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Updated: June 29, 2025
Even Virgilian quotation has seldom been put to nobler use. Like all the great men of the eighteenth century, Paoli was an enthusiast for the ancients. "A young man who would form his mind to glory," he told Boswell, "must not read modern memoirs; ma Plutarcho, ma Tito Livio." His own mind was formed not only to glory, but also to what so often fails to go with glory, to justice and moderation.
I grant there should be something coming to Mr Blackwood for the thousands that profit by his labours in America but if it can't be so, let the glory suffice him, and let Sic vos non vobis be his song of patient resignation. The parallel between his case and that of the Virgilian sufferers, is perfect. Who concentrates more pungency, or collects more sweets than the busy bee?
Indeed Navagero always begins by choosing a truly poetical subject, which he then treats, not with servile imitation, but with masterly freedom, in the style of the Anthology, of Ovid, of Catullus, or of the Virgilian eclogues. He makes a sparing use of mythology, only, for instance, to introduce a sketch of country life, in a prayer to Ceres and other rural divinities.
All had relied however on the powerful assistance of the great defender of the Protestant faith, the father-in-law of the Elector, the King of Great Britain. But James had nothing but cold water and Virgilian quotations for his son's ardour. He was more under the influence of Gondemar than ever before, more eagerly hankering for the Infanta, more completely the slave of Spain.
The commentators all note the hexameter structure of these words, and many regard them as a quotation from some Latin poet. The words themselves are also poetical, e.g. patrum for majorum, and formidine for religione. The coloring is Virgilian. Cf. Aen. 7, 172; 8, 598. See Or. in loc. and Preliminary Remarks to the Histories, p. 234. Legationibus coeunt.
But this man who lived so wild and adventurous a life expressed his passions with delicacy; and one finds an almost girlish purity in the immortal love passages of Les Troyens or the "nuit sereine" of Roméo et Juliette. And compare this Virgilian affection with Wagner's sensual raptures. Does it mean that Berlioz could not love as well as Wagner?
They bow their bristling crests. They are falling, falling on us, and the earth is riven. I wake in terror, shouting: INSOLITIS TREMUERUNT MOTIBUS ALPES! An earthquake, slight but real, has stirred the ever-wakeful Vesta of the brain to this Virgilian quotation. I sleep, and change my dreaming. Once more at night I sledge alone upon the Klosters road.
Then, a little later, I used to go o' Sundays to the open house of Westland Marston, which was then a great haunt of literary Bohemians. Here I first met Dinah Muloch, the author of John Halifax, who took a great fancy to me, used to carry me off to her little nest on Hampstead Heath, and lend me all her books. Dobell's mouth was ever full of very pretty Latinity, for the most part Virgilian.
The later didactic poets of all ages have imitated Virgil, particularly in England, where Thomson's Seasons is a thoroughly Virgilian poem.
Alas! in the acacia-avenue the myrtle-alley I did see some of them again, grown old, no more now than grim spectres of what once they had been, wandering to and fro, in desperate search of heaven knew what, through the Virgilian groves. They had long fled, and still I stood vainly questioning the deserted paths. The sun's face was hidden.
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