meos amores.-53. incidere, see on v. 14.-amores, perhaps i. q. amorem, and it may be the name of Lycoris, or of some other fair one; or love verses.-54. Crescent illae, etc. "Hoc vero, si quid aliud, Virgiliana elegantia dignum," Heyne. 55-61. Amidst these more tranquil occupations I will at times take the more stirring exercise of the chase. Interea is here i. q. inter ea.-mixtis Nymphis, i. q. permixtus Nymphis. Thus Prop. ii. 25, 57, Ut regnam mixtas inter conviva puellas. ―lustrabo, I will range. Voss interprets this of joining in the dances of the nymphs, and no doubt lustrare is used of dancing (Aen. vii. 391 ; x. 224); but the former interpretation is we think to be preferred.-56. acres, spirited, fierce, Dovρéovs, Ovμwders.—57. Parthenios. Mount Parthenius lay on the confines of Arcadia and Argolis.—58. Jam mihi, etc. In imagination he now follows the chase, with the huntressnymphs, over rocks and through woods, sending the arrows from his bow at the flying game.-lucos sonantes, sc. with the baying of the dogs and the shouts of the hunters. Perhaps however it is only a poetic epithet of woods, which yield a sound when agitated by the wind.-59. Partho, etc. Parthian and Cydonian are merely epitheta ornantia, as the Parthians and Cretans were the nations most famed for archery. Cydonia was one of the principal towns of Crete.-cornu, from the bow. The most ancient bows were made of the horns of goats: see Il. iv. 105.-60. tanquam, etc., 'I am planning these things as if they, or anything else, were a remedy for my love." -61. deus ille, etc, ' that god (i. e. Love) would ever learn pity from the evils which he sees men suffering through his means.' 62-69. 'Now again I see no use in employing myself in poetry or in hunting; for nothing, as I said, will change the relentless nature of that deity.'-Hamadryades, nymphs in general. See on v. 10.—ipsa, verses themselves, from which I expected more than from anything else.-63. concedite, give way, retire, as it were, ye avail nothing.-64. Non illum, etc. 'No toils that I may endure, hunting or keeping cattle, even in the most adverse regions of the earth, will avail to drive the love of Lycoris from my bosom.'-65. Nec si, etc., 'not if, as a hunter or herdsman, I endure all the rigours of a Thracian 6 winter.' The Hebrus is a river of Thrace, which was also called Sithonia, from the town of Sithone.-66. aquosae. This is merely a usual epithet of hiems, which the poet uses without reflecting that it does not accord with nives.—67. liber, the inner bark, here taken for the bark in general.—aret, is quite dried, burnt up with the great heat in the region beyond the equinoctial line.-68. Aethiopum versemus ovis, ‘I should keep the flocks of the Aethiopians.' Versare is the Greek πολεῖν (whence αἴπολος ο ύπολος) to drive, to pasture.-sub sidere Cancri, i. e. under the northern tropic.- Omnia, etc. He sagely concludes: Since Love conquers everything, there is no use in struggling any more; I may as well yield to him.' 70-77. The poet concludes in his own person. Forgetting, as it were, that it was the nymph Arethusa that he had invoked in the commencement, he now addresses the Muses in general.-71. Dum sedet. "Praesens interpositum pertinet ad cecinisse, ut Aen. x. 55–58." WunderlicH. See on vii. 6. We might have expected the imperf. of sedeo, but the necessities of the metre often induced the poets to take liberties with the tenses of verbs, and the numbers of both verbs and nouns, which prose writers could not allow themselves, and which critics employ useless ingenuity in explaining and defending. In the same way the poets of modern Italy and the Spanish peninsula frequently employ the imperf. instead of the perf. tense of verbs, for the sake of rime, as is proved by these inaccuracies occurring only at the end of lines. To the same cause (the necessities of the verse) may be ascribed the mixtures of past and present tenses by our own poets.—fiscellam. The fiscella was a basket of rushes, or as here of hibiscus, used for making cheese. Colum. vii. 8, 3.—hibisco. See ii. 30. It is called gracilis, slender, as the rods of it which he was using were such.-72. maxima, of very great value in the eyes of.-73. cujus amor, etc., for whom my love in V. 65. Εἴης δ ̓ Ηδωνῶν μὲν ἐν ὤρεσι χείματι μέσσῳ Ἕβρον πὰρ ποταμόν τετραμμένος ἐγγύθεν ἄρκτω, Πέτρᾳ ὑπὸ Βλεμύων, ὅθεν οὐκ ἔτι Νεῖλος ὁρατός.—Theoc.vii.111. creases hourly, as the green alder grows in the early spring.' -74. se subjicit, grows up, throws itself up from beneath, from the ground. Cf. Geor. iv. 385; Aen. xii. 288.—75. Surgamus, the first pers. plur. of the imper. though he speaks only of one person; for there is no first pers. sing. But perhaps he means himself and the Muses.-solet esse, etc. He probably had in view these lines of Lucretius vi. 783: Arboribus primum certis gravis umbra tributa Usque adeo capitis faciant ut saepe dolores-cantantibus. If the shade was injurious in general, it must have been so to singers: the poet only therefore gives a particular instance of a general effect.—76. Juniperi. He would seem to intimate that there was something particularly noxious in the shade of the juniper, and at the same time, that he was sitting under or near one of these trees. Martyn however says that the smell of the juniper is considered to be rather wholesome.-nocent umbrae. We believe there is no other reason for the use of the plural here than the one assigned above. Every farmer knows how injurious trees are to corn, and what a pest the close hedgerows of elm are in this country.-Ite domum, etc. See vii. 44. -venit Hesperus, the evening star is appearing, the sun is setting. OBSERVATIONS. Date. The date of this last of our author's bucolic poems is probably 714-16. See Life of Gallus. Subject. The subject is the love of the poet's friend Gallus for a mistress who had deserted him. See Life of Gallus. In order to give his composition a greater degree of poetic ornament, and to be able to imitate some passages of his favourite first idyll of Theocritus, he adopted the bucolic form, and laid the scene in Arcadia. It is one of his best eclogues, for it is on a subject in the description of which he excels, having studied it carefully, perhaps in Apollonius Rhodius. Characters and Scenery.-On these points we have here no remarks to make. NOTES ON THE GEORGICS. BOOK I. ARGUMENT. PROPOSITION, 1-5. Invocation, 6-42. Ploughing, 43-70. Fallowing, rotation, etc. 71-99. Irrigating, 100-117. Digression on the Golden and succeeding Age, 118-146. Enemies of the corn, 147-159. Implements, 160-175. Threshing-floor, 176–186. Signs of a good or bad harvest, 187–192. Preparing the seed, 193–203. Proper times for sowing different kinds of grain, 204–230. Description of the celestial sphere, the zones, etc. 231-256. Work to be done on rainy days and holidays, 257-275; on certain days of the month, 276-286; at night, by day, in summer, in winter, 287–310. Description of a summer-storm, 311-334. Remedies against it, worship of Ceres, 335-350. Signs of an approaching storm, 351-392. Signs of fine weather, 393-423. Signs in the moon, 424-437. Signs in the sun, 438-463. Prodigies that followed the death of Julius Caesar, 464-488. Civil war, 489-497. Prayer for Caesar Octavianus, 498-514. NOTES. 1-5. Quid faciat, etc. In these opening lines the poet briefly gives the subject of the four books of his poem, namely tillage, planting, grazing, and the keeping of bees. The gradation, as has been observed, is very natural and cor rect, from grasses and leguminous plants to trees, thence to animals, and terminating with those social insects which approach nearest to man in their instinct.-faciat, may make. The potential is the best suited to a didactic work, as the precepts are somewhat hypothetic.-laetas segetes, joyous (i. e. fruitful) cornfields. Laetas segetes etiam rustici dicunt, Cic. De Or. iii. 38; ager crassus et laetus, Cato R. R. 6; and perhaps (as laetamen is manure) the original sense of this adj. may have been fruitful, abundant. For seges, see Terms of Husbandry, s. v.-quo sidere, at what time, at the rising or setting of what constellation. As we shall see, the rural labours of the ancients were regulated by the times of the rising and setting of the Pleiades and other constellations.―terram vertere, sc. aratro : see Hor. S. i. 1, 28; or with the bidens, Coll.iv.5. It is the plough that is intended here.-2. Maecenas. The celebrated C. Cilnius Maecenas, at whose desire he wrote the poem: see Life of Virgil, and Hist. of Roman Empire, p. 17.-ulmis, etc. See on Ec. iii. 10.-3. cultus, attention, care. It is merely a variation of the expression, being nearly equivalent to the preceding cura. Quae quidem (oves) neque ali neque sustentari neque ullum fructum edere ex se sine cultu hominum et curatione potuissent, Cic. de N. D. ii. 63.— habendo pecori, for keeping small cattle: not as Heyne explains it, "pecoris, quod quis possidet s. alit." Habendo is the dat. of the gerund: see Zumpt, § 664. For pecori, see Terms of Husbandry, s. v.—4. experientia, experience, sc. of the beemaster, habendis being understood with apibus. It is little more than another variation of the cura of v. 3. Cf. iv. 316.— parcis. Some MSS. read parvis, one paucis, joining it with the following words. With Servius and Voss we regard parcis as an adjective qualifying apibus, and signifying thrifty, frugal. Pliny (xi. 19, 21) says of bees, Caetero perparcae et quae alioqui prodigas atque edaces non secus ac pigras atque ignavas proturbent. Wagner however (with whom Forbiger as usual agrees,) says that parcus is not here peɩdóμevos, sparing, but σrários, scanty, few (see iii. 403); and that it expresses the difficulty of keeping up, and still more of increasing, the stocks of bees; a difficulty of which, even in |