University of Virginia Library

Ver. 1. Honey.] The poet calls honey aërial and heavenly, according to the opinion of the old philosophers, who believed that it was derived from the dew of heaven. This heavenly dew they thought was received by the flowers, and thence gathered by the bees, Every reader of taste perceives how Virgil exalts and dignifies these wonderful insects, by ascribing to them thro' this whole book, the manners, passions, and actions of men. I have before said, that the characteristic of this book is elegance, and of the former, sublimity. Virgil has borrowed most of his observations upon bees from Varro, and Aristotle's treatise of animals. Modern philosophy has cleared up many mistakes which these ancients fell into, with regard to bees and other animals.

12. Sportful lambkin.] Which puts me in mind of those sweet lines of Euripides, Hippol. Coron. 73.

An author (whose meanest praise is his critical taste and judgment) instead of ηρινον in the last verse, would read ηρινος the vernal bee. Jortin on Ecclesiastical Hist. 387. vol. 2.

16. The merops.] Apiaster, or Bee-eater, is shaped like a king-fisher. It is about the size of a black-bird. Progne the daughter of Pandion was turned into a swallow, which has the feathers of its breast stained with red.

23. Palm.] Dr. Martyn observes that the palm-tree is of several sorts; but believes the species cultivated in Italy (and consequently that meant in this place) to be the date tree.

30. Willows.] In the original tranversas salices. Varro would have a small stream near the apiary not above 2 or 3 fingers deep, with several shells or small stones standing a little above the surface of the water, that the bees may drink.

36. Savoury.] The thymbra of the ancients is generally thought, says Dr. Martyn, to be some species of satureia, or savoury. Serpyllum is wild thyme. Cassia is not rosemary, as some have supposed.

56. The red'ning crabs.] This must sound very odd to modern readers. The Romans were wont to burn crabs to ashes, and used them as a remedy for scalds and burns.

61. The poet proceeds to speak of the swarming of bees, and points out the method of making them settle.

77. Cerinth, &c.] Trita melisphylla, et cerinthae ignobile gramen, says the original. Dr. Martyn, who is very accurate and full in explaining the botanical part of the Georgics, says, that the first plant seems to be a contraction of melissophyllon; and that the description of it agrees very well with the melissa or baum, a common herb in the English gardens. Cerinthe (which is derived from κηριον, a honey-comb) is the cerinthe flavo fiore asperior, or yellow flowered honey-wort. The stalks are about the thickness of one's finger, round, smooth, whiteish, and divided into several branches. The leaves embrace the stalks and branches with their bases, and diminish gradually to a point. They are of a bluish colour marked with white spots, set on both sides with prickles, and neatly indented. Dr. Martyn in his quarto edition has given a beautiful print of the cerinthe finely coloured.

78. Cymbals,] Tinitusque cie, &c. This custom is still used. Aristotle mentions it likewise, and questions whether they hear or not, and whether it be delight or fear that causes the bees to be quieted with such noises. For my own part I believe it to be of no manner of service in this case. Martyn.

85. Hosts to arms.] This battle is described with as much spirit and strength, and the fury of the combatants is painted in terms as bold and majestic, as if it were an engagement between the greatest heroes. One cannot but observe how Virgil exalts his bees by giving them all the warlike apparatus of a Roman army. Such are the expressions.—Aeris rauci canor, spicula, and praetoria, magnisque vocant clamoribus hostem, per medias acies, erumpunt portis— concurritur.

115. Spits from parch'd lips.] 'Tis observable that this is the only low, or droll image, that Virgil hath admitted into the Georgics; so careful was he of keeping up a dignity and majesty throughout his poem.

144. Teach Paestum's.] We learn from Servius, that Paestum is a town in Calabria, where the roses blow twice a year.

145. How celeri.] These exquisite lines make us wish the poet had enlarged upon the subject of gardening. We have no poem on it but an insipid one of F. Rapin, written in pure Latin indeed, but with no poetical spirit, and indeed I think not comparable to an old fragment of Columella on this subject. Considering the many great improvements made in this science, perhaps the garden is the properest and most fruitful subject for a didactic poem of any whatsoever. Especially as this art hath been lately so much improv'd by Mr. Kent, who with great taste banished the regular, strait walks, Dutch work, and unnatural uniformity, formerly so much admir'd.

151. Once.] Who that reads this, says Dr Trapp, despises not the wealth, and pities not the persons of all the great ones upon earth?

158. Lillies.] The original is, albaque circum lilia. Tho' the white lilly be the most common species of that flower, among us, yet it was the most celebrated, and best known among the ancients. Thus Virgil does not produce the epithet alba in this place, without reason. In other passages our poet has taken care to insist on the whiteness of the lilly; as in Aen. lib. 12.

And Aen. 6.

170. Pines.] Columella observes that limes are hurtful to bees, but mentions the pine as agreeable to them.

175. Planes.] This relates to the Corycians having the art of removing even large trees.

177.] Columella has endeavoured to supply what Virgil has here omitted concerning gardens, in a poem on that subject, which gives us room to wish Virgil had wrote it on this subject.

180. King.] The poet here insinuates, that Jupiter gave the bees a degree of reason, as a reward for their feeding him, when an infant, with honey, while he was conceal'd in a cave from his father Saturn.

198. Intent and watchful.] Vaniere, in his book on the management of bees, relates the following extraordinary circumstance, which he says he takes from M. Maraldi, Histoire de l' Academie Royale de Sciences, 16 Nov. 1712. sur les abeilles, p. 299.

This is an instance, if it be true, of more astonishing sagacity than any mentioned by Virgil.

205. Cyclops.] Mr. Pope observes with fine taste on this passage: “That the use of the grand style on little subjects, is not only ludicrous, but a sort of transgression against the rules of proportion and mechanics: I believe, now I am upon this head, it will be found a just observation, that the low actions of life cannot be put into a figurative style without being ridiculous, but things natural can. Metaphors raise the latter into dignity, as we see in the Georgics; but throw the former into ridicule, as in the Lutrin. I think this may be very well accounted for; laughter implies censure; inanimate and irrational beings are not objects of censure; therefore these may be elevated as much as you please, and no ridicule follows: but when rational beings are represented above their real character, it becomes ridiculous in art, because it is vicious in morality. The bees in Virgil, were they rational beings, would be ridiculous, by having their actions represented on a level with creatures so superior as men; since it would imply folly or pride, which are the proper objects of ridicule.” Pope, Postscript to the Odyssey.

236. Enfeebling joys of love.] Vaniere, who received new lights on this subject from the observations of modern philosophers, describes the queen laying her eggs in the following manner:

237. Bear.] The modern philosophers are much better acquainted with the nature of insects, than were Aristotle or Theophrastus, from whom Virgil borrowed largely in his account of bees. They assert and prove that no animal (nay no plant) is produced without a concurrence of the two sexes, and that consequently equivocal generation is an idle and most groundless opinion: See Redi de insectis. With regard to the generation of bees, I shall present the reader with a large but entertaining extract from a French author lately publish'd. The matter of the treatise is taken from the works of the learned Mr. Maraldi, and Mr. de Reaumer, and is flung into a very sprightly dialogue.

It begins with a general view of the hive. The glass hive represents a city of sixteen or eighteen thousand inhabitants. This city is a monarchy, consisting of a queen, of grandees, soldiers, artizans, porters, houses, streets, gates, magazines, and a most strict civil policy. The queen dwells in a palace in the inner part of the city; some of the cells (which run perpendicular from the top of the hive) are larger than the rest, and belong to those, who after the queen, hold the first rank in the commonwealth; the others are inhabited by the common people. The cells are all publick buildings, which belong to the society in common; for among this people there is no meum nor tuum. Some cells are close magazines for a store of honey; others for the daily nourishment of the labouring bees; others are destin'd to receive eggs, and to lodge the worm from which the young bee springs.

In the hive there is usually but one queen, six or eight hundred, or even a thousand males called drones, and from fifteen to sixteen thousand or upwards, of bees without sex, who carry on the whole policy and manufacture of the hive. The mother-bee, or the queen-mother, is the soul of the community, and but for her, every thing would languish; when she is secreted from the hive, the other bees lose all care of posterity, and make neither honey nor wax, so that the city soon becomes desolate and empty.—The rest of the bees pay her the most dutiful respect, and follow her whereever she goes, or is carried from home. Her subjects perform their several functions without any instructions, and without giving her the least trouble. Her only business is to people the hive; and this she fulfils so perfectly, as well to deserve the most honourable of all political titles, that of Parent of her country. To merit the love of her subjects, 'tis necessary she should produce from ten to twelve thousand children in the space of seven weeks, and one year with another, from thirty to forty thousand. She is easily distinguish'd from the other bees, by the form of her body, which is longer and slenderer. Her wings are shorter, in proportion to her length: in the other bees, they cover the whole body; in her, they terminate about half way, at the third ring of her trunk. She has like the rest, a sting and bladder of poison; but is with much more difficulty provoked to use them; though when she does, the wound is larger and much more painful.

The drones, or the thousand husbands of this single queen, are found in the hive only from the beginning of May to the end of July. Their number increases every day during that space of time, and is greatest when the queen is breeding; in a few days after which period they die a violent death. Their way of living is very different from the rest: for excepting the single moment when they pay their duty to the queen, they are quite idle, and enjoy a most luxurious fare; being fed only with the finest honey, whereas the common bees live in a great measure upon wax. These go out early in the morning, and don't return till they are loaded with honey and wax, for the good of the society: The drones, on the contrary, don't go abroad till about eleven o'clock to take the air, and return punctually before six at night. They have no stings, nor those long elastic teeth with which the other bees work up the honey; nor those kind of hollows, which serve them for baskets to bring it home to the hive. The other bees, or the manufacturers (as we may call them) have an infinite number of strange particularities about them, of which we can only impart a few to the reader.

Their head seems triangular, and the point of the triangle is formed by the meeting of two long elastic teeth, which are concave on the inside. In the second and third pair of their legs, is a part called the brush, of a square figure, with its outward surface polish'd and sleek, and its inward hairy, like a common brush. With these two instruments they prepare their wax and honey. The materials of their wax lie in the form of dust, upon the amina of flowers. When the bee would gather this dust, she enters into the flower, and takes it up by means of her brush, to which it easily adheres. She comes out all covered with it, sometimes yellow, sometimes red, or according to the native colour of the dust. If this dust be inclosed in the Capsulae of a flower, she pierces the Capsulae, with her long moveable teeth, and then she gathers it. When it is quite loaded with dust, she rubs herself to collect it, and rolls it up in a little mass. Sometimes she performs this part of her business by the way; sometimes she stays till she comes to the hive. As soon as it is formed into a ball about the size of a grain of pepper, she lodges it in her basket, and returns home with a joy proportionable to the quantity she brings. The honey of the bees is found in the same place with the wax. It is lodged in little reservoirs, placed at the bottom of the flower,

241. Rugged rocks.] These lines in the original are certainly misplaced; they seem to come in more properly, says Martyn, after ver. 196 of the original. I am indebted for this observation to the learned Sir Daniel Molyneux, Bart. F. R. S.

227. Taygetae.] Virgil in speaking of the rising of the Pleiades, speaks of them in the singular number, and that personally.

'Tis probable, that on the ancient globes this was a distinct constellation from Taurus, and represented by one of the sisters only, that named by Virgil. Aratus and Erastothenes both speak of it as distinct from Taurus; and the latter calls it Πλειας, and not Πλειαδες. Spence.

279. Die upon.] It is said to be a vulgar error, that bees lose their lives with their stings. Martyn.

280. Winter.] He now proceeds regularly to tell us, how to manage those hives in which the honey is left for supporting the bees through the winter, and likewise enumerates the particular vermin, and plagues that infest them.

326. But should,] The poet having already spoken of the ways of driving noxious animals from the bees, and of the method of curing their diseases; now proceeds to describe the manner after which the total loss of them may be repaired; which, he tells us was practiced by the Egyytians. Martyn.

333. Canopus.] The commentators are prodigiously divided about the meaning of these four verses. Dr. Martyn takes Virgil to mean only a description of the Delta or lower Egypt. Canopus is the west angle of that triangular region; Pelusium is the east angle, being nearest to Persia, and the south angle is the point where the Nile is divided to form the Delta. Δ. The circumstance,

is a very agreeable picture of that country, which during the inundation of the Nile resembles a vast level lake.

340. Green Egypt.] The Nile is the greatest wonder of Egypt. As it seldom rains there, this river, which waters the whole country by its regular inundations, supplies that defect, by bringing, as a yearly tribute, the rains of other countries; which made a poet say iugeniously, The Egyptian pastures, how great foever the drought may be, never implore Jupiter for rain.

To multiply so beneficent a river, Egypt was cut into numberless canals, of a length and breadth proportioned to the different situation and wants of the lands. The Nile brought fertility every where with its salutary streams; united cities one with another, and the Mediterranean with the Red sea; maintained trade at home and abroad, and fortified the kingdom against the enemy; so that it was at once the nourisher and protector of Egypt. The fields were delivered up to it; but the cities that were raised with immense labour, and stood like islands in the midst of the waters, look down with joy on the plains which were overflowed, and at the same time enriched by the Nile.

This is a general idea of the nature and effects of this river, so famous among the ancients.

There cannot be a finer sight than it affords at two seasons of the year. For if a man ascends some mountain, or one of the largest pyramids of Grand Cairo, in the months of July and August, he beholds a vast sea, in which numberless towns and villages appear, with several causeys leading from place to place, the whole interspers'd with groves and fruit trees, whose tops are only visible, all which forms a delightful prospect. This view is bounded by mountains and woods, which terminate, at the utmost distance the eye can discover, the most beautiful horizon that can be imagined. On the contrary, in winter, that is to say, in the months of January and February, the whole country is like one continued scene of beautiful meadows, whose verdure enamell'd with flowers charms the eye. The spectator beholds, on every side, flocks and herds dispersed over all the plains, with infinite numbers of husbandmen and gardeners. The air is then perfumed by the great quantity of blossoms on the orange, lemon, and other trees; and is so pure, that a wholsomer and more agreeable is not found in the world: so that nature, being then dead, as it were, in all other climates, seems to be alive only for so delightful an abode. Rollin's Ancient History, page 13, 8 vo, 1749.

355. Zephyris primum in the original. This little description of the spring diversifies the subject, and enlivens the dryness of the preceding paragraph.

360. Begin to boil.] Nothing can be expressed in a livelier manner, than this generation of the bees;

Such lines as these on a low and indeed a gross subject, shew Virgil's prodigious command of language; the two similes at the end add an ornament and an elegance likewise to the passage. It must be observed, that insects cannot be generated by putrefaction; carcases are only a proper nidus and receptacle for their young: and therefore, says Dr. Martyn, the female parent chuses there to lay her eggs, that the warmth of the fermenting juices may help to hatch them.

395. Ligea, Xantho] There are but eighteen nymphs mentioned by Virgil in this account of Cyrene's grotto; including Clymene and Cyrene herself; of which passage Mr. Dryden says, The poet here records the names of fifty river nymphs, and for once I have translated them all. Polymetis, page 316. note 46.

406. Vulcan's fruitless cares.] Some of the graver critics make an observation, which the ladies must needs think unjust and satyrical. When Dido gives a feast to Aeneas, her physician Iopas entertains the company, which were chiefly composed of men and strangers, with a song on a philsophical subject. But, say they, where Virgil introduces a nymph singing to her mistress Cyrene, and to her fellow virgins, she describes to them the loves of Mars and Venus: the dulcia furta were the subject that sweetened their labours at the loom. The poet hints at the topics which employ the conversation of the ladies when they are alone by themselves. The commentators, who make such unfair reflections, must doubtless be a set of ill-bred, abusive fellows, that know very little of the world, and less of the ladies.

423. River.] The descent of Aristaeus into the earth, is founded on an ancient superstition of the Egyptians. Servius tells us, that on certain days sacred to the Nile, boys born of holy parents, were delivered to the nymphs by the priests; who, when they were grown up, and returned back, reported, that there were groves under the earth, and an immense water containing all things, and from whence every thing is procreated.

432. Deep.] This is one of the most sublime passages in Virgil. Nothing can strike the imagination more strongly, than to conceive a person entering the bowels of the earth, and at once hearing and seeing the most celebrated rivers in the world bursting forth from their several sources. The rough and more amazing scenes of rocks, caves, and altars which Aristaeus passes thro', are at last finely softened by the kind reception he meets with from his mother, and the beautiful appearance of the nymphs spinning and singing the loves of the gods. Fracastorius has a descent into the earth in search of metals, where, no doubt, he had Virgil in his eye; and in which he has been followed by Dr. Garth.

438. Eridanus—the Po.] This passage cannot be better explained than by quoting the following words from Mr. Spence in his Polymetis:

“But there is another thing in it, with which I am not yet satisfied; and that is, Virgil's calling the Po here, the most violent of all rivers. I know one of the most celebrated and most ingenious writers of our age has endeavoured to soften this, by understanding it only of the rivers in Italy. But, (not to enquire at all whether the Po be really the most violent of all the rivers in Italy) how can Virgil be understood of the rivers of one country only, where he is expresly speaking of all the rivers of the world? and of one common point, from whence all their sources were anciently supposed to be derived?

“I am not quite clear as to that expression, replied Polymetis: but to answer you as far as I can, I must give you the opinion of a man whom you both know; and whose name I need not mention to you, when I have told you it is the person who understands Virgil in a more masterly manner, than perhaps any one in this age. It is his opinion, (with all that modesty, with which he generally offers his opinions) that the difficulty you mention may possibly be got over, by the expression joined with it; per pinguia culta. The most violent rivers in the world are such as run, or fall, through a chain of mountains; and (not to speak of any of the Apennine rivers, or rather torrents, in Italy itself) the Isar which we cross so often in the two or three last days journey before we enter Italy, is (in all that part of its course,) much more violent and more disturbed than the Po: but the Po, you know, very soon after its source, flows on thro' the vale of Piedmont, and afterwards traverses all the rich vale of Lombardy. These are the pinguia culta, which Virgil speaks of: almost the whole course of the Po is through such rich low ground: and perhaps there may not be any river in the world, which has almost all its course through so fat and rich a soil, which is so violent as the Po is.

454. An hundred groves.] I follow the sense given to this passage in the Arcadia del Sannazaro, Prosa 10.

459. Proteus.] This fable of Proteus is imitated by Virgil, from the fourth book of the Odyssey; where Menelaus is sent to consult the same deity, by the advice and assistance of his own daughter Eidothea.

509. Spray.] The circumstance of these monsters scattering the spray of the sea about them, greatly enlivens this beautiful sea-piece,

512. Like a peasant.] Virgil has imitated Homer so nicely in his adventure with Proteus, that he has not forgot this simile of the shepherd, in his copy. Lupos acuunt is wonderfully expressive, and short.

548. But with loud shrieks.] Virgil does not at length describe the serpents stinging and killing Eurydice. This from the pen of a lesser genius, would have taken up twenty lines. He contents himself with saying—alta non vidit herba; and adds immediately,

554. To thee.] There are few things in the ancient poetry more moving than the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. It hath acquired new beauties by falling into the hands of the tender and passionate Virgil; and is told by him in so melting a strain, that some of the touches he hath given it can hardly be read without tears. When we are wrought up to such a temper, it naturally leads us to compassionate the hard fate of the unhappy lovers; and we begin to feel some indignation at the captious condition, upon which he was to possess his beauty, or lose her for ever: not to look at his loved Eurydice. Arbitrary and capricious! unbefitting the just brother of Jove, and unlike the bounties of a divine, unenvious nature: unless indeed there be something else understood than appears: some truth in life or morals that lies latent under this circumstance of the tale.

The great and unhappy Lord Verulam, who was sensible of the incongruity, has given an explication of the fable; but seems not to have hit upon the real meaning. What he says is entertaining and beautiful: for he was a spirit of that high order that go ingeniously wrong, and who cannot err without instruction. But I incline to think that the moral of the fiction is rather to be learned at an ordinary music-meeting, or an unmeaning opera, than, where his lordship direct us, in the recesses of an abstruse philosophy.

Orpheus's mistress was music. The powers of it are enchanting. It lulls the reason, and raises the fancy in so agreeable a manner, that we forget ourselves while it lasts. The mind turns dissolute and gay, and hugs itself in all the deluding prospects and fond wishes of a golden dream. Whilst every accent is warbled over by a charming voice, a silly song appears sound morality, and the very words of the opera pass for sense, in presence of their accompagnament. But no sooner does the music cease, than the charm is undone, and the fancies disappear. The first sober look we take off it breaks the spell; and we are hurried back with some regret to the common dull road of life, when the florid illusion is vanish'd. Blackwall's enquiry concerning the life and writings of Homer, Sect. 11.

585. He stopt—and cast.] The philosophic goddess of Boethius having related the story of Orpheus, who when he had recovered his wife from the dominions of death, lost her again by looking back upon her in the confines of light, concludes with a very elegant and forcible application; Whoever you are that endeavour to elevate your mind to the illuminations of heaven, consider yourselves as represented in this fable; for he that is once so far overcome, as to turn back his eye towards the infernal caverns, loses, at the first sight, all that influence that attracted him on high.

587. Thrice echoed.]—Terque fragor stagnis auditus Avernis, says the original very finely. A certain dismal and hollow sound was heard through the vaults of hell. Some imagine, but I think groundlessly, that it was the shout of ghosts rejoicing for Eurydice's return. Surely the other sense is far the more poetical and more strongly imagined.

610. As Philomel.] Is not Proteus too great a poet in this simile?

633. He spoke.] Though the episode of Orpheus and Eurydice be so admirable in itself, that we thank the poet for having introduced it at any rate: yet, after all is it not stitch'd in a little inartificially? Is it to be conceived that Proteus, who, being made a prisoner, and speaking by constraint, is in no very good humour, should tell this long story (which is not very material to the point neither) to entertain Aristaeus, who has offered that violence to him? Was it not enough to inform him, that his misfortune was occasioned by Eurydice's death, without telling all these circumstances consequent of it? Perhaps it may be reply'd, that it is more material to the point than is commonly imagined. These consequences greatly aggravate the guilt of Aristaeus; and so it was proper enough, if not absolutely necessary, to recite them. Whether this answer be sufficient, or not, I neither know, nor much care. Be it as it will, I would not lose this episode, to be the author of all the best criticisms that ever were, or shall be, written upon the classics. Trapp.

663. Putrid bowels.] Observe how the poet has varied his expressions on a subject so difficult to be ornamentally expressed as this birth of the bees, for,

is quite newly expressed from what it was before in the passage above, Interea teneris tepefactus in ossibus humor .

673. Parthenope.] There may be a propriety in this that is not generally remarked. Naples was a town of indolence and pleasure, and was therefore, as some suppose, said to have been founded by Parthenope one of the Sirens, who were goddesses of indolence and pleasure:

This idea too makes the contrast between Augustus and Virgil much the stronger. Spence.

673. Then me.] I cannot forbear being of opinion that the four concluding lines of the Georgics, illo Virgilium, &c. &c. are of the same stamp and character with the four justly exploded ones, which are prefixed to the Aeneid. Audaxque juventa is, I think, an expression entirely unworthy of Virgil, and a mere botch. Besides nothing can be a more complete and sublime conclusion than that compliment to Augustus —Viamque affectat Olympo.

676. Groves.] Each book of Virgil's Georgics is in a different stile (or has a different colouring) from all the rest. That of the first is plain; of the second, various; of the third, grand; and of the fourth, pleasing. Holdsworth.