MISCELLANEOUS PASSAGES FROM VIRGIL. VIRGIL IRGIL Concludes his fourth eclogue, with calling upon the child to distinguish his mother by her smiles; because those children, on whom their, parents did not smile at their birth, were accounted unfortunate: Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem : The commentators are not all agreed, whether the poet means that the child should know its mother by her smiling on him, or that he should recognise his mother by smiling on her. The two last of the four lines can only accord with the former sense. Servius is rather inconsistent on the subject. He seems to consider this passage as involving an interchange of smiles. The passage of Catullus, In Nuptias Juliæ et Manlii, represents the smiles of infants very pleasingly, but at a more advanced period: Torquatus, volo, parvulus Porrigens teneras manus, Dulce rideat ad patrem, Pliny thus speculates on the subject: "Hominem tantum nudum et in nuda humo, natali die abjicit ad vagitus statim et ploratum, nullumque tot animalium aliud ad lacrymas, et has protinus vitæ principio. At hercules risus, præcox ille et celerrimus, ante quadragesimum diem nulli datur.' The same author states a whimsical exception to his general rule, with what he seems to consider as a physical cause for it, in the instance of a great philosopher:-"Risisse eodem die, quo genitus esset unum hominem accepimus Zoroastrem. Eidem cerebrum ita palpitasse, ut impositam repelleret manum, futuræ præsagio scientiæ." In St. John's gospel there is a beautiful description of the maternal feeling :-"A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.” Another objection to the application of the smiling to the child, is the strained sense it forces. on cognoscere, to own by smiles, which, on every principle of compounding prepositions with verbs, should have been expressed by agnoscere. Servius has an absurd explanatory note on decem. menses, inferring from the expression that males are born in the tenth month, females in the ninth. But the difference between lunar and calendar months will justify the number generally without having recourse to a distinction so trifling, and so entirely unfounded in truth. Pliny states the variations even of the lunar month. The passage is worth giving at length, as illustrative of his astronomical notions :-" Proxima ergo cardini, ideoque minimo ambitu, vicenis diebus septenisque, et tertia diei parte peragit spatia eadem, quæ Saturni sidus altissimum triginta (ut dictum est) annis. Deinde morata in coitu Solis biduo, cum tardissime e tricesima luce rursus ad easdem vices exit: haud scio an omnium, quæ in cœlo pernosci potuerunt, magistra : In duodecim mensium spatia oportere dividi annum, quando ipsa toties Solem redeuntem ad principia, consequitur. Solis fulgore reliqua siderum regi, siquidem in toto mutuata ab eo luce fulgere, qualem in repercussu aquæ volitare conspicimus: ideo molliore et imperfecta vi solvere tantum humorem, atque etiam augere, quem Solis radii absumant: Ideo et inæquali lumine aspici: quia ex adverso demum plena, reliquis diebus tantum ex se terris ostendat, quantum ex Sole ipsa concipiat: In coitu quidem non cerni: quoniam haustum omnem lucis aversa illo regerat, unde acceperit: Sidera vero haud dubie humore terreno pasci, quia orbe dimidio nonnumquam maculosa cernatur, scilicet nondum suppetente ad hauriendum ultra justa vi: maculas enim non aliud esse quam terræ raptas cum humore sordes: Defectus autem suos, et Solis, rem in tota contemplatione naturæ maxime miram, et ostento similem, eorum, magnitudinum, umbræque indices exsistere." The same author gives the opinion of his age respecting the indefinite periods of human parturition: "Ceteris animantibus statum et pariendi et partus gerendi tempus est: homo toto anno, et incerto gignitur spatio. Alius septimo mense, alius octavo, et usque ad initia decimi undecimique. Ante septimum mensem haud unquam vitalis est." In another place he gives an individual instance of this uncertainty: - "Vestilia C. Herdicii, ac postea Pomponii, atque Orfiti clarissimorum civium conjux, ex his quatuor partus enixa, septimo semper mense, genuit Suilium Rufum undecimo, Corbulonem septimo, utrumque Consulem : postea Cæsoniam Caii principis conjugem, octavo.". Ovid, in the third book of his Fasti, accounts for the division of the old year in reference to this calculation, without any distinction of male or female: Annus erat; decimum cum Luna repleverat orbem. Seu quia tot digiti, per quos numerare solemus : Servius says, that in the passage of Virgil, some read abstulerint, making the sense, Si riseris, abstulerint decem menses matri tuæ longa fastidia : but other commentators justly think that interpretation ridiculous. Qui is used by some thority of Quinctilian: editors for cui, on the au"Est figura et in nume ro vel cum singulari pluralis subjungitur, Gladio pugnacissima gens Romani: gens enim ex multis : vel e diverso, Qui non risere parentes, Nec deus hunc mensa, dea nec dignata cubili est. Ex illis enim, qui non risere, hunc non dignatus deus, nec dea dignata." The testimony of Quinctilian therefore, in adopting this reading, goes to the sense, those who have not smiled on their parents, with the additional harshness of considering hunc as used for hos. Ruæus also considers the passage as a denunciation of some imminent calamity to the child, if he know not his mother by a smile. An additional proof that this is not the right sense is derived from the use of the dative case after the same verb in the following passage of the fifth Æneid: Risit pater optimus olli, Et clypeum efferri jussit, Didymaonis artes, Hoc juvenem egregium præstanti munere donat. The most approved meaning is this:—“ Begin sweet boy to know thy parents by their smile; for thy parents must smile upon thee before thou canst be advanced to the life of the gods." A preceding passage confirms this: Ille Deum vitam accipiet, Divisque videbit Bucol. ecl. iv. He elsewhere expresses the employments of immortality in a most spirited and beautiful manner, and makes it the vehicle of a highly wrought compliment to Augustus :— Tuque adeo, quem mox quæ sint habitura Deorum Georg. lib. i, |