The works of John Dryden :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Poet celebrates the birthday of Saloninus, the son of Pollio, born in the consulship of his father, after the taking of Salona, a city in Dalmatia. Many of the verses are translated from one of the Sibyls, who prophesied of our Saviour's birth.

Sicilian Muse, begin a loftier strain!
Though lowly shrubs, and trees that shade the plain,
Delight not all; Sicilian Muse, prepare
To make the vocal woods deserve a consul's care.
The last great age, foretold by sacred rhymes,
Renews its finished course: Saturnian times
Roll round again; and mighty years, begun
From their first orb, in radiant circles run.
The base degenerate iron offspring ends;
A golden progeny from heaven descends.
O chaste Lucina! speed the mother's pains;
And haste the glorious birth! thy own Apollo reigns!

364

The lovely boy, with his auspicious face,
Shall Pollio's consulship and triumph grace;
Majestic months set out with him to their appointed race.
The father banished virtue shall restore,
And crimes shall threat the guilty world no more.
The son shall lead the life of gods, and be
By gods and heroes seen, and gods and heroes see.
The jarring nations he in peace shall bind,
And with paternal virtues rule mankind.
Unbidden earth shall wreathing ivy bring,
And fragrant herbs (the promises of spring),
As her first offerings to her infant king.
The goats with strutting dugs shall homeward speed,
And lowing herds secure from lions feed.
His cradle shall with rising flowers be crowned:
The serpent's brood shall die; the sacred ground
Shall weeds and poisonous plants refuse to bear;
Each common bush shall Syrian roses wear.
But when heroic verse his youth shall raise,
And form it to hereditary praise,
Unlaboured harvests shall the fields adorn,
And clustered grapes shall blush on every thorn;
The knotted oaks shall showers of honey weep;
And through the matted grass the liquid gold shall creep.
Yet, of old fraud some footsteps shall remain;
The merchant still shall plough the deep for gain,
Great cities shall with walls be compassed round,
And sharpened shares shall vex the fruitful ground;
Another Tiphys shall new seas explore;
Another Argo land the chiefs upon the Iberian shore;
Another Helen other wars create,
And great Achilles urge the Trojan fate.

365

But when to ripened manhood he shall grow,
The greedy sailor shall the seas forego;
No keel shall cut the waves for foreign ware,
For every soil shall every product bear.
The labouring hind his oxen shall disjoin;
No plough shall hurt the glebe, no pruning-hook the vine;
Nor wool shall in dissembled colours shine;
But the luxurious father of the fold,
With native purple, or unborrowed gold,
Beneath his pompous fleece shall proudly sweat;
And under Tyrian robes the lamb shall bleat.
The Fates, when they this happy web have spun,
Shall bless the sacred clew, and bid it smoothly run.
Mature in years, to ready honours move,
O of celestial seed! O foster-son of Jove!
See, labouring Nature calls thee to sustain
The nodding frame of heaven, and earth, and main!
See to their base restored, earth, seas, and air;
And joyful ages, from behind, in crowding ranks appear.
To sing thy praise, would heaven my breath prolong,
Infusing spirits worthy such a song,
Not Thracian Orpheus should transcend my lays,
Nor Linus crowned with never-fading bays;
Though each his heavenly parent should inspire;
The Muse instruct the voice, and Phœbus tune the lyre.
Should Pan contend in verse, and thou my theme,
Arcadian judges should their god condemn.

366

Begin, auspicious boy! to cast about
Thy infant eyes, and, with a smile, thy mother single out.

367

Thy mother well deserves that short delight,
The nauseous qualms of ten long months and travail to requite.
Then smile! the frowning infant's doom is read;
No god shall crown the board, nor goddess bless the bed.

In Latin thus—

Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem, etc.

I have translated the passage to this sense—that the infant, smiling on his mother, singles her out from the rest of the company about him. Erythræus, Bembus, and Joseph Scaliger are of this opinion. Yet they and I may be mistaken; for, immediately after, we find these words, cui non risere parentes, which imply another sense, as if the parents smiled on the new-born infant; and that the babe on whom they vouchsafed not to smile was born to ill-fortune: for they tell a story that, when Vulcan, the only son of Jupiter and Juno, came into the world, he was so hard-favoured that both his parents frowned on him, and Jupiter threw him out of heaven: he fell on the island Lemnos, and was lame ever afterwards. The last line of the Pastoral seems to justify this sense—

Nec Deus hunc mensâ, Dea nec dignata cubili est.

For, though he married Venus, yet his mother Juno was not present at the nuptials to bless them; as appears by his wife's incontinence. They say also, that he was banished from the banquets of the gods. If so, that punishment could be of no long continuance; for Homer makes him present at their feasts, and composing a quarrel betwixt his parents with a bowl of nectar. The matter is of no great consequence; and therefore I adhere to my translation, for these two reasons: first, Virgil has his following line—

Matri longa decem tulerunt fastidia menses,

as if the infant's smiling on his mother was a reward to her for bearing him ten months in her body, four weeks longer than the usual time. Secondly, Catullus is cited by Joseph Scaliger as favouring this opinion, in his Epithalamium of Manlius Torquatus—

Torquatus, volo, parvolus,
Matris e gremio suæ
Porrigens teneras manus,
Dulce rideat ad patrem, etc.

What if I should steer betwixt the two extremes, and conclude that the infant, who was to be happy, must not only smile on his parents, but also they on him? For Scaliger notes, that the infants who smiled not at their birth, were observed to be αγελαστοι, or sullen (as I have translated it) during all their life; and Servius, and almost all the modern commentators, affirm that no child was thought fortunate on whom his parents smiled not at his birth. I observe, further, that the ancients thought the infant who came into the world at the end of the tenth month was born to some extraordinary fortune, good or bad. Such was the birth of the late Prince of Condé's father, of whom his mother was not brought to bed till almost eleven months were expired after his father's death; yet the College of Physicians at Paris concluded he was lawfully begotten. My ingenious friend, Anthony Henley, Esq., desired me to make a note on this passage of Virgil; adding (what I had not read) that the Jews have been so superstitious as to observe not only the first look or action of an infant, but also the first word which the parent or any of the assistants spoke after the birth; and from thence they gave a name to the child, alluding to it.