the farm on which he lived formed part of the Mantuan land added to the confiscated territory of Cremona, the inference seems obvious that it was on the right bank of the Mincio, i. e. on the side nearest Cremona. The use of the word ' depellere' (Ecl. i. 21) might perhaps justify the inference that it was either on higher ground, or was situated higher up the river than Mantua, though the other interpretation of driving our weaned lambs' forbids our attaching much force to this problematical inference. But the lines which produce more than any other the impression of describing the actual features of some familiar place are those of the ninth Eclogue, 7-10:—

Certe equidem audieram qua se subducere colles
Incipiunt mollique iugum demittere clivo,

Usque ad aquam et veteres, iam fracta cacumina, fagos,
Omnia carininibus vestrum servasse Menalcan1.

There seems no motive, certainly none suggested by the Sicilian idyl, for introducing the hills gradually sinking into the plain, unless to mark the actual position of the place referred to. The only hills in the neighbourhood of the Mincio to which these lines can apply are those which for a time accompany the flow of the river from the foot of the Lago di Guarda, and gradually sink into the plain a little beyond the picturesque hill and castle of Vallegio,' about fifteen miles higher up the river than Mantua. Eustace, in his Classical Tour, finds many of the features introduced into the first and ninth Eclogues in this neighbourhood, though the wish to find them may have contributed to the success of his search. A walk of fifteen miles seems not too long for young and active shepherds, like Moeris and Lycidas, while such expressions as

Tamen veniemus in urbem;

Aut si nox pluviam ne colligat ante veremur 2,

1 'I had indeed heard that from the spot where the hills begin to draw themselves away from the plain, sinking down with a gentle slope, as far as the river and the old beeches, with their now withered tops, your Menalcas had saved all his land by his songs.'

2 Yet we shall reach the town or if we fear that night may first bring the rain-'

seem inapplicable to the shorter distance between Pietola and Mantua.

The sacri fontes' which are spoken of in Eclogue I., the existence of which is further confirmed by the

Non liquidi gregibus fontes, non gramina deerunt1

in the description from the Georgics (ii. 200), of the pastoral land which Mantua lost, are more naturally to be sought in the more picturesque environment of the upper reaches of the river than in the level plain in the midst of which Mantua stands2. The accurate description of the lake out of which the Mincio flows

Fluctibus et fremitu adsurgens Benace marino 3,

the truth of which is attested by many modern travellers, Goethe among others—may well be the reproduction of some actual impression made in some of Virgil's early wanderings not far distant from the home of his youth. The passage in the Georgics just referred to, in which, speaking of the land most suitable for rearing herds and flocks, he introduces the lines

Et qualem infelix amisit Mantua campum,
Pascentem niveos herboso flumine cycnos1,

proves the tender affection with which he recalled in later life the memory of his early home.

Some analogy has been suggested between the quiet beauty of the scenery which first sank into his soul, and the tranquil meditative cast of his genius. And though it is easy to push such considerations too far, and to expect a closer correspond

1 The herds will not lack their clear springs, nor their pasture.'

2 Cf. Eustace, vol. i. chap. v. Compare also the following characteristic passage quoted from Dickens by Mr. Hare in his Cities of Northern and Central Italy: Was the way to Mantua as beautiful when Romeo was banished thither, I wonder? Did it wind through pasture land as green, bright with the same glancing streams, and dotted with fresh clumps of graceful trees? Those purple mountains lay on the horizon, then, for certain.' Dickens certainly was not looking for Virgilian reminiscences in writing this description.

And thou, Benacus, uprising with waves and roar like that of the sea.' And such a plain as ill-fated Mantua lost, a plain which fed its snowwhite swans on its weedy river.'

ence than ever exists between the development of genius and the earliest impression of outward nature on.the soul, in a poet like Virgil, unusually receptive and retentive of such impressions, whose days from childhood to death were closely bound ' each to each by natural piety,' in whom all elements of feeling were finely and delicately blended with one another, such influences may have been more powerful than in the case of men of a less impressionable and more self-determining type.

The district north of the Po, of which Virgil was a native, had enjoyed the 'ius Latii' since the end of the Social War, but did not obtain the full rights of Roman citizenship till the year 49 B. C., when Virgil was in his twenty-first year. The national poet of the early Empire, like the national poet of the Republic, had thus in all probability no claim by birth to be a member of the State of whose character and destiny his voice has been the truest exponent. It may be doubted whether Virgil belonged by birth to the purely Italian stock. He claims for Mantua a Tuscan origin1; but the Etruscan race in the region north of the Po had for a long time previously given way before the settlements of the Gauls; and, although Roman conquest had established several important colonies north of the Po, the main stock between that river and the Alps must have been of Celtic blood, although assimilated in manner of life and culture to the purely Italian inhabitants of the Peninsula. Zeuss, in his Celtic Grammar, recognises the presence of a Celtic root, which appears in other Gallic names, and which he supposes to be the root also of virgo, and virga, and Vergiliae, in the name Vergilius 2. Some elements in Virgil's nature and genius which seem to anticipate the developments of modern feeling, as, for instance, his vague melancholy, his imaginative sense of the mystery of the unseen world, his sympathy with the sentiment, as distinct from the passion, of love,

1 Aeneid, x. 204.

2 Vergilius-nomen vix dubiae originis Gallicae. Cf. Vergiliae (stellae), Propert. i. 8. 10, Plin. fq. Ovepyıλía (Oppid. Hispan.), Ptol. 2. 5. Radix vetust. Camb. guerg. (efficax) gl. Ox, extat etiam in vetusto nomine apud Caes.' Zeuss, Grammatica Celtica, p. 11, edit. altera: Berol. 1871.

the modes in which his delight in nature manifests itself, the vein of romance which runs through his treatment of early times, may perhaps be explained by some subtle intermixture of Celtic blood with the firmer temperament of the old Italian race. Appreciated as his genius has been by all the cultivated nations of Europe, it is by the nation in whom the impressible Celtic nature has been refined and strengthened by the discipline of Latin studies that his pre-eminence has been most generally acknowledged.

It is to be noticed that, while in the Ciceronian Age the names of the men eminent in literature belong, with one or two exceptions, either to the pure Roman stock or to the races of central Italy which had been longest incorporated with Rome, in the last years of the Republic and in the Augustan Age Northern Italy contributed among other names those of Catullus, Cornelius Gallus, Quintilius Varus, Aemilius Macer, Virgil, and the historian Livy to the roll of Latin literature. Since the concessions which followed the Social War the whole people inhabiting the Peninsula had become thoroughly united in spirit with the Imperial city, and Latin literature as well as the service of the State thus received a great impulse from the liberality with which Rome, at different stages in her history, extended the privileges of her citizenship. The culture of which Rome had been for two generations the centre became now much more widely diffused; and as the privilege of citizenship, or of that modified citizenship conferred by the 'ius Latii,' was more prized from its novelty, so the attractions of literary studies and the impulses of literary ambition were felt more strongly from coming fresh and unhackneyed to a vigorous race. It was a happier position for Virgil and for Horace, it fitted them not only to be truer poets of the natural beauty of Italy, but also to feel in imagination all the wonder associated with the idea of the great city, to have spent their earliest and most impressible years among scenes of peace and beauty, remote from contact with the excitement, the vices, the routine of city life, than if, with the friend of Juvenal, they could have

applied to themselves the words 'our childhood drank in the air of the Aventine.'

There is still one point to be noticed in connexion with the district in which Virgil was born and passed his early youth. It was from Julius Caesar that Gallia Transpadana received the full Roman citizenship. But before he established this claim on their gratitude, the 'Transpadani,' as we learn from Cicero's letters, were thoroughly devoted to his cause 1, and it was among them that his legions were mainly recruited. One of the spiteful acts by which the aristocratic party showed its animosity to Caesar was the scourging of one of the inhabitants of the colony of Novum Comum (Como) by order of the Consul Marcellus, an act condemned by Cicero on the ground that the victim of this outrage was a 'Transpadanus 2. Caesar was in the habit of passing the winters of his proconsulate in this part of his province, especially at Verona, where he was the guest of the father of Catullus. The name of Caesar must thus have become a household word among this people. They must have soon recognised his greatness as a soldier, and felt the fascination of his gracious presence. They must have been grateful for his championship of the provinces against the oppressive rule of the Senate, and for the protection afforded by his army from dangers similar to those from which their fathers had been saved, after many disasters, by his great kinsman, Marius. They did not share the sentiments of distrust excited among the aristocracy at Rome by Caesar's early career, and had no reason to regard the permanent ascendency of one man as a heavier burden than the caprices of their temporary governors. From the favour which Virgil received from leaders of the Caesarean cause before his fame was established, and from his intimacy with Varius the panegyrist of Julius Caesar, it may be inferred that in adhering to the cause of the Empire he was true to the early impressions of his boyhood. He was one of the first to feel and make others feel the spell which the

1 Cic. Epp. ad Att. vii. 7; ad Fam. xvi. 12.

2 Cic. Epp. ad Att. v. 2.