How unpoetically and badly had this been translated, _Thou shalt Marcellus be_! Yet some of my friends were of opinion, that I mistook the sense of Virgil in my translation. The French interpreter observes nothing on this place, but that it appears by it, the mourning of Octavia was yet fresh for the loss of her son Marcellus, whom she had by her first husband, and who died in the year _ab urbe conditâ_, 731; and collects from thence, that Virgil, reading this Æneïd before her in the same year, had just finished it; that, from this time to that of the poet's death, was little more than four years; so that, supposing him to have written the whole Æneïs in eleven years, the first six books must have taken up seven of those years; on which account, the six last must of necessity be less correct. Now, for the false judgment of my friends, there is but this little to be said for them; the words of Virgil, in the verse preceding, are these, ----_Siquâ fata aspera rumpas_-- as if the poet had meant, "if you break through your hard destiny, so as to be born, you shall be called Marcellus:" but this cannot be the sense; for, though Marcellus was born, yet he broke not through those hard decrees, which doomed him to so immature a death. Much less can Virgil mean, "you shall be the same Marcellus by the transmigration of his soul:" for, according to the system of our author, a thousand years must be first elapsed, before the soul can return into a human body: but the first Marcellus was slain in the second Punic war; and how many hundred years were yet wanting to the accomplishing his penance, may with ease be gathered, by computing the time betwixt Scipio and Augustus. By which it is plain, that Virgil cannot mean the same Marcellus; but one of his descendants, whom I call a new Marcellus, who so much resembled his ancestor, perhaps in his features and his person, but certainly in his military virtues, that Virgil cries out, _quantum instar in ipso est!_ which I have translated, How like the former, and almost the same! Note VII. _Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn; Of polished ivory this, that of transparent horn._--P. 423. Virgil borrowed this imagination from Homer, Odysses xix. line 562. The translation gives the reason, why true prophetic dreams are said to pass through the gate of horn, by adding the epithet _transparent_, which is not in Virgil, whose words are only these: _Sunt geminæ Somni portæ, quarum altera fertur Cornea_---- What is pervious to the sight is clear; and (alluding to this property) the poet infers such dreams are of divine revelation. Such as pass through the ivory gate, are of the contrary nature--polished lies. But there is a better reason to be given; for the ivory alludes to the teeth, the horn to the eyes. What we see is more credible, than what we only hear; that is, words that pass through the portal of the mouth, or "_hedge of the teeth_;" which is Homer's expression for _speaking_.