fit to use a title more intelligible, the reason of the other being ceased; and we are supported by Virgil's own authority, who expressly calls them _carmina pastorum_. The French editor is again mistaken, in asserting, that the _Ceiris_ is borrowed from the ninth of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_: he might have more reasonably conjectured it to be taken from Parthenius, the Greek poet, from whom Ovid borrowed a great part of his work. But it is indeed taken from neither, but from that learned, unfortunate poet, Apollonius Rhodius, to whom Virgil is more indebted than to any other Greek writer, excepting Homer. The reader will be satisfied of this, if he consults that author in his own language; for the translation is a great deal more obscure than the original. Whilst Virgil thus enjoyed the sweets of a learned privacy, the troubles of Italy cut off his little subsistence; but, by a strange turn of human affairs, which ought to keep good men from ever despairing, the loss of his estate proved the effectual way of making his fortune. The occasion of it was this: Octavius, as himself relates, when he was but nineteen years of age, by a masterly stroke of policy, had gained the veteran legions into his service, and, by that step, outwitted all the republican senate. They grew now very clamorous for their pay; the treasury being exhausted, he was forced to make assignments upon land; and none but in Italy itself would content them. He pitched upon Cremona, as the most distant from Rome; but that not sufficing, he afterwards threw in part of the state of Mantua. Cremona was a rich and noble colony, settled a little before the invasion of Hannibal. During that tedious and bloody war, they had done several important services to the commonwealth; and, when eighteen other colonies, pleading poverty and depopulation, refused to contribute money, or to raise recruits, they of Cremona voluntarily paid a double quota of both. But past services are a fruitless plea; civil wars are one continued act of ingratitude. In vain did the miserable mothers, with their famishing infants in their arms, fill the streets with their numbers, and the air with lamentations; the craving legions were to be satisfied at any rate. Virgil, involved in the common calamity, had recourse to his old patron, Pollio; but he was, at this time, under a cloud; however, compassionating so worthy a man, not of a make to struggle through the world, he did what he could, and recommended him to Mæcenas, with whom he still kept a private correspondence. The name of this great man being much better known than one part of his character, the reader, I presume, will not be displeased if I supply it in this place.