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And it gave additional charms to the region to think that Mantua, the poet's birthplace, lay not a long way to the south, and that, doubtless, the author of the Bucolics often visited in his youth this very spot, and walked by the margin of these waters, and marked the light and shade on these noble hills; or, turning to the rich agricultural country on the right, had seen exactly such bullocks as those I now saw, drawing exactly such ploughs, and making exactly such furrows in the red earth; and, spreading the beauty of his own mind over the picture, he had gone and imprinted it eternally on his page.
On approaching the farm-buildings, Randal was seized with the terror of an impostor; for, despite all the theoretical learning on Bucolics and Georgics with which he had dazzled the squire, poor Frank, so despised, would have beat him hollow when it came to the judging of the points of an ox, or the show of a crop. "Ha, ha," cried the squire, chuckling, "I long to see how you'll astonish Stirn.
"And the road is safe?" "As that of Paradise." "Chicot, we are returning to Virgil." "To what part?" "To the Bucolics. 'O fortunatos nimium!" "Ah! very well; but why this exception in favor of plowmen?" "Alas! because it is not the same in towns." "The fact is, Henri, that the towns are the centers of corruption." "Judge of it.
Severe simplicity was favored by Calvus in his orations, Catullus in his lyrics 5 while a more polished and well-nigh précieuse plainness was illustrated in the speeches of Calidius and in the Alexandrian epyllion of Catullus' Peleus and Thetis and in Vergil's Ciris and Bucolics. Demetrius, Philodemus, Cicero; of. Class.
It is to the suggestion of Mæcenas that we owe Virgil's most perfect poem, his "Georgics," which he commenced after the publication of the "Bucolics." To suppose these four books of verses on soils, fruit-trees, horses and cattle, and finally on bees, as a practical treatise to guide and instruct the farmer, is absurd. Few farmers have time or inclination to read so elaborate a work.
When later I essayed to sing of kings and battles, Phoebus warned me to return to my shepherd song." On this passage Servius has the comment: significat aut Aeneidem aut gesta regum Albanorum. Donatus finally in his Vita says explicitly: mox cum res Romanas inchoasset, offensus materia, ad Bucolica transit. The poem, therefore, was on the stocks before the Bucolics.
It has been observed that Virgil's descriptions are more like landscape painting than those of any of his predecessors, whether Greek or Roman, and it is a remarkable fact, that landscape painting was first introduced in his time. DIDACTIC POETRY. The poems, which first established the reputation of Virgil as a poet, belong to didactic poetry. They are his Bucolics and Georgics.
"Fallow" as a noun meant originally a "harrow," and as a verb, "to plough," "to harrow." I employ this agricultural metaphor not in ignorance; for I have, out on these very prairies, read between corn-husking and the spring ploughing Virgil's Georgics and Bucolics, for which Varro's treatises furnished the foundations.
Young gentlemen of all ages from nine to fifteen were to be found there, who expended such part of their energies as was devoted to Latin and Greek upon a book of Livy, the "Bucolics" of Virgil, and the "Hecuba" of Euripides, which were ground out in small daily portions.
When represented as Virgil represents them in his Bucolics, they are in masquerade, and the drama in which they form the characters is of an allegorical kind. Even the scenery is Sicilian, and does not truthfully describe the tame neighborhood of Mantua.