It is impossible to enjoy either Homer or Virgil, if their text is to be “improved” at every step after this sort. Augustus and Octavia looked to the poet for a tale of the olden time, and he told it well. No doubt he threw in graceful compliments to Rome and its ruler; but to have to guess at some hidden meaning all along would have been far too severe a tax on the imperial audience, and would certainly not heighten the enjoyment of modern readers. One would be glad to know what was the view that was really taken by that profligate court on the one hand, and by the poet himself on the other, of the theological machinery of the poem; those powerful and passionate Genii who pull the wires of the human puppets to gratify their own preferences and hatreds, and are themselves the slaves of an awful Fate which overrides them all. Wherever Justice had fled from the earth, as the legend ran, in those pagan days, she had not found refuge in heaven. The human virtues which Virgil gives his heroes were no copies of anything celestial. Such lessons as the “gods” taught were chiefly perfidy and revenge. For men of intellect and of a pure life--and such is credibly said to have been Virgil’s--the only salvation lay in utter unbelief of such a creed; or, at most, a stoical submission to that Unknown Fate which ruled all things human and divine. But even when the forms and creeds of religion had become a mockery, the rule of right, however warped, was recognised--in fiction, if not in fact: and Virgil, though for some reason he declined to paint the true hero at full length, has enabled us to pick out his component parts from his sketches of a dozen characters. END OF VIRGIL. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. FOOTNOTES: [1] One story of this kind is perhaps curious enough for insertion. Virgil is said to have been startled one day by a voice calling to him out of a small hole in a cave. It proceeded from an Evil Spirit who had been conjured into that place of confinement, and who undertook to show Virgil certain books of necromancy on condition of his release. The bargain was made, and the condition fulfilled. “He stood before Virgil like a mighty man, whereof Virgil was afraid; and he marvelled greatly that so great a man might come out of so little a hole. Then said Virgil, ‘Should ye well pass through the hole that ye came out of?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ ‘I hold the best pledge that I have that ye cannot do it.’ The devill said, ‘I consent thereto.’ And then the devill wrang himself into the little hole again. And when he was in, then Virgil closed him there again, so that he had no power to come out again, but there abideth still.”--[‘Of the Lyfe of Virgilius and his deth, and the many marvayles that he dyd.’] [2] It has been thought that the friend of whom Horace speaks (Sat. I. 3, 31), under whose somewhat slovenly dress and rustic bearing lay hid so much talent and worth, may have been Virgil.