husbandry, laid down in it, are better calculated for the soil of
Mantua, than for the more sunny climate of Naples; near which place,
and in Sicily, he finished it. But, lest his genius should be depressed
by apprehensions of want, he had a good estate settled upon him, and
a house in the pleasantest part of Rome; the principal furniture of
which was a well-chosen library, which stood open to all comers of
learning and merit: and what recommended the situation of it most, was
the neighbourhood of his Mæcenas; and thus he could either visit Rome,
or return to his privacy at Naples, through a pleasant road, adorned on
each side with pieces of antiquity, of which he was so great a lover,
and, in the intervals of them, seemed almost one continued street of
three days' journey.

Cæsar, having now vanquished Sextus Pompeius, (a spring-tide of
prosperities breaking in upon him, before he was ready to receive them
as he ought,) fell sick of the _imperial evil_, the desire of being
thought something more than man. Ambition is an infinite folly; when
it has attained to the utmost pitch of human greatness, it soon falls
to making pretensions upon heaven. The crafty Livia would needs be
drawn in the habit of a priestess by the shrine of the new god; and
this became a fashion not to be dispensed with amongst the ladies.
The devotion was wonderous great amongst the Romans; for it was their
interest, and, which sometimes avails more, it was the mode. Virgil,
though he despised the heathen superstitions, and is so bold as to
call Saturn and Janus by no better a name than that of _old men_, and
might deserve the title of subverter of superstitions, as well as
Varro, thought fit to follow the maxim of Plato his master, that every
one should serve the gods after the usage of his own country; and
therefore was not the last to present his incense, which was of too
rich a composition for such an altar; and, by his address to Cæsar on
this occasion, made an unhappy precedent to Lucan and other poets which
came after him. --_Georg. i. _ and _iii. _ And this poem being now in
great forwardness, Cæsar, who, in imitation of his predecessor Julius,
never intermitted his studies in the camp, and much less in other
places, refreshing himself by a short stay in a pleasant village of
Campania would needs be entertained with the rehearsal of some part of
it. Virgil recited with a marvellous grace, and sweet accent of voice,
but his lungs failing him, Mæcenas himself supplied his place for what
remained. Such a piece of condescension would now be very surprising;
but it was no more than customary amongst friends, when learning passed
for quality. [275] Lælius, the second man of Rome in his time, had done
as much for that poet, out of whose dross Virgil would sometimes pick
gold, as himself said, when one found him reading Ennius; (the like
he did by some verses of Varro, and Pacuvius, Lucretius, and Cicero,
which he inserted into his works. ) But learned men then lived easy
and familiarly with the great: Augustus himself would sometimes sit
down betwixt Virgil and Horace, and say jestingly, that he sat betwixt
sighing and tears, alluding to the asthma of one, and rheumatic eyes of
the other. He would frequently correspond with them, and never leave
a letter of theirs unanswered; nor were they under the constraint of
formal superscriptions in the beginning, nor of violent superlatives
at the close, of their letter: the invention of these is a modern
refinement; in which this may be remarked, in passing, that "_humble
servant_" is respect, but "_friend_" an affront; which notwithstanding
implies the former, and a great deal more. Nor does true greatness lose
by such familiarity; and those who have it not, as Mæcenas and Pollio
had, are not to be accounted proud, but rather very discreet, in their
reserves. Some playhouse beauties do wisely to be seen at a distance,
and to have the lamps twinkle betwixt them and the spectators.

But now Cæsar, who, though he were none of the greatest soldiers, was
certainly the greatest traveller, of a prince, that had ever been, (for
which Virgil so dexterously compliments him, Æneid, vi. ) takes a voyage
to Egypt, and, having happily finished the war, reduces that mighty
kingdom into the form of a province, over which he appointed Gallus
his lieutenant. This is the same person to whom Virgil addresses his
Tenth Pastoral; changing, in compliance to his request, his purpose
of limiting them to the number of the Muses. The praises of this
Gallus took up a considerable part of the Fourth Book of the Georgics,
according to the general consent of antiquity: but Cæsar would have it
put out; and yet the seam in the poem is still to be discerned; and the
matter of Aristæus's recovering his bees might have been dispatched
in less compass, without fetching the causes so far, or interesting
so many gods and goddesses in that affair. Perhaps some readers may
be inclined to think this, though very much laboured, not the most
entertaining part of that work; so hard it is for the greatest masters
to paint against their inclination. But Cæsar was contented, that he
should be mentioned in the last Pastoral, because it might be taken for
a satirical sort of commendation; and the character he there stands
under, might help to excuse his cruelty, in putting an old servant to
death for no very great crime.

And now having ended, as he begins his Georgics, with solemn mention
of Cæsar, (an argument of his devotion to him,) he begins his _Æneïs_,
according to the common account, being now turned of forty. But that
work had been, in truth, the subject of much earlier meditation.
Whilst he was working upon the first book of it, this passage, so very
remarkable in history, fell out, in which Virgil had a great share.

Cæsar, about this time, either cloyed with glory, or terrified by
the example of his predecessor, or to gain the credit of moderation
with the people, or possibly to feel the pulse of his friends,
deliberated whether he should retain the sovereign power, or restore
the commonwealth. Agrippa, who was a very honest man, but whose view
was of no great extent, advised him to the latter; but Mæcenas, who had
thoroughly studied his master's temper, in an eloquent oration gave
contrary advice. That emperor was too politic to commit the oversight
of Cromwell, in a deliberation something resembling this. Cromwell
had never been more desirous of the power, than he was afterwards
of the title, of king; and there was nothing in which the heads of
the parties, who were all his creatures, would not comply with him;
but, by too vehement allegation of arguments against it, he, who
had outwitted every body besides, at last outwitted himself by too
deep dissimulation; for his council, thinking to make their court
by assenting to his judgment, voted unanimously for him against his
inclination; which surprised and troubled him to such a degree, that,
as soon as he had got into his coach, he fell into a swoon. [276] But
Cæsar knew his people better; and, his council being thus divided,
he asked Virgil's advice. Thus a poet had the honour of determining
the greatest point that ever was in debate, betwixt the son-in-law
and favourite of Cæsar. Virgil delivered his opinion in words to this
effect:

"The change of a popular into an absolute government has generally been
of very ill consequence; for, betwixt the hatred of the people and
injustice of the prince, it, of necessity, comes to pass, that they
live in distrust, and mutual apprehensions. But, if the commons knew
a just person, whom they entirely confided in, it would be for the
advantage of all parties, that such a one should be their sovereign;
wherefore, if you shall continue to administer justice impartially, as
hitherto you have done, your power will prove safe to yourself, and
beneficial to mankind. " This excellent sentence, which seems taken
out of Plato, (with whose writings the grammarians were not much
acquainted, and therefore cannot reasonably be suspected of forgery in
this matter,) contains the true state of affairs at that time: for the
commonwealth maxims were now no longer practicable; the Romans had
only the haughtiness of the old commonwealth left, without one of its
virtues. And this sentence we find, almost in the same words, in the
First Book of the "Æneïs," which at this time he was writing; and one
might wonder that none of his commentators have taken notice of it. He
compares a tempest to a popular insurrection, as Cicero had compared a
sedition to a storm, a little before:

_Ac veluti, magno in populo, cum sæpe coorta est
Seditio, sævitque animis ignobile vulgus,
Jamque faces, et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat:
Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem
Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant:
Ille regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet. _

Piety and merit were the two great virtues which Virgil every where
attributes to Augustus, and in which that prince, at least politicly,
if not so truly, fixed his character, as appears by the _Marmor Ancyr. _
and several of his medals. Franshemius, the learned supplementor of
Livy, has inserted this relation into his history; nor is there any
good reason, why Ruæus should account it fabulous. The title of a
poet in those days did not abate, but heighten, the character of the
gravest senator. Virgil was one of the best and wisest men of his time,
and in so popular esteem, that one hundred thousand Romans rose when
he came into the theatre, and paid him the same respect they used to
Cæsar himself, as Tacitus assures us. And, if Augustus invited Horace
to assist him in writing his letters, (and every body knows that the
"_Rescripta Imperatorum_" were the laws of the empire,) Virgil might
well deserve a place in the cabinet-council.

And now he prosecutes his "Æneïs," which had anciently the title of
the "Imperial Poem," or "Roman History," and deservedly: for, though
he were too artful a writer to set down events in exact historical
order, for which Lucan is justly blamed; yet are all the most
considerable affairs and persons of Rome comprised in this poem. He
deduces the history of Italy from before Saturn to the reign of King
Latinus; and reckons up the successors of Æneas, who reigned at Alba,
for the space of three hundred years, down to the birth of Romulus;
describes the persons and principal exploits of all the kings, to their
expulsion, and the settling of the commonwealth. After this, he touches
promiscuously the most remarkable occurrences at home and abroad, but
insists more particularly upon the exploits of Augustus; insomuch
that, though this assertion may appear at first a little surprising,
he has in his works deduced the history of a considerable part of
the world from its original, through the fabulous and heroic ages,
through the monarchy and commonwealth of Rome, for the space of four
thousand years, down to within less than forty of our Saviour's time,
of whom he has preserved a most illustrious prophecy. Besides this,
he points at many remarkable passages of history under feigned names:
the destruction of Alba and Veii, under that of Troy; the star Venus,
which, Varro says, guided Æneas in his voyage to Italy, in that verse,

_Matre deâ monstrante viam. _

Romulus's lance taking root, and budding, is described in that passage
concerning Polydorus, Æneïd, iii.

----_Confixum ferrea texit
Telorum seges, et jaculis increvit acutis_--

The stratagem of the Trojans boring holes in their ships, and sinking
them, lest the Latins should burn them, under that fable of their
being transformed into sea-nymphs; and therefore the ancients had no
such reason to condemn that fable as groundless and absurd. Cocles
swimming the river Tyber, after the bridge was broken down behind him,
is exactly painted in the four last verses of the ninth book, under the
character of Turnus: Marius hiding himself in the morass of Minturnæ,
under the person of Sinon:

_Limosoque lacu per noctem obscurus in ulvâ
Delitui_. [277]

Those verses in the second book concerning Priam,

----_jacet ingens littore truncus, &c. _

seem originally made upon Pompey the Great. He seems to touch the
imperious and intriguing humour of the Empress Livia, under the
character of Juno. The irresolute and weak Lepidus is well represented
under the person of King Latinus; Augustus with the character of _Pont.
Max. _ under that of Æneas; and the rash courage (always unfortunate
in Virgil) of Marc Antony, in Turnus; the railing eloquence of Cicero
in his "Philippics" is well imitated in the oration of Drances; the
dull faithful Agrippa, under the person of Achates; accordingly this
character is flat: Achates kills but one man, and himself receives one
slight wound, but neither says nor does any thing very considerable
in the whole poem. Curio, who sold his country for about two hundred
thousand pounds, is stigmatized in that verse,--

_Vendidit hic auro patriam, dominumque potentem
Imposuit. _

Livy relates, that, presently after the death of the two Scipios in
Spain, when Martius took upon him the command, a blazing meteor shone
around his head, to the astonishment of his soldiers. Virgil transfers
this to Æneas:

_Lætasque vomunt duo tempora flammas. _

It is strange, that the commentators have not taken notice of this.
Thus the ill omen which happened a little before the battle of
Thrasymen, when some of the centurions' lances took fire miraculously,
is hinted in the like accident which befel Acestes, before the burning
of the Trojan fleet in Sicily. The reader will easily find many
more such instances. In other writers, there is often well-covered
ignorance; in Virgil, concealed learning.

His silence of some illustrious persons is no less worth observation.
He says nothing of Scævola, because he attempted to assassinate a king,
though a declared enemy; nor of the younger Brutus; for he effected
what the other endeavoured; nor of the younger Cato, because he was
an implacable enemy of Julius Cæsar; nor could the mention of him be
pleasing to Augustus; and that passage,

_His dantem jura Catonem_----

may relate to his office, as he was a very severe censor. Nor would he
name Cicero, when the occasion of mentioning him came full in his way,
when he speaks of Catiline; because he afterwards approved the murder
of Cæsar, though the plotters were too wary to trust the orator with
their design. Some other poets knew the art of speaking well; but
Virgil, beyond this, knew the admirable secret, of being eloquently
silent. Whatsoever was most curious in Fabius Pictor, Cato the elder,
Varro, in the Egyptian antiquities, in the form of sacrifice, in the
solemnities of making peace and war, is preserved in this poem. Rome is
still above ground, and flourishing in Virgil. And all this he performs
with admirable brevity. The "Æneïs" was once near twenty times bigger
than he left it; so that he spent as much time in blotting out, as some
moderns have done in writing whole volumes. But not one book has his
finishing strokes. The sixth seems one of the most perfect, the which,
after long entreaty, and sometimes threats, of Augustus, he was at last
prevailed upon to recite. This fell out about four years before his
own death: that of Marcellus, whom Cæsar designed for his successor,
happened a little before this recital: Virgil therefore, with his usual
dexterity, inserted his funeral panegyric in those admirable lines,
beginning,

_O nate, ingentem luctum ne quære tuorum, &c. _

His mother, the excellent Octavia, the best wife of the worst husband
that ever was, to divert her grief, would be of the auditory. The poet
artificially deferred the naming Marcellus, till their passions were
raised to the highest; but the mention of it put both her and Augustus
into such a passion of weeping, that they commanded him to proceed
no further.