The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 39

216 'Now in defeat and sadness, since all things are the sport of chance.'

217 'Me too the shepherds call a bard, but I give no ear to them; for as yet my strain seems far inferior to that of Varius and of Cinna, and to be as the cackling of a goose among tuneful swans.' Compare the lines which Theocritus applies to Lycidas:-

?a? ??? ???? ???s?? ?ap???? st?a, ??? ?????t?

p??te? ???d?? ???st??? ??? d? t?? ?? ta??pe????, ?? ??? ?? ??? p? ?at' ??? ???? ??te t?? ?s????

S??e??da? ????? t?? ?? S??, ??d? F???t??

?e?d??, ?t?a??? d? p?t' ????da? ?? t?? ???sd?.

Theoc. vii. 3741.

218 'Varus, thy name provided only Mantua be spared to us.' 'Daphnis, why gazest thou on the old familiar risings of the constellations?'

219 'And now you see the whole level plain [sea?] is calm and still.'

220 i. 496.

221 Compare Gaston Boissier, La Religion Romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins: 'Il y a pourtant un cote par lequel la quatrieme eglogue peut etre rattachee a l'histoire du Christianisme; elle nous revele un certain etat des ames qui n'a pas ete inutile a ses rapides progres. C'etait une opinion accreditee alors que le monde epuise touchait a une grande crise et qu'une revolution se preparait qui lui rendrait la jeunesse.... Il regnait alors partout une sorte de fermentation, d'attente inquiete et d'esperance sans limite. "Toutes les creatures sonpirent," dit Saint Paul, "et sont dans le travail de l'enfantement." Le princ.i.p.al interet des vers de Virgile est de nous garder quelque souvenir de cette disposition des ames.'

222 Any child born of this marriage in the year 40 B.C. must have owed its birth, not to Antony, but to Marcellus, the former husband of Octavia.

223 The application of the words 'magnum Iovis incrementum' by the author of the Ciris (398) to Castor and Pollux suggests a doubt as to Mr. Munro's interpretation of the words, accepted by Dr. Kennedy; though at the same time there is nothing improbable in the supposition that Virgil gave a meaning to the words which was misunderstood by his imitator.

224 'And will rule the world in peace with his father's virtues.'

225 Fuit enim hic poeta, ut scrupulose et anxie, ita dissimulanter et clanculo doctus, ut multa transtulerit quae, unde translata sint, difficile sit cognitu. Sat. v. 18.

226 Quae a penitissima Graecorum doctrina transtulisset. Ib. 22.

227 De Graecorum penitissimis literis hanc historiam eruit Maro. Ib. 19.

228 'Receive a song undertaken at your command.'

229 'When the dew on the tender blade is most grateful to the flock.'

230 'I shall hurl myself headlong into the waves from the high mountain's crag.'

231 'But I think that the finest lines in the Latin language are those five which begin-

Saepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala.

I cannot tell you how they struck me. I was amused to find that Voltaire p.r.o.nounces that pa.s.sage to be the finest in Virgil.' Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, vol. i. pp. 371, 372.

232 'It was within our orchard I saw you, a child, with my mother gathering apples, and I was your guide: I had but then entered on my twelfth year. I could just reach from the ground the fragile branches: the moment I saw you how utterly lost I was, how borne astray by fatal pa.s.sion.'

233 'I loved you, maiden, when first you came with my mother wishing to gather hyacinths from the mountain, and I guided you on the way: and since I saw you, from that time, never after, not even yet, can I cease loving you; but you care not, no, by Zeus, not a whit.'

234 Compare 8586 with Lucret. ii. 355, etc.:-

At mater viridis saltus...o...b..ta peragrans.

235 'And would that I had been one of you, and had been either shepherd of your flock or the gatherer of the ripe grape.'

236 'I am resolved rather to suffer among the woods, among the wild beasts' dens, and to carve my loves on the tender bark of the trees.'

237 'First my Muse deigned lightly to sing in the Sicilian strain, and blushed not to dwell among the woods.'

238 'Nor need you be ashamed of your flock, O G.o.dlike poet; even fair Adonis once fed his sheep by the river-banks.'

239 Compare the following pa.s.sage from one of the prose idyls of G.

Sand: 'Depuis les bergers de Longus jusqu'a ceux de Trianon, la vie pastorale est un eden parfume ou les ames tourmentees et la.s.sees du tumulte du monde ont essaye de se refugier. L'art, ce grand flatteur, ce chercheur complaisant de consolations pour les gens trop heureux, a traverse une suite ininterrompue de _bergeries_. Et sous ce t.i.tre, _Histoire des bergeries_, j'ai souvent desire de faire un livre d'erudition et de critique ou j'aurais pa.s.se en revue tous ces differents reves champetres dont les hautes cla.s.ses se sont nourries avec pa.s.sion.' Francois le Champi.

240 'Among the lonely haunts of the shepherds and the deep peace of Nature.'

241 'One may not now hold converse with him from a tree or from a rock, like a maid and youth, as a maid and youth hold converse with one another.'

242 Compare the account of the origin of pastoral poetry in Muller's Literature of the Greeks.

243 'But I attune the plaintive Ausonian melody.' Incertorum Idyll. 1.

100101. (Ed. Ahrens.)

244 Compare Symonds' Studies of Greek Poets, First Series, The Idyllists.

245 Wordsworth's great pastoral 'Michael' is a marked exception to this general statement. So, too, love can hardly be called the most prominent motive in Tennyson's 'Dora.'

246 'Poured forth its rustic banter in responsive strains.'

247 Idyl vii. 97, vi. 2.

248 Idyl xi. 26, xiii. 2.

249 Preface to Poems by M. Arnold, First Series.

250 vii. 19, 20:-

?a? ' ?t??a? e?pe sesa???

?at? e?d????t?, ????? d? ?? e??et? ?e??e??.

251 x. 41:-

??sa? d? ?a? ta?ta t? t? ?e?? ??????sa.

252 'Next well-trimm'd A crowd of shepherds, with as sunburnt looks As may be read of in Arcadian books; Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe, When the great deity, for earth too ripe, Let his divinity o'erflowing die, In music, through the vales of Thessaly.'

And again:-

'He seem'd, To common lookers on, like one who dream'd Of idleness in groves Elysian.'

Keats, Endymion.

253 'Often, I remember, when a boy I used to pa.s.s in song the long summer days till sunset.'