separated from the mare, which is mentioned at the end as a signal instance of the truth of the general remark, not with any didactic purpose, but simply as occurring in the course of observation. This accounts for the position of the young lover, who is regarded for the moment merely as a proof of the universality of passion, and so left to find his place as he may. Whether it would have been a greater compliment to the dignity of humanity to place him, as M. Ribbeck would have had him placed, after all the brute creation, except horses and mares, may, I think, be doubted. The rhetorical effect would have been injured: the prerogatives of the human race would scarcely have been vindicated. As to the two lines which M. Ribbeck wishes to cancel, it is difficult to see what would be gained by waging special war against them. They were probably introduced to gratify Virgil's love for geographical allusion, just as in the lines immediately preceding he indulges his taste for mythological reference. Even if they are struck out, the alleged tautology will not be wholly removed: after impregnation, the mares will still scamper "saxa per et scopulos et depressas convalles," while "scopuli rupesque cavae" fail to retard the horses.

In the Fourth Book M. Ribbeck repeats the objections which have been made by various critics to the position of vv. 47-50. They had long ago been answered by Heyne, who shows that there is connexion enough to justify an unsystematic writer in mentioning later what a systematic one would probably have mentioned earlier. Virgil had begun by directing the bee-master to choose a neighbourhood for the bees where they might expatiate without injury; he now speaks of the hive, and after enjoining that it should be made weather-tight, he naturally passes on to speak about smells and sounds which might penetrate it and injure the inmates. It does not seem to have occurred to M. Ribbeck to ask himself whether the passage would read equally well as a piece of poetry if the lines in question were removed or transposed. But most readers, I think, will feel that Virgil has intentionally elaborated his language and rhythm as he approaches the end of a paragraph, and that the verses about the echo,

"Aut ubi concava pulsu

Saxa sonant, vocisque offensa resultat imago,"

make a fuller and more appropriate close than the simple "raras superiniice frondes." The lines 203-205 are confessedly very difficult to harmonize with the context, and, taken by themselves, may be fairly said to support M. Ribbeck's theory. I have nothing better to suggest in defence of their present position than has been suggested in my commentary, that the mention of the constant succession reminded Virgil of the accidents which carry off bees before their time, in themselves a proof of the energy of the race, and that thence he was led to observe that, in spite of the frequency of such accidents and the scanty lives enjoyed by individuals in any case, the line was inextinguishable. No other place which could be assigned to them would be free from objections, as M. Ribbeck seems to feel. Wagner's proposal to insert them after v. 183 would probably suit the sense best; but "tantus amor florum et generandi gloria mellis" would in that case come too soon after "Cecropias innatus apes amor urget habendi." As they stand, there is no reason why "saepe etiam," of which M. Ribbeck complains, should not refer to a suppressed thought, "they show their energy too in that," &c.

The paragraph 228-250 has given trouble to other scholars besides M. Ribbeck; but it need not trouble any one who is not anxious to bind Virgil by the precision of a technical treatise. He tells the bee-master what he must do when he wants to take the honey, informs him what are the periods for doing so, warns him that it is a hazardous business, says that if it is decided to leave them the honey for the winter the combs may advantageously be cut, and finally declares that the bees will second any remedial care bestowed on them, and repair any injuries they may have received. The

whole passage is arranged so as to draw out what I may call the human interest of the subject,—to make us regard the bees as if they were creatures like ourselves. I must again express my wonder that. M. Ribbeck should think that the last three lines of the paragraph formed no part of the paragraph as it originally stood. Take them away, and we should be left with a dull cheerless impression of the bees as a prey to innumerable enemies: leave them in their place, and we are inspired with the feeling which the poet throughout desires to excite-a sympathy for indomitable energy existing in the lower creation.

Vv. 289–294 stand on a different ground from any other passage in the Georgies. The varieties in the MSS. are a clear external warrant for suspecting the integrity of the passage, and critical hypothesis is invited accordingly. I do not, however, think that the omission of the three lines most in question, vv. 291–293, which is M. Ribbeck's present view, as it has been the view of others, is the most feasible way of dealing with the difficulty. The passage seems overloaded: but I see no reason for supposing that any part of it was not written by Virgil.

After thus going through the four books, M. Ribbeck steps back, and examines other passages in the poem without much regard for order. I follow him in doing so, though I could have wished, for the sake of my readers, that this arrangement had been more systematic.

He complains of the lines on Envy, Book 3, vv. 37–39, which he thinks would have come in more appropriately after v. 33 as part of the sculpture on the doors of the temple. Accordingly, he supposes that in v. 37, "metuens," found in the Palatine MS., was the original reading, the sentence having been left incomplete by the poet, and afterwards altered to make it suit the place into which it had been unskilfully foisted. Once more I must contend that the lines, rhythmically and poetically, are better where they stand. They form an appropriate close to the sense: they would have been somewhat too elaborate elsewhere than at the close. The monument to Augustus concludes with Envy in her torments, just as the prophecy of Jupiter (A. 1. 294 foll.) concludes with Fury in his prison. As for the artistic appliances by which the representation of Envy is to be made, we may well be left to imagine them for ourselves.

After a proposal which he does not press, to insert vv. 343–345 of Book 2 after v. 335, M. Ribbeck returns to Book 3, and following Tittler, a scholar with whom he does not generally agree, pronounces that vv. 120-122 of that book ought to stand after v. 96. The proposal is much older than Tittler, having been made in the last century by a friend of Warton. No doubt Virgil has expressed himself carelessly, confusing a comparison of different qualifications in the same horse with a comparison of different qualifications in different horses; but his meaning is plain enough: and as before, the transposition of the lines would rob the paragraph of an appropriate and sonorous close, and leave it tame and spiritless. Tittler would remedy this by further transposing vv. 113-119, so as to place them after v. 102. But v. 102 would suffer greatly by being separated from the description of the chariot race: and it can scarcely be doubted that Virgil intends to repeat the thought of the first lines of the paragraph in the last, leaving on the reader's mind the one clear impression, that past services in a horse are not to blind the breeder to the essential superiority of youth to age.

The next passage which is called in question is Book 1, vv. 204-310. M. Ribbeck first places vv. 257, 258 before v. 252, and then finds that the lines so re-arranged are a revised edition of vv. 201-207. He next pronounces the paragraph about the zones (vv. 231 — 251) and that about the occupations for wet days and holidays (vv. 259-275) to be later insertions, imperfectly harmonized with the context, and finally concludes that the whole ought to stand thus, omitting vv. 204-207 altogether: vv. 257, 258, vv. 252 -256, vv. 231-251, vv. 208-230, vv. 276-286, vv. 259–275, vv. 287–310. The

notion of transposing vv. 257, 258, so that they should precede v. 252, occurred to myself many years ago, as I could not understand how they cohered either with the following paragraph, with which they were generally printed, or with the preceding lines. Afterwards I saw that Professor Ramsay was right in connecting them with the preceding lines, as they really depend on "hine" v. 252, the sense being “It is this disposition of the mundane system which makes our observation of stars and seasons not in vain." Thus the lines refer back to vv. 204-207, at the same time that they do not simply repeat them. "Idcirco," v. 231, to which M. Ribbeck demurs, refers to the whole preceding paragraph: it is with a view to our carrying on the operations of husbandry at their proper seasons that the mundane system is arranged. Just so later in the book (vv. 351 foll.) the poet tells us that Jupiter himself has ordained certain things as the antecedents of fine or stormy weather for the benefit of man. After v. 258 the precepts become more desultory: rainy days suggest holidays, holidays lucky and unlucky days, and these again bring us back to the natural suitableness of different times and seasons to different occupations. Thus explained, the passage vindicates itself as having been intended by Virgil to stand as we now read it, and lends no countenance whatever to the theory of two editions. There are however one or two further difficulties detected by M. Ribbeck. One is about vv. 297, 298, where he would read with Peerlkamp, "Nec rubicunda Ceres. . . At medio," &c., and then place the lines immediately after v. 290. But it was long since pointed out that "medio aestu" is to be understood of summer, not of the heat of the day, Virgil having made a transition in the lines just preceding from times of day to times of year by speaking of the man who works through a long winter night. M. Ribbeck is also not quite satisfied about the right position of vv. 259-275, which he refers to the operations of the summer, but cannot connect with the lines where summer and winter operations are contrasted nor is he clear about the best place for vv. 291-296. These are difficulties which he may be fairly said to have brought on himself, and one who believes that no transpositions are needed can hardly be asked to help in removing them.

:

Three short passages, Book 3, vv. 81-83 ("Honesti. . . et gilvo"), Book 1, vv. 173, 175, and Book 4. 276, are next noted as marginal jottings made by the poet with a view to a second edition. Such slight matters will scarcely bear argument; and it is perhaps enough to say that, as M. Ribbeck himself evidently regards them only as very subsidiary proofs of his theory, they may be left to the reader's judgment after he has made up his mind on the strength or weakness of the more important part of the case.

In the observations which immediately follow I am glad to welcome M. Ribbeck as a defender of the integrity of Virgil's text. Tittler maintains that Books 1 and 2 are the only parts of the Georgics given to the world by the poet himself, and supposes the exordium of Book 3 to be a mixture of two different draughts. M. Ribbeck vindicates the passage as it stands very satisfactorily (though confessing a difficulty in the mention of the Britons, v. 25), refuting the notion that the temple which Virgil promises to raise to Augustus is a symbolical representation of the Aeneid, and explaining it rightly as an undertaking that was never performed. In replying, however, to another part of Tittler's dissertation, which treats of the invocation of Maecenas near the beginning of Book 2, he relapses, I regret to say, into unauthorized conjecture, adopting a suggestion of Peerlkamp's, to put v. 41 after v. 42 and alter "da" into "dare." Virgil doubtless intended by "pelago patenti" not what we call the open sea, but a sea not crowded with other ships, though it would have been better if he had chosen a different word, so as to avoid the verbal inconsistency with what follows. This leads M. Ribbeck to further speculations about Book 2, and the spirit of re-arrangement takes possession of him again. He agrees with Hanovius (Hanow ?) in believing that the invocation of Maecenas should follow the invocation of Bacchus, but is per

plexed to know what to do with the previous lines, vv. 35—38, till he sees that their true place is immediately before v. 109. Any one who feels the full enthusiasm of vv. 35 foll. will, I think, be slow to believe that they ought to stand anywhere but where they do. The poet, after surveying some of the details of his subject, is visited by an access of inspiration as he contemplates the work before him, points to the triumphs to be won in planting whole mountains with the vine and the olive, speaks of his own labours as parallel to the husbandman's, and calls upon his patron to bear his part in the undertaking. Dislocate the passage and the effect is gone: Bacchus and Maecenas lose respectively by juxtaposition: and the lines about Ismarus and Taburnus are rendered tame by being attached to a reminder that all lands do not produce all things.

Passing rapidly over transpositions in Book 4, by Peerlkamp and Heyne, which he disapproves, and Schrader's transposition of vv. 369, 370, which he accepts, M. Ribbeck concludes his chapter, "De retractatis a poeta Georgicis," by discussing the latter part of Book 3. Here again he finds traces of a confusion between two alternative draughts. After v. 519 he thinks the poem might have been continued either thus, vv. 534-536, 531-533, 537-547, or thus, vv. 520-530, 548-553, 556-566. Vv. 554, 555 he condemns as an interpolation. The only reason for suspecting the text as it stands is that Virgil after speaking of cattle digresses to other things, and then returns to cattle again. Whether it may not be Virgil's manner to do so is a question which M. Ribbeck does not ask; indeed, it would be somewhat late to ask it at the end of a chapter which is devoted (so a believer in the integrity of the existing text may fairly say) to obliterating the various indications of that manner which abound in the poem. The issue raised is really one of aesthetic criticism, of the order in which a poet may be expected to present his thoughts and images. If we criticize the passage before us as poetry, we shall not, I think, be inclined to pronounce it deficient. Virgil, as I have said already, is fond of variety; he does not keep the reader long on the stretch, but is always finding some expedient for relieving him, at the same time that he takes care that the impression finally left on the mind shall be uniform and consistent. After exciting our feelings for the labouring ox, struck down in the midst of his work, he changes the subject, tells us briefly of the difficulty of procuring cattle for processions and of tilling the ground at all, describes the universality of the pestilence as extending to all creatures, tame or wild, harmless or noxious, and then reverts to the condition of the cattle, which, instead of ministering to man even after death by the food and raiment they supply, have become useless and injurious, and require to be buried out of sight as fast as they fall. The two condemned lines add to the variety: as we read them, we think of pleasant pastures, of mountain slopes and river banks, once vocal with the bleating or the lowing of healthy cattle, now echoing with their dying groans. Whether our understandings would be assisted by the dismemberment of the passage I will not say: I am very sure that our imaginations would be appealed to less powerfully.

Such are M. Ribbeck's reasons for believing that the Georgics, as they have come down to us, have suffered from the unskilfulness of those who edited them after the author's death. The two remaining chapters, in which he points out interpolations in the poem and discusses conjectures on the text proposed by recent critics, are much shorter.

After noticing two or three lines as suspicious, because occurring also in the Aeneid, he condemns v. 433 of Book 2 as being absent in the Medicean MS., not commented on by Servius, and not quoted by any ancient author, and also as being out of harmony with the context. It is absurd, he says, to ask "Et dubitant homines serere atque impendere curam ?" when the poet is speaking of things which grow spontaneously, "non rastris, hominum non ulli obnoxia curae." I have elsewhere expressed my opinion

of the blindness which would rob us of one of Virgil's finest lines; so I will merely say here that the poet's purpose is to rouse the cultivator to the duty of seconding nature by art, by setting before him what nature can do and is doing unaided. Book 4, v. 506, is said to be justly rejected by Heyne, as being superfluous after v. 503. It is true no doubt that we already know that Orpheus has lost Eurydice, but that does not prove that the fact will not bear to be brought home to us further-that it is superfluous to tell us that while Orpheus is casting about in agony how to recover her, she is floating off in the Stygian boat, death-chilled already. The omission of vv. 134, 135 of Book 1 would be less felt as a poetical loss, but it would destroy a characteristic trait of Virgil, who is fond of combining the particular with the general: nor does there seem ground enough for pronouncing v. 144 an interpolation in the face of the MSS. Book 3, v. 162, again, is harmless enough, if explained, as M. Ribbeck sees that it ought to be explained, in connexion with what follows rather than what goes before; so that his final sentence, "ambiguo illo versu malim equidem carere," is, to say the least, a little arbitrary. V. 288 of the same book is more than harmless; it is eminently characteristic. As usual, Virgil in approaching a new part of his subject points out to the husbandman the difficulty and glory of the task: as usual, he goes on in the following verses to identify his own toil with theirs. Peerlkamp has been severe on the Ovidian redundance of the description of the Scythian winter later in the book (vv. 360 foll.): but M. Ribbeck has happily been proof against his critical acumen except in the case of v. 362, which he thinks "loquacior." In the remainder of the chapter I am glad to say that he devotes himself to the defence of supposed interpolations against Peerlkamp and others, observing with regard to one place that the "Batavus sagacissimus," as he elsewhere calls him, "pulchram imaginem cum non intellegeret delevit." Si sic omnia!

The concluding chapter on the Georgics, which is chiefly occupied with the enumeration of some conjectures of Peerlkamp's, is still briefer than the last, and need scarcely detain us a moment. M. Ribbeck does not pledge himself to any of these conjectures, while some of them he expressly controverts. Perhaps the only really tempting one is “divinius” for “divinitus,” Book 1, v. 415, which was long since proposed by Reiske; and even that can be shown to be inadmissible. The rest are mostly ingenious, but a reader, who is convinced that Virgil's text does not require the aid of conjecture, will be apt to be intolerant of such a perverse application of cleverness. M. Ribbeck declares himself almost a convert to an emendation by Hanovius of Book 1. 142, "Alta petens alius pelago trahit humida lina,” which may perhaps be an improvement of the original line as he and others point it, but cannot be set against the old punctuation, by which "Alta petens" is referred to the preceding verse; and he also approves of a proposal by the same critic to alter the stopping of Book 3, vv. 223 foll., so as to make a new sentence begin with v. 226, in which it is difficult to see any advantage. He atones, however, for these concessions by resisting a suggestion that vv. 187-192 of Book 1 should be placed after v. 203, disposing of it by the just remark, which I cannot but wish he had thought of on other occasions, "solere Vergilium singula praeceptorum capita item ut libros singulos graviore vel aliquo modo insigniore sive sententia sive imagine concludere."

VOL. III.

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