Virgil's Early Life. 211 



other Latin poet who felt in the same degree the 

 beauty and the mystery of animals. 



I believe there are still people who think of 

 Virgil as a court-poet, writing to order, and 

 drawing conventional ideas of nature from Greek 

 authors of an earlier age. This is, of course, 

 absolutely untrue. Virgil's connection with Au- 

 gustus was accidental, and was probably no more 

 to the poet's taste than any other result of an 

 education and an occasional residence in the huge 

 city of Rome. If we compare what is known of 

 his life with the general character of his poetry, 

 we get a very different result. 



The first sixteen years of his life were spent in 

 his native country of Cisalpine Gaul, almost under 

 the shadow of the Alps, three hundred miles away 

 from Rome. His parents were ' rustic,' and he 

 himself was brought up among the woods and 

 rushy meads of Mantua and Cremona. " Doubt- 

 less there is many a reminiscence of his early 

 years in the Georgics, where his love of the 

 woods, in which he must have wandered as a 

 boy, meets us in every page." In that day it is 

 1 Ancient Lives of Virgil (Prof. Nettleship), p. 33. 



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