Nor be the citron, Media's boast, unsung,

155

160

Whose juice, tho' harsh, and lingering on the tongue,
When stepdames mix their herbs with baleful spells,
From the envenom'd limbs dire death expels ;
Large, like the bay, and were its sweets the same,
The tree itself had known no other name :
Before the wind its leaves unscatter'd play,
The flow'rs unbroken blossom on the spray;
With fragrant juice th' infected breath assuage,
And breast that pants beneath the load of age.

Yet nor the boundless woods o'er Media spread, 165
Ganges' fair flood, or Hermus' golden bed,
Nor all the spice that all Panchaia breeds,
Bactra, nor Ind, Italia's praise exceeds.

Here, while they cleave the glebe, the yoke beneath,

No powerful bulls live flames around them breathe, 170
No hydra teeth embattled harvest yield,
Spear and bright helmet bristling o'er the field;
But golden corn each laughing valley fills,
The vintage reddens on a thousand hills,
Luxuriant olives spread from shore to shore,
And flocks unnumber'd range the pastures o'er.
Hence the proud war-horse rushes on the foe,
And where thy sacred streams, Clitumnus! flow,

175

155 Pliny speaks of the citron as the most salutary of exotic fruits, and a remedy for poison. Palladius seems to have first cultivated it with any success in Italy.-Martyn.

166 The Indian Ganges is mentioned by Pliny among the rivers which afford gold.-Hermus, a river of Lydia: it receives the Pactolus, famous for its golden sands.

168 The capital of Bactriana, a country between Parthia and India, celebrated for its large-grained wheat.

170, 171 Virgil alludes to Jason, and the golden fleece. See the spirited description in Apollonius Rhodius, beautifully imitated by Val. Flaccus.

178 Now called Clitumno: it rises a little below Campello, in Ombria. The inhabitants near this river still retain a notion that its waters are attended with a supernatural property,

White herds, and stateliest bulls that oft have led
Triumphant Rome, and on her altars bled.

180

Here ceaseless Spring, here Winter wreathed with

flowers,

And flocks twice teem, and fruits twice bend the bowers:

Yet here no lion breeds, no tiger strays,

No poisonous aconite the touch betrays,

190

No monstrous snake th' uncoiling volume trails, 185
Or gathers orb on orb his iron scales.
But many a peopled city tow'rs around,
And many a rocky cliff with castle crown'd,
And many an antique wall whose hoary brow
O'ershades the flood that guards its base below.
Say, shall I add, inclosed on either side,
What seas defend thee, and what lakes divide?
Thine, mighty Larius? or, with surging waves,
Thine, that like ocean, vext Benacus, raves?
Havens and ports, the Lucrine's added mole,
Seas that enraged along their bulwark roll,
Far from the deep where Julian waters roar,
And Tuscan billows sweep th' Avernian shore?

195

imagining that it makes the cattle white that drink of it. See Melmoth's Pliny, p. 455.-Warton.

193, 194 Larius, at the foot of the Alps, now Lago di Como. Benacus, in the Veronese, Lago di Garda.

195 Lucrinus and Avernus are two lakes of Campania, the former of which was almost destroyed by an earthquake; the latter still remains, and is called Lago d' Averno. The Lucrine bay was separated from the sea by a mound, which was said to have been made by Hercules; but as the sea had broken through it, Agrippa restored it: the moles erected by him permitted only a communication with the sea sufficient to receive the ships into the harbor. Suetonius says that Augustus called the basin within the mole the Julian port. We find in Strabo that the lake Avernus lay near the Lucrine bay, but more within land: hence it seems probable that a cut was made between the two lakes.-Stawell. Martyn.

Here brass and silver earth's deep beds contain,
And streams of gold enrich the pregnant vein.
Blest with bold race; Ligurians unsubdued,
The spear-arm'd Volsci and the Sabine brood:
Camilli, Marii, Decii swell thy line,

And, thunderbolts of war, each Scipio thine!

200

Thou, Cæsar! chief, whose sword the East o'erpow'rs,

205

And the tamed Indian drives from Roman tow'rs.
All hail, Saturnian earth! hail, loved of fame,

Land, rich in fruits, and men of mighty name!
For thee I dare the sacred founts explore,
For thee the rules of ancient art restore,
Themes, once to glory raised, again rehearse,
And pour through Roman towns th' Ascræan verse.
Now learn the soils, the nature of each field,
What fruits their varying strength and virtue yield.
Know first, th' ungenial hill, and barren land,
Where sterile beds of hungry clay expand,
And thorns and flints deface the rugged earth,
Demand the long-lived plants, Palladian birth.

210

215

199 Pliny tells us that Italy abounds in all sorts of metals, but that to dig them was forbidden by a decree of the senate. 203 Marcus Furius Camillus drove the Gauls from Rome, after they had taken the city, and laid siege to the Capitol. His son Lucius conquered the Gauls.

There were several Marii: one was seven times consul. Julius Cæsar was related to them by marriage; hence, in compliment to Augustus, the poet celebrates the Marian family.

The elder Scipio delivered his country from the invasion of Hannibal, by transferring the war into Africa, where he subdued the Carthaginians, and obtained the surname of Africanus the younger Scipio triumphed for the conclusion of the third Punic war, by the total destruction of Carthage.Martyn.

212 Ascra, in Baotia, the birth-place of Hesiod, author of Georgics in Greek.

Wild olives there from many a wanton shoot
Show'r the rude berry and uncultured fruit.
But fertile land, by genial moisture fed,
Where the thick herbage mats th' exuberant bed,
Such as we view from off the mountain brow
In the rich vale where nurturing floods o'erflow;
And plains that to the south their upland turn,
And rear, abhorr'd by ploughs, th' unfruitful fern;
There shall large grapes on crowded clusters grow,
Wines that to gods from golden bowls o'erflow,
When the swoln Tuscan pipes th' invoking strain,
And bending chargers smoke before the fane.
But if the breed of herds thy care invite,
If calves, or lambs, or browsing kids delight;
Seek far Tarentum's glades and fertile shores,
And plains which hapless Mantua still deplores,

220

225

230

219 The wild olive differs from the cultivated, as crabs from apples. The plant cultivated in our gardens under the name of oleaster is not an olive. Tournefort refers it to his genus of Elæagnus.-Martyn.

221 The opinion Virgil here gives, that deep and rich soils are better for vines than dry and rocky soils, does not agree with modern observations and experience.-T. A. Knight.

226 Fern has sometimes a root eight or ten feet deep in the ground; it is therefore detested by the ploughman, as it descends deeper than the plough. Its ashes are said to yield a greater quantity of salt than any other vegetable.-Stawell.

229 C'étoient ordinairement des Toscans qui jouoient de la flûte dans les sacrifices: ils étoient fameux pour leur gloutonnerie. Une fois ils quittèrent Rome, parce qu'on les empêcha de satisfaire leur amour pour la bonne chère. Ils ne consentirent à leur retour que sous la condition qu'on leur permettroit de manger dans les sacrifices.-De Lille.

232 We find in Varro that the ancient Romans articled in their leases that the tenants should not breed kids, because they destroy, by browsing, the trees and bushes.-Martyn. 233 Tarentum, a city of Magna Græcia, according to Pliny, famous for fine wool.

Augustus Cæsar had given the fields about Mantua and Cremona to his soldiers; and Virgil in consequence lost his

Where silver swans on Mincio's herbage feed,
Nor fountains fail the flock, nor grass the mead :
And what thy herds throughout long days devour,
Cool dews restore beneath night's transient hour.

235

For wheaten harvests Nature points her bed Black, rich, and crumbling underneath the tread: 240 Such as the plough prepares, and glads the swain When the slow ox home drags the frequent wain. Or where rich soil has idly slept unknown, Age after age, by forest wilds o'ergrown, Th' indignant peasant fells th' uprooted wood, And ancient mansions of the feather'd brood; The houseless exiles wing the waste of air; But the fresh land bright opes beneath the share. Scarce can the hungry gravel's hilly field,

245

Vile casia for thy bees and rosemary yield;
And mould'ring stones that crumble to decay,

250

And chalk where black'ning snakes have gnaw'd their

way,

There lurks in winding caves the serpent breed,

And gathers poison from each baleful weed.

Where lands thin mists and vapors light exhale, 255
Drink, and at will with fogs condense the gale,
Clothe their green lap with grass that never fades,
Nor rust the share that cuts their humid blades ;

farm, to the possession of which he was restored by the interest of his patron Mæcenas. This is the subject of his first Eclogue.-Martyn.

239 The celebrated soil of Campania, called pulla, was a black earth. The black color of soils is the effect of putrefactive decomposition. The influence of caloric is increased on a dark-colored soil, the rays being absorbed; therefore, other circumstances alike, the fertility of such a soil is higher. It is observed that the peasants of the Alps spread black mould over the surface in the spring to dissolve the snow. Stawell.