THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
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 The death of Virgil, a dramatic narrativ 
 
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THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 A DRAMATIC NARRATIVE 
 
 BY 
 
 T. H. WARREN, M.A., Hon. D.C.L. 
 
 PRESIDENT OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 VICE-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 
 1907 
 
 ^ 
 
TO 
 
 THE DEAR MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 SIR RICHARD JEBB 
 
[Scene IV, Virgil's Soliloquy, appeared in The 
 Monthly Review for June, 1907, and is reprinted with 
 Mr. Murray's kind consent.] 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 THE occasion and manner of Virgil's death are 
 briefly but graphically recorded by Suetonius 
 and other ancient authorities. For some eleven 
 years the poet had been engaged upon the composition 
 of the Aeneid. Undertaken in this shape at the sugges- 
 tion of Augustus, it was, strictly speaking, a revival of 
 an earlier ambition, for in youth he had begun an Epic 
 on the * Story of Rome ', but had put it aside, daunted, 
 it is said, by the difficulty of the material, and the 
 intractability of the proper names. He was now in 
 his fifty-second year and felt the ' lust of finishing ', 
 and with that object determined to retire to Greece 
 and Asia and there devote three continuous years to 
 the one task of correcting and perfecting his poem, 
 intending afterwards to keep the rest of his life free 
 for his favourite study, Philosophy. He began his 
 journey, but at Athens met Augustus returning from 
 the East and, persuaded by him, gave way and decided 
 to return with him. Before leaving Athens, however, 
 he made an archaeological visit to the neighbouring 
 town of Megara, and while exploring its antiquities 
 under a very hot sun contracted a low fever. This he 
 
6 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 aggravated by sailing straight home, and finally, reach- 
 ing Brundisium in a critical state, died there a few days 
 after his landing, namely upon the 2ist of September, 
 19 B.C. 
 
 His ashes were carried to Naples, where he had 
 passed many years of his life, and buried in a tomb on 
 the way to Puteoli, just before the second milestone. 
 For this tomb he had written the following couplet : 
 
 Mantua me genuit ; Calabri rapuere ; tenet nunc 
 Parthenope ; cecini pascua^ rura^ duces. 
 
 He left one moiety of his estate to his half-brother 
 Proculus, one^fourth part to Augustus, and one-twelfth 
 to Maecenas, appointing as his residuary legatees Lucius 
 Varius and Plotius Tucca, the same two who after his 
 death, by the Emperor's orders, edited the Aeneid. He 
 had begged of Varius before leaving Italy that, if any- 
 thing happened to him, Varius would burn the Aeneidy 
 but Varius had always replied that he should do nothing 
 of the kind. The poet therefore in his last sickness 
 kept on calling for the casket which contained it, in 
 order that he might commit it himself to the fiames, 
 but no one would give it him, and either, as some say, 
 he left no express provision about it, or if, as others 
 relate, he ordered in his will that it should be burnt, 
 Augustus overruled this clause. He had bequeathed 
 the rest of his papers to Varius and Tucca, as his literary 
 executors, on condition that they should publish nothing 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 7 
 
 which he had not himself given to the world. Augustus 
 therefore, not willing that so great a work should perish, 
 ordered Varius and Tucca to publish it, putting it into 
 shape with as little rehandling as possible, omitting if 
 they liked anything that was superfluous, but not adding 
 a syllable. This they did. They struck out here and 
 there some lines which the poet himself might have 
 finally decided to omit, but they inserted nothing, leav- 
 ing the half-lines incomplete, as we read them tb-day. 
 
 The Scene of the poem is laid at Brundisium, and it 
 opens with Virgil's landing there. The Jetton, if action 
 it can be called and not rather passion, occupies portions 
 of the few days during which the poet lingered. 
 
 The Persons are, Virgil himself, and his secretary Eros 
 (who, surviving him by many years, told in his old age 
 more than one story of his great master, especially as 
 regards his manner of composition) ; Augustus ; and 
 Maecenas. An Apothecary speaks once. ' Mute Masks ' 
 are, the people of the inn, attendants, sailors, soldiers, &c. 
 
 An old and charming story, preserved in some Latin 
 lines formerly sung in the Mass of St. Paul at Mantua, 
 relates that the Apostle of the Gentiles, in the course of 
 his famous journey to Rome, when, as we know from 
 the narrative in the Acts, he disembarked at Puteoli 
 and was met by the brethren there, was conducted to 
 
8 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 the neighbouring tomb of Virgil, and wept because he 
 had come too late to convert this beautiful soul, by 
 Christian tradition ever regarded as * naturally Christian ', 
 to the new and true faith. The lines, the original of 
 which will be found in Comparetti's Firgilio nel Medio 
 Evo, chap, vii, may be thus rendered : 
 
 To Maro's mound the way they led : 
 The Apostle raining o'er the dead 
 
 The true and tender tear ; 
 Alive, he cried, hadst thou been found, 
 How high a saint I here had crowned. 
 
 Thou poet without peer 1 
 
THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 First Day, September i8, b.c. 19 
 THE HARBOUR OF BRUNDISIUM 
 
 Virgil, Eros, the Emperor Augustus, Maecenas, 
 their Suite, Body-guard, Sailors of the ship, ^c. 
 
 The ship is resting by the quay, to which it has been made 
 fast. The other passengers have disembarked. Virgil, 
 who has lain on deck till all is ready to land him, speaks 
 in a voice faint at first, but gradually gaining strength. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Land 1 land ! which from the tossing billow's top. 
 How earnestly mjr fevered brain desired. 
 How eagerly my straining eyes descried. 
 Under its misty ridges lying low : 
 Italy ! Italy at last, at last ! 
 Aye, lift me from the ship upon the shore ; 
 And let me rest and breathe a litde, so . . , 
 
 [They carry him on shore and lay 
 
 him on a couch on the quay. 
 
 He speaks again, with pauses. 
 
lo THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 Now I shall live or die in mine own land : 
 
 Italy, Italy, a land to love, 
 
 A land to live for, a land to die for, a land, lo 
 
 If death hath dreams, to dream of even in death ! 
 
 If death hath dreams, if dying be not waking : 
 For what are lives but dreams within a dream ? 
 
 Italy, Italy, from end to end 
 How have I loved thee ! from the Upper Sea 
 Even to the Lower, from the far white wall 
 And silver spires mirrored in sapphire lakes 
 That moat the ample plain where I was born ; 
 Down by the Sirens' bay, my second home, 
 Warm, wide, and blue, laving a shore divine, 20 
 
 But reared on treacherous crust of ash and slag. 
 Heaven built on Hell, Venus with Vulcan wed, 
 Where Heaven and Hell and Earth of old, they say, 
 In unforgettable conflagration jarred, 
 And still the flame sleeps underneath the flowers ; 
 To this dull, dreary, rough, Calabrian coast. 
 Whereon my frail bark beaches but to break ; 
 Never, never to put to sea again ! 
 
 Italy, Italy . . . 
 
 How have I hymned thy beauty and thy wealth, 3° 
 
 * Mother of increase, mighty mother of men ' I 
 
 And fain had sung the glory of thine annals. 
 
SCENE I II 
 
 And all the wondrous ways of God to Rome, 
 Toiling to make thine honour greater yet, 
 Loftier and lordlier on my fluctuant line ; 
 But fate has other ends and other doom. 
 Fate and those awful presences and powers 
 That throng the gloomy gate where I must pass. 
 
 How say you, friends, *'tis but a passing fever 
 Fomented by the long and weaiy voyage * : 40 
 
 ' Rest and my native air, medicine and comfort. 
 Shall soon, you think, restore me to myself ? 
 Well, bear me to the inn and to my bed, 
 My good Eros will see me well bestowed ; 
 And you, lord Caesar, you sleep here to-night : 
 Ask for me in the morning ere you start. 
 
 [^Tkey carry him to the inn. He 
 rests awhile on a touchy and 
 at length speaks again. 
 Come then, Eros, make haste, unpack our boxes ; 
 Get pen and paper ready, and the poem. 
 Have it at handj for we must sift and sort 
 Books and affairs as soon as strength allows. 50 
 
 I did not tell them, but we have not long : 
 For I am dying, Erosj and aU my projects 
 Stand like those halt half-lines, my Aeneid's blot 
 — Though some may read in them pathetic beauty — 
 Blossoms wind-wUted, an arrested music 
 
12 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 Left imperfect and never to be finished. 
 
 Ah 1 if some miracle of refluent life, 
 
 Some warm afflatus of the instant God, 
 
 Might breathe on them, even such as you remember 
 
 Filled, as we read and wrote, the idle clarion 60 
 
 From the cold lips of the dead trumpeter dropt, 
 
 And bade it blare to battle evermore . . . 
 
 It may not be ; Greece conquers conquering Rome, 
 
 Greece jealous of Sicilian strains renewed. 
 
 And song of Ascra sung to Italy ; 
 
 It could not be ; thy bays, Maeonides, 
 
 Are safe from me — nay, they were ever safe : 
 
 I sought to rival, not to rob thy crown ! 
 
 * Pirate and plagiary,' they cried, the critics ; 
 
 •Rob Homer,' let them try, they'll find 'tis easier 70 
 
 To wring his cudgel from Alcides' clutch 
 
 Than make one line of Homer truly ours. 
 
 Yet what is that echoing in my faint brain ? 
 
 ' Way^ bards of RomSy and Grecian bards make way. 
 
 More than the Iliad soon shall see the day : ' 
 
 What fond and flattering friend thus prophesied ? 
 
 'Twas he, Assisium's melancholy son, 
 
 Crabb'd, dark may be, but a right elegist, 
 
 With true love for his lady and his land, 
 
 Passions that swell the slight pentameter 80 
 
SCENE I 13 
 
 At times to epic weight and majesty ; 
 Not like that glib precocious lawyer's lad 
 They brought to stare at me : I only saw him, 
 Nor heard his exercises of the school. 
 
 [He falls back on the couch, dozes 
 uneasily, then starts up. 
 
 * More than the Iliad, more than the Iliad ' ; lights. 
 Bring lights, Eros ! my head is clearer now, 
 
 I think that I could add a touch or two. 
 
 Complete, perhaps, one hemistich to-night : 
 
 ' Lo, monstrous miens, appalling potencies 
 
 Of godhead, foes to Troy ! . . . once more I see them, 90 
 
 Those awful forms of angry deities ; 
 
 What then should follow ? Stay, they fade again, 
 
 • Jjo, round and round the horizon land no more I 
 Lo, nothing but the welkin and the wave I 
 
 At sea again, — all swims, — I am overwhelmed. 
 
 [Overcome with fatigue, falls asleep. 
 
 EROS 
 My master sleeps, 'tis well. I'll watch beside ; 
 To-morrow better fortune may betide. 
 
SC6:Mi6 II 
 
 Second Day, September 19 
 
 VIRGIL'S ROOM IN THE INN 
 
 Virgil, Eros, the Emperor Augustus, Maecenas 
 
 EROS 
 Master, the Emperor and Maecenas send, 
 'Their litters wait to carry them to Rome 
 Where they have business of high import, io< 
 
 The Emperor's entry, and a hundred matters 
 That, after his long absence in the East, 
 Accumulated look for his return : 
 And yet, if you could go with them to-morrow. 
 Gladly they would remain another night ; 
 If not, they fain would bid good-bye to-day 
 And let you follow at convenience.* 
 
 What shall I tell them — say that you are better, 
 
 And that to-morrow you will start with them ; 
 
 Or let them come and see you for themselves ? ii< 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Better, perhaps, Eros, and yet — I know not — 
 But let them come ; 'twere best they came at once. 
 
SCENE II 15 
 
 The Emperor, the Emperor must not wait ; 
 
 Crown of the world, and lord of many legions. 
 
 Why should he linger by a poet's pillow ? 
 
 And for Maecenas, he too has his calls 
 
 Like every man, ' of business and desire ' ; 
 
 And if I know him, good as is his heart, 
 
 'Twere cruelty to keep him moping here 
 
 In this dull sorry traveller's hostelry, 120 
 
 Far from his comforts and delights of town, 
 
 When duty does not hold him from their charm. 
 
 No, let them post along the Appian way ; 
 
 I think to-morrow I may start somewhither. 
 
 But not with them, I think ; let them be free. 
 
 Say their farewells to-day, and so begone, 
 
 [Eros goes out. Virgil continues. 
 The Appian way 1 ah, what a merry tour 
 We made whilome along the Appian way, 
 Maecenas, Capito, Plotius, Varius, Horace, 
 Days for white stones ; what zest, what frolic wit, 130 
 Rough roads, smoked dinners, water bad or none. 
 The horseplay and the clumsy repartee 
 Of clown and pantaloon, what mirth it made ! 
 More comic still, better than any stage. 
 The play of unprofessed provincial stars. 
 Traveller and boatman's rival serenades. 
 And strutting pomp of country justices ; 
 We laughed the rough way smooth, the long road short. 
 
1 6 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 Till all too soon Brundisium closed our path. 
 
 How differently it closes mine to-day — 140 
 
 Nay, how more differently reopens it, 
 
 If I must travel soon another track 
 
 And pay my passage to another boatman ; 
 
 No fear hell ever cry his bark is full. 
 
 Eros returrn followed by Augustus and Maecenas 
 
 EROS 
 His Highness and His Lordship. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 
 Bring them in. 
 
 AUGUSTUS 
 Dear friend, how fare you ? Glad indeed am I 
 Eros reports you better, yet you are wise 
 To wait and rest, I think ; we shall be busy 
 Both on the journey and arrived at Rome ; 
 You will rejoin us when our cares are less. 150 
 
 I cannot but rejoice I brought you back 
 With the great poem safe ; 'tis all but finished — 
 Or all save you would count it finished now ; 
 You'll perfect it at home ; let me look at it. 
 I see you have it underneath your hand ; 
 Those later books you know I have not seen. 
 Or only in a first unpolished draft. 
 
SCENE II 17 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Unpolished are they still. Caesar 1 lord Caesar 1 
 It may be I am dying, will you heed 
 A dying man's request ? The poem 's here 160 
 
 That I may burn it if I should not live 
 To better it : Caesar, will you burn it now. 
 Or will you swear by Caesar's head to burn it 
 Hereafter, if I leave it you by will ? 
 
 AUGUSTUS 
 Nay, that I cannot, and I will not, Virgil : 
 Your verses are the gilding of mine age, 
 To make it brave in after memory. 
 How says friend Horace, with his happy tact 
 Of phrase, and common sense made musical ? 
 
 * The world J e'er Agamemnon came^ 170 
 
 Had witnessed many a gallant wight ; 
 No sacred poet sang their fame : 
 Unwept^ unknown they sleeps engulfed in endless night' 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Horace shall sing you, then ; he'll do it better, 
 In briefer compass, more enduringly ; 
 Brief lays float farthest down the stream of time. 
 
 AUGUSTUS 
 But when the stream becomes the sea they founder : 
 Homer's twin caravels ride gallant yet 
 Where many a lesser craft hath sunk from sight. 
 
1 8 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Caesar, your house hath ever been my stay ; i8o 
 
 Your uncle was the patron of my people, 
 The hero of the Gallic provinces. 
 Half-sainted for his tragic martyrdom. 
 You bade me sing, made me your laureate ; 
 But 'twas no laureate task, love's labour rather. 
 To laud the line and glorify the rule 
 Which made us Roman, gave us liberty. 
 And to the battling universe brought back peace : 
 If worthily 'twere done, I had died happy ; 
 But 'tis not worthy ; wherefore, Caesar, burn it. 190 
 
 AUGUSTUS 
 What says the book itself? first let me see it. 
 
 [^Takes a roll and turns it over. 
 Virgil, your verses are an oracle 
 Which many men will reckon half-divine ; 
 Kings in the crisis of their fortune's fate 
 Shall question them, I prophesy, hereafter. 
 Let us make trial now, open at random. 
 And take the first line of the column, so. 
 
 [Reads. 
 * We have lived full long together^ good my horsey 
 If mortal lives can reckon short or long.^ 
 Nay, that's too sad. 
 
SCENE II 19 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Not so, for, dearest lord, aoo 
 
 True oracles speak oft unpleasing truth. 
 
 AUGUSTUS 
 Let 's try again, turn to another place : 
 ^For each is set his own appointed day^ 
 A brief and irrecoverable span 
 Is all metis life., but to make gkry grow 
 With glorious deedSf thisy this, is virtue's task.' 
 That's better, — 
 
 And glorious words make glory longer still. 
 Let 's try once more : 
 
 ' Us to new tears the old dire destinies no 
 
 Of warfare summon still : Hail, gallant Pallas, 
 For ever, and for ever fare thee well T 
 Now, verily, I could find it in my heart 
 To burn the book that makes us all so sad. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Nay, but 'tis true, dear lord, and you must on, 
 Whether I die or live. I well remember, 
 Caesar, that distant day when first we met ; 
 'Twas when, a young and brilliant boy, you entered 
 The lecture-room of old Epidius ; 
 You a blithe freshman, I an awkward senior, s2o 
 Unapt for rhetoric ; yet something drew me 
 Toward you ; awhile the bar of rank and place 
 
 B 2 
 
20 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 And the time's tumult held us far apart, 
 
 Yet I nursed hope, and late, the tumult over. 
 
 Wherein I wellnigh perished, found you again. 
 
 To me you were a god, giving me what is 
 
 The breath of poets, calm and competence. 
 
 Fain had I lent my life to aid your ends ; 
 
 Perchance I am giving it, not as I meant, 
 
 Yet one thought comforts me if I must cease, 230 
 
 I saw the dawning of your fortune's day, 
 
 I shall not see the setting. Long, long, Gaesar, 
 
 Be its fair orbit, far the splendid moment 
 
 "When pale above the crimson of your passing 
 
 Your mother's gentle planet hung on high 
 
 Shall summon you to shine among the stars ! 
 
 AUGUSTUS 
 I hope I shall not outlive all my friends ; 
 'Tis the worst trial of an aged ruler 
 That he must trust new tools for those that grew 
 Apt to his hand in youth, and he to them. 440 
 
 Gladly would I remain with you, dear Virgil ; 
 The happiest hours I ever knew were those 
 When, after Actium's arduous agony, 
 I rested at Atella, and you read 
 The Georgics to me with Maecenas here ; 
 I look for more as happy, when you shall read 
 The tale of Actium, softened now by time. 
 
SCENE II 21 
 
 Meanwhile I must to Rome without delay, 
 
 For if that cold suspicious saying stands, 
 
 * Rome is a she-wolf, grip her by the ears, 250 
 
 And you may hold her, but ware how you loose her 
 
 Even for an instant.' So, farewell ; I'll send 
 
 My own physician to you ; farewell, Virgil. 
 
 I'll speak to Eros upon it. Eros, a moment. 
 
 \_The Emperor beckons Eros aside. 
 Is he in earnest, think you ? this grand poem, 
 So various, lofty, lovely, his life's crown. 
 For a few flaws, to burn, he cannot mean it ; 
 And yet — but no, it must not be ; to you 
 We look to save it and him, from himself. 
 Master and masterpiece, be true to both ! a6o 
 
 EROS 
 O my lord Caesar, think you my lord 's dying ? 
 
 AUGUSTUS 
 Nay, good Eros, not that, but in some phase 
 Of dull depression or tense aching brows ; 
 — You know his innocent sheer unworldliness, 
 His shy fastidious self-depreciation — 
 He may despond, destroy it, anon too late 
 Recover life to find life's labour lost. 
 Prevent such momentary dangerous mood. 
 Hinder, defer, plead our authority, 
 Use craft, mislay, be absent when he calls ; i?© 
 
22 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 All 's fair in love and art ; Rome must not lose 
 Her Iliad and her Odyssey at once. 
 
 EROS 
 My Lord, your Highness loves him, and your word 
 Is law to him and me in all save this, 
 He must obey his genius, and I him. 
 Shy seems he, sweet and gentle, but the edge 
 Of his fine temper steeled by patience 
 Is like some brand in Tiber trebly dipped. 
 I know not how it may be ; twice ere now 
 He made as he would fling it in the flame. 280 
 
 I think he is not certain of his wish ; 
 Thus much, I will be vigilant and try all, 
 All lengths true loyalty and love may dare. 
 
 [^Meanwhile Maecenas approaches the couch. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 
 You too, Maecenas, much I owe you also. 
 
 My lands, my life, and Caesar's intimacy. 
 
 The basis and continuance of my fortunes. 
 
 Gift upon gift, but best the equal friendship 
 
 Which made the rest not irksome to receive ; 
 
 I cannot pay you, not were I to live 
 
 To add another Georgic to the tale. 29° 
 
 \_Aside. 
 (My testament shall speak my love anon 
 
 Though with a weight too litde for my love.) 
 
 But one thing let me now be bold to say 
 
SCENE II 23 
 
 I had said ere now, but wanted fitting time, 
 
 — What time could be more fitting than this hour ? — 
 
 This life you have made so happy, I may leave 
 
 If the gods will, to-day, to-morrow, soon. 
 
 Yours shovJd be long and full. For you 'tis natural 
 
 To crowd sensation and enjoyment ; yet. 
 
 Love not mere life with all its bauble toys, 300 
 
 Nor rate too high its lolling luxuries. 
 
 The empty plaudits of obsequious clients. 
 
 Spiced cates and luscious wines and dyes and odours. 
 
 To know, to do, and on the tide of time 
 
 Not to drift idly like the cockle-sailor 
 
 Whose pearly shallop dances on the blue. 
 
 Fanned by soft airs and basking in brief sun. 
 
 Then at a cloudlet sinks with scarce a ripple : 
 
 But to steer onward to some purposed haven 
 
 And make new waves with motion of our own, — 310 
 
 That is to live. So lives the Emperor, 
 
 So let his henchmen ! Stay, one message more ; 
 
 If I should never come again to Rome 
 
 Bid farewell for me to that friend of friends. 
 
 The litde, plump, shrewd, dapper poet-critic, 
 
 The laughing, loving lyric-satirist. 
 
 Of wit and heart, honey and gall compounded, 
 
 Who called me ' a white soul ' and * half his own ', 
 
 Comrade of years, companion of life's morn : 
 
 How oft we two in youth's gay, struggling hour, 330 
 
24 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 A Treasury-clerk and briefless barrister, 
 
 Exchanged our songs, and clubbed our scent and wine 
 
 To spice the something Spartan board of youth ; 
 
 And in a later hour, how sweet a stave 
 
 He sang to puiF my star-led prow to Greece, — 
 
 How sweet a stave, I have it still, it sails 
 
 On every voyage with me, and shall sail ; 
 
 For it shall be my dirge and chant me down 
 
 Over the mournful flood to the dim shore. 
 
 Where I shall find Quintilius and our tears. 330 
 
 Yes, farewell, Horace ! unto you I leave 
 
 The laurel and the letters that we loved ; 
 
 Till we shall meet again. I cannot hold 
 
 Your light yet heavy Epicurean creed ; 
 
 Your lays ^ shall outlive brass and pyramid\ 
 
 But he that made them shall oudive the lays. 
 
 Though how or where we know not. 
 
 MAECENAS 
 Dear friend, I trust that you are over-fearful ; 
 Sophocles sang to ninety, wed again 
 With a young bride, and baulked his greedy heirs ; 340 
 Then why not you ? 'Tis true he ' took life cheerly ', 
 That spirit serene, and 'death as cheerly too*. 
 But you must copy him before you join him. 
 You must not die but live ; there 's much remains ; 
 You are not old, life's banquet 's not half done I 
 Full many a dish it hath for us to taste, 
 
SCENE II 25 
 
 And after feasting many a pleasant cup, 
 
 If temperately we sip, may be prolonged, 
 
 Before we slide into the senseless sleep. 
 
 That I love life is true ; I find it sweet, 350 
 
 Even in the lees, and I had rather live 
 
 A cripple, hand and foot and body, live 
 
 "With half my being, than not live at all. 
 
 'iVay, ghze not death away^ glittering Ulysses^ 
 
 Liefer Vd live a ploughman on a pittance^ 
 
 A peasant slave^ even some small master's thrall^ 
 
 Than to be king oer all the buried dead^ 
 
 So saith the only bard can vie with you. 
 
 Take heart then, friend, be cheered, and live and sing 
 
 Another score of years ; as for good Horace, 360 
 
 He will not need, nor gready heed, your message ; 
 
 You poets have your dumps, your fits of spleen, 
 
 'Tis motion cures them ; he shall come and fetch you. 
 
 And write another •Journey', '■from Brundisium.' 
 
 I'll have a special litter sent for you. 
 
 Cushions and canopy of my own devising 
 
 And careful carriers ; you'll hardly know 
 
 You are on the road, until you wake in Rome, 
 
 And see our villas on the Esquiline. 
 
 So, farewell, friend, until we meet again 1 370 
 
 AUGUSTUS 
 'Tis all arranged, Musa will come and seek you 
 At Appius' Market or at Puteoli. 
 
26 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Near Puteoli he'll find me, — sleeping there. 
 
 AUGUSTUS 
 So, once more, farewell, Virgil 1 
 
 MAECENAS 
 
 Farewell, Virgil ! 
 [^Exeunt the Emperor and Mae- 
 cenas. The bugles of the 
 body-guard sound, and they are 
 heard marching away. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 After a hng pause 
 
 Until we meet again. Ah, when will that be? 
 Well, they are gone ; partings are best cut short. 
 'Tis painful and 'tis idle, labouring them. 
 Straining the tender thread that at the last 
 Must still be cut. Farewell, dear friends, farewell ! 
 Well, they are gone, Eros ; let us to work. 380 
 
 But first, while I have strength, there is a word 
 Or two that I would speak ; fetch you your tablets ! 
 
 [Eros goes out and returns with 
 writing materials. 
 Eros, the reason of this ill-starred journey 
 You know in brief, and something of the years 
 We two have spent together on one work ; 
 
SCENE II 27 
 
 And yet you know not its full history, 
 
 All the design and purpose I have missed, 
 
 Nor why, after such labour to create 
 
 I fain would burn upon the instant now. 
 
 Something I'll tell you. Set down, if you will, 390 
 
 A note or two, that so you may report 
 
 If curious friends should one day question you. 
 
 I hope they will not wish to write my life ; 
 
 A poet's life, they say, should be a poem, 
 
 And in his poems is his life best writ ; 
 
 Apart from these 'tis seldom worth the record. 
 
 Lives of the poets, what are they ? saddest tales 
 
 Only too often, madness, exile, want. 
 
 Passion ill-sorted, envy, vanity. 
 
 Disease, and death too soon or late for fame. 400 
 
 Ah, what a life was his, the first I knew. 
 
 The most poetic I have ever known. 
 
 My boyhood's hero, dowered with every gift, 
 
 Popular, precious, passionate at once, 
 
 Fervour Aeolic, Alexandrine art, 
 
 Italian feeling, Roman force, combined : 
 
 Now mocking his own sparrow's little language 
 
 With dainty pipe ; now, like the nightingale. 
 
 Sobbing the love or woe that wrung his heart ; 
 
 Now, like a hawk, screaming and swooping hotly 410 
 
 At high or low that crossed his fantasy. 
 
 I was for Caesar, and I could not love 
 
28 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 His modish insolence and party sneers, 
 
 Yet Caesar, kindly to his father's son. 
 
 Took, on the moment, his apology. 
 
 And bade him dine and let Mamurra hang : 
 
 And his rare notes, true voice of mine own fields. 
 
 Fired me, and like a boy I aped his verse. 
 
 How soon the mistress of the Juno eyes 
 
 And Juno temper stilled those matchless lips, 420 
 
 Scattering the heaped-up treasure of his love. 
 
 And wrecking, Juno-like, with gusty rage. 
 
 His bark of life, less lucky than the craft 
 
 That mourns her master yet at Sirmio. 
 
 You too, my Gallus, whom to immortalize 
 
 My grateful purpose held, one error marred 
 
 The strangest, richest genius of us all. 
 
 How sad when we perforce must pass a friend 
 
 Silently over, lest we blaze his shame I 
 
 But stay, 'twas not of others, but myself, 430 
 
 I meant to speak. There is a time for all. 
 And nigh his end a man may speak of self. 
 For truth's sake, when he most would speak the truth. 
 You know, Eros, why I set sail to Greece ; 
 Wealth had flowed to me from the wealth of friends. 
 And fame was mine, such fame as seldom comes 
 In a poet's lifetime, by the people's favour, 
 Too flattering favour, but I knew its worth : 
 
SCENE II 29 
 
 Half praise, half fashion mixed with partial pride 
 
 Because I glorified their Commonwealth. 440 
 
 How often have I, in the streets of Rome, 
 
 Sought shelter 'neath the nearest roof to shun 
 
 The pointed finger of the passer-by ; 
 
 And once it happened in the theatre, 
 
 I had slipped in quietly, and, as I deemed, unnoticed. 
 
 To hear my Corydon and Thyrsis sing 
 
 In something they were giving from my Eclogues, 
 
 When all the house rose to their feet and clapped. 
 
 I thought 'twas for the Emperor in his box. 
 
 But they cried * Virgil ! Virgil ! Bravo, Virgil ! 450 
 
 Caesar and Virgil I Prince and prince of poets ! ' 
 
 And, better than such fickle breath, I had 
 
 The nice approval of the chosen few, 
 
 Poets themselves, wits, artists, men of the world, 
 
 Aye, of more worlds than one, and sweeter still 
 
 Than their approval to me was their love ; 
 
 And best of all, when I must be alone. 
 
 As oft they must be who would be themselves. 
 
 My own undying passionate thirst for knowledge ; 
 
 For of all else, Eros, there comes enough, 460 
 
 But knowledge is a cup that never cloys, 
 
 And whoso drinks of it his thirst shall grow 
 
 Deep and more deep till death shall seal his lips. 
 
 Perchance not then as in some moods I deem. 
 
 If enemies were mine I was not theirs, 
 
30 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 Bavius and Maevius and their insect tribe ; 
 
 *Tis true there came that petty difference once 
 
 With the town-councillors of my little burgh ; 
 
 They cut my aqueduct, I threatened them 
 
 That I would blot them from the Book of Fame, 470 
 
 My Golden Catalogue of the Italian clans. 
 
 'Twas but in jest, I meant to reinstate them, 
 
 And I will do it, if I live, Eros, 
 
 Aye, if I live, Eros, aye, if I live . . . 
 
 Why did I ever leave, who had all this, 
 
 My quiet home beneath Vesevus' hill. 
 
 And with my frail frame and uncertain health 
 
 Tempt stormy seas and insalubrious air, 
 
 And travel's thousand toils and accidents ? 
 
 'Twas for this poem's sake, not for mine own ; 480 
 
 I hoped from travel to bring leisure back, 
 
 And give what years of life might still remain 
 
 Wholly to thee, divine Philosophy ! 
 
 I had grown weary of my daily task. 
 
 To read, revolve, conceive, create, combine 
 
 Nature and art ; to copy and outvie 
 
 Each Grecian model, gather grains of gold 
 
 From • Father Ennius' ' something musty midden ; 
 
 To file my lines, or beat them on the anvil. 
 
 Then file again, or roll them on the tongue, 490 
 
 Rounding their edges like the mother-bear 
 
SCENE II 31 
 
 That licks her lumpish whdp to shapeliness ; 
 Manipulating name and theme intractable, 
 With clever joins that make the old word new, 
 The new seem old, each shimmering into other 
 With glancing hues, like Iris' purfled scarf; 
 To echo sense with sound, enrich my rhythm 
 With pause, hypermeter, caesura, elision, 
 Precipitate hurry dactylic, or drawling spondee, 
 Subtle alliterations, assonances, 500 
 
 And all the thousand tricks o' the poet's trade. 
 
 Not nine years only, as good Horace counsels. 
 But two whole lustres had I toiled ; at times 
 I deemed me mad that ever I began. 
 So huge the task to rear the Rhyme of Rome ; 
 And when the third drew on, desire came o'er me 
 To see an end of all and to be free. 
 Live my own life, think my own thoughts again, 
 Have done with words and clasp realities. 
 Pierce to the secret and the source of things, 510 
 Go back to my first love. Philosophy, 
 My first love and my last ; for know, Eros, 
 That when I came, a sallow silent lad. 
 From Naples to the larger schools of Rome, 
 Bashful and sensitive as any girl, 
 — The Maid, they called me, of the Maiden city — 
 Rustic and raw, but full of fire and dream, 
 And critical as the young and silent are. 
 
32 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 I wearied of the rhetoricians' lectures, 
 
 Pretentious repetition of schoolboy studies, 530 
 
 Their apparatus, parallel quotations. 
 
 Trope, metaphor and flower, hendiadys, 
 
 Hypallagfe, enallage, and the like : 
 
 And while they prosed or flourished in the rostrum, 
 
 Our merry set made many a scurril line. 
 
 And passed it to and fro beneath the desk, 
 
 Calling them * bubble-pedants ', 'tinkling cymbals,' 
 
 • Fat-brained,' or * shrill grammarian grasshoppers ', 
 
 Swilling stale tanks not sipping Attic dew, 
 
 'And grating scrannel music with the wings 530 
 
 Given them for soaring * ; and I forswore them all. 
 
 And soon bade good-bye to all dear delights. 
 
 Of pleasant sport and sprightly company ; 
 
 Nay, half forswore my darling mistresses. 
 
 The Muses, the sweet Muses, bade them pack 
 
 And leave me to pursue Philosophy, 
 
 Sail her deep seas, and find her haven of peace, 
 
 With Siro for my pilot, dear old Siro, 
 
 My father's friend, my spiritual father ; 
 
 And I embraced, or half embraced, his tenets, 540 
 
 — Not less by life than precept inculcated — 
 
 Drawn from Democritus, Empedocles, 
 
 And him who in the Athenian garden taught 
 
 Pleasure the highest end, a happy creed 
 
 For souls whose pleasure lies in noble deeds. 
 
SCENE II 33 
 
 But for the baser, seeming commendation 
 
 Of all indulgence, fitting faith for swine. 
 
 Not such for him that rare secluded spirit, 
 
 Greek in his science, but in soiJ true Roman, 
 
 Who on the day that closed my nonage died : 550 
 
 His vivid passionate sincerity, 
 
 The levin and the thunder of his line. 
 
 Reverberant in the rout of ignorance 
 
 Beyond the blazing battlements of heaven. 
 
 For all his mad mood and his tragic end. 
 
 Fascinated me, and '■Happy he\ I sang, 
 
 ' Who has learned the law and cause of things and trampled 
 
 Under his feet all craven fear of fate y 
 
 Nor heeds the ever-ravening roar of death ' : 
 
 Yet could my soul not rest in cold negation, 560 
 Religious irreligion, and I sighed, 
 ^ Happy y indeed^ but not less happy he^ 
 Who through the whispering tree-tops hears the voice 
 Of life and love in all things, and discerns 
 The fairy denizens of the forest. Pan, 
 The sister Nymphs, and Greybeard the Woods, 
 That teach the branch to burgeon, sap to spring:' 
 If death be real, yet not less real is life. 
 Nor less persistent, even as light to shadow. 
 So from the philosophic height I fell 57° 
 
 Once more upon the fields of infancy, 
 
 c 
 
34 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 And found again the sweetheart of my boyhood, 
 
 The merry Muse that loves the country-side, 
 
 Shepherd and milking-maid, in barn and byre, 
 
 Arcadian airs and wit of simple souls. 
 
 Then Pollio praised my strain, Maecenas praised. 
 
 And spurred me on to try a larger theme, 
 
 Aiding Augustus in his high endeavour 
 
 To bring again the good and golden day 
 
 Of Rome, and build the future of her fortunes 580 
 
 Firm on that best tradition of the past, 
 
 Love of the soil and honest husbandry ; 
 
 And then Augustus praised, praised, and suggested 
 
 That I should sing the reign and realm of Rome ; 
 
 Half bidden, half persuaded, I obeyed. 
 
 Willing — unwilling : in my desk there slept 
 
 A sketch begun, then scorned and tossed aside, 
 
 A scheme of youth beyond the scope of youth. 
 
 The 'Tale of Rome, an Epic in Twelve Books'. 
 
 ' Arms and the man of destiny, I sing, 590 
 
 Warrior and saint, who der the wild sea sailing. 
 
 From out the fires and toppling towers of Troy 
 
 Brought a thrice precious and thrice glorious freight. 
 
 The seed of Caesar and the Gods of Rome, 
 
 Tho" tried and tempted long in hve and war'' — 
 
 So I began. I plotted all anew, 
 
 Recast, rewrote ; if youth's first fire was less 
 
 In middle age, I had gained more critic skill : 
 
SCENE II 35 
 
 Slowly it grew, piecemeal, as here and there 
 
 I took it up, sometimes with happy jet, 600 
 
 More oft with studious elaboration, 
 
 — Three books I loved the best and toUed at most : — 
 
 At last I saw the haven within reach, 
 
 If I could only gain what poets need, 
 
 Retirement and uninterrupted peace. 
 
 Since 'Solitude', as wise Menander sings, 
 
 * Is the best mother of invention.' 
 
 I had meant, Eros, to reconsider aU, 
 
 To polish and perfect, visit myself 
 
 Each site, each scene, and on the classic soil do 
 
 Of Greece or Asia, Troy, Crete, Sicily, 
 
 Catch and revive and fix, whate'er remains 
 
 Of rite or custom, colour, tale, tradition. 
 
 A few fair months were mine — Athens, loved Athens ! 
 
 Would I had never left that charmed cirque. 
 
 Your violet hills and their delicious air ! 
 
 With Socrates beneath the blossomed bough 
 
 That overhung Uissus' rill I sat, 
 
 I strolled with Plato in the olive-grove 
 
 Of Academe, and with them both discoursed 620 
 
 Of life before the cradle, after the grave, 
 
 And through Colonus' thicket saw and heard 
 
 The stars and nightingales of Sophocles. 
 
 Alas ! that fatal day in Megara, 
 
 c 2 
 
36 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 When the fierce sun bred thick in air and soil, 
 Those seeds of lower life that slay the higher, 
 To batten on its grave, and flourish most 
 'Mid such • corpse-cities ', as he aptly called them 
 — Nay, was it his friend Sulpicius or himself? — 
 The grand old orator, lord of epithet, 630 
 
 That vain and vapouring but kindly genius. 
 Lawyer, philosopher, statesman, man of letters. 
 Friend of the poets, would-be poet himself. 
 Who patronized my shy and girlish boyhood. 
 And dubbed me ' Second hope of mighty Rome ', 
 Himself the first and Father of his country ! 
 There, as it chanced, stirring some scribbled stone 
 To learn its lore, I breathed into my blood 
 The deadly dust that once had breath itself. 
 Whose atoms with the atoms of our being 640 
 
 Strive for the mastery, and unexpelled 
 March onward, harrying and devouring all 
 To oppugn the inmost citadel of life. 
 That moment ruined all, faint hope was mine 
 At first, that the fresh breezes of the sea 
 Might fairly blow the venom from my veins. 
 But blustering Aeolus, jealous, it may be. 
 Because I drew his wanton wrath too well. 
 Tossed me from wave to wave and wore me down. 
 Then flung me with my book upon the beach, 650 
 A shipwrecked mother with a crippled child. 
 
SCENE II 37 
 
 'Twere better he had whelmed us both at once, 
 For now my pretty babe will never grow 
 To beauty, but live halting all his days : 
 Live halting ! wherefore should he live at all 
 When what the wave hath marred the fire can end ? 
 Bring me the casket, on the flame I'll fling 
 With mine own hand my child before I die : 
 Troy towers perished shrivelling in the fire, 
 So shrivel in the fire my Tale of Troy ! — 660 
 
 EROS 
 Aye, Master, but you cannot so destroy it; 
 The Emperor has, in copies that you gave him, 
 The three great books, the Second, Fourth, and Sixth ; 
 And many of your friends have pages too. 
 Others have passages in memory, 
 Which they hold precious and will piece together. 
 So some lame presentation will be published 
 Of verse the world will not consent to lose ; 
 Perchance some lesser poet, at the best 
 Of the Emperor, or of his own conceit, 670 
 
 Will fill the gaps and furbish up the whole. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Nay, that were worse than all ; the Emperor, 
 The Emperor will not wish it ; who himself 
 An artist with fastidious love of form 
 Cancelled his own fine faulty tragedy, 
 
38 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 Bidding great Ajax 'fall upon the sponge' 
 
 And die at once rather than live half-dead. 
 
 Of men and gods and bookstalls disallowed. 
 
 So be it, let the Emperor decide, 
 
 And if he keep it, my executors 680 
 
 Who'll have my papers, Varius and Tucca, 
 
 Must edit for him, blotting what they will. 
 
 But adding naught, not even of mine own. 
 
 The saddest fate that can o'ertake our garden 
 
 Is when some dull inheriting botanist 
 
 Replants the weeds our careful hand removed. 
 
 And yet, I fear, 'twill prove a sorry makeshift ; 
 
 How will they deal with all I left uncertain. 
 
 Endings, beginnings, indeterminate. 
 
 Half-lines just jotted, verses obelized, 690 
 
 Tentative versions, variant epithets, 
 
 Lavinia's • blosmy locks ' or ' locks of gold ', 
 
 The fair false Helen hid in Vesta's fane. 
 
 Or Palinurus battling with the wave ; 
 
 Mere stop-gap stuff, provisional scaffolding. 
 
 Where the pure Parian piUars were to come ? 
 
 No, no, 'twere better burned ; bring me the rolls ; 
 Why linger you, Eros ? aU things must die ; 
 Mouldering and smouldering, there 's no difference. 
 Vapour resolves to vapour, dust to dust, 700 
 
 More quickly or more slowly, 'tis all one. 
 Stay, will you swear to burn it with my bones 
 
SCENE II 39 
 
 And let my music mingle with my relics. 
 The swan-song with the ashes of the swan ? 
 Then if the swan shovild haply prove a Phoenix, 
 rU find my song and sing it o'er again, 
 'Neath some far sun, perchance in some far land. 
 Perchance the laureate of another realm. 
 Chanting the gests of some new warrior-saint. 
 Haply the hero of the Britons' isle. 710 
 
 How, I am wandering ? you hold me mad ; 
 And mad I am wellnigh, and yet with method ; 
 I see I cannot trust you ; come, the book. 
 Quick, quick, Eros. You will not ? oh, you are cruel ! 
 I burn, my brain burns ; all 's on fire save that 
 Whose flaming should my fever something cool ; 
 The book, the book, give me the book, Eros ! 
 
 EROS 
 Master, your fever, not yoifrself, comriiands, 
 'Twere well to sleep on any great resolve : 
 To-morrow, if you hold your purpose still, i^o 
 
 I'll bring the book, and you shall work your will ! 
 
SC6:J^6 III 
 
 Morning of Third Day. September 20 
 VIRGIL'S ROOM IN THE INN 
 
 EROS 
 Master, how fare you ? You have slept, I think. 
 If brokenly, yet somewhat ; and you look 
 Less weary, and your hand — 'tis not so hot. 
 How think you, wUI you rise and sit awhile 
 In the sun ? The winds are laid, and all is calm. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Not yet, my good Eros; 'tis true I feel 
 Less worn to-day, yet not, I fear, less weak. 
 But set me near the window and prop me up 
 On pillows ; let me see the world ; I doubt 730 
 
 If I shall ever walk its ways again. 
 
 EROS 
 Nay, Master, you are on the upward road. 
 And on the homeward, take but heart of hope. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Homeward, no doubt ; upward is not so clear. 
 
SCENE III 41 
 
 Eros, do you remember that last day 
 
 In our loved home ? Our parting all prepared, 
 
 "We sat at leisure on the sunny shore ; 
 
 And sweet it was to count the drifting clouds 
 
 Or watch the stealthy ruffling of the breeze 
 
 Wreathing with tricksy smiles the lazy main, 740 
 
 Traitorous in her sleek tranquillity ; 
 
 And watching stUl the myriad-dimpling deep. 
 
 Almost I thought I saw its fickle Queen 
 
 Born of the waves, and borne upon the wave, 
 
 Move shoreward once more with the murmuring surf : 
 
 • And will she play me false, that fickle queen ? ' 
 
 To myself I said, *The merry light-o'-love. 
 
 Friend Horace lured her for me with a lay, 
 
 I too will vow the vow and chant the hymn, 
 
 Virgil shall buy the Golden Goddess' fevour.' 750 
 
 And in a flash my vow had taken shape, 
 
 And ran into the rhythm of a song : 
 
 I bade you write it down, read it me now ; 
 
 'Tis in the casket with the Aeneid. 
 
 EROS 
 Master, 'tis here, your * Virgil's Vow to Venus'. 
 
 'VIRGIL'S VOW TO VENUS' 
 
 * Grant me but strength and skilly 
 My purpose to fulfil^ 
 
42 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 Lady of Paphos and the Idalian shrine ; 
 
 7b sing him fairly home^ 
 
 At last thro his own Rome, 760 
 
 Sharing thy state, that Trojan son of thine ! 
 
 Not paltry frankincense 
 
 Or painted board's pretence 
 ril vow, nor hbmely wreaths with pious finger twine ; 
 
 But a homed victim high, 
 
 A bull, no ram, shall die. 
 Proudly thy hallowed hearth to incarnadine: 
 
 And sculptured Love shall stand. 
 
 Hard at his mother's hand. 
 With quiver gay and wings of rainbow shine ; 770 
 
 Set, then, from thine isle thy sails, 
 
 O Queen; thy Caesar hails 
 From Heaven, and thine own shore invites, thy Surrentine!* 
 
 VIRGIL 
 'Twas a fond vow, and fondly 'twas expressed, 
 Lightly put by, or at the best half heard, 
 When hearing half is hearing not at all. 
 The Gods know best what is the best for men. 
 And often 'twere not well to grant our prayer. 
 And yet they will that we should make the prayer. 
 Live true, give due, be loving, there 's our rule ; 780 
 For love wiU sweeten duty, and to accept 
 Humbly, makes every ill more tolerable. 
 No longer to be first, but not to fail. 
 
SCENE III 43 
 
 My Mnestheus prayed, and yet — and yet his heart 
 Was fain and full, even as mine to-day. 
 
 EROS 
 First, first, you shall be first, doubt not of that ! 
 Your verse shall be your people's very voice : 
 ' No date shall blot you from the brain of time. 
 While the race keeps its crag Capitoline, 
 With faith firm fixed as the imperishable rock, 790 
 
 And Romes High Sire holds empery over Rome.^ 
 More, Master ; for your fanie, I prophesy. 
 Shall fly afar and live from lip to lip. 
 And widen with our Empire and its tongue, 
 "Winning a vanquished world to love our yoke : 
 Even Carthage rased and sitting solitary 
 Shall cherish in her wan and widow'd weeds 
 Your record of her maiden morn of glory. 
 Less obdurate than that Foundress Queen who heals 
 Her scornful sorrows on the Dolorous Plain, 800 
 
 In secret alley hid or myrde maze. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Now, good Eros, 'tis well we are alone: 
 I rightly can appraise your loyal warmth 
 That seeks to hearten me with words of hope. 
 To flatter is the province of a courtier 
 Or cringing slave, and that you never were — 
 A true friend, rather, and truer every day. 
 
44 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 Your nature like your name, * Affection.' 
 
 You promise fame, Eros, but what is fame ? 
 
 Fame is an earthly echo of earthly deeds, sio 
 
 That like the deeds, and with the earth, must die : 
 
 Yet sweet it is to know ourselves approved 
 
 To-day, to-morrow, and to dream our words. 
 
 If they were ever worth their breath, may sway 
 
 Not our years only but our children's time ; 
 
 Fond fancy mostly, for our sons will have 
 
 Their own loud life, and echoes of their own. 
 
 Enough of fame, Eros ; let us to fact. 
 
 Find you my will ; fain would I reconsider it. 
 
 EROS 
 Your will, O Master ! let it wait, you're better, Sao 
 There is no need ; you are not at the last 1 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Nay, nay, Eros, I shall not die the quicker 
 For setting my affairs in order thus ; 
 Get out the will, and read it to me, slowly. 
 
 EROS 
 Here it is, Master; shall I read it all? 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Leave the preamble, pass to the provisions ; 
 'Tis very simple, since of kith and kin. 
 Save my half-brother Proculus, I have none ; 
 
SCENE III 45 
 
 My father watched me grow to man's estate 
 And saw no more, his eyes, blind to our day, 830 
 Opened long since to see that lower sun. 
 Those other stars ; my mother wed again. 
 Yet lived not long, for of my brothers one 
 Died as a child, in manhood's dawn the other, 
 Daphnis, our darling Daphnis ; his life's flower 
 Just fruiting, fell ; she could not brook the loss. 
 But with a sigh that seemed to stream to heaven. 
 Followed her earlier, left her later, son. 
 
 EROS 
 
 l^Tuming over the parchment. 
 I have them, Master, thus they here begin. 
 
 \Reads. 
 ' Half of my goods I give to my half-brother : 840 
 Of the other moiety, half to the Emperor.' 
 
 VIRGIL 
 He fain had swell'd the whole yet more, I would not. 
 
 EROS 
 * Then one-sixth to the generous Maecenas, 
 The residue to Varius and Tucca, 
 With all my writings published and unpublished 
 To be dealt with according to instructions 
 Fully set forth in an appended schedule.' 
 Follows the schedule, making first provision 
 
46 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 For certain litde legacies to friends 
 
 And humble folk in Mantua and Naples, 850 
 
 And, Master, that annuity to myself; 
 
 My best hope is that I shall ne'er receive it. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 You shall not want, Eros ; what I have given you 
 Will make you rich ; if more you need hereafter 
 The Emperor and Maecenas wiU provide. 
 How easy 'tis to strip us of that gear 
 That was so hard to get, scarce less to keep. 
 But stay — the schedule, that 's yet incomplete ; 
 There is the difficulty — Bucolics, Georgics, 
 Are safe and settled, but those lesser lays, 860 
 
 What shall I do with them, Eros, or since 
 There is no time to make selection, 
 What bid my literary executors ? 
 Those scraps that I have treasured all these years. 
 My 'early rubbish', strays of drifted script, 
 ' Chips of the workshop,' ' callow chirpings,' call them ! 
 Dear to me for the memories they revive. 
 But worthless to the world and in themselves ; 
 Best burn the whole at once and make an end. 
 How say you, Eros ; hold you not that were best ? 870 
 
 EROS 
 What said your old Corycian rose-grower ? 
 Quoth he, ' The very powder of a petal 
 
SCENE III 47 
 
 Is precious to the lover of the rose ' : 
 
 So is it with the adorers of a poet, 
 
 They prize the merest filings of his verse ; 
 
 And even so your early friends of youth — 
 
 That intimate, critical, partial coterie — 
 
 Treasure your budding efforts, every line ; 
 
 Nay, some of them will even vow to-day 
 
 You never have done better, truer work sso 
 
 Than when you were unknown to all but them. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 
 Some of them loved me more because unknown, 
 
 I was their secret, their discovery ; 
 
 'Twas their own cleverness, their discrimination, 
 
 Methinks, made half my merit in their eyes ; 
 
 They have not grown, but stiffened, in their taste. 
 
 Give me the bundle, Eros ; what have we here ? 
 
 The ' Gnat ', the ' Ciris ', ' Siro's Farm ', ' Mine Hostess 
 
 O' the Inn', the 'Salad*, an Alexandrine study 
 
 Rightly so labelled, of my salad days ; 890 
 
 Lampoons to tease, posies to please, a neighbour. 
 
 Petulant flings at prosy pedagogues 
 
 Scribbled to amuse my classmates for the nonce. 
 
 Parodies out-Catullusing Catullus, 
 
 Abuse without the excuse of personal passion, 
 
 The dross of the volcano, not the flame ; 
 
 No, no, Eros ; best burn them one and all. 
 
48 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 EROS 
 Master, it must be as you will ; and yet. 
 Could you not keep and give them to the world 
 Separately ; or, if you will, hereafter 9°° 
 
 Let Varius and Tucca publish them, 
 A supplement to your collected works ? 
 
 VIRGIL 
 The mermaid ending in a fishy tail, 
 * Virgil's Appendix ' ; No ! no ! no ! Eros ! 
 "We'll have a famous holocaust to-morrow. 
 Remains the chiefest care and crux of all. 
 This arduous ambitious Aeneid ; 
 To-morrow I must burn that too or leave 
 Some precept strict for my executors ; 
 Now here, now there, my darting mind departs, 910 
 And leaves me dazed, doubtful alike of doubt 
 And of decision. Truly to decide 
 Is difficult most when most it is required. 
 My longest, largest effort come to naught 
 
 EROS 
 
 Not all to naught- 
 
 VIRGIL 
 
 Yes, all to naught, Eros, 
 
 For poetry is nothing if not perfect. 
 
SCENE III 49 
 
 EROS 
 The will is signed, could you not leave the schedule ? 
 Morning will bring new life and light on all. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Enough Eros ! I yield, be it as you will ; 
 And now no more of business ; leave me, Eros, 920 
 To rest alone awhile and think; I feel 
 Weary of my weakness, weary of the world. 
 You must be weary, too, my good Eros, 
 Of waiting and of watching and of me ; 
 Go, take the air, find out the news, or rest 
 An hour or two ; no harm will happen, trust me. 
 
 EROS 
 What shall I say? Should I refuse, 1 fear 
 'Twill make my master think I deem him worse. 
 I will withdraw to the adjoining room 
 And listen first awhile, then if he sleep 930 
 
 Go forth a little, anon slip quietly back. 
 Master, I go ; I will return ere long. 
 And tell you of the day and of the news, 
 If aught hath come from Naples or from Rome. 
 
 ^Exit Eros. 
 
SC6:^C6 IF 
 
 Evening of Third Day, September 20 
 
 VIRGIL'S ROOM IN THE INN 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Now help me, all high thoughts and all ye gods. 
 To make my soul, and cleanse me ere my hour. 
 From something of the soilure of this world. 
 Corporeal grossness, folly and sin, that creep 
 Into the spirit's grain, and clog and grime 
 With earthy residue the soul's pure essence, 940 
 
 That sparkle from the divine element 
 Whose flamelet flickers in this lamp of flesh ; 
 So fitter grow, after brief purgatory 
 Entrance to find to those Elysian fields. 
 With their green pleasaunces and ampler air, 
 And walk the lucent lawns of Paradise 
 Wearing the white wreath of the justified. 
 In that choice company of exalted ghosts, 
 ' Warriors, for fatherland who fought and fell. 
 Priests of pure life through all their earthly day, 950 
 
 Leal bards, lips worthy of the laurelled god. 
 Minds whose invention gave a grace to life. 
 
SCENE IV 51 
 
 Or service merits memory among men^ 
 
 There shall I rest nor weary of my rest ; 
 
 Haply among the shadows one will come, 
 
 No shade, but from the living and the light, 
 
 Some hero loved of heaven like them of old. 
 
 Some bard of mine own land and mine own tongue, 
 
 And I shall show him all our life below 
 
 And he shall tell me of the life above, 960 
 
 How grows the realm of Rome, how wags the world, 
 
 Who sits in Caesar's chair, who in the Senate, 
 
 What white-robed Pontiff quaffs the costly grape. 
 
 Who tread Suburra, who the Sacred Way, 
 
 How echo Quirinal and Vatican, 
 
 What loves, what hates, what hopes, for human kind. 
 
 Whether at length that golden age hath dawned 
 
 That 'mid the flocks my Muse divined and sang. 
 
 Scarce knowing what she sang, or what she meant, 
 
 Of the Maid Mother and the Heavenly Babe. 970 
 
 So I shall dream the quiet eras by. 
 
 And when the thousand-spoked wheel whose rays 
 
 Are years, full circling, brings me to the brink 
 
 Where that Oblivious River, lapsing, mirrors 
 
 The slumbrous leafage of the silent land. 
 
 Too deeply I'll not quaff his drowsy drench ; 
 
 I would not all forget this life I lived. 
 
 Prosperous under Caesar's mounting star. 
 
 But keep some hint for my millennial morn ; 
 
 D 2 
 
52 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 How strange 'twill be to learn to live again, 980 
 
 Perchance to sing again, perchance to find 
 — For lucky verses live a thousand years — 
 Some scraps of mine own music living too, 
 The task and model of barbarian schools, 
 And con again the half-remembered lore, 
 Echoing the echoes of my former being. 
 
 Nay, what am I to centre in myself 
 
 And dream of other lives ere this be done, 
 
 That was so poorly lived, so void, so vain ? 
 
 For while great Caesar thundered conquering down 990 
 
 Euphrates* giant gorges, like a god. 
 
 Winning the nations to acclaim his law 
 
 "With love, and practising the path to heaven. 
 
 Me in that hour indulgent Naples nursed 
 
 'Mid smooth pursuits of all-inglorious ease. 
 
 Chanting the plowman's toil, the breeder's art. 
 
 Soft hymeneals of the vine and elm. 
 
 Or lays of the hive-heroes musical 
 
 As their own murmur in the luscious lime, 
 
 A sheltered bard and scarce more strenuous looo 
 
 Than when a boy by Mincius' brink I roved 
 
 Mocking the shepherd's note, or bold to sing 
 
 Of Tityrus 'neath the broad and beechen shade. 
 
 Yet, O Apollo witness, 'twas constraint 
 
SCENE IV 53 
 
 Of heavenly passion led me in your train 
 
 To be your priest and with the Muses move, 
 
 Rapt by the sacred secrets of your rites, 
 
 And colour of your mystic pageantry, 
 
 Flushed faces of the faithful, holy things 
 
 Held high in reverent hands, rose-blossomed rods, loio 
 
 And slender swaying lilies pure and tall. 
 
 The poet's life may oft seem indolent. 
 
 Inactive, uneventful, self-absorbed. 
 
 Yet must he gain the mastery of his art 
 
 Like other craftsmen by incessant toil. 
 
 And steel himself to suffer if he wovdd see 
 
 Fair offspring of his travail of the soul. 
 
 Or skill to ken, what only quiet may 
 
 In noontide meditation, watch of night, 
 
 — For stiU the Muses haunt the brooding mind — 1020 
 
 The one in many that makes the many one, 
 
 Something that underlies our rainbow dreams. 
 
 The pattern of the web of all the world. 
 
 And I too, in my shy, sequestered life. 
 Have suffered and known many and mighty strokes 
 Of act and chance, and watched in signal scenes 
 The tragi-comedy of history — 
 Brawls, feuds, strifes, plots, traps, stabs, intrigues, 
 
 revolts. 
 Intestine agony, civil and foreign war. 
 
54 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 Rule of the basest, murder of the best, 1030 
 
 Famine and rapine, and 'mid sign and portent 
 
 The universe convulsed, and East and West 
 
 In immemorial duel ranged once more 
 
 Disturb and drench with blood and havoc new 
 
 The bleaching bones of their old battlefields ; 
 
 Or in their galleons on the churning surge, 
 
 Like mountain-islands from their base unmooring. 
 
 Borne on to shock and sink with all their hosts. 
 
 Weltering years of chaos, kings and queens. 
 
 Consuls and senates, orator, warrior, pontiff, 1040 
 
 Censor, and tribunes with their raucous raff. 
 
 Swept down the ensanguined tides of destiny. 
 
 Till all was changed and our strong ancient state 
 
 That chased the kings, like Plato's Commonwealth, 
 
 Found in one wisest head a king once more. 
 
 Fain had I lived a little longer, seen 
 
 The Empire orb itself around the sun 
 
 Of Caesar's princedom ; fain had striven to sing 
 
 Somewhat that might have helped it to this end. 
 
 Some word to weld the world and link together 1050 
 
 Its present to its past and far to near. 
 
 Spreading from Thulfe to Taprobanfe 
 
 One happy realm and rule, the * Roman Peace'. 
 
 I fear it may not be ; ' ApoWs priest^ 
 
 Nor righteousness nor ribbon of his god. 
 
 Availed to shelter in that stress of fate.^ 
 
SCENE IV S5 
 
 I take the omen, I accept and leave 
 My theme a legacy to luckier lips. 
 
 A poet's course cut short, one epic less, 
 
 What larger loss than if a linnet ceased ? io6o 
 
 What difference in their warbling, bard or bird, 
 
 Catullus or the sparrow, Heraclitus 
 
 Or the sweet nightingales his verses echo. 
 
 If death end all ? But if we live again. 
 
 Yet only live this little life again. 
 
 What serves, my soul, this tedious barren round. 
 
 Serpentlike still, recurrent on itself? 
 
 What means it the Sphinx-riddle set to man, 
 
 Life's paradox of proud deeds writ in tears ? 
 
 Have infinite time and space no God, no goal, 1070 
 
 Finite or infinite, to which we tend. 
 
 Through test and trial of a thousand fates. 
 
 And nature's ever new experiment 
 
 In all her epochs of aeonian change ? 
 
 This wistful world our sadly splendid home, 
 Ocean and earth and heaven, the giant sun, 
 And the moon's glittering globe and all the stars — 
 What are they, and whence come they ; by what hand. 
 By what force, fashioned ? Atoms fortuitously 
 Conglomerate, they say, the subtle Grecians, 1080 
 
56 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 And he who followed, trenchant son of Rome, 
 
 A dust of atoms driven in endless dance ; 
 
 Like links to like, and round and round they whirl 
 
 Awhile, then wearying seek new partnership : 
 
 So Love and Hate are stewards of the ball, 
 
 But over all Necessity is lord — 
 
 Necessity, what is Necessity ? 
 
 Natural Law, Necessity, high names 
 
 For what we know, yet know not, order noted 
 
 In our brief span of sense, and stretched beyond 1090 
 
 Our sense's scope : long searching, long perpending. 
 
 Two ultimates, two only can I find — 
 
 Matter and Mind, matter imperishable 
 
 In its prime elements, but ever mutable ; 
 
 Mutable matter — and is mind as mutable ? 
 
 Hath it invisible atoms of its own ? 
 
 Doth it too sunder and reshape itself. 
 
 Or doth it only dress itself anew. 
 
 With form on form through cycles of creation ? 
 
 In ooze and sand, in crystal of the rock, 1100 
 
 In sponge or coral, weed of sea or shore, 
 
 In branch and bloom, in fish or fowl or brute, 
 
 In man, himself first brute and barbarous. 
 
 Fiery and dour as old Deucalion's flint. 
 
 Then scaling into law and art and song 
 
 And civic life of Athens or of Rome, 
 
 Hero and saint, poet and lawgiver. 
 
SCENE IV 57 
 
 Half men, half gods, last into Gods themselves — 
 
 Aye, into Gods ; for what, I say, are Gods ? 
 
 Are they not mind, are they not mutable, mo 
 
 Many and multiform, some small, some great ? 
 
 The powers unseen that lead us in and out. 
 
 The godlets of the cradle and the go-cart. 
 
 Good-fellows of the cupboard and the hearth. 
 
 Naiad and Nymph, Dryad and Oread, 
 
 Fairy and Faun by fountain, hill, and tree. 
 
 Immortal are they, or but half immortal ? 
 
 The Hamadryad withers with the oak. 
 
 Old Xanthus pined when the flame parched his wave ; 
 
 The guardian sprite that throned in each man's planet 1 120 
 
 Sways him from birth, passes too with his passing ; 
 
 And they the high, the august, the Gods of Heaven, 
 
 Mavors, Minerva, Jove Capitoline, 
 
 A stronger life, a longer life, is theirs : 
 
 Yet they too haply have their period. 
 
 Dodona and Delphi and Hammon are half dumb, 
 
 * Saturn is gone, Saturn will come again ' : 
 Are they not manifestations manifold 
 
 Of one sole mind in all things immanent ? 
 
 One mind, — ^why not one God, higher than all, 1130 
 
 In whom we live and move and have our being, 
 
 * And are His offspring,' as Aratus told ? 
 Is this the truth, is this the ultimate. 
 
 One unknown God, Father and Lord of things ? 
 
58 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 'Twas this, this, this, I ever yearned to learn, 
 
 And meant to give my waning life to probe, 
 
 Groping and feeling if haply I might find Him, 
 
 Who if He is, is sure not far away. 
 
 But in this world I now shall never know. 
 
 Perchance had never known, perchance shall know 1140 
 
 On that Elysian plain ; now only stand 
 
 Like those sad wraiths that by the Stygian stream 
 
 Crane from the marge and ever pray to ferry. 
 
 With passionate palms forth-flung, to the further shore. 
 
 And yet, O God Unknown, why all unknown ? 
 Couldst Thou not come, or send some harbinger 
 With human lips, to tell us who Thou art ? 
 Maybe even now Thine angel is on his way 
 Star-led, or with the sunlight from the East : 
 For me too late, yet let him seek my grave, 1150 
 And in my cold ear speak his embassage 
 Twice, thrice, as those who call upon the dead. 
 And lay my ghost that fain had found the faith. 
 Unquiet else and craving still return. 
 
 [Eros enters^ 
 Eros, if I should die now in Brundisium, 
 'Twere best to burn my body here, but bring 
 My ashes home to sweet Parthenope : 
 There, on the road to Puteoli, I have chosen 
 My resting-place ; I love the antique use 
 
SCENE IV 59 
 
 That sets our tombs beside the traveller's way, m6o 
 Where as we walk they mind us we are all 
 Pilgrims upon a further, dimmer path. 
 There build beneath the brow my sepulchre, 
 And on my marble carve this epitaph, 
 FLOCKS-FIELDS' AND-CHIEFS«I'SANG'MANTUA'GAVE 
 ME'BIRTH'CALABRIA-DEATH'NAPLES'A'GRAVE 
 So haply shall some bard of after days 
 Light the pale lamp, and with blue violets 
 Wreathe my white stone, and on the ledges lay 
 The laurel that I loved and not disgraced, 1170 
 
 Or sit upon my grassy mound and sing 
 A lulling requiem to my slumbering soul. 
 
 EROS 
 Master, I have your bidding, and will keep ; 
 Meanwhile bethink you of less iron sleep. 
 The day draws in ; I'll see all ordered right. 
 And may you find, dear lord, true rest to-night. 
 
Night of Third Day, September 20 
 
 VIRGIL'S ROOM IN THE INN 
 
 Virgil, Eros 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Now verily, Eros, I feel more peace ; 
 My cares, one only excepted, are put by, 
 My preparation made, my soul assoiled. 
 And for this last anxiety, this poem iiSo 
 
 So laboured, loved so dearly, something tells me, 
 I may not see the High Sire as of old 
 Hang forth his glittering balance fraught with fate 
 At broad noon from the sky, but I shall have 
 Some sign, some omen, to decide its doom. 
 Give me the casket, then, that holds it, here. 
 And set a burning brazier by my bed. 
 So, if I deem I am for death, I'll burn it, 
 But if for life I'll keep it still unharmed. 
 Stay, hand me first that yet unfinished book, 1190 
 That Sixth, most deep, various, and diflicult 
 
SCENE V 6 1 
 
 In its creation, therefore best beloved : 
 
 Draw forth the roll, thus — in my hand I'll hold it 
 
 Sleeping or waking, till to-morrow morn. 
 
 If I elect to burn, it shall flame first. 
 
 EROS 
 It must be so ; I cannot say him nay, 
 And yet 'tis dangerous. I'll not to rest, 
 But watch till dawn, else in some sudden fit, 
 'Twixt sleep and waking, he may work a harm 
 Not only to the poem but to himself. 1200 
 
 So, Master, 'tis arranged ; the fire is set. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 
 [^Leaning towards the brazier. 
 How the flame leaps ! the sublime element 
 Prometheus purloined, struggling to regain 
 The home from which 'twas ravished, so the soul 
 Birth-prisoned seeks to evaporate whence it came. 
 
 EROS 
 Oh, Master, have a care ; 'twere well to place 
 The brazier somewhat back ; 'twill not abate 
 The hunger of the flame to burn your best. 
 But make it greedier ; shovdd aught befall 
 Of mischief to yourself, that would mar all. laio 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Do as you will, I heed not ; I must rest. 
 
62 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 Yet once more I grow heavy and opprest. 
 
 [Virgil ^//j asleep with the roll 
 in his hand. Eros watches. 
 Virgil begins to mutter: moves 
 restlessly and seems about to 
 throw the roll into thefire^ then 
 with a sudden start draws back 
 and lies quiet. "Presently he 
 wakes and calls Eros. 
 Eros, I have been dreaming a strange dream ; 
 Meseemed I was descending to the abyss. 
 Darkling beneath that dim and niggard light. 
 And in my hand I held a golden bough. 
 Whence plucked I knew not, nor if truly gold ; 
 For when I showed it Charon 'twas like gold, 
 But when I landed, lo, a mistle spray 
 With berries burnish'd by the winter frost ; laao 
 
 Enraged, I flung it into Phlegethon, 
 But his fierce-flaming torrent hurled it back. 
 And then 'twas very gold, pure and refined. 
 So on I stepped and came to the still gate. 
 And, * O chaste Queen,* I cried, * Proserpina ! 
 Pale regent of the poppy and asphodel, 
 I come to fasten on your temple front 
 This only passport to your Paradise : * 
 And I awoke, and in my hand the roll. 1229 
 
 What means the vision, Eros, how think you, came it 
 
SCENE V 63 
 
 Or through the gate of ivory or of horn ? 
 And shall I burn the book or keep it still ? 
 
 EROS 
 Not burn, dear lord, not burn, but purify 
 Yet further, if you will, with toil and tears. 
 
 VIRGIL 
 Aye, if the day be granted ; 'tis dark yet ; 
 I'll sleep again, perchance I'll dream again. 
 
 [^He seems to sleep again. For some 
 time Eros watches, then overworn 
 falls asleep too. Suddenly in the 
 early morning, just before the dawn, 
 Virgil is heard speaking again. 
 Light, light, Eros, more light ! nay, now I see them — 
 Father dear, mother, brethren. Silo, Flaccus, 
 Old Siro, too, I see you and I come, 
 I come. Eros, faithful Eros ! farewell ! 1*40 
 
 EROS 
 Lights, lights, bring lights, what is it hath befallen ? 
 
 my dear lord ! fetch in the apothecary ! 
 Quick ! he has fainted, O my dear dear lord ! 
 
 APOTHECARY 
 
 1 fear me 'tis no faint, — it is the end ; — 
 Virgil has lived, he is with the immortals. 
 
 But what is this, clenched in his hand, this roll. 
 As though it were his life to which he clung ? 
 
64 THE DEATH OF VIRGIL 
 
 EROS 
 It was his life, and it will be his life, 
 A finer spirit the world never knew. 
 Loftier or gentler, or more loyally 1250 
 
 Lent to one task — in truth he died for it, 
 And now 'twill never die while the world holds. 
 Would it had burned, and you had lived, dear lord ! 
 That bargain might not be. Nay, your own word 
 Hesitated and your will left all in doubt. 
 Now, Caesar's hinted hest is Jove's decree 
 Which every pious poet and pensive Muse 
 Through lengthening ages yet unborn will bless, 
 And every Nature-lover, and whoso dreams 
 Of Peace and Empire throned on sister seats ia6o 
 Splendidly potent to enlarge mankind 
 With spacious calm for Toil to plant and reap. 
 And Art to flower in Plenty's happiest plot, 
 And Love to nestle, and Thought to soar and float, 
 And Faith and Hope to colour earth with heaven. 
 
 The Gods have taken and the Gods have spoken. 
 Even through the gate of horn the vision came. 
 
 FINIS 
 
NOTES 
 
 The title of the piece, ' A Dramatic Narrative,' is intended to 
 imply that the elements of truth and fiction are blended. It is not 
 a play, but a story told in a dramatic form, following generally fact and 
 tradition, but not professing to be strictly historic. 
 
 P. II, 1. 53. Newman, Grammar of Assent, p. 79 : 'Perhaps this 
 is the reason of the mediaeval opinion about Virgil, as of a prophet 
 or magician; his single words and phrases, his pathetic half-lines 
 giving utterance as the voice of Nature herself to that pain and weariness, 
 yet hope of better things, which is the experience of her children 
 in every time.' 
 
 P. 16, 1. 152. Macrobius tells us that Augustus wrote to Virgil 
 long before this, a letter partly of entreaty, partly of threats, though 
 these last were in jest, asking him to send the first sketch of the jieneid, 
 or any fragment of it he liked. 
 
 P. 25, 1. 356. Maecenas's own words, quoted by Seneca, Epistles, 
 
 lOI, II. 
 
 P. 31, 1. 504. Macrobius, Sat. I. xxiv. 11, preserves a fragment 
 of one of Virgil's own letters to Augustus, in which he writes : ' So 
 big a business is begun, that I think I must have been pretty well mad 
 to have essayed so great a task.' 
 
 P. 31, 1. 516. ^ Parthenlas' so called after Parthenope, another 
 name for Naples, obviously also with a play upon VergtUus or F'irgilius 
 and yirgo. So Milton was called when an undergraduate at Cambridge, 
 'The Lady of Christ's'. 
 
 E 
 
eS NOTES 
 
 P. 31, 1. 518. For the whole of this passage see the spirited little 
 poem in the Appendix Vergiliana, Number V, doubtless written by 
 Virgil as a young student, which may be translated as follows : — 
 
 Avaunt, ye vain bombastic crew, 
 
 Crickets that swill no Attic dew: 
 
 Good-bye, grammarians crass and narrow, 
 
 Selius, Tarquitius, and Varro ! 
 
 A pedant tribe of fat-brained fools. 
 
 The tinkling cymbals of the schools : 
 
 Sextus, my friend of friends, good-bye. 
 
 With all our pretty company! 
 
 I'm sailing for the blissful shore. 
 
 Great Siro's high recondite lore. 
 
 That haven where my life shall be 
 
 From every tyrant passion free. 
 
 You too, sweet Muses mine, farewell ! 
 
 Sweet Muses mine, for truth to tell 
 
 Sweet were ye once, but now begone, 
 
 And yet, and yet, return anon. 
 
 And when I write, at whiles be seen, 
 
 In visits shy and far between ! 
 
 •P- 32j '• 538. Siro or Siron, a well-known philosophical teacher of 
 Virgil's boyhood belonging to the Epicurean School. Virgil studied 
 under him and imbibed from him the fashionable Epicurean philosophy 
 of the day, and perhaps some of his love of Lucretius its great poetical 
 exponent. But Siro was more than a philosophic guide. He was 
 a personal friend of Virgil and his father. When turned out of their 
 own property, it was in Siro's cottage they took refuge. Appendix 
 VergiUana, No. VIII. 
 
 •P- 33) '• 650' Virgil came of age on the same day on which 
 Lucretius died. 
 
 P. 41, 1. 755. Virgil's Vow to Venus. This is a fairly literal 
 translation of one of the numbers in the Virgilian Appendix, No. XIV. 
 
NOTES 67 
 
 P. 43, 1. 794. The first really good Commentary on Virgil was 
 written by Probus of Berytus in Syria about a.d. 50-60. 
 
 P. 43, 1. 796. Probably the oldest and most authentic portrait of 
 Virgil is a mosaic found at Tunis. 
 
 P. 44, 1. 809. ' Er6s ' — a common name for a Greek slave-servant 
 at Rome (cp. Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra) — means of course 
 Love. 
 
 P. 51, 1. 970. ' Le tendre et clairvoyant Virgile semble repondre, 
 comme par un echo secret, au second Issue.' Renan, Vie de Jesus. 
 
 P. 54, 1. 1052. From Thule to Taprobane, i. e. from the Orkneys 
 or Shetlands to Ceylon. 
 
 !*• 55i '• 1061. Cf. Callimachus's Epigram (Anthologia Palatina, 
 vii. 80), so exquisitely rendered by Mr. Cory in lontca; especially 
 the lines — 
 
 Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake : 
 For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take. 
 
 P. 69, 1. 1 168. Pliny's Letters, iii. 7, 8. 
 P. 59, 1. 1171. Sutius, Sihae, iv. 4. Si-g. 
 
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 PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY