shade presented itself, and informing him that she was provided for by the mother of the gods, enjoined him to abandon all search for her, and proceed upon his divine mission to found a new empire in Hesperia, where another, and a royal, spouse awaited him; that accordingly he returned to the place where he had concealed his father and son and domestics, and found. there a great number of fugitives from the burning city, collected, and prepared to share his fortunes; and that with them and his father and son, he bade adieu for ever to Troy, and made good his retreat to the mountains.

Nothing can be plainer than that this is a mere personal narrative of one of the principal sufferers; every circumstance related, with the single exception of the concealment of the Grecian fleet at Tenedos, having been witnessed by the relator, or heard by him on the spot from Pantheus or Sinon. This is, I think, a sufficient answer to those critics who have objected to Virgil's account of the taking of Troy, that it is by no means a full, complete, and strategical account of the taking of a great city; that many circumstances which may be supposed to have happened, and which indeed must have happened on such an occasion, have been either wholly omitted or left unexplained; and that, in short, Virgil, in his second book of the Eneis, has evinced his infinite inferiority in strategical science to his great prototype and master, Homer. Many such objections have been urged from time to time by various critics; and, amongst others, by a celebrated personage, whose opinion on any matter connected with military tactics must be received with the greatest deference, I mean the Emperor Napoleon, whose observations on this subject are to be found in a volume published after his death under the following title: Précis des Guerres de César, par Napoléon; écrit par M. Marchand, à l'île Sainte Hélène, sous la dictée de l'Empereur; suivi de plusieurs fragmens inédits. Paris, 1836. 1 vol. 8vo.

It is not my intention to enter into a detailed examination or refutation of all Napoleon's objections, (although I shall probably in the course of these notes have occasion to refer specially to more than one of them,) but simply to state that the whole of his critique is founded on the assumption that Virgil intended to give, or ought to have given, such a full and complete account of the taking of Troy as was given by Homer of the operations before its walls; such an account as might have

been given by an historian, or laid before a directory by a commander-in-chief. On the contrary, it is to be borne carefully in mind, that, Homer's subject being the misfortunes brought by the wrath of Achilles upon the army besieging Troy, that poet could scarcely have given too particular or strategical an account of all that happened before the Trojan walls; while, Virgil's subject being the adventures and fortunes of one man, (as sufficiently evidenced by the very title and exordium of his work,) the taking of Troy was to be treated of, only so far as connected with the personal history of that hero. Virgil, therefore, with his usual judgment, introduces the taking of Troy, not as a part of the action of his poem, but as an episode; and, still more effectually to prevent the attention from being too much drawn away from his hero, and too much fixed upon that great and spirit-stirring event, puts the account of it into the mouth of the hero himself, whom, with the most wonderful art, he represents either as a spectator or actor in so many of the incidents of that memorable night, that on the one hand the account of those incidents is the history of the adventures of his hero, and on the other, the adventures of his hero form a rapid précis of the taking of Troy.

Even if it had been otherwise consistent with the plan of the Eneis to have given a full and complete account of the taking of Troy, and to have described, for instance, (as required by Napoleon,) how the other Trojan chiefs, signalised in the Iliad, were occupied during that fatal night, and how each defended his own quarter of the city with the troops under his command, such a full account must necessarily, either have rendered Eneas's narrative too long to have been delivered inter mensas laticemque Lyæum; or, to make room for that additional matter, some part of the present story should have been left out; and then, I ask, which of the incidents would the reader be satisfied should have been omitted?-that of Laocoon, the unceasing theme and admiration of all ages, that shuddering picture of a religious prodigy?—that of Sinon, on which the whole plot hangs?—that of the vision, of the inimitable Tempus erat, the mastissimus Hector?-that of the Priameian priestess, Ad cœlum tendens ardentia lumina frustra, Lumina nam teneras arcebant vincula palmas ?—that of Neoptolemus blazing in burnished brass, Qualis ubi in lucem coluber ?-or Hecuba and her daughters flying to the sheltering altar, Præcipites atrâ ceu

tempestate columba ?-or the good old king, cased in the longunused armour, and slipping and slain in his Polites' blood?or Venus staying her son's hand, lifted in vengeance against the fatal spring of all these sorrows?—or the innoxious flame which, playing about the temples of Iulus, foreshowed him the father of a line of kings?-or the ter frustra comprensa imago of the for ever lost Creusa? Which of all these passages should have been omitted, to make room for the additional matter required by the imperial critic? What reader will consent to give up one, even one, of these most precious pearls, these conspicuous stars in, perhaps, the most brilliant coronet that ever graced a poet's brow? And even if the reader's assent were gained; if he were content with less of Eneas, and more of the other Homeric Trojans; with less of the romance, and more of the art, of war; would such an account have been equally interesting to the assembled guests and the love-caught queen? How coldly would a story in which Eneas played a subordinate part have fallen upon Dido's ear? How would not her thought have wandered from the thing told, to the teller? There was but one way to guard against the double danger, that Dido would forget the story in thinking of Eneas, and that the reader would forget Eneas in thinking of the story; and Virgil adopted that way-he made Eneas speak of himselfquæque ipse miserrima vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui. With what effect he spoke, we learn in the beginning of the fourth book-hærent infixi pectore vultus Verbaque, and Dido herself testifies; Heu, quibus ille Jactatus fatis! quæ bella exhausta canebat! Or, in the words of another great master of the human heart,

"His story being done,

She gave him for his pains, a world of sighs:

She swore in faith 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange;

"Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful;

She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished

That heaven had made her such a man; she thanked him,

And bade him, if he had a friend that loved her,

He should but teach him how to tell his story,
And that would woo her."

But let us suppose that the modern commander is right, and the great ancient poet and philosopher wrong: that the error lies not in Napoleon's total misconception, not only of Virgil's

general scope and design, but of his meaning in the plainest passages, (as, for instance, in the account of the situation of Anchises' house, and of the number of men contained in the horse); let us suppose, I say, that the error lies not in Napoleon's misconception of the poet, but in the poet's ignorance of heroic warfare; and that the episode does, indeed, sin against military tactique; (but see note, v. 604); yet where, in the whole compass of poetry, is there such another episode? so many heart-stirring incidents grouped together, representing in one vivid picture the fall of the most celebrated city in the world, and at the same time, and pari passu, the fortunes of one of the most famous heroes of all antiquity, the son of Venus, the ancestor of Augustus, the first founder of Imperial Rome? spoken, too, by the hero himself, at a magnificent banquet, and in presence not only of the princes of his own nation, (the partners of his sufferings, and the witnesses of the truth of all he related,) but of the whole Carthaginian court, and at the request of the young and artless queen, who, already admiring his god-like person and beauty, lost her heart more and more at every word he uttered; at every turn of griefs, which,

Alas, alas, for the cold-blooded criticism which could detect, or, having detected, could dwell upon, errors of military tactique in this flood of living poetry; which would chain the poet with the fetters of the historian; which, frigid and unmoved, could occupy itself with the observation of cracks and flaws in the scenic plaster, while the most magnificent drama ever presented to enraptured audience was being enacted!

V. 13. Incipiam.—I may perhaps be accused of drawing too nice a distinction, yet I am inclined to think that incipiam here means not to begin, but to undertake or take in hand ;—

1st, Because although it might, strictly speaking, be quite correct for Virgil, having just stated (v. 2) that Eneas began to speak (orsus) with the words Infandum, regina, jubes, &c., to cause Eneas almost instantly afterwards to say that he began his story with the words Fracti bello, &c.; yet it would be highly unpoetical, and evince a barrenness of thought and expression, quite foreign to Virgil.

2dly, Because it is evidently the intention of Eneas not ly to begin, but briefly to tell the whole story.

3dly, Because the very word begin involves the idea of a long story, and thus, however true in point of fact, contradicts the intention expressed by breviter (v. 11).

I, therefore, understand incipiam to be here used (as in En. x. 876,) in its primary and etymological meaning of undertaking, taking in hand, [in capio]; so understood, it harmonises with orsus, with Eneas's intention of telling the whole story, with breviter, and with the immediately preceding words, Quanquam animus meminisse horret, &c. Compare Disserere incipiam, Lucr. I. 50; not begin or commence, but undertake, take in hand, to discuss. That our own English begin had originally and primarily a similar signification, and meant not to commence, but to undertake, appears both from its German origin (viz. Beginnen, to undertake

"Er würde Freiheit mir und Leben kosten,

Und sein verwegenes Beginnen nur

Beschleunigen."-Schiller, Die Piccolom. 1. 3.);

and from the use made of the term, not only by the earliest English writers,

("That Eneas bigan hys ofspring to Lumbardie first bring." Robert of Gloucester), but by Milton, no mean part of the excellence of whose poetry consists in the frequent employment of ordinary and current terms in primitive and obsolete, and therefore extraordinary meanings:

"If he aught begin,

How frequent to desert him, and at last

To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds."

Sams. Agon. 274.

V. 14. Tot jam labentibus annis.-The translators refer labentibus to the dim and faded past, instead of the vivid and continuing present; for instance, Surrey :

And Phaer:

"All irked with the war,

Wherein they wasted had so many years."

"Whan all in vaine so many yeeres had past.”

Yet the present and continuing force of labentibus is doubly evident; because the verb labor expresses a continuing action, and the present participle a continuing time. It is this continuing -ense (observed, with his usual acumen, by Wagner, Quest.