and Minerva stalking on amid the rolling clouds of dust and smoke, and marking their passage by the headlong crash of sinking walls and falling towers.7

There are other passages, but on the whole they occur but rarely. It is in tenderness, in dignity, in sweetness, in pathos, that he shines unrivalled. I need hardly remind my readers of the excellent beauty of the passages concerning Orpheus and Eurydice, Dido, the death of Anchises, the fate of Marcellus, Nisus and Euryalus, Lausus, Mezentius, Pallas, and Camilla; nor shall I detain them with any remarks upon the wondrous melody of his verse, an union of sweetness and majesty, which, as an instrument of language, few have come up to, and no one but Homer has ever gone beyond. It may be that he loved to study inanimate and irrational nature better than mankind, but he has drawn men like a true genius. I do not defend Æneas, but surely Turnus, and Pallas, and Lausus, and Nisus, and Ascanius, and even Latinus, and Mezentius are touched with a master's hand. It may be that he disliked and despised women, yet no Latin poet has drawn the female character with anything like his purity and grace. His Andromache, Creusa, Hecuba, Camilla, little as we hear of them, are exquisite; his faithful Anna is full of beauty; but his Dido is a marvellous creation. Walsh has called her "lustful and revengeful;" Dryden has ascribed her whole conduct to animal desire, and the criticism has been echoed by others. I am bold to say that Dryden's coarse though powerful mind rendered him an unfit judge

7 There is something a little like this in Callimachus's hymn to Delos, where Ares is represented as on the point of attacking the Peneus. Virgil is far finer, and perhaps, he did not know of this passage, though his obligations to Apollonius Rhodius, a poet of the school of Callimachus, might form the subject of a separate paper.

of such a question. She is warm, true-hearted, nobleminded, heart-broken; as a queen, she feels indignation at the contempt, she breaks her heart as a woman at the perfidy of Æneas. Next to the Medea of Euripides, she is perhaps the most striking picture of human feeling and passion to be met with in the classics. Some of her speeches have almost a Shaksperean power. Next to those of Shakspere, the Ulysses of the Odyssey has been called the most perfect character ever drawn; and is not Dido, though not so elaborate, yet to the full as consistent as Ulysses?

Let us

But I must close these rambling remarks. never forget in our estimate of Virgil that the Eneid is but a rough draft, and that he is the author of the Georgics. Obvious as they seem, both these facts are too commonly lost sight of. The first Eclogue is the key to all his writings. His sorrow over the wretched state of his country therein displayed, may be traced in all his subsequent productions; and perhaps impelled him to the composition of the Georgics, in order to direct the minds of his countrymen to those pursuits by which alone the horrors of war can be mitigated, and its effects assuaged. We see by a beautiful passage at the beginning of the Culex, how very early he had regarded these things with a loving sympathy. Even if we gave up the Æneid altogether, enough would remain to place him in the first rank of poets; but the Eneid will maintain itself if

8 There seems no reason to doubt of the genuineness of this very pretty little piece, considering Martial's testimony concerning it. May I add, in taking leave of him, as an instance of Virgil's simple majesty, the celebrated line, " Aude, hospes, contemnere opes, et te quoque dignum Finge deo;" a line, of which Dryden says, "I am lost in admiration of it, I contemn the world when I think on it, and myself when I translate it." Dedication to the Æneid.

learning, height of thought, pathetic vehemence, natural description, tenderness, and dignity can give a poem life and power. In fine, let us be content to swear "per Maronem." Critics may decry, and philosophers may contemn him. But his fame remains unshaken. His own and all succeeding ages cannot have been wholly wrong. The granite rock remains fixed for ever, utterly regardless of the boiling sea of clouds which from time to time beat upon its head, for at the first blast of wind they are blown away and scattered into nothingness. Let us gladly give to Virgil a reverent admiration, and a worship not blind but reasoning: let us leave those to depreciate and despise who have not studied and who do not understand him.

LYCOPHRON OF CORINTH.

Concluded from page 96.

CANTO III.

Days and months have floated on,
And a year is come and gone,
While the restless world hath sped

With the living and the dead,

Driven by time's and nature's stress

Towards the goal of nothingness.

Why should we pause, why should we stay,

Questioning about decay,

Wringing hands, and shedding tears

O'er faded nurslings, which the shears

Of our relentless enemy

Have cut away to rot and die?

It is a sail that meets his eye,

Gleaming athwart the yellow sky;
That gleaming sail

How can he fail

To recognize undoubtingly?

He that hath thrice been made to go
Over these waters to and fro
Within that royal ship-and now
Trouble is gathering on his brow,

And fear begins to presage
Some new and pitiless decree,
Or else the death of Therine,
From yonder galley's message.

The vessel nears; from rocky seat
He views her gliding at his feet;
She passes-and his eye is keen
To trace her path of glancing sheen,
And mute, without a thought of flight
He yields his fancy to the sight.

Oh! that sunny trail of foam,
He had watched it once before,
When first borne away from home
He looked on Corinth's lessening shore,
And measured by that transient cleft
Of spray and fleeting bubbles,

How far behind him he had left

His boyish cares and troubles.

And again that furrowed wake
He had watched for sorrow's sake,
When along the fading track
Towards this isle his gaze ran back,

And every where in sea or sky,
With a grief-enchanted eye,