His muse is instinct with Lucretian spirit when he describes with such graphic skill the murrain attacking the brute creation;[499] and Ovid exclaims that the sublime strains of Lucretius shall never perish until the day shall arrive when the world shall be given up to destruction.
Contemporary with the great didactic poet, but nine years his junior in age, flourished C. Valerius Catullus. He was a member of a good family, residing on the Lago di Garda, in the neighbourhood of Verona,[500] and his father had the honour of frequently receiving Cæsar as his guest.[501] At an early age he went to Rome, probably for education, but his warm temperament and strong passions plunged him into the licentious excesses of the capital. During this period of his career, passed in the indulgence of pleasure and gayety, and in the midst of a dissipated society, he had no more serious occupation than the cultivation of his literary tastes and talents. The elegant tenderness of his amatory poetry made him a favourite with the fair sex, for its licentiousness was not out of keeping with the sentiments and conversation prevalent in the Roman fashionable world. It must not be supposed that the tone of society amongst the higher classes was pure and moral, like that of Cicero and his friends, or that it was not marked by the same licentious freedom which polluted some even of their most graceful poems.
The poetry of Catullus was such as might be expected from the tenor of his life. The excuse which he made for its character was not a valid one;[502] for the line in Hadrian’s epitaph on Voconius could not possibly be applied to him:—
His mistress, whom he addresses under the feigned name of Lesbia, was really named Clodia.[504] It has been said that she was the sister of the infamous Clodius; but there are no grounds for the assertion.
A career of extravagance and debauchery terminated in ruin, and though his fortune had been originally ample, his affairs became hopelessly embarrassed; and in order to retrieve them by colonial plunder, he accompanied Memmius, the friend of Lucretius, when he went as prætor to Bythinia. Owing, however, to the grasping meanness of his patron his expectations were disappointed. He returned home “with his purse full of cobwebs.” Still he enjoyed the privilege of visiting those cities of Greece and Asia which were the most celebrated for literature and the fine arts.
When he went to Asia he visited the grave of a brother who had died in the Troad, and who was buried on the Rhætian promontory; and a poem which he addressed on the occasion to Hortalus, the dissipated son of the orator Hortensius, as well as another dedicated to Manlius, bear witness to the warmth of his fraternal affection. The former is a beautiful and touching specimen of his elegiac style:—
On his return to Rome he resumed his old habits, and died in the prime of life, probably B. C. 47, as that is the latest date to which allusion is made in his writings.
His works consist of numerous short fugitive pieces of a lyrical character; elegies, such as that already quoted; a secular hymn to Diana; a poem, somewhat of a dithyrambic character, entitled Atys; and the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, a mythological poem in heroic verse. His taste was evidently formed on a study of the Greek poets, from whom he learnt not only his beautiful hendecasyllables, but also their modes of thought and expression. He had skill and taste to adopt the materials with which his vast erudition furnished him, and to conceal his want of originality and inspiration. Some of his pieces are translations from the Greek, as, for example, the elegy on the hair of Berenice, which is taken from the Greek of Callimachus, and the celebrated ode of Sappho.[505] He was one of the most popular of the Roman poets—firstly, because he possessed those qualities which the literary society of Rome most highly valued, namely, polish and learning; and secondly, because, although he was an imitator, there is a living reality about all that he wrote—a truly Roman nationality. He did not merely disguise the inspiration of Greece in a Latin dress, but invested Roman life, and thoughts, and social habits with the ideal of Greek love and beauty. For these reasons his fame flourished as long as Rome possessed a classical literature. Two eminent men only have withheld their admiration—Horace in the golden age; Quintilian in the period of the decline. The former disparages him as a lyrical poet; the latter almost passes him over in silence. Horace was jealous of a rival who was so nearly equal to himself: he could not bear the remotest chance of his claim being disputed to be the musician of the Roman lyre;[506] and he dishonestly declared that he first adapted Æolian strains to the Roman lyre,[507] notwithstanding the Lesbian character and hendecasyllabic metres of his predecessor. Quintilian could not appreciate Catullus, because his own taste was too stiff and affected, and spoilt by the rhetorical spirit of his age.
Catullus had a talent for satire, but his satire was not inspired by a noble indignation at vice and wrong. It was the bitter resentment of a vindictive spirit: his love and his hate were both purely selfish. His language of love expresses the feelings of an impure voluptuary; his language of scorn those of a disappointed one. He gratified his irritable temper by attacking Cæsar most offensively; but the noble Roman would not crush the insect which annoyed him; and although Catullus insulted him personally by reading his lampoons in his presence, not a change passed over his countenance: he would not stoop to avenge himself: and the imperial clemency disarmed the anger of the libeller. The strong prejudice of Niebuhr in favour of Roman antiquity led him to pronounce Catullus a gigantic and extraordinary genius, equal in every respect to the lyric poets of Greece previously to the time of Sophocles; he believed him to be the greatest poet Rome ever possessed, except, perhaps, some few of the early ones; but that great man also thought that Virgil had mistaken his vocation in becoming an epic instead of a lyric poet.[508] Catullus certainly possessed great excellences and talents of the most alluring and captivating kind. No genius ever displayed itself under a greater variety of aspects. He has the playfulness and the petulance of a girl, the vivacity and simplicity of a child. He has never been surpassed in gracefulness, melody, and tenderness. No one, unless he possessed the coolness and self-command of a Cæsar, could have avoided wincing under the sharp attacks of his wit: he had passion and vehemence, but he had not the grandeur and sublimity either of Lucretius or Virgil.
Although the peculiar characteristics of his poetry are chiefly to be found in his lyric and elegiac poems, there are in his longer pieces, which are less known and less admired, passages of singular sweetness and beauty. He had not sufficient grasp and comprehensiveness of mind to conduct an epic poem. His knowledge of human nature, confined as it was to one of its phases—the development of the softer affections—did not admit of sufficient variety for so vast a work. His intellectual taste, like his moral principles, was too ill-regulated to construct a well-digested plan, necessary to the perfection of an epic poem; but wherever ingenuity and liveliness in description, or pathos in moving the affections, are required, the poetry of Catullus does not yield to that of Ovid or of Virgil.
The poem, entitled the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, bears some slight resemblance to an heroic poem. Its subject is heroic, for it imbodies a legend of the heroic age. The characters of mythology play a part in it, similar to that which they support in the poems of Homer or Virgil. But it is unconnected and deficient in unity; and the plan is far too extensive for the dimensions by which it is circumscribed. Nevertheless, with all these faults, it is pleasing on account of the luxuriance of its fancy and the brilliancy of its genius. The most beautiful passage, perhaps, is the episode relating the story of Theseus and Ariadne, which is introduced into the main body of the poem as being woven and embroidered on the hangings of the palace of Holeus. The following verses are taken from this episode,[509] and form part of the complaint of Ariadne for the perfidious desertion of Theseus:—
The writers of the Augustan age and their successors paid Catullus what they considered the highest compliment, when they called him learned. Criticism referred everything to the Greek standard. The qualities which they recognised by this epithet were those which they deemed most valuable—more so even than originality and invention—an extensive acquaintance with the materials of Greek story, an elaborate study of the poets taken as models, a scientific appreciation of the cadences and harmonies of Greek versification. They were grateful for the blessings which they were conscious of having derived from mental cultivation; and the highest praise which they could bestow was to confer upon a poet the title of a learned and accomplished man.
This period, at which prose reached its zenith, could boast of other poets, also, besides Lucretius and Catullus, whose merits were considerable although they did not satisfy the fastidious taste of the Augustan age. There flourished C. Licinius Calvus,[510] C. Helvius Cinna, Valerius Cato, Valgius, Ticida, Furius Bibaculus, and Varro Atacinus.
The first of these was a lively little man,[511] an orator as well as a poet. His speeches were elaborately modelled after those of the Attic orators; and had his poems displayed the same polish, they might have satisfied Horace[512] and his contemporaries, and thus have been preserved. As it is, the fragments which remain are so brief, that it is impossible to say whether his merits were such as to justify Niebuhr in placing him amongst the three greatest poets of his age. His poetry resembled that of Catullus in spirit and morality. It was the fashionable poetry of the day, and consisted of tender elegy, playful and sentimental epigram, licentious love-songs, and bitter personality.
Cinna,[513] besides smaller poems, was the author of an epic, entitled Smyrna; the subject is unknown: but Catullus, who was his intimate friend, praises it highly, and Virgil modestly declares that, as compared with Varius and Cinna, he himself appears a goose amongst swans.[514] Valerius Cato was a grammarian as well as a poet. His two principal poems were entitled Lydia and Diana;[515] and a fragmentary poem, to which the title Diræ or Curses[516] has been given, has been generally attributed to him on the grounds that the author pours forth his woes to a mistress named Lydia. The argument of the piece is as follows:—The estate of Cato, like that of Virgil, was confiscated and made a military colony; and smarting under a sense of wrong, he imprecates curses on his lost home. Then the theme changes: his heart softens; and in sad accents he bewails his separation from his mistress, and from all his rural pleasures. This poem was formerly believed to be the work of Virgil, but neither the language nor the poetry can be compared to those of the Mantuan bard; nor do the sentiments resemble the calmness and resignation with which he bears his misfortunes. J. Scaliger, impressed with these considerations, transferred the authorship from Virgil to Cato. But there are no sufficient grounds for determining the question.
Respecting C. Valgius Rufus all is doubt and obscurity. The grammarians quote from him; Pliny[517] speaks of his learning; Horace[518] refers to him as an elegiac poet, and expresses the greatest confidence in his critical taste and judgment. Ticida is mentioned by Suetonius as bearing testimony to the merits of Valerius Cato. Bibaculus was a bitter satirist, who spared not the feelings of his friend Cato when reduced from affluence to poverty;[519] who himself had the vanity to attempt an epic poem, and by his vulgar taste provoked the severe criticism of Horace.[520]
P. Terentius Varro Atacinus was a contemporary of Varro Reatinus; and for this reason his works have often been confounded with those of the latter. He was born B. C. 82,[521] near the river Atax in Gaul, and hence he was surnamed Atacinus, in order to distinguish him from his learned namesake, who derived his appellation from property which he possessed at Reati. Very few fragments of his works are extant,[522] although his poetry was of such a character that Virgil deemed some of his lines worthy of plagiarizing.[523] His principal work, which is not spoken of in very high terms by Quintilian,[524] is a translation of the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius. Besides this, he wrote two geographical poems, namely, the Chorographia and Libri Navales, a heroic poem entitled Bellum Sequanicum, on one of the Gallic campaigns of J. Cæsar, and also some elegies, epigrams, and saturæ.[525]
A fragment of the Chorographia is preserved by Meyer,[526] the concluding lines of which were evidently imitated by Virgil, and also the following severe epigram on Licinius:—
The period at which Virgil flourished was singularly favourable both to the development and appreciation of poetical talent of the most polished and cultivated kind. The indulgent liberality of the imperial court cherished and fostered genius: the ruin of republican liberty left the intellect of the age without any other object except refinement; imagination was not harassed by the cares and realities of life. The same causes contributed to limit the range of prose composition,[527] and therefore the field was left undisputed to Virgil and Horace and their friends; and as the age of Cicero was essentially one in which prose literature flourished, so that of Augustus was the golden age of poetry. Of this age, Virgil stands forth pre-eminent amongst his contemporaries, as the representative. He exhibited all its characteristics, polish, ingenuity, and skill, and to these he superadded dignity and sublimity. The life of Virgil, commonly prefixed to his works, professes to be written by Tiberius Claudius Donatus, who lived in the fifth century. If, as Heyne thought, the groundwork is by him, it has been overlaid with fables similar to those found in the Gesta Romanorum, and owing their origin to the inventions of the dark ages. From this biography, stripped of those portions which are clearly fabulous, and from other sources, the following particulars respecting him may be derived:—P. Virgilius Maro was born on the ides (the 15th) of October,[528] B. C. 70, on a small estate belonging to his father, at Andes (Pietola,) a village of Cisalpine Gaul, situated about three Roman miles from Mantua. It has been disputed whether his name was Virgilius or Vergilius. Most probably both orthographies are correct, as Diana, Minerva, liber, and other Latin words, were frequently written Deana, Menerva, leber, &c.[529]
Virgil was by birth a citizen of Mantua,[530] but not of Rome, for the full franchise was not extended to the Transpadani until B. C. 49, although they enjoyed the Jus Latii as early as B. C. 89. The varied stores of learning contained in the Georgics and Æneid, abundantly prove that Virgil received a liberal education. It is said that he acquired the rudiments of literature at Cremona, where he remained until he had assumed the toga virilis.[531] This event, if the anonymous life is to be depended upon, took place unusually early; for it is there assigned to the consulships of Pompey the Great and Licinius Crassus,[532] in the first consulship of whom he was born. From Cremona he went to Milan, and thence to Naples, where he studied Greek literature and philosophy under the direction of Parthenius, a native of Bithynia. Muretus asserts that he diligently read the history of Thucydides; but his favourite studies were medicine and mathematics—an unusual discipline to engage the attention of the future poet, but one which, by its exactness, tended to foster and mature that judgment which distinguishes his poetry. The philosophical sect to which he devoted himself was the Epicurean; and the unfortunate general, P. Quintilius Varus, to whom he addresses his sixth Eclogue,[533] studied this system together with him under Syron.
After this, it is probable that he came to Rome, but soon exchanged the bustle of the capital, for which his bashful disposition and delicate health unfitted him, for the quiet retirement of his hereditary estate. Of this he was deprived in B. C. 42, with circumstances of great hardship, when the whole neighbouring district was divided, after the battle of Philippi, amongst the victorious legionaries of Octavius and Antony. The town of Cremona had supported Brutus, and the old republican party, and Mantua, together with its surrounding district, suffered in consequence of its too close vicinity.[534] Asinius Pollio was at that time commander of the forces in Cisalpine Gaul. He was grinding and oppressive in his administration; but being himself an orator, poet, and historian, he patronised literary men. Congenial tastes recommended Virgil to his notice, and led him to take compassion on the poet’s desolate condition. By his advice, Virgil proceeded to Rome with an introduction to Mæcenas. Through him he gained access to Octavius, and either immediately before or after the peace of Brundisium[535] his little farm was restored to him.
He now became a prosperous man, was a member of the literary society which graced the table of Mæcenas, and basked in sunshine of court favour. Horace, Virgil, Plotius, and Varius, were united by the closest bonds of friendship with Mæecenas, and accompanied him on that cheerful expedition to Brundisium,[536] when he went thither in order to negotiate a reconciliation between Octavius and Antony. Henceforth Virgil’s favourite residence was Naples.[537] Its sunny climate suited his pulmonary weakness far better than the low and damp banks of his native Mincius (Menzo.) He had, besides, a villa in Sicily, and when at Rome he lived in a pleasant house on the Esquiline, situated near those of his friends Mæcenas and Horace. It is difficult to say how Virgil became so rich: patrons were liberal in those days, and he doubtless owed a portion of his affluence to their munificence. The liberality of Mæcenas is well known; and Martial attributes the prosperity of Virgil to the favour of “the Tuscan knight.”[538] Augustus also had great wealth at his disposal, and was profuse in the distribution of it amongst his favourites.
There is a passage in the Odes of Horace[539] which seems to hint that he engaged to a slight extent in mercantile concerns: even if this formed one source of his wealth, the love of gain (studium lucri,) and anxiety about the means of living, do not appear to have hindered him from devoting his hours of serious occupation to literary labours and the diligent use of his well-stored library, whilst his leisure was given to the delights of social intercourse, for which he was so eminently qualified by his sweet temper and amiable disposition.
The poet’s term of life was not extended far beyond fifty years. He had never been healthy or robust: he sometimes spat blood, and frequently suffered from headache and indigestion.[540] Ill health was the only drawback to a life otherwise passed in calm felicity. In the year B. C. 19 he meditated a tour in Greece, intending, during the course of it, to give the final polish to his great epic poem. Greece and her classic scenes, the favourite haunts of the Muses, the time-honoured contests of Olympia, the living and breathing statues which he beheld in that home of art, evidently inspired the beautiful imagery which adorns the introduction to the third Georgic. He, however, only reached Athens: there he met Augustus, who was on his way back from Samos, and both returned together. On the occasion of this voyage, Horace wrote that tender ode[541] in which he affectionately calls him “the half of his soul:”—
On the way he was seized with a mortal sickness, which was aggravated by the motion of the vessel, and he only lived to land at Brundisium. The powers of nature, already enfeebled, were now totally exhausted, and he expired on the 22nd of September. He was buried rather more than a mile from Naples, on the road to Puteoli (Pozzuoli.) A tomb is still pointed out to the traveller which is said to be that of the poet. Nor is this improbable; for, although it is not situated on the present high-road, it is quite possible that the original direction of the road may have been changed.[542] His epitaph is said to have been dictated by himself in his last moments:—
Virgil was deservedly popular both as a poet and as a man. His rivals in literature could not envy one so unassuming and inoffensive his well-merited success, but loved him as much as they admired his poetry. The emperor esteemed him, the people respected him. “Witness,” says Tacitus,[544] “the letters of Augustus,—witness the conduct of the people itself, which, when some of his verses were recited in the theatre, rose en masse, and showed the same veneration for Virgil, who happened to be present among the audience, which they were wont to show to Augustus.” He was exceedingly temperate in his manner of living; so pure-minded[545] and chaste in the midst of a profligate and licentious age, that the Neapolitans gave him the name of Parthenias (from παρθενος, a virgin,) unselfish, although surrounded by selfishness, kind-hearted, and sympathizing. His talents and popularity never spoiled his natural simplicity and modesty, as his moving in the polite circles of the capital never could entirely wear off his rustic shyness and unfashionable appearance.
He was constitutionally pensive and melancholy, and so distrustful of his own poems, that Augustus could not persuade him to send an unfinished portion of the Æneid to him for perusal. “As to my Æneas,” he writes to the emperor,[546] when absent on his Cantabrian campaign, “if I had anything worth your reading I would send it with pleasure, but the work is only just begun, and I even blame my folly for venturing upon so vast a task. But you know that I shall apply fresh and increased diligence to carrying out my design.” It was with real reluctance that he subsequently read the sixth book to the Emperor and Octavia. In his last moments he was anxious to burn the whole manuscript; and in his will he directed his executors, Varius and Tucca, either to improve it or commit it to the flames.[547] He was open-hearted and generous, but not extravagant in the expenditure of his wealth, for he bequeathed to his brother, his friends, and the Emperor, a considerable property.
It is said that Virgil’s earliest poetical essay was an epic poem, the subject of which was the Roman wars; but that the impossibility of introducing Roman names in hexameter verse caused him to desist from the task almost as soon as he had commenced it. The minor poems which are still extant, were probably his first works. These are the Culex, Ciris, Moretum, Copa, and the shorter pieces in lyric, elegiac, and iambic metres,[548] commonly known by the name of Catalecta. The “Culex” (Gnat) is a bucolic poem, with something of a mock-heroic colouring, of which the argument is as follows:[549] A shepherd, overcome with the heat, falls asleep beneath the shade of a tree, and a venomous serpent from a neighbouring marsh stealthily approaches. A gnat flies to his rescue, and stings him on the brow. The shepherd, awoke by the smart, crushes his rescuer, but sees the serpent and kills it. The ghost of the gnat appears, reproaches him with his ingratitude, and describes the adventures he has met with in the regions of the dead. The shepherd erects a monument in his honour, and indites the following epigram:—
The “Ciris,” which some have attributed to Corn. Gallus, is the Greek legend of Scylla, who was changed into a fish, and her father Nisus into an eagle. Great use has been made by Spenser of this poem in the conversation between Britomart and her nurse Glauce, and also in Glauce’s incantations.[550] The “Moretum,” was intended to trace the employments of the agricultural labourer through the day; but it only describes the commencement of them, and the preparation of a dish of olla podrida of garden herbs called moretum. It contains an ingenious description of a cottager’s kitchen garden. The “Copa,” is an elegiac poem, not unlike in jovial spirit the scolia or drinking songs of the Greeks: it represents a female waiter at a tavern, begging for custom by a tempting display of the accommodations and comforts prepared for strangers. It describes the careless enjoyment of rural festivity: the simple luxuries of grapes and mulberries, the fragrant roses, the cheerful grasshoppers, and timid little lizards of Italy. Nor are the excitements of the dice, the joys of wine, the blandishments of love unsung. Dull care is banished far, and the enjoyment of the present hour inculcated:—
Amongst the lyric poems of Virgil is a very elegant one on the villa of his instructor in philosophy, Syron.
The poems which first established his reputation were his Bucolics or Eclogues. This latter title was given them in later times, implying either that they were selections from a greater number of poems or imitations of passages selected from the works of Greek poets.[551]
The characters in Virgil’s Bucolics are Italians, in all their sentiments and feelings, acting the unreal and assumed part of Sicilian shepherds. In fact, the Italians never possessed the elements of pastoral life, and therefore could not naturally furnish the poet with originals and models from which to draw his portraits and characters. They were a simple people, but their simplicity was rather Ascræan than Arcadian: the domestic habits and virtues of rural life in Italy were not unlike those of Bœtia, as described by Hesiod. Virgil, therefore, wisely took him as his model, and produced a more natural picture of Italian manners in his Georgics than in his Eclogues. The denizens of the little towns had the manners and habits of municipal life: their cultivation was the artificial refinement of town life, and not the natural sentiments of the contemplative shepherd. Those who lived in the country were hard-working, simple-minded peasants, who gained their livelihood by the sweat of their brow—honest, plain-spoken, rough-mannered, and without a grain of sentimentality. Pastoral poetry owes its origin to, and is fostered by, solitude; its most beautiful passages are of a meditative cast. The shepherd beguiles his loneliness by communing with his own thoughts. His sorrows are not the hard struggles of life, but often self-created and imaginary, or at least exaggerated. When represented as Virgil represents them in his Bucolics, they are in masquerade, and the drama in which they form the characters is of an allegorical kind. The connexion with Italy is rather of an historical than a moral nature: we meet with numerous allusions to contemporary events, but not with exact descriptions of Italian characters and manners. As, therefore, we cannot realize the descriptions, we can neither sympathize nor admire. Menalcas and Corydon and Alexis, and the rest, are as much out of place as the gentlemen and ladies in the garb of shepherds and shepherdesses in English family pictures. Even the scenery is Sicilian, and does not truthfully describe the tame neighbourhood of Mantua. So long as it is remembered that they are imitations of the Syracusan poet, we miss their nationality, and see at once that they are untruthful and out of keeping; and Virgil suffers in our estimation because we naturally compare him with the original whom he professes to imitate, and we cannot but be aware of his inferiority: but if we can once divest ourselves of the idea of the outward form which he has chosen to adopt, and forget the personality of the characters, we can feel for the wretched outcast, exiled from a happy though humble home, and be touched by the simple narrative of their disappointed loves and child-like woes; can appreciate the delicately-veiled compliments paid by the poet to his patron; can enjoy the inventive genius and poetical power which they display; and can be elevated by the exalted sentiments which they sometimes breathe. We feel that it is all an illusion; but we willingly permit ourselves to be transported from the matter-of-fact realities of a hard and prosaic world.
Virgil in his Eclogues was too much cramped by following his Greek original to present us with true pictures of Italian country life; although the criticism of his friend Horace with justice attributes to his rural pieces delicacy of touch and graceful wit:—
The Idylls of Theocritus are transfusions into appropriate Greek of old popular Sicilian legends which had taken root in the country, and had become part and parcel of the national character. His subjects are not always strictly pastoral, for his characters are sometimes reapers and fishermen.[553] His language, characters, sentiments, scenery, habits, incidents, are all Sicilian, and therefore all are in perfect harmony. The characters of Theocritus have a specific individuality, and are therefore different from each other; those of Virgil are generic, the representatives of a class, and therefore there is little or no variety. But still Virgil’s defects do not detract much from the enjoyment experienced in reading his Bucolic poetry. The Aminta of Tasso, the Pastor Fido of Guarini, the Calendar of Spenser, the Lycidas of Milton, the Perdita of Shakspeare, the pastorals of Drayton, Drummond, and Florian, are equally open to objection, and yet who does not admire their beauties?
The Bucolics may be arranged in two classes. Those in the first are composed entirely after the Greek model, and contain the following poems:—
I. The first, in which the poet, representing himself under the character of Tityrus, expresses his gratitude for the restoration of his property, whilst Melibœus, as an exiled Mantuan, bewails his harder fortune.
II. The second, which is generally supposed to have been the first pastoral written by him, and is principally copied from the Cyclops of Theocritus.
III. The third is an imitation of the fourth and fifth Idylls of Theocritus, and as well as the seventh, represent improvisatorial trials of musical skill between shepherds.
V. The fifth, in which two shepherds pay the last honours to a departed friend, the one singing his epitaph, the other his apotheosis. Scaliger[554] has with good reason supposed that this poem allegorized the murder and deification of Julius Cæsar. It has been often imitated by modern poets: the most beautiful imitations are Spenser’s lament for Dido, Milton’s Lycidas, Drayton’s sixth Eclogue, and Pomfret’s Elegy on Queen Mary.
VIII. The eighth, which is imitated from the second and third Idylls of Theocritus, consists of two parts; and, from the subject-matter of the second portion, is entitled “Pharmaceutria,” (the Enchantress.) Two shepherds, Damon and Alphesibœus, rival Orpheus in their musical skill, for, whilst they sing, heifers forget to graze, lynxes are stupified, and rivers stop their course to listen. It was addressed by Virgil to his kind patron Pollio, whilst employed in his expedition to Illyricum.[555] Damon, personifying an unsuccessful lover, laments that a rival has been preferred to himself. Alphesibœus, in the character of an enchantress, goes through a formula of magical incantations in order to regain the lost affections of Daphnis. In this poem a refrain, or intercalary verse, recurs after intervals of a few lines. In the song of Damon, the refrain is—