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Updated: June 26, 2025
E'en sometimes the good Homer naps. Virgil, besides, composed his poem in a state remote from indigence, where he was roused to exertion by the example of several contemporary poets; and what must have animated him beyond every other consideration, he wrote both at the desire, and under the patronage of the emperor and his minister Mecaenas.
"Look here," said Glanville, "are two works, one of poetry one on the Catholic Question both dedicated to me. Seymour my waistcoat. See what it is to furnish a house differently from other people; one becomes a bel esprit, and a Mecaenas, immediately. Believe me, if you are rich enough to afford it, that there is no passport to fame like eccentricity. Seymour my coat. I am at your service, Pelham.
Where the devil did these idiots of shepherds get the tale that Virgil related in such noble verse to Augustus and Mecaenas?" He remained pensive an instant, his eyes bent upon the azure depths, then turning to Sir John: "They say that, no matter how vigorous the swimmer, none has ever returned from this abyss. Perhaps were I to try it, my lord, it might be surer than M. de Barjols' bullet.
This was a principle of the most powerful energy: it fanned the flame of genius, invigorated every exertion; and the poets who basked in the rays of imperial favour, and the animating patronage of Mecaenas, experienced a poetic enthusiasm which approached to real inspiration.
There was the retirement of Horace and Mecaenas: there Brutus forgot his harsher genius; and there the inscrutable and profound Augustus indulged in those graceful relaxations-those sacrifices to wit, and poetry, and wisdom which have made us do so unwilling and reserved a justice to the crimes of his earlier and the hypocrisy of his later years.
Mecaenas is said to have written two tragedies, Octavia and Prometheus; a History of Animals; a Treatise on Precious Stones; a Journal of the Life of Augustus; and other productions.
Mecaenas first presented himself to his imagination: absurdly enough, in my opinion; for there was not a trace of similitude between the two characters. This, however, afforded him some opportunity, as he thought, of discovering a resemblance between Horace and Hamilton, in which he equally failed.
Some writers, giving a wider scope to conjecture, have supposed the transaction to be of a nature still more detestable, and have even dragged Mecaenas, the minister, into a participation of the crime. Fortunately, however, for the reputation of the illustrious patron of polite learning, as well as for that of the emperor, this crude conjecture may be refuted upon the evidence of chronology.
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