afforded by the care with which he was educated. Like Horace, he was fortunate in having parents who, themselves of humble origin, considered him worthy of receiving the best instruction which the world could give, and, like Horace, he repaid their tender solicitude with affectionate gratitude. By his father's care he was from boyhood dedicated to the high calling which he faithfully followed through all his life. At the age of twelve he was taken to Cremona, an old Latin colony; and, from the lines in one of his earliest authentic poems (the address to the villa of Siron)—

Tu nunc eris illi

Mantua quod fuerat, quodque Cremona prius

implying a residence at Cremona, it seems probable that his father may have accompanied him thither, as Horace's father accompanied him to Rome for the same purpose. On his sixteenth birth-day-the day on which, according to Donatus, Lucretius died-Virgil assumed the 'toga virilis,' and about the same time went to Milan, and continued there, engaged in study, till he removed to Rome in the year 53 B. C., when he was between sixteen and seventeen years of age. It was in this year of his life that he is said to have written the Culex.' There are many difficulties which prevent the belief that Virgil is the author of the poem which has come down to us under that name. But the consideration of these must be reserved for a later examination of the poem.

At Rome he studied rhetoric under Epidius, who was also the teacher of the young Octavianus. As the future Emperor made his first public appearance at the age of twelve, by delivering the funeral oration over his grandmother Julia, it may have happened that he and Virgil were pupils of Epidius at the same time, and were not unknown to each other even before the meeting of ten years later which decisively affected Virgil's fortunes and determined his career. The time of his arrival at Rome was of critical importance in literature. The recent Rublication of the poem of Lucretius, the most important

event in Latin literature since the appearance of the Annals of Ennius, must have stimulated the enthusiasm of the younger generation, among whom poetry and oratory were at that time conjointly cultivated. Mr. Munro has shown the influence exercised by this poem on the later style of Catullus, who collected and edited his own poems about the time when Virgil came to Rome, and died shortly afterwards. One or two of the minor poems in the Catalecta, attributed to Virgil with more probability than the Culex, are parodies or close imitations of the style of Catullus, and are written in a freer and more satiric spirit than anything published by him in later years. But it is a little remarkable that, while reproducing the language and cadences of both these poets in his first acknowledged work, Virgil never mentions the names either of Lucretius or Catullus. The poets mentioned by him with admiration in the Eclogues are his living contemporaries, Varius and Cinna, Pollio and Gallus. Is it on account of the Senatorian and anti-Caesarean sympathies of the older poets that the poets of the new era thus separate themselves abruptly from those of the previous epoch? If it was owing to the jealousy of the new régime that the two great Augustan poets, while paying a passing tribute to the impracticable virtue of Cato, never mention the greater name or allude to the fate of Cicero, there seems to have been nothing in the political action or expressed opinions of Lucretius to call for a similar reticence. If, on the other hand, the boldness of his attack on the strongholds of all religious belief had the effect of cutting him off for a time from personal sympathy, as similar opposition to received opinions had in modern times in the case of Spinosa and Shelley, it did not interfere with the immediate influence exercised by his genius on the thought and art of Virgil.

The most interesting of the minor poems among the 'Catalecta' is one written at the time when the young poet entered on the study of philosophy under Siron the Epicurean. This poem expresses the joy felt by him

in exchanging the empty pretension and dull pedantry of rhetorical and grammatical studies for the real enquiries of philosophy :

These lines are the earliest expression of that philosophical longing which seems to have haunted Virgil through all his life as a hope and aspiration, but never to have found its realisation in speculative result. The motive which he professes for entering on the study,

Vitamque ab omni vindicabimus cura,

is the same as that which acted on Lucretius-the wish to secure an ideal serenity of life. The same trust in the calming influence of the Epicurean philosophy appears in the

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, etc.

of the second Georgic. But in different ways, by the deep feeling of melancholy in the one, by the revolt and spiritual reaction in the other, Lucretius and Virgil both show that these tenets could not secure to 'the passionate heart of the poet' that calmness and serenity of spirit which they gave to men of the stamp of Atticus, Velleius, or Torquatus. The final lines of the poem express the lingering regret with which he bids farewell to the Muses, although only for a time. These few lines, more than any other poem attributed to Virgil, seem to bring him in his personal feelings nearer to us. There is a touch of the graciousness of his nature, recalling the loyal feeling of Catullus to all his young comrades, in the passing notice of those who had shared his studies:

Iam valete, formosi.

At a time when the poetry of the younger generation was

universally free and licentious in tone, the purity of Virgil's nature reveals itself in the prayer to the Muses to revisit his writings 'pudenter et raro,' chastely and seldom. The whole poem is the sincere expression of the scholar and poet, even in youth idealising the austere charm of philosophy, while feeling in his heart the more powerful attraction of poetry. In the

Nam, fatebimur verum,

Dulces fuistis,

is the literal expression of that deep joy which afterwards moved him in uttering the lines—

and

Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, etc.

Sed me Parnassi deserta per ardua dulcis
Raptat amor;

and which sustained him stedfastly in the noble consistency and harmony of all his later life.

Of the next ten years of his career nothing is known with certainty, but the outbreak of the Civil War is likely to have interrupted his residence at Rome, and he is next heard of living in his native district and engaged in the composition of the Eclogues. He took no part in the war, nor ever served as a soldier; and he is said to have appeared only once in the other field of practical distinction open to a young Roman who had received so elaborate an education—that of forensic pleading. He is said to have wanted the readiness of speech and self-possession necessary for success in such a career; and he was thus fortunate in escaping all temptation to sacrifice his genius to the ambition of practical life, or to divide his allegiance, as Licinius Calvus did, between the claims of poetry and oratory. His first literary impulse was to write an historical epic on the early Roman or Alban history, and to this impulse he himself alludes in the lines of the sixth Eclogue,

Cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem

Vellit et admonuit.

He gave up the idea, feeling the unsuitable nature of the

material for poetic treatment,-'offensus materia,' as the Life of Donatus expresses it; and he resolutely resisted the projects often urged upon him of giving a poetical account of contemporary events, in celebration of the glory of Pollio, Varus, or Caesar. But it is noticeable as a proof of the persistence with which his mind continued to dwell on ideas once projected, till they finally assumed appropriate shape, that in the Aeneid he really combines these two purposes of vivifying the ancient traditions of Rome and Alba, and of glorifying the great results of his own era. It is by this capacity of forecasting some great work, and dwelling on the idea till it clears itself of all alien matter and assimilates to itself the impressions and interests of a life-time, that the vastest and most enduring monuments of genius are produced.

In the year of the battle of Philippi, Virgil was living in his native district, engaged in the composition of his pastoral poems. Of his mode of life, taste, and feelings about this time we perceive only that he continued to be a student of the Alexandrine literature, that he had, by natural gift and assiduous culture, brought the technical part of his art—the diction and rhythm of poetry—to the highest perfection hitherto attained, that he enjoyed the favour and patronage of the Governor of the province, Asinius Pollio, and that he was united by strong ties of affection and warm admiration to Cornelius Gallus, who while still in early youth had obtained high distinction in poetry and a prominent position in public life. There are in the Eclogues notices of other poets of the district, whose friendship he enjoyed or whose jealousy he excited. The Mopsus of the fifth is said to be the didactic poet, Aemilius Macer. The mention of Bavius and Maevius, the 'iurgia Codri,' and the allusion in a later poem to Anser the panegyrist of Antony, are the nearest approaches to anything like resentment or personal satire that Virgil has shown. It may be that in the lines where Amaryllis and Galatea and other personages of the poems are introduced he refers to some personal experiences; but as compared with all