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 increrit 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 Tiber, 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obscurus in ulvâ Those verses in the second book concerning Priam, - jacet ingens littore truncus, etc., He seems seem originally made upon Pompey the Great. 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: Achate kills but one man, and himself receives one slight wound, but neither says nor does anything very considerable in the whole poem. 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. Curio, who sold his country for about two hundred thousand pound, is stigmatised in that verse,— Vendidit hic auro patriam, dominumque potentem 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 befell 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 Eneis 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, etc. 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 Eneïs: 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 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 wideshouldered, 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 made his hair grey 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 headache 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 Eneis, then too by way |