morrow's lesson began. It opened with the
melancholy reflection that, in the lives of mor-
tals, the best days are the first to flee. _"Op-_
_tima_dies..._prima_fugit."_ I turned back to
the beginning of the third book, which we had
read in class that morning. _"Primus_ego_in_
_patriam_mecum..._deducam_Musas";_ "for I
shall be the first, if I live, to bring the Muse
into my country." Cleric had explained to us
that "patria" here meant, not a nation or
even a province, but the little rural neighbor-
hood on the Mincio where the poet was born.
This was not a boast, but a hope, at once bold
and devoutly humble, that he might bring
the Muse (but lately come to Italy from her
cloudy Grecian mountains), not to the capi-
tal, the _palatia_Romana,_ but to his own little
"country"; to his father's fields, "sloping
down to the river and to the old beech trees
with broken tops."

Cleric said he thought Virgil, when he was
dying at Brindisi, must have remembered that
passage. After he had faced the bitter fact
that he was to leave the Aeneid unfinished, and
had decreed that the great canvas, crowded
with figures of gods and men, should be burned
rather than survive him unperfected, then his

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v?