when the too powerful splendor is withdrawn, our natural veneration of it takes place: Extinctus amabitur idem. This is the true exposition of the poet's sentiment; which therefore appears just the reverse of what his French interpreter would fix upon him. "La justice, que nous rendons aux grands hommes “après leur mort, ne vient pas de l'AMOUR, que "nous avons pour leur vertu, mais de la HAINE, "dont notre cœur est rempli pour ceux, qui ont "pris leur PLACE.” An observation, which only becomes the misanthropy of an old cynic virtue, or the selfishness of a modern system of ethics, 15. PRAESENTI TIBI MATUROS, &c. to v. 18.] We are not to wonder at this and the like extravagances of adulation in the Augustan poets. They had ample authority for what they did of this sort. We know, that altars were erected to the Emperor by the command of the Senate; and that he was publicly invoked, as an established, tutelary divinity. But the seeds of the corruption had been sown much earlier. For we find it sprung up, or rather (as of all the ill weeds, which the teeming soil of human depravity throws forth, none is more thriving and grows faster than this of flattery) flourishing at its height, in the tyranny of J. CAESAR. Balbus, in a letter to Cicero [Ep. ad Att. 1. ix.] Swears by the health and safety of Caesar: ità, incolumi Caesare, moriar. And Dio tells us [L. xliv.] that it was, by the express injunction of the Senate, decreed, even in Caesar's life-time, that the Romans should bind themselves by this oath. The Senate also, as we learn from the same writer, [L. xliii.] upon receiving the news of his defeat of Pompey's sons, caused his statue to be set up, in the temple of Romulus, with this inscription, DEO INVICTO. 'Tis true, these and still greater honours had been long paid to the Roman governors in their provinces, by the abject, slavish Asiatics. And this, no doubt, facilitated the admission of such idolatries into the capitale. But that a people, from the highest notions of an independent republican equality, could so soon be brought to this prostrate adoration of their first Lord, is perfectly amazing! In this, they shewed themselves ripe for servitude. Nothing could keep them out of the hands of a master. And one can scarcely read such accounts, as these, without condemning the vain efforts of dying patriotism, which laboured so fruitlesly, may one not almost say, so weakly? to protract the liberty of such a people. Who can, after this, wonder banxтy year. Though, to complete the farce, it was with the greatest shyness and reluctance, that the humility of these lords of the universe could permit itself to accept the ensigns of deity, as the court-historians of those times are forward to inform us. An affectation, which was thought to sit so well upon them, that we find it afterwards practised, in the absurdest and most impudent manner, by the worst of their successors. c See a learned and accurate dissertation on the subject in HIST, DE L'ACAD. DES INSCR. &c. tom. i. 1 at the incense, offered up by a few court-poets? The adulation of Virgil, which has given so much offence, and of Horace, who kept pace with him, was, we see, but the authorized language of the times; presented indeed with address, but without the heightenings and privileged licence of their profession. For, to their credit, it must be owned, that, though in the office of poets, they were to comply with the popular voice, and echo it back to the ears of sovereignty; yet, as men, they had tod much good sense, and too scrupulous a regard to the dignity of their characters, to exaggerate and go beyond it. It should, in all reason, surprize and disgust us still more, that modern writers have not always shewn themselves so discrete. The grave and learned LIPSIUS was not ashamed, even without the convenient pretext of popular flattery, or poetic coloring, in so many words, to make a God of his patron : who though neither King, nor Pope, was yet the next best material for this manufacture, an Archbishop. For, though the critic knew, that it was not every wood, that will make a Mercury, yet no body would dispute the fitness of that, which grew so near the altar. In plain words, I am speaking of an Archbishop of MECHLIN, whom, after a deal of fulsome compliment (which was the vice of the man) he exalts at last, with a pagan complaisance, into the order of Deities. "Ad haec, says he, erga omnes humanitas et facilitas me faciunt, ut omnes te non tanquàm hominem aliquem de nostro coetu, "sed tanquam DEUM QUENDAM DE COELO DELAPSUM INTUEANTUR ET ADMIRENTUR." 16. JURANDASQUE TUUM PER NUMEN PONIMUS. ARAS.] On this idea of the APOTHEOSIS, which was the usual mode of flattery in the Augustan age, but, as having the countenance of public authority, sometimes inartificially enough employed, Virgil hath projected one of the noblest allegories in ancient poetry, and at the same time hath given to it all the force of just compliment, the occasion itself allowed. Each of these excellencies was to be expected from his talents. For, as his genius led him to the sublime; so his exquisite judgment would instruct him to palliate this bold fiction, and qualify, as much as possible, the shocking adulation, implied in it. So singular a beauty deserves to be shewn at large. The third GEORGIC sets out with an apology for the low and simple argument of that work, which, yet, the poet esteemed, for its novelty, preferable to the sublimer, but trite, themes of the Greek writers. Not but he intended, on some future occasion, to adorn a nobler subject. This was the great plan of the Aeneïs, which he now prefigures and unfolds at large. For, taking advantage of the noblest privilege of his art, he breaks away, in a fit of prophetic enthusiasm, to foretel his successes in this projected enterprize, and, under the imagery of the ancient triumph, which comprehends, or VOL. I. suggests to the imagination, whatever is most august in human affairs, to delineate the future glories of this ambitious design. The whole conception, as we shall see, is of the utmost grandeur and magnificence; though, according, to the usual management of the poet (which, as not being apprehended by his critics, hath furnished occasion, even to the best of them, to charge him with a want of the sublime) he hath contrived to soften and familiarize its appearance to the reader, by the artful manner, in which it is introduced. It stands thus: tentanda via est, qua me quoque possim Tollere humo, VICTORQUE virúm volitare per ora. This idea of victory, thus casually dropped, he makes the basis of his imagery; which, by means of this gradual preparation, offers itself easily to the apprehension, though it thereby loses, as the poet designed it should, much of that broad glare, in which writers of less judgment love to shew their ideas, as tending to set the common reader at a gaze. The allegory then proceeds: Primus ego patriam mecum (modo vita supersit) The projected conquest was no less than that of all the Grecian Muses at once; whom, to carry on the decorum of the allegory, he threatens, 1. to force from their high and advantageous situation on the summit of the Aonian mount; and, 2. bring captive with him into Italy: the former circumstance |