(h) And, plunged in curved vale, hide; myself in arms Fulgent am girt, and seek again the city; Troy to return, and to the risks again My head present. The walls first I reseek, 895 And dark gate-threshold, where my steps had out-passed ; Appals the soul: thence home; if thither, chance, curved valley, but, having first hid, &c. then commend, &c. (b) Ipse urbem repeto, et cingor fulgentibus armis; not, reseek the city, and then am girt, &c., but, first am girt, &c., and then reseek the city. (c) Stat casus renovare omnes, &c., not, Am resolved to renew all chances, and then return, &c. but, Am resolved to renew all chances, by returning, &c. (d) Principio muros, &c., not, first seek the walls, &c., and then trace back my foot-marks; but, trace back my foot-marks to the walls, &c. (h) V. 748.-Recondo. See note, vers. 401. (i) V. 758.-Ilicet ignis edax, &c. Observe the accuracy of description; 1st. The term edax, (devouring, or consumptive of material,) is applied not to the flammae, or the aestus, but, with great precision, to the ignis, or fire properly so called. 2ndly. The ignis edax (consuming fire), which could not exist where there was 900 905 nothing to consume, is, with equal precision, represented as carried only summa ad fastigia. 3rdly. The flammae, flames of the fire,) exsuperant, (overtop,) the summa fastigia. 4thly. The aestus, estuation, (seething and crackling,) furit ad auras, (rages not only above the actual ignis, but to the utmost limits of, and, if it can be so imagined, above the over-topping flammae.) 5thly. The action of the wind, which, according to the well-known principles of modern science, is favorable and necessary to the development and progress of combustion (ignis), but unfavorable to, and destructive of, flames and heat considered separately from the combustion, is, with surprising fidelity to nature, limited by the poet to the ignis edax. See note, vers. 552. (k) V. 759.-Exsuperant flammae ; furit aestus ad auras. Die Flamme prasselnd schon zum Himmel schlug. Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, Act v. Thence, onward, to the citadel again, And Priam's seat: and now in Juno's void Phoenix and dire Ulysses, watched the booty: Goblets, and captive raiment; boys, around, And pavid mothers stand, in long array. Even dared I voices through the shade to fling; (1) Again, again, in vain redoubling, called Creusa. To me, as I searched, and through Larger than known; and, as I stood aghast, (1) V. 769. Creusam Nequidquam ingeminans, &c. Compare Orpheus calling on Eurydice, in the fourth Georgic, and Pope's fine imitation : Eurydice the woods, Eurydice the floods, Eurydice the rocks, and hollow mountains, rung. (m) V. 778.—Nec te comitem portare Creusam Fas; aut ille sinit superi regnator Olympi. This sentence consists of two clauses, the former of which, ending at fas, declares that it is not lawful for Eneas to bear Creusa 910 915 920 925 with him as his companion; the second explains why it is not; viz., because contrary to the will of the supreme ruler of Olympus. This is according to Virgil's usual method, of first presenting his reader with the general idea, and afterwards explaining and particularising; see notes, vv. 18 and 51; also, note, En. i, 496. Wunderlich, Wagner, and those other critics, who, adopting the suggestion of Heinsius, and placing only a comma at fas, refer that word to sinit, and not Who rules supern Olympus, comrade hence And to be ploughed a champaign vast of sea; (n) (0) Amid the opime fields of whose sons where flows, (p) to est understood, (a) substitute for Virgil's poetical structure the prosaic structure of an ordinary writer, and, (b) by uniting fas to regnator by means of the copulative aut, make it necessary to understand fas as something distinct and separate from the will of Jupiter, contrary to the wellknown religious doctrine of the Romans, that fas was nothing more nor less than the declared will of that deity. As I could not transfer the structure of the Latin sentence into the translation, without the, almost, certainty of leading the reader into the error, committed by the abovementioned eminent scholars, viz., that of supposing that there were two distinct obstacles to Eneas's carrying Creusa with him, fas, and the will of Jupiter, I have followed the English idiom, and expressed, in a sentence consisting only of a single clause, the meaning of the two clauses of the Latin sentence, sciz. that the fas, which prevented Eneas to take Creusa with him, was the will, ordinance, or decree of Jupiter. (n) V. 781.-Ubi Lydius, arva Inter opima virúm, leni fluit agmine Tybris. Wo jetzt die Muotta zwischen Wiesen rinnt. Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, Act ii. (0) V. 781.-Arva...opima. "Fruitful fields." Surrey. Opimus is, not fruitful, but, in prime condition; in that condition, sciz. of which fruitfulness is the consequence. Land is opima (in prime condition, or of the best quality,) before it bears, and even before the seed is put into it; it is not fruitful until it bears. Opimus has precisely the same meaning when 930 applied to animals; viz., in prime condition; not, as incorrectly stated by Gesner, Forcellini, and all lexicographers, fat; fatness being only one of the qualities necessary to entitle an animal to be styled opimus. This primitive sense of opimus, (to which its meanings, in the expressions spolia opima, opima facundia, &c., are but secondary,) is expressed in French by the phrase en bon point. The English language possessing no term corresponding to opimus, I have thought it better to form a word directly from the Latin, than to misrepresent Virgil's meaning, by the use of an inadequate term. Dryden has his reward with the English reader, for giving himself no trouble about such niceties, but substituting at once, for the Virgilian thought, whatever idea, suited ad captum vulgi, came first into his mind. Where gentle Tyber from his bed beholds The flowery meadows, and the feeding folds. Virgil is innocent of all but the first three words. See next note. (p) V. 781.-Arva Inter opima virûm. With Heyne I refer virúm to arva, and not, with Burmann and Forcellini, to opima. 1st. Because Virgil, on the other occasions on which he has used the word opimus, has used it absolutely. 2ndly. Because opimus, in the forty examples of its use quoted by the industry of Forcellini, stands absolute in thirty-eight, and only in two is connected with a case, which case is not the genitive, but the ablative. 3rdly. Because, even although it had With soft march, Lydian Tyber; for thee, there, (9) And royal spouse: drive off these tears for chosen- Of Goddess Venus, by my marriage, daughter; Go bondslave; but me in these coasts detains Cleop. Anton. & Cleop., Act. v, Sc. 2. (s) V. 790.—Haec ubi dicta dedit, &c. This having said, she left me all in tears, 935 940 [neck : And subtly fled into the weightless air. Of lusty Ide, and brought the dawning light; Such are the concluding words of Surrey's translation of the second book of the Eneis; such the sweet, chaste voice, which the bloody axe of an obscene and ruffian king silenced for visum. And this, let the reader obever, at the age of thirty; Diis aliter serve, is blank verse in its cradle, before it has acquired the sinewy strength, the manly dignity, the high, chivalrous port, of Shakspeare and Milton. Let him, further, compare these lines with the corresponding rhymes of Dryden, and then hear with astonishment, (astonishment at the unequal rewards of human deservings,) that Surrey's biographer (Dr. Nott) deems it praise, to compare him with that coarse and reckless (1) For this reference see next page. Weeping, and many things to say desiring, (u) And into thin air withdrew: round her neck Thrice, where I stood, I strove mine arms to throw; 'So to my comrades I return at last, The night now spent ; and here, admiring, find 945 950 They have convened, with heart, prepared, and substance, (~) And now, o'er Ida's high'st slopes, Lucifer, I yield; my sire uplift; and seek the mountains.* 960 writer (t) V. 791.-Deseruit. Observe the tender reproach contained in this word; observe, also, that it is spoken, not of Creusa, (on whom the exquisite judgment of the poet is careful not to throw even the shadow of an imputation), but of the apparition, against which it falls harmless, while at the same time it expresses the bereavement of Eneas, and his affection towards his wife, as strongly, nay more strongly, than if it had been spoken directly of Creusa herself. How the word must have sounded in the ears of Dido! Deseruit; deserted; therefore left him free to form a new attachment. (u) V. 792.-Ter conatus ibi. Tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi, E tante mi tornai con esse al petto. Dante. Purgat. ii, 80. (x) V. 801.-Jugis. See third note, vers. 631. * The Davideis, that wild, unequal, and irregular, but highly poetic, effusion of the neglected Cowley, is a paraphrase, and, in many places, almost a translation, of the two first books of the Eneis. |