him the stones of cold Lycæus' wept. His sheep too stand around him, nor are they ashamed of us; nor, divine poet, be thou ashamed of thy flock; even fair Adonis tended sheep by the streams. The shepherd too came up; the slow-paced herdsmen came; Menalcas came wet from winter-mast. All question whence this thy love? Apollo came: Gallus, he says, why ravest thou thy care? Lycoris is following another through snows and horrid camps. Silvanus too came up with rural honours on his head, waving the flowering fennels and big lilies. Pan, the god of Arcadia, came; whom we ourselves beheld stained with the elder's purple berries and vermilion. What bounds, he says, will you set [to mourning]? Love regards not such matters. Nor cruel love with tears, nor grassy meads with streams, nor bees with cytisus, nor goats with leaves, are satisfied. But he, overwhelmed witl grief, said, Yet9 you, Arcadians, shall sing these my woes on your mountains; ye Arcadians, alone skilled in song. Oh how softly then may my bones rest, if your pipe in future times shall sing my loves! And would to heaven I had been one of you, and either keeper of your flock, or vintager of the ripe grape! Sure whether Phyllis or Amyntas, or whoever else, had been my love, (what though Amyntas be swarthy? the violet is black, and hyacinths are black,) they would have reposed with me among the willows under the limber vine; Phyllis had gathered garlands for me, Amyntas would have sung. Here are cool fountains; here, Lycoris, soft meads, here a grove: here with thee I could consume my whole life away. Now frantic love detains me in the service of rigid Mars, in the midst of darts, and adverse foes. Thou, far from thy native land, (let me not believe it,) beholdest nothing but Alpine snows,10 and the colds of the Rhine, ah, hard

Lycæus, a mountain of Arcadia, sacred to Jupiter, and also to Pan. Adonis, a youth, the favourite of Venus: having lost his life by the bite of a wild boar, he was changed into the flower Anemone.

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7 Esch. Choeph. 233, & píλarov μέλnμa (i. e. cura”) δώμασιν πατρός. Β.

• Silvanus, a rural deity among the Romans, who presided over woods. But Nonius Marcell. i. s. v. triste est mæstum, connects 66 tamen with "ille," which I should almost prefer, the sense being, "But he (despite all that even Pan could say) yet replied," &c. B.

10 Alpine snows. The Alps are a chain of mountains, the highest in Europe, separating Italy from France, Switzerland, and Austria. The

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hearted one! alone, without me. Ah, may neither these colds hurt thee! ah, may not the sharp ice wound thy tender feet! I will go, and warble on the Sicilian shepherd's reed those songs which are by me composed in Chalcidian strain." I am resolved, rather to endure [my passion] in the woods, among the dens of wild beasts, and to inscribe my loves upon the tender trees: as they grow up, so you, my loves, will grow. Meanwhile. in company with the nymphs, over Mænalus will I range, or hunt the fierce boars. No colds shall hinder me from traversing with my hounds the Parthenian lawns 12 around. Now over rocks and resounding groves methinks I roam: pleased I am to shoot Cydonian shafts from the Parthian bow : [Fool that I am!] as if these were a cure for the rage of love; or as if that god could learn to be softened by human woes. Now, neither the nymphs of the groves, nor songs themselves, charm me any more: even ye woods, once more farewell. No suffering can change him, though amidst frosts we drink of Hebrus, 13 and undergo the Sithonian snows 41 of rainy winter; or even if we should tend our flocks in Ethiopia,15 beneath the sign of Cancer, when the dying rind withers on the stately elm. Love conquers all; 16 and let us yield to love. These strains, ye divine Muses, it shall suffice your poet to have sung, while he sat and wove his little basket of slender osiers: these you will make acceptable to Gallus; to Gallus, for whom my love grows as much every hour, as the green alder shoots up in the infancy of spring. Let us arise: the shade is wont to prove noxious to singers; the juniper's shade now grows noxious; the shades are hurtful even to the corn. Go home, the even

ing star arises, my full-fed goats, go home.

Rhine, a celebrated river which rises in the Alps, and, after a course of 600 miles, discharges itself into the German Ocean.

11 Chalcidian strain, that is, in the elegiac strain of Euphorion, a Greek poet of Chalcis in Euboea.

12 Parthenian lawns. Parthenius was a mountain of Arcadia, for which it is here used; as Cydonian shafts is used for Cretan darts,-Cy. don being a city of Crete.

13 The cold of the Hebrus in Thrace was celebrated, as we find from Philippus in Anthol. p. 47, "Εβρου θρηϊκίου κρυμῷ πεπεδημένον ὕδωρ. Β. 14 Sithonian snows, from Sithonia, a part of Thrace.

15 Ethiopia, an extensive country of Africa: by the ancients, this name was applied to modern Abyssinia, and the southern regions of Africa.

16 Heyne finds fault with the abruptness of this passage, but Anthon well remarks, that "this line is meant to express a return to a sounder mind." B.

VIRGIL'S GEORGICS.

BOOK I.

This admirable Poem was undertaken at the particular request of that great patron of poetry, Mæcenas, to whom it is dedicated, and has justly been esteemed the most perfect and finished of Virgil's works. Of the Four Books of which it consists, the First treats of ploughing and preparing the ground; the Second, of sowing and planting; the Third, of the manage. ment of cattle, &c.; and the Fourth gives an account of bees, and of the manner of keeping them among the Romans.

WHAT make ́he harvests joyous; under what sign, Mæcenas, it is proper to turn the earth and join the vines to elms; what is the care for kine, the nurture for breeding sheep;1 and how much experience for managing the frugal bees; hence will I begin to sing. Ye brightest lights 2 of the world, that lead the year gliding along the sky; Bacchus and fostering Ceres, if by your gift mortals exchanged the Chaonian acorn for fattening ears of corn, and mingled draughts of Achelous 3 with the invented juice of the grape; and ye Fauns propitious to swains, ye Fauns and Virgin Dryads, advance your foot in tune: your bounteous gifts I sing. And thou, O Neptune, to whom the earth, struck with thy mighty trident, first poured forth the neighing steed; and thou, tenant of the groves, for whom three hundred snow-white bullocks crop Cæa's' fertile

1 Pecori. Pecus here, as opposed to boves, signifies the lesser cattle, as sheep and goats, but especially sheep; as he word, I think, always signifies in Virgil when it stands by itself. See Ecl. i. 75; iii. 1, 20, 34; Y. 87. Georg. ii. 371.

2 Vos, ô clarissima mundi, &c. Varro, in his seventh book of Agriculture, invocates the sun and moon, then Bacchus and Ceres, as Virgil does here: which sufficiently confutes those who take the words, vos, clarissima lumina, to be meant of Bacchus and Ceres.

3 Achelous, (Aspro Potamo,) a river of Epirus in Greece,' said by some to have been the first river that sprung from the earth after the deluge; dence it was frequently put by the ancients, as it is here, for water. DAVIDSON. Servius observes, "Acheloum generaliter, propter antiquitatem fluminis, omnem aquam veteres vocabant." B.

♦ Cæa, (Zea,) an island in the Archipelago, one of the Cyclades.

thickets: thou too, O Pan, guardian of the sheep, O Tegeæan' god, if thy own Mænalus be thy care, draw nigh propitious, leaving thy native grove, and the dells of Lycæus and thou Minerva, inventress of the olive; and thou, O boy, teacher of the crooked plough; and thou, Sylvanus, bearing a tender cypress plucked up by the root: both gods and goddesses all, whose province it is to guard the fields; both ye who nourish the infant fruits from no seed, and ye who on the sown fruits send down the abundant shower from heaven.

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And thou too, Cæsar, whom it is yet uncertain what councils of the gods are soon to have; whether thou wilt vouchsafe to visit cities, and [undertake] the care of countries, and the widely extended globe receive thee, giver of the fruits, and ruler of the seasons, binding thy temples with thy mother's myrtle: or whether thou comest, god of the unmeasured ocean, and mariners worship thy divinity alone; whether remotest Thule is to be subject to thee, and Tethys to purchase thee for her son-in-law with all her waves; whether thou wilt join thyself to the slow months, a new constellation, where space lies open between Erigone and the [Scorpion's] pursuing claws: the fiery Scorpion himself already contracts his arms and leaves for thee more than an equal proportion of the sky. Whatever thou wilt be, (for let not Tartarus expect thee for its king, nor let such dire lust of sway once be thine; though Greece admires her Elysian fields, and Proserpine, redemanded, is not inclined to follow her mother,) grant me an easy course, and favour my adventurous enterprise; and pitying with me the swains who are strangers to their way, commence [the god], and accustom thyself even now to be invoked by prayers.

In early spring, when melted snows glide down from the Tegeæan god. Pan is so called, from Tegea, a town of Arcadia, in Greece, which was sacred to him.

Thule, an island in the most northern parts of the German Ocean, to which the ancients gave the epithet of Ultima. Some suppose that it is the island of Iceland, or part of Greenland, while others imagine it to be the Shetland Isles.

7 Tethys, the chief of the sea-deities, was the wife of Oceanus. The word is often used by the poets to express the sea.

Tartarus, the infernal regions, where, according to the ancients, the

most impious and guilty among mankind were punished.

Proserpine, the daughter of Ceres, and wife of Pluto, who stole her away as she was gathering flowers in the plains of Enna in Sicily.

hoary hills, and the crumbling glebe unbinds itself by the zephyr; then let my steer begin to groan under the deeppressed plough, and the share worn by the furrow [begin] to glitter. That field at last answers the wishes of the covetous farmer, which twice hath felt the sun, twice the cold,1o harvests immense are wont to burst his barns.

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But, before we cleave an unknown plain with the ploughshare, let it be our care previously to learn the winds, and various character of the climate, the ways of culture practised by our forefathers, and the tillage and habits of the soil; what each country is apt to produce, and what to refuse. Here grain, there grapes, more happily grow; nurseries of trees elsewhere, and herbs spontaneous bloom. Do not you see, how Tmolus " sends saffron odours, India ivory, the soft Sabæans their frankincense? But the naked 12 Chalybes [send] steel, Pontus strong-scented castor, Epirus 13 the prime of the Olympic mares. These laws and eternal conditions nature from the beginning imposed on certain places: what time Deucalion first cast stones into the unpeopled world, whence men, a hardy race, sprang up. Come then, let your sturdy steers forthwith turn up a soil that is rich for the first month of the year; and let the dusty summer bake the scattered clods with mature suns. But, if the land be not fertile, it will be

10 Anthon observes, "The usual custom of the Roman farmers was to plough the land three times, when it fell under the denomination of hard land. The first ploughing was in the spring, the second in the summer, the third in autumn (tertiabatur, COLUM. ii. 4). In this way the ground was exposed twice to the heat of the sun, and once to the frost. If, however, the soil was unusually hard and stubborn, a fourth ploughing took place at the end of autumn or beginning of winter; and it is to such a process that the poet here alludes, the land having thus, in the course of its four upturnings with the plough, twice felt the sun and twice the cold." 11 Tmolus, a mountain of Lydia, in Asia Minor, abounding in vines, saffron, &c. Sabæans, the inhabitants of Saba, a town of Arabia, famous for frankincense, myrrh, and aromatic plants. Chalybes, a people of Pontus, in Asia Minor; their country abounded in iron mines.

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12 If "nudi be correct, Virgil must speak of the Chalys only as lightly clad, (leviter vestiti,) as in his direction to husbandmen plough and sow naked." But although this would be a very proper way of speaking among people acquainted with this limitation of meaning, yet it seems scarcely an apt epithet for a barbarian tribe, dwelling in a cold region. Some years since, I proposed to read "duri." See the supplement to my notes on Apul. de Deo Socr. B.

19 Epirus, (Albania,) a country of Greece, famous for its fine breed of horses.