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._