Harvey's Virgilian quotation in his lectures of 1616.

  • Sir Norman Moore, 1st Baronet
Date:
06 April 1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Harvey's Virgilian quotation in his lectures of 1616. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    Ab love principium, Musae ; Iovis omnia plena Virgil was Harvey’s favourite poet, and be wrote this line of the third Eclogue at the top of the title-page of the manuscript notes for the lectures which he delivered in our College on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, April 16, 17 and 18, in the year 1616. The conversation, of which the line is a part, takes place in a pleasant rural scene: Palaemon : Dicite, quandoquidem in modi consedimus herba. Et nunc omnis ager, nunc omnis parturit arbos ; Nunc frondent silvae; nunc formosissimus annus. Incipe, Damoeta; tu deinde sequere, Menalca. Alternis dicetis; amant alterna Camenae. Damoetas: Ab love principium, Musae; Iovis omnia plena; Ille colit terras ; illi mea carmina curae. Menalcas : Et me Phoebus amat; Phoebo sua semper aput me Munera sunt, lauri et suave rubens hyacinthus. Dryden calls the Bucolics “ the rudiments of Virgil’s poetry,” and apologises for the roughness of his own translation, yet he had studied Virgil so much that it is always pleasant to read his version after the original: “ Palaemon : “ Sing then ; the shade affords a proper place, The trees are cloth’d with leaves, the fields with grass; The blossoms blow, the birds on bushes sing, And Nature has accomplish’d all the spring. The challenge to Damoetas shall belong; Menalcas shall sustain his under song : Each in his turn your tuneful members bring; By turns the tuneful Muses love to sing. “ Damoetas. “ Prom the great father of the gods above My Muse begins ; for all is full of Jove ; To Jove the care of heaven and earth belongs; My flocks he blesses, and he loves my songs.
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