Shall bless the sacred clue, and bid it smoothly run. Mature in years, to ready honours move, O of celestial seed! O foster-son of Jove! See, labouring Nature calls thee to sustain The nodding frame of heaven, and earth, and main! See to their base restored, earth, seas, and air; And joyful ages, from behind, in crowding ranks appear. To sing thy praise, would heaven my breath prolong, Infusing spirits worthy such a song, Not Thracian Orpheus should transcend my lays, Nor Linus crowned with never-fading bays; Though each his heavenly parent should inspire; The Muse instruct the voice, and Phoebus tune the lyre. Should Pan contend in verse, and thou my theme, Arcadian judges should their god condemn. Begin, auspicious boy! to cast about Thy infant eyes, and, with a smile, thy mother single out.[298] Thy mother well deserves that short delight, The nauseous qualms of ten long months and travail to requite. Then smile! the frowning infant's doom is read; No god shall crown the board, nor goddess bless the bed. FOOTNOTES: [298] In Latin thus, _Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem_, &c. I have translated the passage to this sense--that the infant, smiling on his mother, singles her out from the rest of the company about him. Erythræus, Bembus, and Joseph Scaliger, are of this opinion. Yet they and I may be mistaken; for, immediately after, we find these words, _cui non risere parentes_, which imply another sense, as if the parents smiled on the new-born infant; and that the babe on whom they vouchsafed not to smile, was born to ill fortune: for they tell a story, that, when Vulcan, the only son of Jupiter and Juno, came into the world, he was so hard-favoured, that both his parents frowned on him, and Jupiter threw him out of heaven: he fell on the island Lemnos, and was lame ever afterwards. The last line of the Pastoral seems to justify this sense: _Nec Deus hunc mensâ, Dea nec dignata cubili est._ For, though he married Venus, yet his mother Juno was not present at the nuptials to bless them; as appears by his wife's incontinence. They say also, that he was banished from the banquets of the gods. If so, that punishment could be of no long continuance; for Homer makes him present at their feasts, and composing a quarrel betwixt his parents, with a bowl of nectar. The matter is of no great consequence; and therefore I adhere to my translation, for these two reasons: first, Virgil has his following line, _Matri longa decem tulerunt fastidia menses_, as if the infant's smiling on his mother was a reward to her for bearing him ten months in her body, four weeks longer than the usual time. Secondly, Catullus is cited by Joseph Scaliger, as favouring this opinion, in his Epithalamium of Manlius Torquatus: _Torquatus, volo, parvolus, Matris e gremio suæ Porrigens teneras manus, Dulce rideat ad patrem_, &c.