No More Learning

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. Virgil answered, that he had already ended that passage.
Some relate, that Octavia fainted away; but afterwards she presented
the poet with two thousand one hundred pounds, odd money: a round
sum for twenty-seven verses; but they were Virgil's. Another writer
says, that, with a royal magnificence, she ordered him massy plate,
unweighed, to a great value.

And now he took up a resolution of travelling into Greece, there to set
the last hand to this work; proposing to devote the rest of his life
to philosophy, which had been always his principal passion. He justly
thought it a foolish figure for a grave man to be overtaken by death,
whilst he was weighing the cadence of words, and measuring verses,
unless necessity should constrain it, from which he was well secured
by the liberality of that learned age. But he was not aware, that,
whilst he allotted three years for the revising of his poem, he drew
bills upon a failing bank: for, unhappily meeting Augustus at Athens,
he thought himself obliged to wait upon him into Italy; but, being
desirous to see all he could of the Greek antiquities, he fell into
a languishing distemper at Megara. This, neglected at first, proved
mortal. The agitation of the vessel (for it was now autumn, near the
time of his birth,) brought him so low, that he could hardly reach
Brindisi. In his sickness, he frequently, and with great importunity,
called for his scrutoir, that he might burn his "Æneïs:" but, Augustus
interposing by his royal authority, he made his last will, (of which
something shall be said afterwards;) and, considering probably how much
Homer had been disfigured by the arbitrary compilers of his works,
obliged Tucca and Varius to add nothing, nor so much as fill up the
breaks he left in his poem. He ordered that his bones should be carried
to Naples, in which place he had passed the most agreeable part of his
life. Augustus, not only as executor and friend, but according to the
duty of the _Pontifex Maximus_, when a funeral happened in his family,
took care himself to see the will punctually executed. He went out
of the world with all that calmness of mind with which the ancient
writer of his life says he came into it; making the inscription of his
monument himself; for he began and ended his poetical compositions
with an epitaph. And this he made, exactly according to the law of his
master Plato on such occasions, without the least ostentation:

I sung flocks, tillage, heroes; Mantua gave
Me life, Brundusium death, Naples a grave.


A SHORT

ACCOUNT

OF HIS

PERSON, MANNERS, AND FORTUNE.

He was of a very swarthy complexion, which might proceed from the
southern extraction of his father; tall and wide-shouldered, so that he
may be thought to have described himself under the character of Musæus,
whom he calls the best of poets--

----_Medium nam plurima turba
Hunc habet, atque humeris extantem suspicit altis. _

His sickliness, studies, and the troubles he met with, turned his
hair gray before the usual time. He had a hesitation in his speech,
as many other great men; it being rarely found that a very fluent
elocution, and depth of judgment, meet in the same person: his aspect
and behaviour rustic and ungraceful; and this defect was not likely to
be rectified in the place where he first lived, nor afterwards, because
the weakness of his stomach would not permit him to use his exercises.
He was frequently troubled with the head-ach, and spitting of blood;
spare of diet, and hardly drank any wine. Bashful to a fault; and,
when people crowded to see him, he would slip into the next shop, or
by-passage, to avoid them. As this character could not recommend him
to the fair sex, he seems to have as little consideration for them as
Euripides himself. There is hardly the character of one good woman to
be found in his poems: he uses the word _mulier_ but once in the whole
"Æneïs," then too by way of contempt, rendering literally a piece of
a verse out of Homer. In his "Pastorals," he is full of invectives
against love: in the "Georgics," he appropriates all the rage of it to
the females. He makes Dido, who never deserved that character, lustful
and revengeful to the utmost degree, so as to die devoting her lover
to destruction; so changeable, that the Destinies themselves could not
fix the time of her death; but Iris, the emblem of inconstancy, must
determine it. Her sister is something worse. [278] He is so far from
passing such a compliment upon Helen, as the grave old counsellor in
Homer does, after nine years' war, when, upon the sight of her, he
breaks out into this rapture, in the presence of king Priam:

None can the cause of these long wars despise;
The cost bears no proportion to the prize:
Majestic charms in every feature shine;
Her air, her port, her accent, is divine.
However, let the fatal beauty go, &c.

Virgil is so far from this complaisant humour, that his hero falls
into an unmanly and ill-timed deliberation, whether he should not kill
her in a church;[279] which directly contradicts what Deiphobus says
of her, Æneid vi. , in that place where every body tells the truth. He
transfers the dogged silence of Ajax's ghost to that of Dido; though
that be no very natural character to an injured lover, or a woman.
He brings in the Trojan matrons setting their own fleet on fire, and
running afterwards, like witches on their _sabbat_, into the woods. He
bestows indeed some ornaments on the character of Camilla; but soon
abates his favour, by calling her _aspera_ and _horrenda virgo_: he
places her in the front of the line for an ill omen of the battle, as
one of the ancients has observed. We may observe, on this occasion, it
is an art peculiar to Virgil, to intimate the event by some preceding
accident. He hardly ever describes the rising of the sun, but with some
circumstance which fore-signifies the fortune of the day. For instance,
when Æneas leaves Africa and Queen Dido, he thus describes the fatal
morning:

_Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile. _

[And, for the remark, we stand indebted to the curious pencil of
Pollio. ] The Mourning Fields (Æneid vi. ) are crowded with ladies of a
lost reputation: hardly one man gets admittance; and that is Cæneus,
for a very good reason. Latinus's queen is turbulent and ungovernable,
and at last hangs herself: and the fair Lavinia is disobedient to the
oracle, and to the king, and looks a little flickering after Turnus.
I wonder at this the more, because Livy represents her as an excellent
person, and who behaved herself with great wisdom in her regency during
the minority of her son; so that the poet has done her wrong, and it
reflects on her posterity. His goddesses make as ill a figure: Juno is
always in a rage, and the Fury of heaven; Venus grows so unreasonably
confident, as to ask her husband to forge arms for her bastard son,
which were enough to provoke one of a more phlegmatic temper than
Vulcan was. Notwithstanding all this raillery of Virgil's, he was
certainly of a very amorous disposition, and has described all that
is most delicate in the passion of love: but he conquered his natural
inclination by the help of philosophy, and refined it into friendship,
to which he was extremely sensible. The reader will admit of or reject
the following conjecture, with the free leave of the writer, who will
be equally pleased either way. Virgil had too great an opinion of the
influence of the heavenly bodies: and, as an ancient writer says, he
was born under the sign of Virgo; with which nativity he much pleased
himself, and would exemplify her virtues in his life. Perhaps it was
thence that he took his name of _Virgil_ and _Parthenias_, which does
not necessarily signify _base-born_. Donatus and Servius, very good
grammarians, give a quite contrary sense of it. He seems to make
allusion to this original of his name in that passage,

_Illo Virgilium me tempore dulcis alebat
Parthenope. _

And this may serve to illustrate his compliment to Cæsar, in which he
invites him into his own constellation,

Where, in the void of heaven, a place is free,
Betwixt the Scorpion and the maid, for thee--

thus placing him betwixt Justice and Power, and in a neighbour mansion
to his own; for Virgil supposed souls to ascend again to their proper
and congenial stars. Being therefore of this humour, it is no wonder
that he refused the embraces of the beautiful Plotia, when his
indiscreet friend almost threw her into his arms.

But however he stood affected to the ladies, there is a dreadful
accusation brought against him for the most unnatural of all vices,
which, by the malignity of human nature, has found more credit in
latter times than it did near his own. This took not its rise so
much from the "Alexis," in which pastoral there is not one immodest
word, as from a sort of ill-nature, that will not let any one be
without the imputation of some vice; and principally because he was so
strict a follower of Socrates and Plato. In order, therefore, to his
vindication, I shall take the matter a little higher.

The Cretans were anciently much addicted to navigation, insomuch that
it became a Greek proverb, (though omitted, I think, by the industrious
Erasmus,) a _Cretan that does not know the sea_. Their neighbourhood
gave them occasion of frequent commerce with the Phoenicians,
that accursed people, who infected the western world with endless
superstitions, and gross immoralities. From them it is probable that
the Cretans learned this infamous passion, to which they were so much
addicted, that Cicero remarks, in his book "_De Rep. _" that it was "a
disgrace for a young gentleman to be without lovers. " Socrates, who
was a great admirer of the Cretan constitutions, set his excellent
wit to find out some good cause and use of this evil inclination, and
therefore gives an account, wherefore beauty is to be loved, in the
following passage; for I will not trouble the reader, weary perhaps
already, with a long Greek quotation. "There is but one eternal,
immutable, uniform beauty; in contemplation of which, our sovereign
happiness does consist: and therefore a true lover considers beauty and
proportion as so many steps and degrees, by which he may ascend from
the particular to the general, from all that is lovely of feature, or
regular in proportion, or charming in sound, to the general fountain
of all perfection. And if you are so much transported with the sight
of beautiful persons, as to wish neither to eat nor drink, but pass
your whole life in their conversation; to what ecstasy would it raise
you to behold the original beauty, not filled up with flesh and blood,
or varnished with a fading mixture of colours, and the rest of mortal
trifles and fooleries, but separate, unmixed, uniform, and divine," &c.
Thus far Socrates, in a strain much beyond the "_Socrate Chrétien_" of
Mr Balzac: and thus that admirable man loved his Phædon, his Charmides,
and Theætetus; and thus Virgil loved his Alexander and Cebes, under
the feigned name of Alexis: he received them illiterate, but returned
them to their masters, the one a good poet, and the other an excellent
grammarian. And, to prevent all possible misinterpretations, he warily
inserted, into the liveliest episode in the whole "Æneïs," these words,

_Nisus amore pio pueri_----

and, in the sixth, "_Quique pii vates_. " He seems fond of the words,
_castus_, _pius_, _virgo_, and the compounds of it: and sometimes
stretches the use of that word further than one would think he
reasonably should have done, as when he attributes it to Pasiphaë
herself.

Another vice he is taxed with, is avarice, because he died rich; and so
indeed he did, in comparison of modern wealth. His estate amounts to
near seventy-five thousand pounds of our money: but Donatus does not
take notice of this as a thing extraordinary; nor was it esteemed so
great a matter, when the cash of a great part of the world lay at Rome.
Antony himself bestowed at once two thousand acres of land, in one of
the best provinces of Italy, upon a ridiculous scribbler, who is named
by Cicero and Virgil. A late cardinal used to purchase ill flattery at
the expence of a hundred thousand crowns a year. But, besides Virgil's
other benefactors, he was much in favour with Augustus, whose bounty
to him had no limits, but such as the modesty of Virgil prescribed to
it. Before he had made his own fortune, he settled his estate upon his
parents and brothers; sent them yearly large sums, so that they lived
in great plenty and respect; and, at his death, divided his estate
betwixt duty and gratitude, leaving one half to his relations, and the
other to Mæcenas, to Tucca, and Varius, and a considerable legacy to
Augustus, who had introduced a politic fashion of being in every body's
will; which alone was a fair revenue for a prince. Virgil shows his
detestation of this vice, by placing in the front of the damned those
who did not relieve their relations and friends; for the Romans hardly
ever extended their liberality further; and therefore I do not remember
to have met, in all the Latin poets, one character so noble as that
short one in Homer:

#----Philos d' ên anthrôpoisi;
Pantas gar phileesken. #

On the other hand, he gives a very advanced place in Elysium to good
patriots, &c. observing, in all his poem, that rule so sacred among
the Romans, "That there should be no art allowed, which did not tend to
the improvement of the people in virtue. " And this was the principle
too of our excellent Mr Waller, who used to say, that he would raze any
line out of his poems, which did not imply some motive to virtue: but
he was unhappy in the choice of the subject of his admirable vein in
poetry. The Countess of Carlisle was the Helen of her country. There
is nothing in Pagan philosophy more true, more just, and regular, than
Virgil's ethics; and it is hardly possible to sit down to the serious
perusal of his works, but a man shall rise more disposed to virtue
and goodness, as well as most agreeably entertained; the contrary to
which disposition may happen sometimes upon the reading of Ovid, of
Martial, and several other second-rate poets. But of the craft and
tricking part of life, with which Homer abounds, there is nothing to
be found in Virgil; and therefore Plato, who gives the former so many
good words, perfumes, crowns, but at last complimentally banishes him
his commonwealth, would have entreated Virgil to stay with him, (if
they had lived in the same age,) and entrusted him with some important
charge in his government. Thus was his life as chaste as his style;
and those who can critic his poetry, can never find a blemish in his
manners; and one would rather wish to have that purity of mind, which
the satirist himself attributes to him; that friendly disposition, and
evenness of temper, and patience, which he was master of in so eminent
a degree, than to have the honour of being author of the "Æneïs," or
even of the "Georgics" themselves.

Having therefore so little relish for the usual amusements of
the world, he prosecuted his studies without any considerable
interruption, during the whole course of his life, which one may
reasonably conjecture to have been something longer than fifty-two
years; and therefore it is no wonder that he became the most general
scholar that Rome ever bred, unless some one should except Varro.
Besides the exact knowledge of rural affairs, he understood medicine,
to which profession he was designed by his parents. A curious florist;
on which subject one would wish he had writ, as he once intended: so
profound a naturalist, that he has solved more phenomena of nature upon
sound principles, than Aristotle in his Physics: he studied geometry,
the most opposite of all sciences to a poetic genius, and beauties of
a lively imagination; but this promoted the order of his narrations,
his propriety of language, and clearness of expression, for which he
was justly called the _pillar of the Latin tongue_. This geometrical
spirit was the cause, that, to fill up a verse, he would not insert one
superfluous word; and therefore deserves that character which a noble
and judicious writer has given him, "That he never says too little,
nor too much. "[280] Nor could any one ever fill up the verses he left
imperfect. There is one supplied near the beginning of the First Book.
Virgil left the verse thus,

----_Hic illius arma,
Hic currus fuit_----

the rest is none of his.

He was so good a geographer, that he has not only left us the finest
description of Italy that ever was, but, besides, was one of the few
ancients who knew the true system of the earth, its being inhabited
round about, under the torrid zone, and near the poles. Metrodorus,
in his five books of the "Zones," justifies him from some exceptions
made against him by astronomers. His rhetoric was in such general
esteem, that lectures were read upon it in the reign of Tiberius, and
the subject of declamations taken out of him. Pollio himself, and many
other ancients, commented him. His esteem degenerated into a kind of
superstition. The known story of Mr Cowley is an instance of it[281].
But the _sortes Virgilianæ_ were condemned by St Austin, and other
casuists. Abienus, by an odd design, put all Virgil and Livy into
iambic verse; and the pictures of those two were hung in the most
honourable place of public libraries; and the design of taking them
down, and destroying Virgil's works, was looked upon as one of the most
extravagant amongst the many brutish phrenzies of Caligula.

FOOTNOTES:

[270] Knightly Chetwood, whom Dryden elsewhere terms "learned and every
way excellent," (Vol. XIV. p. 49. ) contributed to the Second Book of
the Georgics those lines which contain the praises of Italy. Knightly
Chetwood was born in 1652. He was a particular friend of Roscommon,
and, being of Tory principles, he obtained high preferment in the
church, and was nominated to the see of Bristol; but the Revolution
prevented his instalment. In April 1707 he was made Dean of Gloucester,
and died 11th. April, 1720.

The Life of Virgil has usually been ascribed to William Walsh, whose
merits as a minor poet are now forgotten, but who still lives in the
grateful strains of Pope, whose juvenile essays he encouraged, as well
as in the encomium of Dryden, whom he patronised in age and adversity.
I have left his name in possession of the Essay on the Pastorals,
although it also was probably written by Dr Chetwood. See MALONE, Vol.
III. p. 549.

[271] There is great justice in this observation. The prevalence of a
system, founded in egotism and self-indulgence, which teaches, that
pleasure was the greatest good, and pain the most intolerable evil, as
surely indicates the downfal of the state, as the decay of morality.

[272] See _Suetonius_, Life of Octavius, chap. 94.

[273] Walsh might have found an hundred poets of his own time, who
would have expressed themselves as warmly as Horace on a similar
occasion. Our Dryden, for example:

Tell good Barzillai, thou canst sing no more;
And tell thy soul, she should have fled before.

But neither Horace nor Dryden expected to die a day the sooner for
these ardent expressions; and, in extolling the gratitude of the
ancients at the expence of the moderns, Walsh only gives another
instance of the cant which distinguishes his compositions.

[274] An affected Gallicism, for proud of the services.

[275] Certainly there was no age in Britain, where, if a prince chose
to hear an author read his works, and his lungs happened to fail him,
the favourite, if present, and capable, would not have been happy
to have continued the recitation. This is one of those hackneyed
compliments to the manners of antiquity, which are often paid without
the least foundation.

[276] Walsh seems to have been but a slender historian. Oliver's
council well knew his private wishes, but were determined to counteract
them.

[277] Many of these resemblances, and particularly the last, seem
extremely fanciful. The same may be said of most of those which follow;
but this comes of seeing too far into a mill-stone.

[278] All this charge is greatly overstrained. The critic, in censuring
poor Dido and her sister, totally forgets their very reasonable ground
of provocation.

[279] The critic should have considered, that Troy was not actually
blazing when the old counsellor pronounced his panegyric upon Helen's
beauty.

[280] "Essay on Poetry," by Sheffield, Marquis of Normanby, originally
Earl of Mulgrave, and afterwards Duke of Buckingham.

[281] The _sortes Virgilianæ_ were a sort of augury, drawn by dipping
at random into the volume, and applying the line to which chance
directed the finger, as an answer to the doubt propounded.
Cowley seems
to have been a firm believer in this kind of sooth-saying. When at
Paris, and secretary to Lord Jermin, he writes to Bennet his opinion
concerning the probability of concluding a treaty with the Scottish
nation; and adds, "And, to tell you the truth, which I take to be an
argument above all the rest, Virgil has told the same thing to that
purpose. " There is a story, that Charles I. and Lord Faulkland tried
this sort of divination at Oxford concerning the issue of the civil
war, and that the former lighted upon this ominous response:

----_Jacet ingens littore truncus,
Avulsumque humeris caput, et sine nomine truncus. _

Lord Faulkland drew an answer equally prophetic of his fate.

These follies seem to have been founded upon the vulgar idea still
current at Naples, that Virgil was a magician. Gervas of Tilbury was an
early propagator of this scandal, which was current during the middle
ages, so that Naudæus thinks it necessary to apologize for Virgil,
among other great men accused of necromancy. These legends formed the
contents of a popular romance.




PASTORALS.




TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

HUGH,

LORD CLIFFORD,

BARON OF CHUDLEIGH. [282]


MY LORD,

I have found it not more difficult to translate Virgil, than to find
such patrons as I desire for my translation. For, though England is not
wanting in a learned nobility, yet such are my unhappy circumstances,
that they have confined me to a narrow choice. [283] To the greater
part I have not the honour to be known; and to some of them I cannot
show at present, by any public act, that grateful respect which I
shall ever bear them in my heart. Yet I have no reason to complain of
fortune, since, in the midst of that abundance, I could not possibly
have chosen better, than the worthy son of so illustrious a father.
He was the patron of my manhood, when I flourished in the opinion
of the world; though with small advantage to my fortune, till he
awakened the remembrance of my royal master. He was that Pollio, or
that Varus,[284] who introduced me to Augustus: and, though he soon
dismissed himself from state affairs, yet, in the short time of his
administration, he shone so powerfully upon me, that, like the heat of
a Russian summer, he ripened the fruits of poetry in a cold climate,
and gave me wherewithal to subsist, at least, in the long winter which
succeeded. What I now offer to your lordship, is the wretched remainder
of a sickly age, worn out with study, and oppressed by fortune; without
other support than the constancy and patience of a Christian. You, my
lord, are yet in the flower of your youth, and may live to enjoy the
benefits of the peace which is promised Europe: I can only hear of that
blessing; for years, and, above all things, want of health, have shut
me out from sharing in the happiness. The poets, who condemn their
Tantalus to hell, had added to his torments, if they had placed him in
Elysium, which is the proper emblem of my condition. The fruit and the
water may reach my lips, but cannot enter; and, if they could, yet I
want a palate as well as a digestion. But it is some kind of pleasure
to me, to please those whom I respect; and I am not altogether out
of hope, that these Pastorals of Virgil may give your lordship some
delight, though made English by one who scarce remembers that passion
which inspired my author when he wrote them. These were his first essay
in poetry, if the "Ceiris"[285] was not his: and it was more excusable
in him to describe love when he was young, than for me to translate
him when I am old. He died at the age of fifty-two; and I began this
work in my great climacteric. But, having perhaps a better constitution
than my author, I have wronged him less, considering my circumstances,
than those who have attempted him before, either in our own, or any
modern language. And, though this version is not void of errors, yet
it comforts me, that the faults of others are not worth finding. Mine
are neither gross nor frequent in those Eclogues, wherein my master
has raised himself above that humble style in which pastoral delights,
and which, I must confess, is proper to the education and converse
of shepherds: for he found the strength of his genius betimes, and
was, even in his youth, preluding to his "Georgics" and his "Æneïs. "
He could not forbear to try his wings, though his pinions were not
hardened to maintain a long laborious flight; yet sometimes they bore
him to a pitch as lofty as ever he was able to reach afterwards.
But, when he was admonished by his subject to descend, he came down
gently, circling in the air, and singing, to the ground; like a lark,
melodious in her mounting, and continuing her song till she alights,
still preparing for a higher flight at her next sally, and tuning her
voice to better music. The fourth, the sixth, and the eighth Pastorals,
are clear evidences of this truth. In the three first, he contains
himself within his bounds: but, addressing to Pollio, his great patron,
and himself no vulgar poet, he no longer could restrain the freedom
of his spirit, but began to assert his native character, which is
sublimity--putting himself under the conduct of the same Cumæan Sibyl,
whom afterwards he gave for a guide to his Æneas. It is true, he was
sensible of his own boldness; and we know it by the _paulo majora_,
which begins his fourth Eclogue. He remembered, like young Manlius,
that he was forbidden to engage; but what avails an express command
to a youthful courage, which presages victory in the attempt? [286]
Encouraged with success, he proceeds farther in the sixth, and invades
the province of philosophy. And, notwithstanding that Phoebus had
forewarned him of singing wars, as he there confesses, yet he presumed,
that the search of nature was as free to him as to Lucretius, who, at
his age, explained it according to the principles of Epicurus. In his
eighth Eclogue, he has innovated nothing; the former part of it being
the complaint and despair of a forsaken lover; the latter, a charm of
an enchantress, to renew a lost affection. But the complaint perhaps
contains some topics which are above the condition of his persons; and
our author seems to have made his herdsmen somewhat too learned for
their profession: the charms are also of the same nature; but both were
copied from Theocritus, and had received the applause of former ages in
their original.

There is a kind of rusticity in all those pompous verses; somewhat of
a holiday shepherd strutting in his country buskins. The like may be
observed both in the "Pollio" and the "Silenus," where the similitudes
are drawn from the woods and meadows. They seem to me to represent our
poet betwixt a farmer and a courtier, when he left Mantua for Rome, and
drest himself in his best habit to appear before his patron, somewhat
too fine for the place from whence he came, and yet retaining part
of its simplicity. In the ninth Pastoral, he collects some beautiful
passages, which were scattered in Theocritus, which he could not insert
into any of his former Eclogues, and yet was unwilling they should
be lost. In all the rest, he is equal to his Sicilian master, and
observes, like him, a just decorum both of the subject and the persons;
as particularly in the third Pastoral, where one of his shepherds
describes a bowl, or mazer, curiously carved:

_In medio duo signa: Conon, et quis fuit alter,
Descripsit radio, totum qui gentibus orbem? _

He remembers only the name of Conon, and forgets the other on set
purpose. Whether he means Anaximander, or Eudoxus, I dispute not; but
he was certainly forgotten, to show his country swain was no great
scholar.

After all, I must confess, that the boorish dialect of Theocritus has
a secret charm in it, which the Roman language cannot imitate, though
Virgil has drawn it down as low as possibly he could; as in the _cujum
pecus_, and some other words, for which he was so unjustly blamed by
the bad critics of his age, who could not see the beauties of that
_merum rus_, which the poet described in those expressions. But
Theocritus may justly be preferred as the original, without injury
to Virgil, who modestly contents himself with the second place, and
glories only in being the first who transplanted pastoral into his own
country, and brought it there to bear as happily as the cherry-trees
which Lucullus brought from Pontus.

Our own nation has produced a third poet in this kind, not inferior to
the two former: for the "Shepherd's Kalendar" of Spenser is not to be
matched in any modern language, not even by Tasso's "Aminta," which
infinitely transcends Guarini's "Pastor Fido," as having more of nature
in it, and being almost wholly clear from the wretched affectation of
learning. I will say nothing of the "Piscatory Eclogues," because no
modern Latin can bear criticism. [287] It is no wonder, that, rolling
down, through so many barbarous ages, from the spring of Virgil, it
bears along with it the filth and ordures of the Goths and Vandals.
Neither will I mention Monsieur Fontenelle, the living glory of the
French. It is enough for him to have excelled his master Lucian,
without attempting to compare our miserable age with that of Virgil, or
Theocritus. Let me only add, for his reputation,

----_Si Pergama dextrâ
Defendi possint, etiam hâc defensa fuissent. _

But Spenser, being master of our northern dialect, and skilled in
Chaucer's English, has so exactly imitated the Doric of Theocritus,
that his love is a perfect image of that passion which God infused into
both sexes, before it was corrupted with the knowledge of arts, and the
ceremonies of what we call good manners.

My lord, I know to whom I dedicate; and could not have been induced, by
any motive, to put this part of Virgil, or any other, into unlearned
hands. You have read him with pleasure, and, I dare say, with
admiration, in the Latin, of which you are a master. You have added
to your natural endowments, which, without flattery, are eminent, the
superstructures of study, and the knowledge of good authors. Courage,
probity, and humanity, are inherent in you. These virtues have ever
been habitual to the ancient house of Cumberland, from whence you are
descended, and of which our chronicles make so honourable mention
in the long wars betwixt the rival families of York and Lancaster.
Your forefathers have asserted the party which they chose till death,
and died for its defence in the fields of battle. You have, besides,
the fresh remembrance of your noble father, from whom you never can
degenerate:

----_Nec imbellem feroces
Progenerant aquilæ columbam. _

It being almost morally impossible for you to be other than you
are by kind, I need neither praise nor incite your virtue. You are
acquainted with the Roman history, and know, without my information,
that patronage and clientship always descended from the fathers to
the sons, and that the same plebeian houses had recourse to the same
patrician line which had formerly protected them, and followed their
principles and fortunes to the last. So that I am your lordship's by
descent, and part of your inheritance. And the natural inclination
which I have to serve you, adds to your paternal right; for I was
wholly yours from the first moment when I had the happiness and honour
of being known to you. Be pleased therefore to accept the rudiments
of Virgil's poetry, coarsely translated, I confess, but which yet
retain some beauties of the author, which neither the barbarity of our
language, nor my unskilfulness, could so much sully, but that they
appear sometimes in the dim mirror which I hold before you. The subject
is not unsuitable to your youth, which allows you yet to love, and is
proper to your present scene of life. Rural recreations abroad, and
books at home, are the innocent pleasures of a man who is early wise,
and gives Fortune no more hold of him, than of necessity he must. It
is good, on some occasions, to think before-hand as little as we can;
to enjoy as much of the present as will not endanger our futurity; and
to provide ourselves of the virtuoso's saddle, which will be sure to
amble, when the world is upon the hardest trot. What I humbly offer to
your lordship, is of this nature. I wish it pleasant, and am sure it is
innocent. May you ever continue your esteem for Virgil, and not lessen
it for the faults of his translator; who is, with all manner of respect
and sense of gratitude,

My Lord,
Your Lordship's
Most humble and
Most obedient servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.

FOOTNOTES:

[282] This was the son of Lord Treasurer Clifford, a member of the
Cabal administration, to whom our author dedicated "Amboyna. " See Vol.
V. p. 5. Hugh, Lord Clifford, died in 1730.

[283] Dryden alludes to his religion and politics. I presume, Hugh,
Lord Clifford, was a Catholic, like his father, and entertained the
hereditary attachment to the line of Stuart; thus falling within the
narrow choice to which Dryden was limited.

[284] The well-known patrons of Virgil. It is disputed, which had the
honour to present him to the emperor.

[285] One of the _Juvenilia_, or early poems, ascribed to Virgil.

[286] Manlius, contrary to the general orders of his father, Manlius
Torquatus, engaged and slew the general of the Latins: his father
caused his head to be struck off for disobedience.

[287] The author alludes to the Piscatoria of Sannazarius. They were
published, with some other pieces of modern Latin poetry, by Atterbury,
Bishop of Rochester, in 1684. I do not pretend to judge of the purity
of the style of Sannazarius, but surely the poetry is often beautiful.
I doubt if Dryden was acquainted with the poems of Phineas Fletcher,
whom honest Isaac Walton calls, "an excellent divine, and an excellent
angler, and the author of excellent Piscatory Eclogues. " They contain
many passages fully equal to Spenser.




PREFACE

TO THE

PASTORALS,

WITH

A SHORT DEFENCE

OF

_VIRGIL_,

AGAINST SOME OF THE REFLECTIONS OF

MONSIEUR FONTENELLE.


BY WILLIAM WALSH, ESQ.

As the writings of greatest antiquity are in verse, so, of all sorts
of poetry, pastorals seem the most ancient; being formed upon the
model of the first innocence and simplicity, which the moderns, better
to dispense themselves from imitating, have wisely thought fit to
treat as fabulous, and impracticable. And yet they, by obeying the
unsophisticated dictates of nature, enjoyed the most valuable blessings
of life; a vigorous health of body, with a constant serenity and
freedom of mind; whilst we, with all our fanciful refinements, can
scarcely pass an autumn without some access of a fever, or a whole
day, not ruffled by some unquiet passion. He was not then looked upon
as a very old man, who reached to a greater number of years, than in
these times an ancient family can reasonably pretend to; and we know
the names of several, who saw and practised the world for a longer
space of time, than we can read the account of in any one entire body
of history. In short, they invented the most useful arts, pasturage,
tillage, geometry, writing, music, astronomy, &c. whilst the moderns,
like extravagant heirs made rich by their industry, ungratefully deride
the good old gentleman who left them the estate. It is not therefore to
be wondered at, that pastorals are fallen into disesteem, together with
that fashion of life, upon which they were grounded. And methinks I see
the reader already uneasy at this part of Virgil, counting the pages,
and posting to the "Æneïs:" so delightful an entertainment is the very
relation of public mischief and slaughter now become to mankind. And
yet Virgil passed a much different judgment on his own works: he valued
most this part, and his "Georgics," and depended upon them for his
reputation with posterity; but censures himself in one of his letters
to Augustus, for meddling with heroics, the invention of a degenerating
age. This is the reason that the rules of pastoral are so little known,
or studied. Aristotle, Horace, and the Essay of Poetry, take no notice
of it; and Monsieur Boileau, one of the most accurate of the moderns,
because he never loses the ancients out of his sight, bestows scarce
half a page on it.

It is the design therefore of the few following pages, to clear this
sort of writing from vulgar prejudices; to vindicate our author from
some unjust imputations; to look into some of the rules of this sort
of poetry, and enquire what sort of versification is most proper for
it; in which point we are so much inferior to the ancients, that this
consideration alone were enough to make some writers think as they
ought, that is meanly, of their own performances.

As all sorts of poetry consist in imitation, pastoral is the _imitation
of a Shepherd, considered under that character_. It is requisite
therefore to be a little informed of the condition and qualification of
these shepherds.

One of the ancients has observed truly, but satirically enough, that,
"Mankind is the measure of every thing. " And thus, by a gradual
improvement of this mistake, we come to make our own age and country
the rule and standard of others, and ourselves at last the measure
of them all. We figure the ancient countrymen like our own, leading
a painful life in poverty and contempt, without wit, or courage, or
education. But men had quite different notions of these things, for the
first four thousand years of the world. Health and strength were then
in more esteem than the refinements of pleasure; and it was accounted
a great deal more honourable to till the ground, or keep a flock of
sheep, than to dissolve in wantonness and effeminating sloth. [288]
Hunting has now an idea of quality joined to it, and is become the
most important business in the life of a gentleman; anciently it
was quite otherways. [289] Mr Fleury has severely remarked, that
this extravagant passion for hunting is a strong proof of our Gothic
extraction, and shews an affinity of humour with the savage Americans.
The barbarous Franks and other Germans, (having neither corn nor
wine of their own growth,) when they passed the Rhine, and possessed
themselves of countries better cultivated, left the tillage of the
land to the old proprietors; and afterwards continued to hazard their
lives as freely for their diversion, as they had done before for their
necessary subsistence. The English gave this usage the sacred stamp of
fashion; and from hence it is that most of our terms of hunting are
French. [290] The reader will, I hope, give me his pardon for my freedom
on this subject, since an ill accident, occasioned by hunting, has
kept England in pain, these several months together, for one of the
best and greatest peers[291] which she has bred for some ages; no less
illustrious for civil virtues and learning, than his ancestors were for
all their victories in France.

But there are some prints still left of the ancient esteem for
husbandry, and their plain fashion of life, in many of our surnames,
and in the escutcheons of the most ancient families, even those of the
greatest kings, the roses, the lilies, the thistle, &c. It is generally
known, that one of the principal causes of the deposing of Mahomet the
Fourth, was, that he would not allot part of the day to some manual
labour, according to the law of Mahomet, and ancient practice of his
predecessors. He that reflects on this, will be the less surprised to
find that Charlemagne, eight hundred years ago, ordered his children to
be instructed in some profession; and, eight hundred years yet higher,
that Augustus wore no clothes but such as were made by the hands of the
empress and her daughters; and Olympias did the same for Alexander the
Great. Nor will he wonder, that the Romans, in great exigency, sent
for their dictator from the plough, whose whole estate was but of four
acres; too little a spot now for the orchard, or kitchen-garden, of a
private gentleman. It is commonly known, that the founders of three the
most renowned monarchies in the world were shepherds; and the subject
of husbandry has been adorned by the writings and labour of more than
twenty kings. It ought not therefore to be matter of surprise to a
modern writer, that kings, the shepherds of the people in Homer, laid
down their first rudiments in tending their mute subjects; nor that
the wealth of Ulysses consisted in flocks and herds, the intendants
over which were then in equal esteem with officers of state in latter
times. And therefore Eumæus is called #dios hyphorbos# in Homer; not so
much because Homer was a lover of a country life, to which he rather
seems averse, but by reason of the dignity and greatness of his trust,
and because he was the son of a king, stolen away, and sold by the
Phoenician pirates; which the ingenious Mr Cowley seems not to have
taken notice of. Nor will it seem strange, that the master of the horse
to king Latinus, in the ninth Æneïd, was found in the homely employment
of cleaving blocks, when news of the first skirmish betwixt the
Trojans and Latins was brought to him.

Being therefore of such quality, they cannot be supposed so very
ignorant and unpolished: the learning and good-breeding of the world
was then in the hands of such people. He who was chosen by the consent
of all parties to arbitrate so delicate an affair as, which was the
fairest of the three celebrated beauties of heaven--he who had the
address to debauch away Helen from her husband, her native country,
and from a crown--understood what the French call by the too soft name
of _galanterie_; he had accomplishments enough, how ill use soever he
made of them. It seems, therefore, that M. Fontenelle had not duly
considered the matter, when he reflected so severely upon Virgil, as
if he had not observed the laws of decency in his Pastorals, in making
shepherds speak to things beside their character, and above their
capacity. He stands amazed, that shepherds should thunder out, as he
expresses himself, the formation of the world, and that too according
to the system of Epicurus. "In truth," says he, page 176, "I cannot
tell what to make of this whole piece, (the sixth Pastoral. ) I can
neither comprehend the design of the author, nor the connection of
the parts. First come the ideas of philosophy, and presently after
those incoherent fables, &c. " To expose him yet more, he subjoins,
"It is Silenus himself who makes all this absurd discourse. Virgil
says indeed, that he had drank too much the day before; perhaps the
debauch hung in his head when he composed this poem," &c. Thus far M.
Fontenelle, who, to the disgrace of reason, as himself ingenuously
owns, first built his house, and then studied architecture; I mean,
first composed his Eclogues, and then studied the rules. In answer to
this, we may observe, first, that this very pastoral which he singles
out to triumph over, was recited by a famous player on the Roman
theatre, with marvellous applause; insomuch that Cicero, who had heard
part of it only, ordered the whole to be rehearsed, and, struck with
admiration of it, conferred then upon Virgil the glorious title of

_Magnæ spes altera Romæ. _

Nor is it old Donatus only who relates this; we have the same
account from another very credible and ancient author; so that here
we have the judgment of Cicero, and the people of Rome, to confront
the single opinion of this adventurous critic. A man ought to be
well assured of his own abilities, before he attacks an author of
established reputation. If Mr Fontenelle had perused the fragments of
the Phoenician antiquity, traced the progress of learning through the
ancient Greek writers, or so much as consulted his learned countryman
Huetius, he would have found, (which falls out unluckily for him,)
that a Chaldæan shepherd discovered to the Egyptians and Greeks the
creation of the world. And what subject more fit for such a pastoral,
than that great affair which was first notified to the world by one
of that profession? Nor does it appear, (what he takes for granted,)
that Virgil describes the original of the world according to the
hypothesis of Epicurus. He was too well seen in antiquity to commit
such a gross mistake; there is not the least mention of _chance_ in
that whole passage, nor of the _clinamen principiorum_, so peculiar to
Epicurus's hypothesis. Virgil had not only more piety, but was of too
nice a judgment to introduce a god denying the power and providence of
the Deity, and singing a hymn to the atoms and blind chance. On the
contrary, his description agrees very well with that of Moses; and
the eloquent commentator Dacier, who is so confident that Horace had
perused the sacred history, might with greater reason have affirmed the
same thing of Virgil; for, besides that famous passage in the sixth
Æneïd, (by which this may be illustrated,) where the word _principio_
is used in the front of both by Moses and Virgil, and the seas are
first mentioned, and the _spiritus intus alit_, which might not
improbably, as M. Dacier would suggest, allude to the "_Spirit moving
upon the face of the waters_;" but, omitting this parallel place, the
successive formation of the world is evidently described in these words,

_Rerum paulatim sumere formas_:

And it is hardly possible to render more literally that verse of Moses,
"_Let the waters be gathered into one place, and let the dry land
appear_," than in this of Virgil,

_Jam durare solum, et discludere Nerea ponto. _

After this, the formation of the sun is described, (exactly in the
Mosaical order,) and, next, the production of the first living
creatures, and that too in a small number, (still in the same method,)

_Rara per ignotos errent animalia montes. _

And here the foresaid author would probably remark, that Virgil keeps
more exactly to the Mosaic system, than an ingenious writer, who will
by no means allow mountains to be coeval with the world. Thus much
will make it probable at least, that Virgil had Moses in his thoughts
rather than Epicurus, when he composed this poem. But it is further
remarkable, that this passage was taken from a song attributed to
Apollo, who himself, too, unluckily had been a shepherd; and he took
it from another yet more ancient, composed by the first inventor of
music, and at that time a shepherd too; and this is one of the noblest
fragments of Greek antiquity. And, because I cannot suppose the
ingenious M. Fontenelle one of their number, who pretend to censure
the Greeks, without being able to distinguish Greek from Ephesian
characters, I shall here set down the lines from which Virgil took this
passage, though none of the commentators have observed it:

#----eratê d' hoi hespeto phônê,
Krainôn athanatous te theous, kai gaian eremnên,
Hôs ta prôta genonto, kai hôs lache moiran hekastos#, &c.

Thus Linus too began his poem, as appears by a fragment of it preserved
by Diogenes Laertius; and the like may be instanced in Musæus himself;
so that our poet here, with great judgment, as always, follows the
ancient custom of beginning their more solemn songs with the creation,
and does it too most properly under the person of a shepherd. And thus
the first and best employment of poetry was, to compose hymns in honour
of the great Creator of the universe.

Few words will suffice to answer his other objections. He demands why
those several transformations are mentioned in that poem:--And is not
fable then the life and soul of poetry? Can himself assign a more
proper subject of pastoral than the _Saturnia regna_, the age and scene
of this kind of poetry? What theme more fit for the song of a god, or
to imprint religious awe, than the omnipotent power of transforming
the species of creatures at their pleasure? Their families lived in
groves, near the clear springs; and what better warning could be given
to the hopeful young shepherds, than that they should not gaze too much
into the liquid dangerous looking-glass, for fear of being stolen by
the water-nymphs, that is, falling and being drowned, as Hylas was?
Pasiphaë's monstrous passion for a bull is certainly a subject enough
fitted for bucolics. Can M. Fontenelle tax Silenus for fetching too far
the transformation of the sisters of Phaëton into trees, when perhaps
they sat at that very time under the hospitable shade of those alders
and poplars--or the metamorphosis of Philomela into that ravishing
bird, which makes the sweetest music of the groves? If he had looked
into the ancient Greek writers, or so much as consulted honest Servius,
he would have discovered, that, under the allegory of this drunkenness
of Silenus, the refinement and exaltation of men's minds by philosophy
was intended. But, if the author of these reflections can take such
flights in his wine, it is almost pity that drunkenness should be a
sin, or that he should ever want good store of burgundy and champaign.
But indeed he seems not to have ever drank out of Silenus's tankard,
when he composed either his Critique or Pastorals.

His censure on the fourth seems worse grounded than the other. It is
entitled, in some ancient manuscripts, the "History of the Renovation
of the World. " He complains, that he "cannot understand what is meant
by those many figurative expressions:" but, if he had consulted the
younger Vossius's dissertation on this Pastoral, or read the excellent
oration of the emperor Constantine, made French by a good pen of their
own, he would have found there the plain interpretation of all those
figurative expressions; and, withal, very strong proofs of the truth
of the Christian religion; such as converted heathens, as Valerianus,
and others. And, upon account of this piece, the most learned of all
the Latin fathers calls Virgil a Christian, even before Christianity.
Cicero takes notice of it in his books of Divination; and Virgil
probably had put it in verse a considerable time before the edition of
his Pastorals. Nor does he appropriate it to Pollio, or his son, but
complimentally dates it from his consulship; and therefore some one,
who had not so kind thoughts of M. Fontenelle as I, would be inclined
to think him as bad a Catholic as critic in this place.

But, in respect to some books he has wrote since, I pass by a great
part of this, and shall only touch briefly some of the rules of this
sort of poem.

The first is, that an air of piety, upon all occasions, should be
maintained in the whole poem. This appears in all the ancient Greek
writers, as Homer, Hesiod, Aratus, &c. And Virgil is so exact in the
observation of it, not only in this work, but in his "Æneïs" too, that
a celebrated French writer taxes him for permitting Æneas to do nothing
without the assistance of some god. But by this it appears, at least,
that M. St Evremont is no Jansenist.

M. Fontenelle seems a little defective in this point: he brings in
a pair of shepherdesses disputing very warmly, whether _Victoria_
be a goddess or a woman. Her great condescension and compassion,
her affability and goodness, (none of the meanest attributes of the
divinity,) pass for convincing arguments, that she could not possibly
be a goddess.

_Les Déesses, toûjours fières et méprisantes,
Ne rassureroient point les bergères tremblantes
Par d'obligeans discours, des souris gracieux.
Mais tu l'as vu: cette auguste personne,
Qui vient de paroître en ces lieux,
Prend soin de rassurer au moment qu'elle étonne;
Sa bonté descendant sans peine jusqu' à nous. _

In short, she has too many divine perfections to be a deity, and
therefore she is a mortal; which was the thing to be proved. It is
directly contrary to the practice of all ancient poets, as well as to
the rules of decency and religion, to make such odious preferences. I
am much surprised, therefore, that he should use such an argument as
this:

_Cloris, as-tu vu des déesses
Avoir un air si facile et si doux? _

Was not Aurora, and Venus, and Luna, and I know not how many more of
the heathen deities, too easy of access to Tithonus, to Anchises, and
to Endymion? Is there any thing more sparkish and better-humoured
than Venus's accosting her son in the deserts of Libya? or than the
behaviour of Pallas to Diomedes, one of the most perfect and admirable
pieces of all the Iliads; where she condescends to _raillé_ him so
agreeably; and, notwithstanding her severe virtue, and all the ensigns
of majesty with which she so terribly adorns herself, condescends to
ride with him in his chariot? But the Odysseys are full of greater
instances of condescension than this.

This brings to mind that famous passage of Lucan, in which he prefers
Cato to all the gods at once:

_Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni_--

which Breboeuf has rendered so flatly, and which may be thus
paraphrased:

Heaven meanly with the conqueror did comply;
But Cato, rather than submit, would die. [292]

It is an unpardonable presumption in any sort of religion, to
compliment their princes at the expence of their deities.

But, letting that pass, this whole Eclogue is but a long paraphrase of
a trite verse in Virgil, and Homer;

_Nec vox hominem sonat: O Dea certe! _

So true is that remark of the admirable Earl of Roscommon, if applied
to the Romans, rather, I fear, than to the English, since his own death:

----one sterling line,
Drawn to French wire, would through whole pages shine.

Another rule is, that the characters should represent that ancient
innocence, and unpractised plainness, which was then in the world.
P. Rapin has gathered many instances of this out of Theocritus and
Virgil; and the reader can do it as well as himself. But M. Fontenelle
transgressed this rule, when he hid himself in the thicket to listen
to the private discourse of the two shepherdesses. This is not only
ill breeding at Versailles; the Arcadian shepherdesses themselves would
have set their dogs upon one for such an unpardonable piece of rudeness.

A third rule is, that there should be some _ordonnance_, some design,
or little plot, which may deserve the title of a pastoral scene. This
is everywhere observed by Virgil, and particularly remarkable in the
first Eclogue, the standard of all pastorals. A beautiful landscape
presents itself to your view; a shepherd, with his flock around him,
resting securely under a spreading beech, which furnished the first
food to our ancestors; another in a quite different situation of
mind and circumstances; the sun setting; the hospitality of the more
fortunate shepherd, &c. And here M. Fontenelle seems not a little
wanting.