INTRODUCTORY NOTE

PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO, the friend of Augustus and the great representative poet of the first age of the Roman Empire, was a man of humble origin. Born Oct. 15, B. C. 70, the son of a small farmer near Mantua in Northern Italy, he was educated at Cremona, Milan, and Rome. Probably as a result of the turmoil of the Civil Wars, Virgil seems to have returned to his native district, where he was engaged for some time in writing his "Eclogues." Though he was never a soldier, and though there is no evidence of his having taken any part in politics, he suffered severely from the results of the wars. His father's farm lay within the territory which was confiscated by the Triumvirs for the purpose of bestowing grants of land upon their soldiers, and Virgil succeeded in having it restored only through the personal intervention of Octavianus, the future emperor. But a change of governors deprived him of protection, and he was forced to desert his heritage in peril of death, escaping only by swimming the river Mincio. The rest of his life was spent farther south, in Rome, Naples, Sicily, and elsewhere. As he gained reputation he became the possessor of a large fortune, bestowed upon him by the generosity of friends and patrons, the most distinguished of whom, apart from Augustus, was Mæcenas, the center of the literary society of the day. The "Eclogues" had been finished in B. C. 37, and in B. C. 30 he published his great poem on farming, the "Georgics." It is characteristic of his laborious method of composition that this work of little more than 2,000 lines occupied him for seven years.

The completion of the "Georgics" established Virgil's position as the chief poet of his time; and at this momentous date, when, the Civil Wars over, the victorious Augustus was laying the foundations of imperial government, the poem which was to be the supreme expression of the national life was begun. At the end of eleven years Virgil had written the whole of the "Eneid," and planned to devote three more to its final revision. But this ́revision was never accomplished, for returning from Athens with Augustus in B. C. 19, he was seized with illness and died on September 21. He was buried at Naples, where his tomb was long a place of religious pilgrimage.

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The modern appreciation of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" has tended to carry with it a depreciation of the "Eneid," the spirit of which appeals less forcibly to the taste of our time. But it is foolish to lose sight of the splendor of a poet who, for nearly two thousand years, has been one of the most powerful factors in European culture. "The concurrent testimony of the most refined minds of all times," says one of the finest of his critics, “marks him out as one of the greatest masters of the language which touches the heart or moves the manlier sensibilities, who has ever lived. A mature and mellow truth of sentiment, a conformity to the deeper experiences of life in every age, a fine humanity as well as a generous elevation of feeling, and some magical charm of music in his words, have enabled them to serve many minds in many ages as a symbol of some swelling thought or overmastering emotion, the force and meaning of which they could scarcely define to themselves."

The subtler elements of the exquisite style of Virgil no translator can ever hope to reproduce; but Dryden was a master of English versification, and the content of Virgil's epic is here rendered in vigorous and nervous couplets. "Despite many revolutions of public taste," says Professor Noyes, Dryden's latest editor, "Dryden's Virgil still remains practically without a rival as the standard translation of the greatest Roman poet; the only one that, like two or three versions of Homer, has become an English classic."

Dryden's "Dedication" is an excellent example of his prose style, and gives an interesting view of the method and standpoint of the greatest of English seventeenth century critics.

TO THE

MOST HONORABLE

JOHN, LORD MARQUIS OF NORMANBY

EARL OF MULGRAVE, &C.

AND KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER

A

HEROIC poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform. The design of it is to form the mind to heroic virtue by example. 'T is convey'd in verse, that it may delight, while it instructs: the action of it is always one, entire, and great. The least and most trivial episodes, or underactions, which are interwoven in it, are parts either necessary or convenient to carry on the main design; either so necessary, that, without them, the poem must be imperfect, or so convenient, that no others can be imagin'd more suitable to the place in which they are. There is nothing to be left void in a firm building; even the cavities ought not to be fill'd with rubbish, (which is of a perishable kind, destructive to the strength,) but with brick or stone, tho' of less pieces, yet of the same nature, and fitted to the crannies. Even the least portions of them must be of the epic kind: all things must be grave, majestical, and sublime; nothing of a foreign nature, like the trifling novels which Ariosto and others have inserted in their poems; by which the reader is misled into another sort of pleasure, opposite to that which is design'd in an epic poem. One raises the soul, and hardens it to virtue; the other softens it again, and unbends it into vice. One conduces to the poet's aim, the completing of his work, which he is driving on, laboring and hast'ning in every line; the other slackens his pace,

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diverts him from his way, and locks him up, like a knighterrant, in an enchanted castle, when he should be pursuing his first adventure. Statius, as Bossu has well observ'd, was ambitious of trying his strength with his master Virgil, as Virgil had before tried his with Homer. The Grecian gave the two Romans an example, in the games which were celebrated at the funerals of Patroclus. Virgil imitated the invention of Homer, but chang'd the sports. But both the Greek and Latin poet took their occasions from the subject; tho' to confess the truth, they were both ornamental, or at best convenient parts of it, rather than of necessity arising from it. Statius, who, thro' his whole poem, is noted for want of conduct and judgment, instead of staying, as he might have done, for the death of Capaneus, Hippomedon, Tydeus, or some other of his seven champions, (who are heroes all alike), or more properly for the tragical end of the two brothers, whose exequies the next successor had leisure to perform when the siege was rais'd, and in the interval betwixt the poet's first action and his second, went out of his way, as it were on prepense malice, to commit a fault. For he took his opportunity to kill a royal infant by the means of a serpent (that author of all evil), to make way for those funeral honors which he intended for him. Now if this innocent had been of any relation to his Thebais; if he had either farther'd or hinder'd the taking of the town; the poet might have found some sorry excuse at least, for detaining the reader from the promis'd siege. On these terms, this Capaneus of a poet ingag'd his two immortal predecessors; and his success was answerable to his enterprise.

If this economy must be observ'd in the minutest parts of an epic poem, which, to a common reader, seem to be detach'd from the body, and almost independent of it; what soul, tho' sent into the world with great advantages of nature, cultivated with the liberal arts and sciences, conversant with histories of the dead, and enrich'd with observations of the living, can be sufficient to inform the whole body of so great a work? I touch here but transiently, without any strict method, on some few of those many rules of imitating nature which Aristotle drew from Homer's