to turn his views towards the East. From that time, Horace, in compliance with the public wish, began to animate both prince and people to revenge the manes of Crassus.* The cautious policy of Augustus, still averse to war, was at length roused in the year 734, by some disturbances in Armenia. He passed over into Asia, and sent the young Tiberius with an army beyond the Euphrates. Every appearance promised a glorious war. But the Parthian monarch, Phrahates, alarmed at the approach of the Roman legions, and diffident of the fidelity of his subjects, diverted the storm, by a timely and humble submission: Jus, imperiumque Phrahates Cæsaris accepit genibus minor.† Cæsar returned in triumph to Rome, with the Parthian hostages, and the Roman ensigns which had been taken from Crassus. These busy scenes, which engage the attention of contemporaries, are far less interesting to posterity than the silent labours, or even amusements, of a man of genius. Cæsar dum magnus ad altum Fulminat Euphraten bello, victorque volentes Whilst Cæsar humbled the Parthians, Virgil was composing the Æneid. It is well known, that this noble poem occupied the author, without being able to satisfy, him, during the twelve last years of his life, from the year 723 to the year 735. The public expectation was soon raised, and the modest Virgil was sometimes obliged to gratify the impatient curiosity of his friends. Soon after the death of young Marcellus,§ he recited the second, fourth, and sixth books of the Eneid, in the presence of Augustus and Octavia. He even sometimes read parts of his work to more numerous companies; with a desire of obtaining their judgment, rather than their applause. In this manner, Propertius seems to have heard the shield of Æneas, and from that specimen he ventures to foretell the approaching birth of a poem, which will surpass the Illiad. Actia Virgilium custodis litora Phoebi, Cæsaris et fortes dicere posse rates. As a friend and as a critic, Horace was entitled to all Virgil's confidence, and was probably acquainted with the whole progress of the Eneid, from the first rude sketch, which Virgil drew up in prose, *Horat. lib. i. od. ii. lib. iii. od. v. lib. ii. serm. i. v. 15, &c. + Horat. lib. i. epist. xii. ; Vell. Pater. lib. ii. c. xciv.; Tacit. Annal. lib. ii. c. i.; Sueton. in Octav. c. xxi. and in Tiber. c. xiv. ; Justin, lib. xlii. c. v. ; Dion Cassius, lib. liv. p. 736, edit. Reimar ; Joseph. Ant. lib. xv. c. v. ; Ovid. Fast. v. ver. 551, &c. Donat. in Virgil. § Marcellus died in the latter end of the year 731. Usserii Annales, p. 555. Donat. in Virgil. ¶ Propert. lib. ii. el. xxv. v. 66. Y Y to that harmonious poetry, which the author alone thought unworthy of posterity. To resume my idea, which depended on this long deduction of cir cumstances; when Horace composed the second ode of his third book, the Eneid, and particularly the sixth book, were already known to the public. The detestation of the wretch who reveals the mysteries of Ceres, though expressed in general terms, must be applied by all Rome to the author of the sixth book of the Æneid. Can we seriously suppose, that Horace would have branded with such wanton infamy, one of the men in the world whom he loved and honoured the most? * Nothing remains to say, except that Horace was himself ignorant of his friend's allegorical meaning, which the Bishop of Gloucester has since revealed to the world. It may be so; yet, for my own part, I should be very well satisfied with understanding Virgil no better than Horace did. It is perhaps some such foolish fondness of antiquity, which inclines me to doubt, whether the Bishop of Gloucester has really united the severe sense of Aristotle with the sublime imagination of Longinus. Yet a judicious critic (who is now, I believe, Archdeacon of Gloucester) assures the public, that his patron's mere amusements have done much more than the joint labours of the two Grecians. I shall conclude these observations with a remarkable passage from the Archdeacon's Dedication: "It was not enough, in your en larged view of things, to restore either of these models (Aristotle or Longinus) to their original splendour. They were to be revived, or rather a new original plan of criticism to be struck out, which should unite the virtues of each of them. This experiment was made on the two greatest of our own poets, (Shakspeare and Pope), and by reflecting all the lights of the imagination on the severest reason, every thing was effected which the warmest admirer of ancient art could promise himself from such a union. But you went farther, by joining to these powers a perfect insight into the human nature; and so ennobling the exercise of literary, by the justest moral censure, you have now at length advanced criticism to its full glory." POSTSCRIPT. I was not ignorant, that several years since, the Rev. Dr. Jortin had favoured the public with a Dissertation on the State of the Dead. as described by Homer and Virgil: but the book is now grown so scarce, that I was not able to procure a sight of it till after these papers had been already sent to the press. I found Dr. Jortin's performance, as I expected, moderate, learned, and critical. Among a variety of ingenious observations, there are two or three which are very closely connected with my present subject. *Horat. lib. 1. od. iii. lib. 1. serm. v. ver. 39, &c. + See the Dedication of Horace's Epistle to Augustus, with an English commentary and notes. Six Dissertations on Different Subjects, published in a volume in octavo, in the year 1755. It is the Sixth Dissertation, p. 207-324. I had passed over in silence one argument of the Bishop of Gloucester, or rather of Scarron and the Bishop of Gloucester; since the former found the remark, and the latter furnished the inference. Discite justitiam moniti, et non temnere divos, eries the unfortunate Phlegyas. In the midst of his torments, he preaches justice and piety, like Ixion in Pindar. A very useful piece of advice, says the French buffoon, for those who were already damned to all eternity: Cette sentence est bonne et belle: Mais en enfer, de quoi sert elle? * From this judicious piece of criticism his lordship argues, that Phlegyas was preaching not to the dead, but to the living; and that Virgil is only describing the mimic Tartarus, which was exhibited at Eleusis for the instruction of the initiated. I shall transcribe one or two of the reasons, which Dr. Jortin condescends to oppose to Scarron's criticism. "To preach to the damned, says he, is labour in vain. And what if it is? It might be part of his punishment, to exhort himself and others, when exhortations were too late. This admonition, as far as it relates to himself and his companions in misery, is to be looked upon not so much as an admonition to mend, but a bitter sarcasm, and reproaching of past iniquities. "It is labour in vain. But in the poetical system, it seems to have been the occupation of the damned to labour in vain, to catch at meat and drink that fled from them, &c. "His instruction, like that of Ixion in Pindar, might be for the use of the living. You will say, how can that be? Surely nothing is more easy and intelligible. The muses hear him-The muses reveal it to the poet, and the inspired poet reveals it to mankind. And so much for Phlegyas and Monsieur Scarron." It is prettily observed by Dr. Jortin, "That Virgil, after having shone out with full splendour through the sixth book, sets at last in = a cloud." The ivory gate puzzles every commentator, and grieves every lover of Virgil: yet it affords no advantages to the Bishop of Gloucester. The objection presses as hard on the notion of an initiation, as on that of a real descent to the shades. "The troublesome conclusion still remain as it was; and from the manner in which the hero is dismissed after the ceremonies, we learn, that in those initiations, the machinery, and the whole show, was (in the poet's opinion) a representation of things, which had no truth or reality. "Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto: "Dreams in general may be called vain and decitful, somnia vana, or somnia falsa, if you will, as they are opposed to the real objects which present themselves to us when we are awake. But when false dreams * The doctrine's good, and spoken well; are opposed to true ones, there the epithet falsa has another meaning. True dreams represent what is real, and show what is true: false dreams represent things which are not, or which are not true. Thus Homer and Virgil, and many other poets, and indeed the nature of the thing, distinguish them." Dr. Jortin, though with reluctance, acquiesces in the common opinion, that by six unlucky lines, Virgil is destroying the beautiful system, which it has cost him eight hundred to raise. He explains too this preposterous conduct, by the usual expedient of the poet's Epicureism. I only differ from him in attributing to haste and indiscretion, what he considers as the result of design. Another reason, both new and ingenious, is assigned by Dr. Jortin, for Virgil explaining away his hero's descent into an idle dream. "All communication with the dead, the infernal powers, &c. belonged to the art magic, and magic was held in abomination by the Romans." Yet if it was held in abomination, it was supposed to be real. A writer would not have made his court to James the First, by representing the stories of witchcraft as the phantoms of an overheated imagination. Whilst I am writing, a sudden thought occurs to me, which, rude and imperfect as it is, I shall venture to throw out to the public. It is this. After Virgil, in imitation of Homer, had described the two gates of sleep, the horn and the ivory, he again takes up the first in a different sense : Quà veris facilis datur exitus umbris. The true shades, veræ umbræ, were those airy forms which were continually sent to animate new bodies, such light and almost immaterial natures as could without difficulty pass through a thin transparent substance. In this new sense, Æneas and the Sybil, who were still encumbered with a load of flesh, could not pretend to the prerogative of true shades. In their passage over Styx, they had almost sunk Charon's boat. Gemuit sub pondere cymba Sutilis, et multam accepit rimosa paludem. Some other expedient was requisite for their return; and since the horn gate would not afford them an easy dismission, the other which was adorned with the polished ivory, was the only one passage, that remained either for them, or for the poet. By this explanation, we save Virgil's judgment and religion, though I must own, at the expense of an uncommon harshness and ambiguity of expression. Let it only be remembered, that those, who in desperate cases conjecture with modesty, have a right to be heard with indulgence. A DISSERTATION ON THE SUBJECT OF THE MAN WITH THE IRON MASK. THE mysterious history of the famous French prisoner, known by the appellation of "the Man with the Iron Mask,” is related by M. Voltaire, in the Siècle de Louis XIV., and in the Questions sur l'Encyclopédie. That writer, the most sceptical and lively of his age, never attempts either to contest the truth, or to reveal the secret, of that wonderful affair. "I know of no fact more extraordinary or better established," is the just conclusion of his first account. In his subsequent additions, he refutes with force and contempt the idle suppositions that this unknown prisoner was the Duc de Beaufort, the Count de Vermandois, or the Duke of Monmouth. At length, breaking off abruptly, he throws out a dark intimation, "that he knows more about it, perhaps, than Father Grifet, and that he will say no more on the subject." If we are disposed to exercise our curiosity and conjectures upon this historical anecdote, we must steadily remember, that no hypothesis can deserve the least credit, unless it corresponds with and explains the following circumstances: 1. The prisoner who passed his melancholy life in the Isles de St. Marguerite and the Bastile, was called Marchiali. As the name was most assuredly fictitious, this circumstance seems, and indeed is, of small importance. However, in case an Italian was either the author of his birth, or the guardian of his infancy, a name drawn from that language would most naturally present itself. 2. Marchiali was buried secretly and by night, in the parish church of St. Paul's, on the third day of March in the year 1703, as is proved by the journal of Father Grifet, who was entrusted with the very delicate employment of confessor to the Bastile. A few days before his death, the unknown prisoner told his physician that he believed himself about sixty years of age. If he reckoned with precision, he was born in the spring of the year 1643, about the time of the death of Louis XIII. But the dreary hours of a prison move slowly, and the infirmities of age are hastened by grief and solitude. Marchiali could speak only from conjecture; nor is it unlikely that he might be somewhat younger than he supposed himself. 3. He was conducted to the Isles de St. Marguerite on the coast of Provence, some months after the death of Cardinal Mazarin ; that is to say, about the end of the year 1661, or the beginning of 1662. This is the first among the few events of his life. M. de Voltaire mentions, in one place, a previous confinement at Pignerol; but without being perfectly clear, or even consistent on that head. |