Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/279

Rh V I B V I R four ; nor is it possible to feel that culminating sympathy with the final combat between Tuniiis and /Eneas that we feel with the combat between Hector and Achilles. Yet a personal interest is awakened in the adventures and fate of Pallas, Lausus, and Camilla. Virgil may himself haye become weary of the succession of battle- scenes &quot; eadem horrida bella,&quot; which the requirements of epic poetry rather than the impulses of his own genius or the taste of his readers called upon him to pourtray; and this may partly account for the sense of discouragement which he is supposed to have felt at the end of his labours. There is not only a less varied interest, there is greater inequality of workmanship in the later books, owing to the fact that they had not received their author s final revisal. Yet in them there are many lines and passages of great power, pathos, and beauty. Virgil brought the two great instruments of varied and continuous harmony and of a rich, chastened, and noble style to the highest perfection of which the Latin tongue was capable. The rhythm and style of the sEneid is more unequal than the rhythm and style of the Gcoryics, but is a larger and more varied instrument. The note of his supremacy among all the poetic artists of his country is that subtle fusion of the music and the meaning of language which touches the deepest and most secret springs of emotion. He touches especially the emotions of reverence and of a yearning for a higher spiritual life, and the sense of noble ness in human affairs, in great institutions, and great natures; the sense of the sanctity of human affections, of the imaginative spell exercised by the past, of the mystery of the unseen world. This is the secret of the power which his words have had over some of the deepest and greatest natures both in the ages of faith and in more positive times. No words more subtly and truly express the magic of his style than those in which Dr Newman characterizes &quot;his single words and phrases, his pathetic half-lines, giving utterance as the voice of nature herself to that pain and weariness, yet hope of better things, which is the experience of her children in every age. &quot; The most important of the recent editions of Virgil arc those of Heyne and the revised edition by Wagner, that of Korbiger, of Kibbcck, of E. Benoist, and of Conington. Among recent works bearing on the literary criticism of Virgil are Sainte-Beuve s Etude surVirgiJe, M. G. Boissier s La Religion liomaine d Augusts ait.r Antonins, Comparetti s Virgilio nel Media Ero, Very it und die episc he Kunat, by Theodor I Hiss, various works by Prof. Nettleshlp, and Prof. Sellar s Roman I ne.ts of the Augustan A&amp;lt;je.. The best critical estimate of the genius and art of Virgil in English is that of Mr F. Myers. Among recent translations of the s Entidnre tliosu of Conington, Mr W. Morris, and Lord Justice Bowen in verse, and of Conington and Mr J. W. Mackail in prose. (W. V. S.) VIRGIL, POLYDORE (&amp;lt;: 1470-1555), author of the Ilis- toria Anglica, otherwise known as P. V. CASTELLENSIS, was a kinsman of Cardinal Hadrian Castellensis, a native of Castro in Etruria. His father s name is said to have been George Virgil ; his great-grandfather, Anthony Virgil, &quot; a man well skilled in medicine and astrology,&quot; had pro fessed philosophy at Paris, as did Polydore s own brother and protege, John Matthew Virgil, at Pavia, in 1517. A third brother was a London merchant in 1511. Polydore is said to have been educated at Bologna, and was probably in the service of Guido Ubaldo, duke of Urbino, before 1498, as in the dedication of his first work, Liber Proverbiorum (April 1498), he styles himself this prince s client. Polydore s second book, De Invent orihus Iterum, is dedicated to Guide s tutor, Ludovicus Odaxius, from Urbino, in August 1499. After being chamberlain to Alexander VI. he came to England in 1501 as deputy col lector of Peter s pence for the cardinal. As Hadrian s proxy, he was enthroned bishop of Bath and Wells in October 1504. It was at Henry VII. s instance that he commenced his Historic i Anglica a work which, though seemingly begun as early as 1505, was not completed till August 1533, the date of its dedication to Henry VIII., nor pub lished till 1534. In May 1514 he and his patron the cardinal are found supporting Wolsey s claims to the cardinalship, but he had lost the great minister s favour before the year was out. A rash letter, reflecting severely on Henry VIII. and Wolsey, was intercepted early in 1515, after which Polydore was cast into prison and supplanted in his collectorship (March and April). He was not without some powerful supporters, as both Catherine de Medici and Leo X. wrote to the king on his behalf. From his prison he sent an abject and almost blasphemous letter to the offended minister, begging that the fast approaching Christmas a time which witnessed the restitution of a world might see his pardon also. He was set at liberty before Christmas 1515, though he never regained his col- lectorship. In 1525 he published the first edition of Gildas, dedicating the work to Tunstall, bishop of London. Next year appeared hisLiber de Prodigiis, dedicated from London (July) to Francesco Maria, duke of L T rbino. Somewhere about 1538 he left England, and remained in Italy for some time. Ill health, he tells us, forbade him on his return to continue his custom of making daily notes on contemporary events. About the end of 1551 he went home to Urbino, where he appears to have died in 1555. He had been naturalized in October 1510, and had held several clerical appointments in England. In 1508 he was appointed archdeacon of Wells, and in 1513 prebendary of Oxgate in St Paul s Cathedral, both of which oflices he held after his return to Urbino. The first edition of the Historia Anglica (twenty-six books) was printed at Basel in 1534 ; the twenty-seventh book, dealing with the reign of Henry VIII. down to the birth of Edward VI. (October 1536), was added to the third edition of 1555. Folydore claims to have been very careful in collecting materials for this work, and takes credit for using foreign historians as well as English ; for which reason, he remarks, the English, Scotch, and French will find several things reported in his pages far differently from the way in which they are told in current national story. In his search after information he applied to James IV. of Scotland for a list of the Scottish kings and their annals ; but not even his friendship for Gavin Douglas could induce him to give credit to the historical notions of this accomplished bishop, who traced the pedigree of the Scots down from the banished son of an Athenian king and Scotta the daughter of the Egyptian tyrant of the Israelites. A similar scepticism made him doubt the veracity of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and thus called forth Leland s Dcfensio Gallofridi and Assertio Incomparabilis Arturii. This doubting instinct led to his being accused of many offences against learning, such as that of burning cartloads of MSS. lest his errors should be discovered, of purloining books from libraries and shipping them oil by the vesself ul to Home. As a matter of fact, it is of course mainly from the time of Henry VI., where our contemporary records begin to fail so sadly, that Folydore s work is useful. He must have been personally acquainted with many men whose memories could carry them back to the be ginning of the Wars of the Roses. l)r Brewer speaks somewhat harshly of him as an authority for the reign of Henry VIII., and indeed his spite against Wolsey is evident; but it is impossible to read his social and geographical accounts of England and Scotland without gratitude for a writer who has preserved so many interest ing details. Polydore s Adagia (Venice, April 1498) was the first collection of Latin proverbs ever printed; it preceded Erasmus s by two years, and the slight misunderstanding that arose for the moment out of rival claims gave place to a sincere friendship. A second series of Bildical proverbs (553 in number) Avas dedicated to Wolsey s follower Richard Pace, and is preceded by an interesting letter (June 1519), which gives the names of many of Polydore s English friends, from More and Archbishop Warham to Linacre and Tunstall. The DC Inventor ibus, treating of the origin of all things whether ecclesiastical or lay (Paris, 1499), originally consisted of only seven books, but was increased to eight in 1521. It was exceedingly popular, and was early translated into French (1521), German (1537), English (1546), and Spanish (1551). All editions, however, except those following the text sanctioned by Gregory XIII. in 1576, are on the Index Expurgatorius. The DC Prodiyiis also achieved a great popularity, and was soon translated into Italian (1543), English (1546), and Spanish (1550). This treatise takes the form of a Latin dialogue between Folydore and his Cambridge friend Robert Ridley. It takes place in the open air, at Polydore s country house near London. Polydore s duty is to state the problems and supply the historical illustrations ; his friend s to explain, rationalize, and depreciate as best he can. Here, as in the Historia Anglica, it is plain that the writer plumes himself specially on the excellence of his Latin, which in Sir Henry Ellis s opinion is purer than that of any of his contemporaries. VIRGINAL. See PIANOFORTE, vol. xix. pp. G7, G8. VIRGINIA, one of the original thirteen States of the Plat*. North American Union, extends from 36 31 to 39 27 ^ JI N. lat., and from 75 13 to 83 37 W. long. It is rudely triangular in form, its southern boundary, the base of the triangle, a nearly east to west line, being 440 miles long, the north-western 565, the northern and north-eastern 230 and the eastern 125 miles. On the S it is bounded uy North Carolina and Tennessee, on the W. and N.W. by Kentucky and West Virginia, on the N. and N.E. by