may relate to his office, as he was a very severe censor. Nor would he name Cicero, when the occasion of mentioning him came full in his way, when he speaks of Catiline; because he afterwards approved the murder of Cæsar, though the plotters were too wary to trust the orator with their design. Some other poets knew the art of speaking well; but Virgil, beyond this, knew the admirable secret, of being eloquently silent. Whatsoever was most curious in Fabius Pictor, Cato the elder, Varro, in the Egyptian antiquities, in the form of sacrifice, in the solemnities of making peace and war, is preserved in this poem. Rome is still above ground, and flourishing in Virgil. And all this he performs with admirable brevity. The "Æneïs" was once near twenty times bigger than he left it; so that he spent as much time in blotting out, as some moderns have done in writing whole volumes. But not one book has his finishing strokes. The sixth seems one of the most perfect, the which, after long entreaty, and sometimes threats, of Augustus, he was at last prevailed upon to recite. This fell out about four years before his own death: that of Marcellus, whom Cæsar designed for his successor, happened a little before this recital: Virgil therefore, with his usual dexterity, inserted his funeral panegyric in those admirable lines, beginning, _O nate, ingentem luctum ne quære tuorum, &c._ His mother, the excellent Octavia, the best wife of the worst husband that ever was, to divert her grief, would be of the auditory. The poet artificially deferred the naming Marcellus, till their passions were raised to the highest; but the mention of it put both her and Augustus into such a passion of weeping, that they commanded him to proceed no further. Virgil answered, that he had already ended that passage. Some relate, that Octavia fainted away; but afterwards she presented the poet with two thousand one hundred pounds, odd money: a round sum for twenty-seven verses; but they were Virgil's. Another writer says, that, with a royal magnificence, she ordered him massy plate, unweighed, to a great value.