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It is said to have been introduced by the Romans, and is familiar as the tree mentioned by Virgil in the opening line of his first Pastoral: "Tityre tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi;" the metre, and the words of which, apart from their signification, suggest so accurately the pattering of the leaves of the tree in a gentle breeze.
This idea of himself as a spectre seems to have accompanied him much in the way that the daemon did Socrates, and to have served in a similar manner as a warning to him. It was a masquerade in which Margaret Fuller and Emerson appeared as invited guests, and held a meeting of the Transcendental club "sub tegmine fagi."
The peals of a bright brass-handled bell at a garden-gate, surmounted by a holly-bush with the top cut into the shape of a fox, announced their arrival to the inhabitants of "Rosalinda Castle," and on entering they discovered young Nosey in the act of bobbing for goldfish, in a pond about the size of a soup-basin; while Nosey senior, a fat, stupid-looking fellow, with a large corporation and a bottle nose, attired in a single-breasted green cloth coat, buff waistcoat, with drab shorts and continuations, was reposing, sub tegmine fagi, in a sort of tea-garden arbour, overlooking a dung-heap, waiting their arrival to commence an attack upon the sparrows which were regaling thereon.
The first state after that, in the road to refined life, is the pastoral, and without music the tawny-colored Corydons and the red-skinned Amaryllises, 'recubans sub tegmine fagi, upon the banks of the Missouri and Mississippi, could make no progress in the delightful business of love and sentiment."
The book was a Delphin edition of 1798, which had followed him in all his wanderings; there was a great scratch on the sheep-skin cover that a thorn had made in a forest of Alabama. And then, in the twilight, as he shut the volume at last, oblivious of my presence, he began to murmur and to chant the adorable verses by memory. Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi,
When he published them he placed at the very beginning the well-known line that recalled Messalla's own line: Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi. What can this mean but a graceful reminder to Messalla that it was he who had inspired the new effort? We may conclude then that Vergil's use of that line as the title of his Eclogues is a recognition of Messalla's influence.
Though in tennis flannels, they both looked remarkably warm, and, throwing aside his racket, Mr. Rolleston sat down with a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness it's over, and that I have won," he said, wiping his heated brow; "galley slaves couldn't have worked harder than we have done, while all you idle folks sat SUB TEGMINE FAGI." "Which means?" asked his wife, lazily.
"Do you mean to tell me you don't know your own tongue? Do you not know what the greatest of all the bards wrote about your own island? 'O et præsidium et dulce decus meum, agus, Tityre tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine Styornoway, Arma virumque cano, Macklyoda et Borvabost sub tegmine fagi?"
Well, you are not examined in Greek roots in polite society, which is lucky for some of us. It is as well just to have a tag or two of Horace or Virgil: 'sub tegmine fagi, or 'habet foenum in cornu, which gives a flavour to one's conversation like the touch of garlic in a salad. It is not bon ton to be learned, but it is a graceful thing to indicate that you have forgotten a good deal.
Mary Bartley then lowered her parasol, and settled into the Colonel's chair under the shade patulae fagi of the wide-spreading beech-tree. She sat down and sighed. Monckton eyed her from his lurking-place, and made a shrewd guess who she was, but resolved to know. Presently Hope caught a glimpse of her, and came forward and leaned out of the window to enjoy the sight of her.
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