force. Canning, in a note on the Loves of the Triangles, in the Anti-Jacobin, gives one or two examples which will point out the nature of the fault better than any argument-observing, that in poetical diction, a person is said to "breathe the blue air, and drink the hoarse wave." V. 27. Auctorem frugum is explained by Heyne to mean moderatorem, regnatorem. The word seems rather to be used in its original signification as a derivative of augeo. V. 32 Tardis has been variously understood, either as an ornamental epithet, or as specifying the summer months, which seem longer in coming to an end. It will have more force, if we suppose it to imply a compliment to Cæsar, who is called upon to speed the months, as with their present staff of constellations they move too slowly. So in Ecl. iv. 50, the coming child is bidden, Adspice convexo nutantem pondere mundum. V. 44. Some difference of opinion has been entertained on the construction of Zephyro. Dryden regarded it as the dative, "when earth unbinds her frozen bosom to the western winds." Wakefield connects it with putris. It seems rather to be the ablative of the instrument, the reflexive se resolvit being used where a prose writer would have employed a passive with an ablative of the agent. Heyne says nothing specially, but in his explanation of the whole sentence, has " terra tepidæ auræ afflatu resolvitur." V. 52. Patrios cultusque habitusque locorum. Both Heyne and Wagner appear to have misunderstood these words, the former rendering patrios cultus "colendi rationem usu majorum probatam," and thus being led to separate cultus from habitus by omitting the first que, on the authority of some MSS., the latter explaining the words as put for "cultus habitusque locorum patriorum," sc. quos quis colit." 66 Patrios cultus seems to mean the natural or customary cultivation, belonging to the soil as it were by he reditary right, an epithet which may be readily extended to habitus; the general sense being that given in the next line, and exemplified in those which follow. There is a good parallel in Georg. ii. 35: Quare agite o, proprios generatim discite cultus, Conserere, atque oleâ magnum vestire Taburnum. V. 60. This has been noted as a peculiar use of continuo: but the word really bears its usual sense, "reaching directly from the time spoken of," like primis extemplo a mensibus anni, just below. V. 68. Suspendere has nothing to do, as Heyne thinks, with suspenso vomere. It means to raise, and leave as it were hanging; an expression sufficiently appropriate to loose earth turned up, and illustrated in Forcellini by various examples, of which the most appropriate is from Columella iii. 13: Præstat vineam non conserere quam in summâ terrâ suspendere. V. 74. Ought not lætum to be constructed with siliquá quassante? 66 V. 77. Trapp explains the connection, "Sow wheat and beans, &c. alternately, by way of change, to relieve impoverished land, not flax, oats, or poppies, for that will make it worse than it was before:" and then proceeds, v. 79, Though to change the grain is a good method, yet it is a good and easy one to let your land rest every other year, as I told you before;" adding, in vv. 82, 83, "He compares these two methods with each other, and pronounces them both good in their kind." Wagner, on the other hand, supposes the whole, 73-83, to refer to the change of crops, which is eventually preferred, v. 83, to the fallow method. According to this interpretation, spelt, pulse, vetches, lupines, flax, oats, poppies, are mentioned merely exempli gratiâ, as possible crops which may be interchanged without injuring the soil, but if not varied will exhaust it: vv. 82, 83, will then mean," Thus the land will have its rest, and at the same time you will be spared the non-productiveness of fallow ground." The latter explanation agrees better with the sequence of the whole passage, and its connecting particles-enim (which need not, as Wagner supposes) be taken for quidem), sed tamen, sic quoque, interea (which in Trapp's sense would rather be præterea). Against this must be set the artificial rendering which we are compelled to give to v. 83, whether we take it "nec interea est nulla gratia (= ea gratia quæ nulla est = sterilitas) inaratæ terræ (gen.);" or, " nec interea nulla est gratia inaratæ (dat.) terræ (= nec interea terra inarata ideoque ingrata est).' The ambiguity arises from a fact which is at the bottom of most of the difficulties in the Georgics, the nature of the work as a didactic poem. When a subject belonging to plain prose is treated in verse, the simplest truths have to be expressed ornamentally: and the greater the triumph of the poet in lifting common things into a higher atmosphere, the greater will be the difficulty of the reader in discovering the real nature of the materials so metamorphosed. V. 92. Heyne and Wagner make tenues an epitheton ornans. It is better to construe it impoverishing, the use of the word being supported by tenuis argilla, in Georg. ii. 180, and the fact by physical considerations stated in Heyne's note. V. 102. Wagner's interpretation, "no Mysian cultivation can equal an ordinary field in a dry winter," seems to involve such a hyperbole as would in a didactic poem amount to a falsehood, in spite of the imitation adduced from Macrobius. Heyne is surely right in preferring to understand the words, "Mysia is never so well cultivated as in a dry winter." The clause, "et ipsa suas mirantur Gargara messes," makes for this, as it would hardly have been worded as it is, had it been meant to be introduced by an absolute negative. We must not, however, press the connection between it and that which precedes it, so as to comprehend both under the same construction. A prose writer might have said " nullo tantum cultu jactant se Mysia et Gargara:" the poet draws out the image of fertility further, by expressing it in a a different form, as if he had no object but to dwell upon it, instead of having merely undertaken to refer to it incidentally. Instances of a similar kind are abundant in Virgil, e. g. Ecl. viii. 3, “ quorum stupefactæ carmine lynces, Et mutata suos requierunt flumina cursus," where the real link to the previous sentence, the quorum carmine, is not grammatically continued from the former to the latter clause. V. 104. The commentators have not remarked that the metaphor here is strictly military-from a warrior who throws his spear (jacto semine) and then advances with his sword to close combat (comminus insequitur). V. 119. Improbus, as used in this and other similar connections (labor improbus, v. 145, mons improbus, Æn. xii. 687) has been naturally paralleled with the Homeric avaions. The oldest use of probus seems to be as a synonyme of pudicus, so that it may very well be compared with aidos, both of them implying that moderation and regard for the rights of others, which are sure to be looked upon as almost synonymous with civil virtue. avaions and improbus then are applied to persons wanting these qualities-to the stone which showed no consideration for Sisyphus, always returning to plague him, or to the goose which treats the farmer in much the same manner. Nearly in the same sense Sophocles, Ed. Col. 120, makes the chorus call Edipus ὁ πάντων ἀκορέστατος, the man who has trespassed on sacred ground, as if the rest of the world were not wide enough for him. V. 123. Corda, used, as frequently in older Latin, for the intellect. Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 9, Aliis cor ipsum animus videtur: ex quo excordes, vecordes concordesque dicuntur: et Nasica ille prudens, bis consul, corculum, et egregie cordatus homo catus Ælius Sextus. V. 131. Ignem removit. Cf. En. vi. 6: semina flammæ Abstrusa in venis silicis. V. 133. Usus, the abstract for the concrete-hence meditando, as if homines had been the nominative. V. 148. Deficere animum is quoted by Forcellini from Varro. R. R. iii. 16, and this may defend silvæ deficerent glandes, for which we should rather have expected glandes deficerent silvas. But why may not sacræ silvæ be the dative, a construction sufficiently common with deficere? Glandes silvæ seu silvarum, as Heyne observes, would be less poetical. V. 150. Ut here expresses the result, not the object, labor additus ut being equivalent to factum est ut, the words given in Heyne's paraphrase. V. 175. Explorat. Heyne's remark "Nimis subtilis (!) illa ratio, ut explorare dictum sit pro exsudare, excoquere, expellere humorum tanquam lacrimas ac ploratus" may serve to remind us that criticism has made some progress during the last eighty years. We know from Festus that plorare originally stood for inclamare, without any notion of lamentation : and similarly that explorare was equivalent to valde plorare or exclamare, from which it may naturally have come to mean, like implorare, to demand a thing with cries; and lastly, to bear the more general sense of quærere. V. 199. We have here a scrap of Lucretian philosophy, not particularly in keeping with the general notions of the poet, who, on other occasions, by no means talks like a pessimist. Such a view as this, however, must at times have had charms for his imagination, and he had no definite creed with which it could be called incompatible. Hence the questions which have been raised as to his religious or philosophical belief-the truth being, that he was a poet, not a professed thinker, more or less influenced by the various systems of his time, and borrowing on occasion from one or the other, but without confining himself to any. |