 | The eclogues and georgics of Virgil (1753) |  |
ECLOGA VI. SILENUS.
On the Epicurean philosophy natural and moral.
ARGUMENT.
This piece is perhaps one of the most beautiful of all the ten Eclogues. Virgil addresses it to Varus his friend and fellow student under the celebrated Syro an Epicurean philosopher. Two shepherds are introduced, who seize Silenus sleeping in a grotto, and compel him, with the assistance of a water nymph, to entertain them with a song he had often promised them. The god immediately begins to give them an account of the formation of things, and lays before them the system of Epicurus's philosophy both natural and moral; which last circumstance was never thought of or understood by any one translator or commentator before Catrou. After Silenus has told them how the world was made according to the doctrine of Epicurus, his adjungit Hylam; that is, say the critics, he recounted the most famous ancient fables, and some surprizing transformations that had happened in the world. How absurd and unlike the regularity and exactness of Virgil! The meaning seems to be,—that after Silenus had done with the natural, he entered upon the moral philosophy of Epicurus: which consisted in teaching men to avoid all immoderate passions and violent perturbations of mind. This was the reason that he sung to them the unnatural passion of Hercules for the boy Hylas, the brutal lust of Pasiphaë, the vanity of the Praetides, the avarice of Atalanta, and the immoderate grief of the sisters of Phaëton. All which the Epicureans condemned as enemies to that quiet and soft repose which they esteemed the perfection of virtue and happiness.
Nor blush'd to dwell amid' the woods and plains;
When chiefs and fields of fight to sing I try'd,
Apollo whisp'ring check'd my youthful pride;
Go, Tit'rus, go, thy flocks and fatlings feed,
To humbler subjects suit thy rustic reed;
Thus warn'd, O Varus, in heroic lays,
While bards sublime resound thy martial praise,
I meditate the rural minstrelsy;
Apollo bids, and I will sing of thee.
Pleas'd with the subject, with indulgent eyes
If any read, and this, ev'n this should prize,
Thy name shall eccho thro' each hill and grove,
And Phoebus' self the votive strains approve;
No page so much delights the god of verse,
As where the lines great Varus' praise rehearse.
Two sportive youths Silenus sleeping found,
With copious wine o'ercome; his flowery wreath
Just from his temples fall'n, lay strewn beneath;
His massy goblet drain'd of potent juice
Was hanging by, worn thin with age and use;
With manacles of his own garlands made;
For oft the senior had deceiv'd the swains
With hopes (for well he sung) of pleasing strains:
Young Aegle too to join the frolic came,
The loveliest Naïd of the neighb'ring stream;
Who, as the god uplifts his drowzy eyes,
With berries' purple juice his temples dies.
Pleas'd with the fraud—“Unloose me, boys, he cry'd,
“Enough, that by surprize I've been espy'd.
“Attend, ye youths, and hear the promis'd lay,
“But Aegle shall be paid a better way.”
And wondering beasts came dancing down the lawns;
The hills exulted, and each rigid oak,
High-seated on their tops, in transport shook;
Parnassus' cliffs did ne'er so much rejoice,
At the sweet echoes of Apollo's voice;
Nor Rhodope nor Ismarus that heard
The magic warblings of the Thracian bard.
He sung, at universal nature's birth,
How seeds of water, fire, and air, and earth,
Fell thro' the void; whence order rose, and all
The beauties of this congregated ball:
How the moist soil grew stiffen'd by degrees,
And drove to destin'd bounds the narrow'd seas;
How Earth was seiz'd with wonder and affright,
Struck with the new-born sun's refulgent light.
Dropt fatness and refreshment on the field;
How first up-springs sublime each branching grove,
While scatter'd beasts o'er pathless mountains rove.
Next to the world's renewal turns the strain,
To Pyrrha's fruitful stones, and Saturn's reign;
And bold Prometheus' theft and punishment,
His mangled heart by hungry vultures rent.
Snatch'd by the Naïds of the neighb'ring well,
Whom pierc'd with love, Alcides loudly mourn'd,
And Hylas, Hylas lost, each echoing shore return'd.
Then, he bewail'd the love-sick Cretan queen;
Happy for her if herds had never been;
Enamour'd of a bull's unspotted pride,
Forsaking shame, for him she pin'd and sigh'd.
The Proetian maids whose lowings fill'd the plain,
Ne'er knew the guilt of thy unnat'ral pain;
Tho' fearful oft their necks should bear the plough,
They felt in vain for horns their polish'd brow.
Ah! wretched queen! while you o'er mountains rove,
Near some dark oak regardless of your love,
He, on soft hyacinths his side reclines,
Or for some happier heifer fondly pines.
“Search where my favourite's footsteps may be found,
“Haply the herds my wanderer may lead,
“To fresher grass on rich Gortyna's mead,
“Or far away, while I such pains endure,
“The wanton heifers may my love allure!”
By the false apple's glittering shew betray'd;
The nymphs who their ambitious brother mourn'd,
He next inclos'd in bark, and to tall poplars turn'd.
How tuneful Gallus wandering, next he sings,
Indulging raptures, near poetic springs,
A muse conducted to th'Aonian seat,
Whose whole assembly rose the guest to greet;
While hoary Linus, crown'd with parsly, spake,—
“This pipe, the Muses' gift, O Gallus, take,
“Which erst the sweet Ascrean sage they gave,
“Who bad the wondering oaks their mountains leave;
“Go, sing on this thy fam'd Grynaean grove,
“So shall Apollo chief that forest love.”
Whose barkings fierce the wand'ring Greeks alarm'd,
Whose hungry dogs the shrieking sailors tore,
And round her dungeon ting'd the sea with gore.
And dire revenge of Philomela's rape,
Who murder'd Itys' mangled body drest,
And to his father serv'd the direful feast.
What Phoebus sung, Eurota's banks along,
And bade the listening laurels learn the song,
All these Silenus chaunts; the vales reply,
And bear their echoes to the distant sky;
Till Hesper glimmering o'er the twilight plains,
To fold their counted sheep had warn'd the swains;
The heav'ns delighted with the matchless lay,
To Hesper's beams unwillingly gave way.
Ver. 3. Chiefs.] This alludes to Virgil's attempt to write an historical poem on the actions of the Alban kings.
6. Humbler.] The word deductum is a metaphor taken from wool, which by spinning is made smaller and smaller. Tenui deducta poemata filo. Hor. Ruaeus.
22.] The commentators are equally divided about the true meaning of procul tantum, which undoubtedly signify near or just by; tantum procul, is barely at a distance.
44. How seeds of water.] This is the system of the atomical philosophers; tho' it is certain Epicurus was not the inventor of this doctrine, but received it from Democritus, These philosophers held, that there were two principles of all things, body, and void; or as the moderns speak, matter, and space; and that by a fortuitous concourse of these atoms, or particles of matter, the universe was formed without the assistance of a directing mind.
47. Moist.] The earth by growing compact and solid, forced the waters to retire from it, and to form the seas. Thus the sea was separated or distinguished, which is the proper meaning of disciudere. Martyn.
50. Struck with the new-born sun's.] This circumstance of the earth's being amazed at the first appearance of the sun, is strongly imagined; yet has been omitted by several translators.
58. His mangled heart by hungry vultures rent.] This tale has been prettily allegorized. It is an ingenious but cruel story which the poets have contrived, to express the train of cares brought into life by Prometheus or Foresight: The chains which fasten him to the rock, and the insatiable vulture that rends his vitals every morning. Blackhall's life of Homer. Page 124.
62. And Hylas.] Hylas the favourite of Hercules falling into a well, was said to be snatched away by the nymphs. Pasiphae the wife of Minos king of Crete, was said to have had an unnatural passion for a bull. The daughters of Proetes, king of the Argives, being struck with madness by Juno, imagined themselves to be cows.
63. Cretan queen] The medals of the people of this town are mark'd with a cow or bull. Lord Pembroke's medals, 2, 34, 8. Quære, whether they had any sacred cattle of that kind kept there? or, whether the woman riding on it be not Pasiphae? Gortyna was a city of Crete. Spence.
67. At this verse, Proetides implerunt, &c. begins the famous manuscript of Virgil in the Lorenzo library; authorized by one of the consuls, and dated by him in the 5th century. Spence.
73. Side reclines] In the original fultus hyacintho. Among the ancients every one was said to be fultus by whatsoever he rested upon. Thus we read Pulvino fultus in Lucilius. Servius. The Rumen or Paunch is the first of the four stomachs of those animals which are said to ruminate or chew the cud. See Martyn.
81.] Hippomanes being engaged in a race with Atalanta, in order to obain her in marriage, threw down a golden apple whenever she gained ground upon him; which she stooping to gather up, Hippomanes had an opportunity of getting before her, and of consequence of obtaining the lovely prize. The sisters of Phaeton consumed themselves with weeping for his death, and were transformed into trees. Phaeton rashly attempting to drive the chariot of the sun, would have set fire to the earth if Jupiter had not struck him down with a thunderbolt.
84. Inclos'd.] I have ventured to translate literally circumdat, because it is very lively. He did not sing how they were inclosed with moss, but he inclosed them.
88. When Virgil himself once entered the theatre, all the spectators rose up to honour his entrance.
89. Linus.] Virgil has been blamed very ridiculously for not saying any thing of Homer in his sixth Aeneid (637. 677.) where if he had said any thing of him, he must have put him in Elysium before he was born. It seems more just to complain that he has not mentioned him in all his works. He seems to have had a fair opportunity here, and another in the fourth Eclogue (v. 55.) But have not the poets he mentions in both these places some relation to pastoral poetry? And might not the mentioning of an epic poet be improper in both? Here he names Linus only; and before, the same Linus, Orpheus, and Pan. Spence.
| The eclogues and georgics of Virgil (1753) | |