THE POET VIRGIL.

IN a Broadway bookstore, this morning, 1 heard a school-boy ask for a Virgil. The clerk vanished into the distant recesses, and returned with seven editions of the poet, from which the young gentleman was requested to choose the one he desired. In the same store there were also two different translations of the works of Virgil into English. I suppose that here, on this continent of America, which was not discovered until Virgil had been dead fifteen hundred years, there could be found half a million copies of his poems. It is eighteen hundred and eighty-five years since he died; but no day passes during the travelling season that does not bring to his grave, near Naples, some pilgrim from a distant land. Such is the magic of genius, or, rather, such is the lasting charm of a piece of literary work that is thoroughly well done.

Virgil was born seventy years before the birth of Christ, at a village near Mantua, on the banks of the Mincio, in that Northern province of Italy, which the Italians wrested, not long ago, from the dominion of hated Austria. Who should possess the birthplace of Virgil was one of the questions which the late war in Europe happily and justly decided. His father was a man of very humble rank, as the fathers of great poets have usually been. The received tradition is that, early in life, his father entered the service of a peddler, who, to reward his fidelity, gave him his daughter in marriage, and settled him upon a small farm near Mantua. Of this union, and upon this farm, the poet was born. He was of a delicate constitution, and of a reflective, retiring cast of character, which induced his father to give him advantages of education not usually bestowed by Roman farmers upon their sons. It

is probable that his father had prospered in his vocation, and that he was a man such as we should expect the father of a great poet to be, a father who would live for his children, and find his happiness in theirs.

When the lad had learned all the schools of his own neighborhood could teach him, he set out, as the custom then was, to find better instructors in other cities. He made his way to Naples, two hundred and fifty miles from his home, where, at that time, many famous teachers practised their profession. The Romans were educated chiefly by means of the Greek language and Greek literature; for, indeed, there was no other literature known to them, and none in existence, except that of the Hebrews, until they themselves had produced some great authors. Virgil learned grammar by studying Greek; he learned mathematics from Greek treatises; he learned his philosophy from the Greek Plato and Epicurus, and he cultivated his poetical talent by a profound and loving study of the great poet of antiquity, the Greek Homer. It was as much a matter of course for a Roman youth of the higher classes to learn Greek, as it is among us for boys to learn French, and there were probably as many Greek tutors in Rome in Virgil's day, as there are French teachers now in London or New York. It was a Greek who assisted the youthful Virgil to acquire that intimate knowledge of this language and its master-pieces, which his poems prove that he possessed.

After some years spent in most assiduous and successful study at Naples, Virgil returned to his father's house near Mantua, visiting Rome on his way. At home he continued to study. It is extremely probable that he began early to try his hand at poetry, though none of his first essays have come down to us. It seems to me impossible that any man could have attained the purity and melody of Virgil's Eclogues, who had not written a multitude of verses before.

Inheriting, at length, his father's estate, which, though small, was sufficient for a student's modest wants, he was in a position to devote most of his time to literature. But soon his little property was snatched from him. Augustus, to stimulate the zeal of his soldiers in the civil war which made him Emperor

of Rome, promised to divide among them a large tract of land in the north of Italy. When this promise came to be fulfilled, Virgil's farm fell to the share of an officer of rank, who drove the young poet from his patrimony, just as a French colonel might drive the poet Tennyson from his cottage in the Isle of Wight, if ever Louis Napoleon should make a successful invasion of England.

It so happened, fortunately for mankind, that one of Virgil's fellow-students, with whom he had been particularly intimate at Naples, was then in the public service, and performing some duty in the neighborhood. Virgil fled to him for advice, and under his patronage went to Rome, and laid his case before Augustus. The emperor ordered the restoration of his farm, and the happy poet returned to take possession of it. He discovered, however, that an imperial order of that nature was not held in much respect by a victorious centurion at so great a distance from Rome. The officer in possession drove the poet away once more, and pursued him with such violence that he only saved his life by swimming a river. It cost him much pains, and required the interposition of powerful friends, before he could again enter into peaceful possession of his estate, without which, in all probability, he had never enjoyed that command of his time, and that tranquillity of mind which are necessary to the production of immortal works.

Restored to his home and to his leisure, he spent the next three years in the composition of his Eclogues, a series of poems in imitation of the Greek pastorals, but which were far from being a mere imitation. Virgil's real delight in the tranquil pleasures of the country, and his antipathy to the scenes of violence and carnage of which he had been the witness, gave to many passages an essential originality, while the harmony of the verse was something wholly his own. The many allusions to recent events-events as stirring to the Roman heart as those of our recent war are to us gave life and freshness to the poems. They had an immediate and most brilliant success; they were recited in the theatre at Rome, they were quoted in every intellectual society. I have ever thought that these and other poems of Virgil may have been

among the causes of the long peace which Rome enjoyed under Augustus.

In the thirty-third year of his age, crowned with the glory of this new fame, Virgil went to Rome, the capital of civilization. There the Emperor Augustus and his minister, Mecænas, gave him cordial welcome, and bestowed such liberal gifts upon him that he was able to live thenceforth much at his ease, and to spend all the residue of his days in literary employments. The public honored him not less. On one occasion, when he was present at the theatre, some of his verses chanced to be recited, and the whole audience rose and cheered him, just as they were accustomed to salute the emperor upon his entrance. He made one noble use of his credit with Mecænas, in recommending to him another poet, Horace. Horace says, in one of his satires, addressed to Mecænas: "It was not chance that brought us together. That best of men Virgil, long since, and, after him, Varius, told you who I was." Horace, therefore, in a certain sense, owed his fortune to Virgil; for Mecanas presented the satirist with a house, and induced Augustus to assign him a piece of land, upon the income of which he lived sufficiently well.

The contemplative Virgil, unlike his merry friend, Horace, did not enjoy the bustle and excitement of a great city. After a short residence at Rome he returned to Naples, which was then to Italy what Oxford now is to England, and there he composed his poems in praise of country employments and pleasures, which are entitled the Georgics. In one of these Georgics (the third) there is a long passage descriptive of a cattle plague which had raged in the northern part of Italy, and driven off almost all the farmers. The poet says:

"We see the naked Alps and thin remains

Of scattered cots and yet unpeopled plains,

Once filled with grazing flocks, the shepherd's happy reigns.
Here, from the vicious air and sickly skies,

A plague did on the dumb creation rise.
During the autumnal heats the infection grew,
Tame cattle and the beasts of nature slew-
Poisoning the standing lakes and pools impure;

Nor was the foodful grass in fle, is secure.

Strange death! for when the thisty fire had drunk
Their vital blood, and the dry neies were shrunk;
When the contracted limbs were camped, e'en then
A waterish humor swelled and oʊzeɩ again,
Converting into bane the kindly juice
Ordained by nature for a better use,

The victim ox, that was for altars prest,

Trimmed with white ribbons, and with garlands drest,
Sunk of himself without the god's command,
Preventing the slow sacrificer's hand."

This calls to mind the cattle plague which prevailed in England a year or two ago. Virgil, however, proceeds to say that the plague of which he speaks attacked dogs, horses, pigs, and even wild beasts. His description of a horse dying of this mysterious malady is exceedingly vigorous. I copy again from Dryden's translation:

"The victor horse, forgetful of his food,

The palm renounces and abhors the flood.
He paws the ground; and on his hanging ears
A doubtful sweat in clammy drops appears;
Parched is his hide, and rugged are his hairs.
Such are the symptoms of the young disease;
But, in time's process, when his pains increase,
He rolls his mournful eyes; he deeply groans,
With patient sobbing and with manly moans.
He heaves for breath, which, from his lungs supplied,
And fetched from far, distends his laboring side.
To his rough palate his dry tongue succeeds,
And very gore he from his nostrils bleeds.
A drench of wine has with success been used,
And through a horn the generous juice infused;
Which, timely taken, ope'd his closing jaws,
But if too late, the patient's death did cause;
For the too vigorous dose too fiercely wrought,
And added fury to the strength it brought.
Recruited into rage, he grinds his teeth

In his own flesh, and feels approaching death."

The poet proceeds to relate with equal power the dying agonies of an ox, seized with the same disease. He says, too, that the mighty fish of the sea drifted dead upon the shore, and that venomous snakes died in their holes.