a country
gentleman.

M. Boissier, however, is not content merely with identifying the poet's
house; he also warmly defends him from the charge that has been brought
against him of servility in accepting it. He points out that it was only
after the invention of printing that literature became a money-making
profession, and that, as there was no copyright law at Rome to prevent
books being pirated, patrons had to take the place that publishers hold,
or should hold, nowadays. The Roman patron, in fact, kept the Roman poet
alive, and we fancy that many of our modern bards rather regret the old
system. Better, surely, the humiliation of the sportula than the
indignity of a bill for printing! Better to accept a country-house as a
gift than to be in debt to one's landlady! On the whole, the patron was
an excellent institution, if not for poetry at least for the poets; and
though he had to be propitiated by panegyrics, still are we not told by
our most shining lights that the subject is of no importance in a work of
art? M. Boissier need not apologise for Horace: every poet longs for a
Maecenas.

An essay on the Etruscan tombs at Corneto follows, and the remainder of
the volume is taken up by a most fascinating article called Le Pays de
l'Eneide. M. Boissier claims for Virgil's descriptions of scenery an
absolute fidelity of detail. 'Les poetes anciens,' he says, 'ont le gout
de la precision et de la fidelite: ils n'imaginent guere de paysages en
l'air,' and with this view he visited every place in Italy and Sicily
that Virgil has mentioned. Sometimes, it is true, modern civilisation,
or modern barbarism, has completely altered the aspect of the scene; the
'desolate shore of Drepanum,' for instance ('Drepani illaetabilis ora')
is now covered with thriving manufactories and stucco villas, and the
'bird-haunted forest' through which the Tiber flowed into the sea has
long ago disappeared. Still, on the whole, the general character of the
Italian landscape is unchanged, and M. Boissier's researches show very
clearly how personal and how vivid were Virgil's impressions of nature.
The subject is, of course, a most interesting one, and those who love to
make pilgrimages without stirring from home cannot do better than spend
three shillings on the French Academician's Promenades Archeologiques.

Nouvelles Promenades Archeologiques, Horace et Virgile. By Gaston
Boissier. (Hachette.)

BERANGER IN ENGLAND

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