as Varius was accepted as the poet of epic, Pollio of tragic poetry : Molle atque facetum Vergilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Camenae1. For a short time afterwards Virgil lived chiefly at Rome, as one of the circle of which Maecenas was the centre, consisting of those poets and men eminent in the State whom Horace (Sat. i. 10) mentions as the critics and friends whose approval he valued. Our knowledge of Virgil at this time is derived from the first Book of the Satires of Horace. It was by Virgil and Varius that Horace himself was introduced to Maecenas. They were all three of the party who made the famous journey to Brundisium in 37 B.C. While Horace starts alone from Rome, Virgil and Varius join him at Sinuessa. Virgil may already have begun to withdraw from habitual residence in Rome to his retirement in Campania, where he principally lived from this time till his death. One line in this Satire confirms the account of the weakness of his health which is given by his biographer, the line, namely, in which Horace describes himself and Virgil as going to sleep, while Maecenas went to enjoy the exercise of the 'pila' : Lusum it Maecenas, dormitum ego Vergiliusque, There is no notice of Virgil in the second Book of the Satires, written between the years 35 and 30 B.C., at which time he had withdrawn altogether from Rome, and was living at Naples, engaged in the composition of the Georgics. Two of the Odes of Book I., however, the third and the twenty-fourth, throw some light on his circumstances and character, and on the relations of friendship subsisting between him and Horace. There is some difficulty in determining the occasion that gave 1 Tenderness and grace have been granted to Virgil by the Muscs who delight in the country.' 2 Maecenas goes to play at fives, Virgil and I to sleep, for that game does not agree with those suffering from dyspepsia and weak eyes.' rise to the first of these Odes. It is addressed to the ship which was to bear Virgil to Attica. As we only know of one voyage of Virgil to Attica, that immediately preceding his death, and as the first three Books of the Odes were originally published some years before that date, we must suppose either that this Ode refers to an earlier voyage contemplated or actually accomplished by Virgil; or that the Virgil here spoken of is a different person; or that the publication of the edition of the Odes which we possess was of a later date than that generally accepted. The reason for rejecting the second of these alternatives has been already given. Two reasons may be given for rejecting the third,-first, the improbability that one of the latest, if not the latest, in point of time among all the Odes in the three Books should be placed third in order in the first Book, among Odes that all refer to a much earlier period; and secondly, that this Ode, in respect of the somewhat conventional nature of the thought and the character of the mythological allusions, is clearly written in Horace's earlier manner. There is no improbability in accepting the first alternative, that as Virgil travelled to and resided in Sicily, so he may have made, or at least contemplated, an earlier voyage to Greece. One object for such a voyage may have been the desire of seeing the localities which he represents Aeneas as passing or visiting in the course of his adventures between the time of leaving Troy and settling in Latium. The Aeneid indicates in many places the tastes of a cultivated traveller; and parts of the sea-voyage of Aeneas look as if they were founded on personal reminiscences. It may be noticed in several of the Odes of Horace how he adapts the vein of thought running through them to the character or position of the person to whom they refer. The revival of the old Hesiodic and theological idea of the sin and impiety of that spirit of enterprise which led men first to brave. the dangers of the sea, and to baffle the purpose of the Deity in separating nations from one another by the ocean,-—an idea to which Virgil himself gives expression in the fourth Eclogue,— Pauca tamen suberunt priscae vestigia fraudis, is not unsuited to the unadventurous disposition of the older poet. The twenty-fourth Ode is addressed to him on the occasion of the death of their common friend Quintilius Varus, probably the Varus of the tenth poem of Catullus, and thus one of the last survivors of the friendly circle of poets and wits of a former generation. While a high tribute to the pure character of their lost friend, it is at the same time a tribute to the pious and affectionate character of Virgil. It is a delicate touch of appreciation that Horace dwells more on the thought of the depth of Virgil's sorrow for their common friend than on his own. Both of these Odes give evidence of the strong affection which Virgil inspired; the second affords further evidence of the qualities in virtue of which he inspired that feeling. Similar proof of affection and appreciation is afforded by the words in which Horace in the fifth Satire of Book I. characterises Virgil (Vergilius optimus,' as he elsewhere calls him), and his two friends Plotius and Varius, The word Animae quales neque candidiores Terra tulit, neque queis me sit devinctior alter2. candidiores' suggests the same qualities of a beautiful nature, the unworldly simplicity and sincerity, which are ascribed to Quintilius in the words 'pudor, incorrupta fides, nudaque veritas.' The seven years from 37 B.c. to 30 B. c. were devoted by Virgil to the composition of the Georgics, a poem scarcely. exceeding 2000 lines in length. His chief residence at this time was Naples : Me dulcis alebat Parthenope, studiis florentem ignobilis oti 3. 1 'Yet there will remain some vestiges of the ancient sin, which will induce men to tempt the sea in ships.' 2 'No more sincere souls has the earth ever borne, nor any to whom there is a more devoted friend than I.' 3 I then had my home in sweet Parthenope, happy in the pursuits of an inglorious idleness.' He possessed also at this time a country-house or estate in the neighbourhood of Nola; and the fourth Book affords evidence. of some time spent at or in the neighbourhood of Tarentum, which is confirmed by the lines in Propertius,— Tu canis umbrosi subter pineta Galaesi Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin harundinibus 1, the region prized by Horace as second only to his beloved. Tibur. In the year 29 B. C. he read the whole poem to Augustus, on his return from Asia, at the town of Atella. The reading occupied four days. Maecenas was of the party, and relieved the poet in the task of reading. The remaining years of his life were spent in the composition of the Aeneid. One of the poems of the Catalepta (vi.) gives expression to a vow binding the poet to sacrifice a bull to Venus if he succeeded in accomplishing the task which he had imposed on himself. So early as the year 26 B. c., Augustus while engaged in the Cantabrian war, had desired to see some part of the poem. It was in answer to that request that Virgil wrote the letter of which the fragment, quoted in the previous chapter, has been preserved by Macrobius. At a later time, after the death of the young Marcellus (23 B. C.), he read three Books to Augustus and the other members of his family. After spending eleven years on the composition of his great epic, he set aside three more for its final correction. In the year 19 B. C. he set out with the view of travelling in Greece and Asia. Meeting Augustus at Athens, he was persuaded to abandon his purpose and return with him to Italy. While visiting Megara under a burning sun he was seized with illness. Continuing his voyage without interruption, he became worse, and on the 21st of September, a few days after landing at Brundisium, he died in the fifty-first year of his age. In his 1 'You sing, beneath the pine-woods of the shaded Galaesus, Thyrsis and Daphnis on your well-worn reeds.' 2 Cf. supra, p. 69. last illness he showed the ruling passion of his life-the craving for perfection-by calling for the cases which held his MSS., with the intention of burning the Aeneid. It is in keeping with the absence of self-assertion in his writings that his final hours were clouded by this sad sense of failure, rather than brightened by such confident assurances of immortality as other Roman poets have expressed. In the same spirit of dissatisfaction with all imperfect accomplishment, he left directions in his will that his executors, Varius and Tucca, should publish nothing but what had been already edited by him. This direction, which would have deprived the world of the Aeneid, was disregarded by them in compliance with the commands of Augustus. He was buried at Naples, where his tomb was long regarded with religious veneration and visited as a temple; and tradition has associated his name, as that of a magician, with the construction of the great tunnel of Posilippo, in its immediate neighbourhood. III. The interest of the life of Virgil lies in the bearing of his circumstances on the development of his genius, in the view which it affords of his whole nature as a man, and in the relation of that nature to the work accomplished by him as a poet. The biography of Horace has an independent value as affording insight into social life and character, irrespective of the light which it reflects on the art of the poet. But no separate line of action, adventure, or enjoyment runs through and intermingles with the even course of Virgil's poetic career. And this may have been a drawback to him as the poet of political action, of heroic adventure, and of human character. His career in this respect is unlike that of other great poets who have been endowed with the epic or dramatic faculty, who either took part in the serious action of their age, or gave proof in their lives of some share of the adventurous spirit or of the |