113 THE BIRDS or VIEGIL. 



■whetter that bird is an Italian bird as well as Greek, and 

 therefore likely to be known to Virgil at first hand. 



I am not going to trouble my readers with much of the 

 uninteresting detail of an inquiry like this (in which indeed 

 the game might seem to be hardly worth the candle), but merely 

 to give them some idea of the bird-knowledge on which this 

 greatest of Eoman poets drew, whether at first or second-hand, 

 for description or illustration ; and in so doing to make clear to 

 them, so far as I can, the particular kinds of birds which he had 

 in his mind. I shall quote him in the original, but shall add 

 translations in foot-notes : in the Georgics, his poem of hus- 

 bandry, I take advantage of a poet's translation, that of my 

 friend Mr. James Ehoades, which caifnot easily be outdone either 

 in exactness of scholarship or in beauty of diction ; and in the 

 Aeneid I make use of Mr. Mackail's prose translation, which I 

 prefer on the whole to any poetical version I know. One passage 

 from the Eclogues I have translated myself. 



The first birds we find mentioned in the poems are the Pigeons, 

 and we may as well begin with them as with any other. 

 Meliboeus tells Tityrus that the farm to which he is returned 

 after a long exile — the same farm which the poet himself lost and 

 found again — shall yield him much true comfort and delight, 

 even though he find it overgrown with reeds, and spoilt with 

 the stones and mud of overflowing Mincius :— ■ 



Neo tamen interea raucae, tua cura, palumbes, 

 Neo gemere aeria cessabit tv/rtu/r ab ulmo.' 



' And all the while, with hollow voice, thine own 

 Loved woodpigeon shall soothe thee, nor alone. 

 For from the lofty elm the dove shall ever moan. 



