With soften'd harvests every plain shall glow, "When now to vigorous manhood thou art come, 35 40 45 50 32 Soften'd harvests. Martyn very elaborately contends that mollis (as applied here to arista) must mean, not ripe or fertile, but soft and tender-bearded. The triticum of the ancients (see Georg. i. 219, and not. ib.) had a beard like vallum, or a prickly fence, to defend it from the birds. This was to be no longer necessary. 42 That under Achilles is adumbrated Pompey, the opponent of Cæsar, who always publicly asserted his own descent from Æneas, as Rome sustained the poetical character of a new Troy, Penn contends, pp. 327-344. Thus Turnus, the adversary of the Trojan prince, is designated by the alius Latio jam partus Achilles of the sixth Æneid, and Pompey is said by Lucan to draw his supplies from Greece-Proxima vicino vires dat Græcia bello. 52 Scarlet, or crimson, Martyn conceives to represent better the color obtained from the Tyrian fish than purple. On cro 'Flow, happy ages,' to their distaffs cried Th' harmonious Fates; and pour your golden tide.' See on the coming year the world intent: 'O reach so far my long life's closing strain ! 60 65 'Know, then, dear Boy, thy mother by her smile: 70 Enough ten months have given of pain and toil. Know her, dear Boy,-who ne'er such smile has known, Nor board nor bed divine 'tis his to own.' ceo, see his note. We are not, he adds, to infer from the word pascentes, that the flocks were actually to feed on the murer, the croceum lutum, or the sandyx (which he explains to be a composition made of the fictitious sandaracha, or preparation of white lead), but that they should have fleeces as beautiful as if they had been stained by those materials. 56 Those honors: i. e. the succession to the name and honors of his illustrious predecessor.-See Penn, ib. p. 361. 65. 67, 68 On Orpheus and Linus, as coeval with this prophecy, and the worship then more particularly paid to Pan, see Penn, ib. pp. 94-99. 70 On the peculiar propriety of the smile,' as applied to Attia, the mother of Augustus and the niece of Julius Cæsar (through whom alone flowed the traditionary descent of the former from the smiling goddess Venus), see Penn, ib. pp. 363-369. ECLOGUE V.-DAPHNIS. ARGUMENT. THE triumvirs, having resolved to open the A. U. C. 712 with performing divine honors to the memory of Julius Cæsar, the Daphnis (which refers to this deification) must probably have been written about the beginning of the year but, as Brutus and Cassius were still at the head of considerable armies, and Virgil had already smarted under the effects of civil fury, he cautiously veils the name of his hero under that of a Sicilian herdsman. Mopsus laments his death, and Menalcas celebrates his apotheosis. If ever Virgil intended in his Eclogues to introduce himself, it is probably as the latter. Philips has imitated this poem in his third Pastoral, intitled Albino,' on the death of the Duke of Gloucester, son of Queen Anne. Menalcas. AND why not, Mopsus, since we're met today You skill'd to pipe, and I to trill the lay— 5 Mopsus. The elder you, my friend, Just what you please prescribe, and I obey: Whether, where Zephyrs 'mid the branches play, We court the checquer'd shade; or choose yon cave, Where thinly bunch'd the wild-vine's tendrils wave. Men. None but Amyntas on our hills may try To match your art in sylvan minstrelsy :— 10 Mops. And he would strive e'en Phoebus to outvie. Men. Begin, then, Mopsus; if or love's fierce flame By beauteous Phyllis felt, or Alcon's fame, Or Codrus' tuneful strife inspire your reed- I carved, and sung alternate as I lay : Men. Far as the willow olives pale o'erpass, 15 20 Mops. Hush, shepherd! see, we've gain'd the grot we sought. 'The nymphs their Daphnis wail'd, by fate austere To death consign'd: ye hazels, witness bear, And you, ye streamlets; when, with fond embrace, Clasping the darling corse, in wild amaze The frantic mother pour'd her piteous moan, And charged on gods and stars her ravish'd son. That day, no shepherd drove his flock to drink The cooling wave; upon the river's brink 25 No steed or sipp'd the flood, or cropp'd the green: 30 (As the wild hills, and savage woodlands tell), 21 The saliunca is a plant not certainly known at present. It may be the same as the nardus Celtica, French spikenard, or a species of valerian growing abundantly on the mountains between Italy and Germany, and also about Genoa near Savona. This the Tyrolese peasants are said still to call' seliunck;' whence the saliunca of Virgil and Pliny, and the ἁλιου γγια of Dioscorides. 28 Mother: i. e. Venus. Compare Ov. Metam. xv. on the same subject. 36 Servius informs us that Julius Cæsar first brought the solemnities of Bacchus to Rome. This De la Rue, arguing To lead their orgies to the god enjoin'd, And the slight thyrsus with soft foliage twined. 45 As vines of trees, and grapes of vines the pride, 40 And bulls of herds, and corn of champaign wide, So thou of thine: now nought of thee remains-Pales and Phoebus both have fled the plains. Where to the furrow bulky grain we gave, Darnel and barren wild-oats idly wave; And, for the daffodil and violet's bloom, Thistles and briers in rank luxuriance gloom. Scatter the ground with leaves; around each spring Let wreathed flowers their sacred freshness fling. -So Daphnis gives command-and rear his tomb; 50 And grave this verse, memorial of his doom: "Pride of the woods, I Daphnis here am laid: Fair was my flock; but fairer I, who fed.'' Men. Sweet to the ear, blest bard, thy tuneful reed, As sleep to wearied shepherds on the mead: 55 from a passage in Livy, denies, Perhaps he restored them, after they had been abolished for their enormities, on a purer and more magnificent scale. 38 Thiasus is a solemn singing and dancing used at festivals. The thyrse was a spear twisted round with branches of vine and ivy, and borne in the hands of the bacchanals. 47 The paliurus has been a subject of some controversy among modern writers. By Theophrastus and Pliny it is called a shrub. Columella recommends it for a quick-hedge, as one of the strongest thorns; whence Martyn concludes it to be the rhamnus folio subrotundo, fructu compresso C. B., now cultivated under the name of Christ's-thorn;' which grows abundantly in desert places in Italy, and is very common in the hedges. 54 This imitates, and surpasses, a similar passage in the eighth Idyl of Theocritus (who supplies many parallels to the present Eclogue), and is itself copied by Philips in his fourth Pastoral; Not half so sweet are midnight winds, that move |