that vote of the senate [which] 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 Adventum; so, in another place, Adventu propiore Dei.

At his foreseen approach, already quake 893 Assyrian kingdoms, and Mæotis' laket.

Nile hears him knocking at his sev'n-fold gates.

1

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

* Verse 798 of the Latin, 1088 of the English. Ever + Different from Dryden's own translation, viz. zlod {1 The Caspian kingdoms, and Mæotian lake. ED.

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 j abroad to palliate the matter. But certain it is, that Octavius dismissed him with great marks of esteem, and earnestly recommended the protec tion of Virgil's affairs to Pollio, then lieutenant of the Cis-Alpine 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, equalling the magnificence of the greatest kings; the neighbour hood of Baiæ, whither the sick, resorted for reco very, 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, 539 Accipiant; cælique vias et sidera monstrent, o Defectus Solis varios, Lunæque labores;

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

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 Muse. This gave him opportunity of refreshing that prince's memory of him; and, about that time, he wrote his Etna. 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 consult 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 learni ed 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 effec tual 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