the poets of this era, Virgil either observed a great reticence, or enjoyed an exceptional immunity from the passions of youth. The whole tone of the earlier poems, and numerous expressions in all of them, such as 'tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra,' are suggestive of a somewhat indolent enjoyment of the charm of books, poetry, and the softer beauties of Nature. The following year was the turning-point in his career, and gave a more definite aim to his genius and sympathies. In that year his own fortunes became involved in the affairs which were determining the fate of the world. The Triumvirs, in assigning grants of land to their soldiers, had confiscated the territory of Cremona, which had shown sympathy with the Senatorian cause, and when this proved insufficient, an addition was made from the adjoining Mantuan territory, in which the farm of Virgil's father was situated. The Commissioners appointed to distribute the land were Pollio, Varus, and Gallus, all friendly to Virgil, and by their advice he went to Rome, and obtained the restitution of his land by personal application to Octavianus. On his return to his native district he found that Varus had succeeded Pollio as Governor of the province. He appears to have been unfriendly to the Mantuans, and was either unable or unwilling to protect Virgil, who was forced at the imminent peril. of his life to escape, by swimming the river, from the violence of the soldier who had entered on the possession of the land. Two of the Eclogues, the first and the ninth, are written in connexion with these events. Though he still adheres to an indirect and allusive treatment of his subject, these poems possess the interest of being based on real experience. They give expression to the sense of disorder, insecurity, and distress, which we learn from other sources accompanied these forced divisions and alienations of land. The first expresses also the gratitude of the poet to 'the god-like youth' to whom he owed the exceptional indulgence of being, though only for a short time, reinstated in the possession of his land. It is characteristic either of some weakness in Virgil's nature, or of a great depression among the peaceful inhabitants of Italy, that he had no thought of resisting violence by violence, that he does not even express resentment against the intruder, but only a feeling of wonder that any man could be capable of such wickedness. Heu! cadit in quemquam tantum scelus? To most readers the vehemence with which the author of the 'Dirae,' under similar circumstances, curses the land and its new owners, appears, if less sweet and musical, more natural than this mild submission to superior force expressed by Virgil. But in these personal experiences that strong sympathy with the national fortunes, which henceforward animates his poetry, originates. Virgil may thus in a sense be numbered among the poets who are cradled into poetry by wrong.' After this second forcible expulsion from his old home, he took refuge, along with his family, in a small countryhouse which had belonged to his old teacher Siron. The poem numbered X. in the Catalecta, Villula quae Sironis eras, et pauper agelle, was written at this time. It expresses anxiety and distress about the state of his native district, to which, as in Eclogue I., he applies the word patria, and affectionate solicitude for those along with him, Hos una mecum, quos semper amavi, and especially for his father. His own experience at this time may have suggested to him the feelings which he afterwards reproduced in describing the flight of Aeneas from the ruins of Troy. He seems never after this time to have returned to his native district. The liberality of Octavianus1 compensated him for his loss, nor was the even tenor of his life henceforward broken by any new dangers or hardships. Through the gift of friends and patrons he acquired a 1 Hor. Ep. ii. 1. 246. fortune, which at his death amounted to 10,000,000 sesterces (more than £80,000 of our money); he possessed a house on the Esquiline near the gardens of Maecenas, a villa at Naples, and a country-house near Nola in Campania, and seems to have lived from time to time in Sicily and the South of Italy. The Eclogues, commenced in his native district in the year 42 B.C., were completed and published at Rome probably in the year 37 B. C. They were at once received with great favour, and recited amid much applause upon the stage. They established the author's fame as the poet of Nature and of rural life, as Varius was accepted as the poet of epic, Pollio of tragic poetry : Molle atque facetum Vergilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Camenae. 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 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 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 appear to have been 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 connoisseur; and parts of the sea-voyage of Aeneas seem to be 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, Quae temptare Thetim ratibus, etc.,— 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, Cui Pudor, et Iustitiae soror Incorrupta Fides, nudaque Veritas Quando ullum inveniet parem?— it is at the same time a tribute to the pious and affectionate character of Virgil: Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit, Nulli flebilior quam tibi, Vergili: Tu frustra pius, heu! non ita creditum 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, Animae quales neque candidiores |