this transformation but a kind of celestial birth; the same imagery which is used in the Eclogue before us.

I have spoken of the laws of celestial imagery; perhaps I ought to explain the meaning. It is very evident that, logically speaking, we can form no conception of the mode of existence among spiritual beings in the future, or upper world. When the Angel in Paradise Lost begins to tell Adam about the revolt and defections in Heaven, he forewarns him;

I shall delineate so

By likening spiritual to corporeal forms
As may express them best.

This is more than poetry, it is philosophy. It is what is done throughout the whole Bible. It is giving us divine things in such resemblances as may express them best. Yet every nation and every individual, on the least improvement, has felt the conviction that it is only by a distant approximation that we can approach these sublime mysteries. We therefore find that all writers sacred and profane, from Isaiah down to the bard of yesterday, have fallen naturally and unconsciously into this expedient, that when they would give us any notion of the celestial world, they have resorted to earthly images, taking care however to dash them with some coloring of superiority. Their imagery must be like earth or we should not know their meaning; it must be superior to earth or it would not exalt our conceptions. This principle is engraven on every statue of Jupiter and every picture of the heathen Heaven. Thus the gods eat and drink like mortals, but their food and beverage are ambrosia and nectar; something like and something better. The palace of Apollo in Ovid1 is like a real palace, but it is built with lofty columns flashing with gold and carbuncle, covered with ivory:

Argenti bifores radiabant lumine valvae.

The same god rides in a chariot and is drawn by horses; but such horses as were never seen on earth-ignemque vomentes. Jupiter and Juno go to bed together like a common husband and wife, but they sleep on flowers and all nature revives beneath their balmy couch.

Τοῖσι δ' ὑπὸ χθὼν δια φύεν νεοθηλέα ποίην,
Λωτόν θ' ἑρσήεντα, ἰδὲ κρόκον, ἠδ' υάκινθον,
Πυκνὸν καὶ μαλακὸν· ὃς ἀπὸ χθονὸς ὑψόσ' ἔεργεν.

Metamorphoses Lib. II. line 1-3.

1846.]

Use of the Symbol and Allegory in the Bible.

47

Τῷ ἔνι λεξάσθην, ἐπὶ δὲ νεφέλην ἔσσαντο
Καλήν, χρυσείην· στιλπναὶ δ' ἀπέπιπτον έερσαι.

Iliad, Lib. XIV. 347-351.

Moses

When we pass to the Bible, the same law prevails. caught a glimpse of the glory of God, though he saw no form, no mortal figure, revelation assuming this superiority over paganism; yet" they saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire-stone, and as it were the body of Heaven in its clearness. In Revelation, there is a sea before the throne but it is a sea of glass."2 The river in Ezekiel which gushes from the foundation of the mystic temple is remarkable. It seems to contradict the whole geography of the country. The limestone mountains had a little stony brook which ran through deserts and desolation into the Dead Sea in the rainy season, and was dry the rest of the year. Such is the real scene. But in the vision of the prophet is a river, with very many trees on one side and on the other. Then said he unto me, these waters issue out towards the East country, and go down into the desert and go into the sea; which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed.3 The first chapters in Ezekiel are to be explained in the same way. It is a remarkable specimen of describing the majesty of the immaterial God by material symbols. Forbidden as the Jews were to make any image of God, the prophet describes the majesty of Jehovah by a confused machine, partly a chariot, partly a throne, drawn not by horses but by living creatures; producing the material figure which poetry must use without departing from the strict spirituality which his religion enjoined. Milton also is full of similar expedients. Now when I see natural similitudes thus dashed and colored by supernaturalism, I think it safe to conclude that I discern the writer's object. He is not literal; he is mystic and allegorical; and this is exactly the character of this Eclogue. We have no need to suppose a mortal birth because the child is a new progeny, come down from Heaven; flowers grow around his cradle; the serpent dies; his mother passes through a supernatural period of gestation; and finally we are told obliquely that the table to which he is to be admitted is that of a goddess and a god. We scarcely can have more notes that such a birth is not literal; it is a poetic adoption into the family of the immortals.

The last lines of the poem seem to seal this conclusion. They 3 Ezekiel 47: 8.

1 Exodus, 24: 10.

2 Rev. 4: 6.

have always been obscure to me, and on the old construction are absolutely unintelligible. The lines are as follows:

Incipe, parve puer: cui non risere parentes,

Nec deus hunc mensa, dea nec dignata cubili est.

Two ways of construing them have been devised. Quintilian, instead of cui in the last line but one, reads qui, in the nominative; and the meaning will be, Those children, O ye parents, that have not smiled on you, will never be admitted to the seats of the gods. But that reading is harsh and unnatural. That of Servius is much easier, as we have it in the common text. That child will never reach the immortal seats, on whom (immortal) parents have not smiled. That is, there must be a celestial birth to exalt a mortal hero into an immortal god; "If some god or goddess have not smiled on the child as parents, the god will not receive him to his table nor the goddess to her couch." On the above theory the concluding sentiment is plain; or the very obliqueness of the sentence makes the compliment more delicate and imposing.

It is certain that the idea of a mystic birth was very current among the ancients. Cicero calls his restoration from banishment a naλıvɣevɛoía, or a new birth. The persons initiated into the mysteries were considered as new born. The fable of the GOLDEN Ass, written by Appulejus, was intended to figure this process. The term renatus is repeatedly used. He calls the day of his initiation his natal day; and the priest by whom he was initiated his father. When a Roman slave was released, it was called his natal day, the day of his regeneration. It is also clear that the Julian family considered themselves as the descendents of the gods. When Julius Caesar pronounced the laudation or funeral discourse on his aunt, Julia, he said, "that the maternal race of his aunt was from kings; the paternal was found with the gods. The Marcii were descended from Ancus Marcius; which was the race of his mother; the Julian race were from Venus. Therefore in our race is the sanctity of kings, who have power among men ; and the ceremonies of the gods in whose power kings are;" Suetonius, Vita Caes. Sect. 6. A frequent watch-word of Caesar to the army was Venus Genetrix. No doubt the whole of this family line, long before it reached the goddess, was, like the Roman genealogies generally, constructive and fabulous. But such were the claims of the Caesarian family; and it is morally certain that when Virgil made Eneas goddess-born and descended from Venus,

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1846.] Alleged Coincidence with the Hebrew Prophets.

49

or rather when he adopted that fable from Homer, he intended to pay a compliment to Augustus.

Consider now the circumstances under which the Eclogue was written. Octavius was yet very young, about twenty-three years old; not yet matured in wisdom, not yet confirmed in empire, but rising; connected with the greatest hero Rome had produced; belonging to his family and his adopted son. He had begun to favor Virgil; he was aspiring to empire, and the most auspicious prospects were opening upon him. What more natural than that Virgil, knowing the pretensions of his family, should sing his apotheosis by making him goddess-born? He has a celestial mother, probably Venus. He is a new progeny sent down from Heaven. We may compare this Eclogue with the Fifth, which is supposed to be the Apotheosis of Julius Caesar. Him the nymphs bemoan, while the mother embracing the body of her miserable son calls the stars and the gods cruel. Who is this mother? One of the critics supposes Calphurnia, his wife; absurd! Ruaeus the Jesuit says, Rome. But surely he who gave the signal Venus Genetriz, could have no other than Venus for his mother.

Candidus insuetum miratur limen Olympi,

Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis.

I confess, I am not able to bring an exact parallel of an apotheosis shadowed forth in a mystic birth. The poem has long been considered as unique. But it seems to me that every probability conducts us to this conclusion; and it seems more probable from the fact that, if true, it would be a new proof of the delicate taste and good judgment of the most selective, if not the most original of

the Roman bards.

Before closing, perhaps a word may be expected on the alleged coincidence between this pastoral and some of the Hebrew prophecies. It struck the ancient Christians and it has struck the modern. Constantine discoursed on it; Pope expressed his astonishment; and even Lowth hardly knew what to say. For so general an impression perhaps it may be said there must be some real cause. I must confess, however, for one, that I have rather wondered at the wonderers. Is there any necessity of supposing that Virgil, either through the Sibylline verses or more directly, caught his fire from the Hebrew prophets, when the same imagery and the same impressions prevailed throughout the world? There are certain convictions which seem to be common to the Jewish and Gentile mind. First, that man is a sinner; secondly,

VOL. IIL No. 9.

5

that he has degenerated from a better state; and thirdly, that he will be restored. Man has always looked back to a paradise and forward to a millennium. These impressions seem to be forced upon us from our ideas of justice and goodness in God, and from our convictions of guilt in our race. The coincidence between this Eclogue and certain passages in Isaiah is not greater than that between the chaos of Ovid and Moses, the deluge of the pagans and the Jews, the golden age of Hesiod and the history of Genesis. It is a remarkable fact that man always believes that he is a fallen creature; and always fancies himself just on the verge of the millennium. As to the imagery here used, the lion lying down with the lamb, etc., it is too natural for us to say from the closest resemblance, that it must be borrowed. If we could sweep away every vestige of antiquity, and if from the waters of oblivion a new order of bards could arise, they would express moral happiness by material figures; and it is vain to attribute that to tradition, which comes from the most established laws of human thought. It is a common inspiration; it is the everlasting voice of nature.

These observations have been read in a company of literary gentlemen; and it is due to the public to say that the writer failed of producing a conviction of the truth of his hypothesis. Several objections were urged. Some of them forcible; all of them acute and ingenious. One of the company thought, that the pagans were accustomed to a magniloquent style; at least what appears so to us; that an apotheosis was a very cheap affair; and that, therefore, such compliments paid to an expected son of Pollio, were not so inadequate as is often supposed. It appears to me, however, very clear that Augustus himself, and no son of his or any other person, is the auspicious hero of the piece. This is evident from the nature of the case; and from a comparison of the Eclogue with the passages in the sixth book of the Æneid. If this position be fixed, we seem then to be forced upon the supposition of a mystic birth. But if this should be rejected, I should be inclined to take, as second best, the opinion, that the poet, rapt above time and succession, goes back in his thoughts, and imagines himself singing his predictions over the cradle of his celestial hero. At any rate, the poem is so dark that my suggestions cannot be completely absurd.