Under the original distich he wrote an of a man of sense. additional verse, running I made these lines, another took the praise, together with the first words of a verse to follow-which same first words were written four times, in form and order as if beginning four successive verses purposely left unfinished. Here was a puzzle and a mystery. Augustus condescended to require that the lines should be completed. Several attempts to complete them ignominiously failed. Virgil at last revealed himself as the author, and finished the lines. They read as follows: Thus you not for yourselves build nests, O birds; The neat symmetrical look of the verses is necessarily lost in an English rendering. It is needless to say that the fortune of the poet was made. Virgil is said to have been shy, awkward, retiring in society. He and the poet Horace were excellent friends, but that did not prevent so accomplished a man of the world as Horace from appreciating the country effect of Virgil in a drawing-room. It is guessed that Horace alludes loyally to this in one of his satires, where, without naming any one, he praises a friend of his for the worth disguised by him under an uncouth exterior. Virgil was, it is believed, a man of exceptionally pure life, for a Roman of his time. His poetry agrees with this estimate of his morals. Toward the close of his life, he lived chiefly at Naples, Par-then'-o-pe, as it used to be called. (Wordsworth, in his magnificent sonnet of farewell and godspeed to Sir Walter Scott starting on his last melancholy voyage to Italy for his health, finely used the name Parthenope to close the closing line of the poem.) He ended his The or peaceful and prosperous life in his fifty-first year, a very wellto-do man. He was buried, according to Roman custom, by the wayside. They still point out the spot to the tourist. It lies on the road leading to Pu-te'o-li, out from Naples. Virgil's works consist of three classes of poems. der of production must be exactly inverted to give the order of comparative importance. That is, Virgil's poetic achieve< ment formed a regular climax to its close. He was still, after finishing the Æneid, younger than Milton was when he began his Paradise Lost. Finishing, we say; but, according to the poet's own standard, the Æneid never was finished. It is even reported that one of his parting directions was to have his manuscript of the poem burned. Augustus intervened to prevent the act of destruction. The text exhibits here and there an unfinished line. In short, the artist's last touches the poem never received; but the most of the poem is in a state requring from the artist no last touches to improve it. We had better let our own order of treatment follow Virgil's order of production. It may properly be stated in passing that the average course of preparation for college includes from Virgil only about six books of the Æneid. What, therefore, we give of the other poetry of Virgil may consistently be limited in amount. First, then, of Virgil's pastoral poems. These are called sometimes bucolics, (Greek for "pastorals," which latter term is Latin,) and sometimes eclogues, (Greek for "select pieces.") There are in all ten eclogues of Virgil now extant. They vary somewhat in length, averaging about eighty lines each. They are written in the same meter as that of the Æneid, dactylic hexameter. The idea of such poems is derived from a Greek original. Theocritus in particular was Virgil's master in this species of composition. The pupil, however, puts into some of his eclogues what he found no hint of anywhere in his master. This is pre-eminently the case with the "Pollio,” so called, which is short enough to be presented in full. In general, the eclogues presuppose a Utopian pastoral life; that is, a life such as never really existed anywhere, certainly not in Italy. The scenery and the circumstance are made up partly from the Greek Arcadia, partly from rural Italy, but chiefly from the poet's imagination. Shepherds, cultivated in music and poetry, tend their flocks and spend their time alternately in love-making and in matches of verse or of song. Grant the poet his world, which never was, which, indeed, never could be, and his poetry is fine. Virgil contrives to weave into his verse some compliments, sincere, no doubt, but thrifty all the same, to his friends, especially to his imperial friend, Augustus. We will be frank with our readers, and fairly tell them that they would not be greatly interested in Virgil's eclogues spread out before them at any considerable length. They are highly artificial literary forms, dependent for currency upon temporary and local vogue. And the vogue, at least among us, has passed, for such poems as these. Tennyson's pastorals, the "Gardener's Daughter," for instance, are intrinsically far more interesting, and far more valuable, as far more genuine, than Virgil's eclogues. Still, interested or not in these productions for their own sake, every enlightened reader will certainly be interested in them as celebrated pieces of literature. The most celebrated among them all is, as we have said, the "Pollio," but that happens to be also the piece least truly pastoral in its quality. However-nay, for that very reason—it is at the same time the most highly characteristic, not, to be sure, of the eclogues as bucolics, but of the eclogues as purely conventional productions of an artificial age, and of a true poet rendered artificial by the influences surrounding him. Our readers would find pleasure in comparing with Virgil's eclogues some imitative pastorals written by Pope at sixteen years of age. These are marvels of precocious facility in verse. The fourth pastoral, or the "Pollio," has for ostensible subject the birth of a marvelous boy, variously supposed to be son of Antony, son of Pollio, son of Augustus—even, by retrospective license on the poet's part, to be Augustus himself. The terms of allusion to this offspring, and of description of a blessed state of things to accompany and follow his birth, are, at points, singularly coincident with prophecies of Holy Writ concerning Jesus. The date of the poem is startlingly near that of the nativity of our Saviour. One can easily conceive in reading it that we have here an articulate utterance of the unconscious desire of all nations for a Redeemer. In it, the Sibyl is spoken of by Virgil as having foretold this happy age. Fragments still exist alleged to be authentic parts of the Sibylline oracles. But we cannot be sure. Those oracles, whatever they originally were, have been tampered with, for reasons of state and of church, until nothing of them remains that is unquestionably genuine. That old Latin hymn, so familiar to us all, the Dies Iræ, has a line, Teste David cum Sibylla, -"David, along with the Sibyl, bearing witness "-which keeps the idea of a Sibylline prophecy concerning Jesus fresh in modern recollection. Cuma was the Sibyl's dwelling-place. Here, then, is Virgil's "Pollio." We use the prose translation of Professor Conington, of whose fruitful labors on Virgil we shall hereafter speak. The Muses of Sicily, you will observe, are invoked. Virgil thus acknowledges, or rather proclaims, that he derives his pastoral verse from Theocritus, a Sicilian Greek, of Syracuse: POLLIO. Muses of Sicily, let us strike a somewhat louder chord. It is not for all that plantations have charms, or groundling tamarisks. If we are to sing of the woodland, let the woodland rise to a consul's dignity. The last era of the song of Cuma has come at length: the grand file of the ages is being born anew; at length the virgin is returning to the reign of Saturn; at length a new generation is descending from heaven on high. Do but thou smile thy pure smile on the birth of the boy who shall at last bring the race of iron to an end, and bid the golden race spring up all the world over-thou Lucina-thine own Apollo is at length on his throne. In thy consulship it is—in thine, Pollio—that this glorious time shall come on, and the mighty months begin their march. Under thy conduct, any remaining trace of our national guilt shall become void, and release the world from the thraldom of perpetual fear. He shall have the life of the gods conferred on him, and shall see gods and heroes mixing together, and shall himself be seen of them, and with his father's virtues shall govern a world at peace. For thee, sweet boy, the earth, of her own unforced will, shall pour forth a child's first presents-gadding ivy and foxglove everywhere, and Egyptian bean blending with the bright smiling acanthus. Of themselves, the goats shall carry home udders distended with milk; nor shall the herds fear huge lions in the way. Of itself, thy grassy cradle shall pour out flowers to caress thee. Death to the serpent, and to the treacherous plant of poisoned juice. spring up by the wayside. Assyrian spices shall But soon as thou shalt be of an age to read at length of the glories of heroes and thy father's deeds, and to acquaint thyself with the nature of manly work, the yellow of the waving corn shall steal gradually over the plain, and from briers, that know naught of culture, grapes shall hang in purple clusters, and the stubborn heart of oak shall exude dews of honey. Still, under all this show, some few traces shall remain of the sin and guile of old-such as may prompt men to defy the ocean goddess with their ships, to build towns with walls around them, to cleave furrows in the soil of earth. A second Tiphys shall there be in those days—a second Argo to convey the flower of chivalry; second war of heroes, too, shall there be, and a second time shall Achilles be sent in his greatness to Troy." Afterward, when ripe years have at length made thee man, even the peaceful sailor shall leave the sea, nor shall the good ship of pine exchange merchandise—all lands shall produce all things, the ground shall not feel the harrow, nor the vineyard the pruning-hook; the sturdy plowman, too, shall at length set his bullocks free from the yoke; nor shall wool be taught to counterfeit varied hues, but of himself, as he feeds in the meadows, the ram shall transform his fleece, now into a lovely purple dye, now into saffron-yellow-of its own will, scarlet shall |