enthusiasms or in his dislikes-wished that Manilius might be read in all the schools. Milton in his treatise Of Education seems to have entertained the same wish. For myself, I wish Manilius no such doubtful fortune. Yet I do greatly desiderate the teaching in the schools of something that used to be taught there, of something that would make the reading of Manilius easier for the average student-I mean what our grandparents called 'the use of the globes'. In an age which seems to be moving inevitably to the depressing ideal of 'secular education', it might yet be possible, by teaching the elements of Astronomy, to keep imagination still alive in the land. I have two celestial globes before me as I write. The first I acquired easily, since it is a hundred years old, and a century ago celestial globes were common objects. The second, which is a modern one, was ordered for me in London, and took a month to procure. That such a thing should be wanted at all was a portent; and the salesman gravely inquired of me whether I wished it coloured politically'. Sic etiam magno quaedam respublica mundo est! Thus do our political animosities taint even the citizenship of heaven, and there survives in our great statesmen after their merited catasterism the passion for painting red the map of the universe. This volume, I should say finally, is an enlargement of a special course of lectures delivered in Michaelmas Term, 1909, under the auspices of the Common University Fund. I have to express my gratitude to the Delegates of that Fund for the opportunity thus afforded to me of devoting myself with an unembarrassed conscience to a subject which lies so much outside the routine of our ordinary studies here. It is possible, of course, to stray both too long and too far from the beaten track. The complaint of time wasted upon 'second-rate authors' has often a good deal of justice in it. Yet, on the whole, the more common fault is to indulge too little in ourselves, and to stimulate too little in others, that curiosity which is the necessary relish of all study. Nor would I submit to rank Manilius among second-rate authors'. Bentley, after all, went so far as to say that Manilius and Ovid alone among the Latins possessed 'wit'. What exactly Bentley understood here by 'wit' I do not undertake to say. But I cannot take leave of Manilius without expressing the sense which I have of the fine poetical quality of much of his work. He possesses something more valuable to a poet than witpersonality. He is a clear soul in a turbid age, and a poet whose utterance is still genuine and fresh in a period of factitious speech. To one or two sentiments that are a permanent part of all reflection in confused and sceptical times he has given beautiful expression. No one among the ancients has drawn out more movingly the contrast between the disorder of human history and the calm and continuity of the workings of nature. When the Greeks overthrew Troy, already then as now 'Arctos and Orion moved with opposed fronts'. No one has expressed more affectingly the beauty and the rarity of human friendship. It is not in nature to repeat the miracle of Pylades and Orestes. No pagan has spoken more Christianly of the need in human life of gentleness. The Ram is ill mated with the Lion and the Centaur. No one of the poets of Stoicism has heard more clearly the call of the universe to its children, or felt more powerfully the homesickness of humanity aspiring to a reunion with that which is divine. 'Of heavenly origin,' he says, 'is that mystery which is ever calling us heavenward to the fellowship of all that is.' But with all this aspiration there goes the sense of defeat. It is, perhaps, this unuttered sense of defeat breathing through all Manilius' poem which gives to it its deepest quality. He comes before us like his own Engonasin-the nameless sign that sinks beneath the weight of some overmastering toil unconjecturable. Who set in heaven that fainting fire? Who left thee nameless in the signs? The hand that fixed thy fate in fire, That master hand and merciless Made even as thou art thy sons: Ah! not for them the Crown, the Lyre: The goal that lesser souls attain Recedes before their nobler strife, Their name none knoweth, nor their pain: These are thy failures, Lord of Life! INTRODUCTION I THE MSS. OF MANILIUS AND THEIR INTERRELATION 'Loxiae oracula mihi audire uideor quotiens Manilium lego: ita multa sunt in eo turpiter conturbata, lacera, mutila, prodigiose obscura.'—Carrio. ‘Infelix fatum illius poetae ut neque posteri eius meminerint neque eius exemplaria ulla bona fide scripta extent.'-SCALIGER, Epist. 1627, p. 165. THE THREE PRINCIPAL MSS. THERE are twenty-two MSS. of the Astronomica still extant. These fall into three families, which may be designated the Belgian, the Italian, and the Hungarian. The Belgian family is represented by GLCV Marc.; the Italian by MV URH Caes. ; the Hungarian by the Paris MS. Par. 8022; the Munich MS. Mon. 15743; the two Oxford MSS., b and o; and finally seven MSS. from Italian libraries, Vatt. 1-4, Pal., Barb., Laur. Of these three families the last and most numerous, the Hungarian, may safely be said to have no importance at all, being merely a product of a chance fusion of the Belgian and Italian families. This fusion was perhaps brought about in the Hungarian libraries of Ofen and Gran under the auspices of Vitezius, Galeotto, and Regiomontanus.1 Of the five MSS. of the Belgian family two said to possess independent value, Gand L. of L, and still more probably Marc. of C. Italian family, again, are really reducible to one. generally agreed among editors that VURH Caes. are all derived, mediately or immediately, from M3 only can be certainly Our twenty-two MSS. of the Astronomica are thus brought 1 For fuller detail see my note in C. Q., 1909, pp. 54-5. 2 Thielscher, Philologus, 1907, p. 116; Rh. Mus., 1907, p. 46 sq. 3 V2 for I. I to II. 683 follows the Belgian recension (see Ellis, Hermathena, 1893, p. 267). |