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.