Does anyone know the source for the following anecdote about Virgil?
It comes from an English translation of the "Pampædia" of J.A. Comenius
(1592-1670) [Dobbie,A.M.O.(tr.) "Comenius's Pampædia or Universal
Education"Dover(England):Buckland Hill Publications,p.73-74]
If anyone can send me the Latin text I would be
grateful for that
also.[ "Pampædia"("Universal Education") ch.6["Pambiblia"("Universal
Books")],para.18.9 (N.B.Pampædia=part 4 of "De Rerum Humanarum
Emendatione Consultatio Catholica"("General Deliberation concerning the
Reform of Human Affairs"), Prague:Czechoslovak Academy of
Sciences,1966)]
"No one therefore should be allowed to hustle books into publication.
Writers must make a habit of drafting and redrafting all their work,
fashioning it by licking it into shape until every book on the market
conforms exactly to the standard of Polycleitus. Quick products quickly
die; those of long workmanship live to a ripe old age. Zeuxis once met
Agatharchus, a fellow artist, who was boasting of his rapid painting,
with the answer:'I take a long time because my painting is for
eternity.' When Virgil was complaining that in the space of three days
he had scarcely composed three lines, and another poet boasted that he
had done three hundred in a single day, Virgil replied:'That is quite
possible, but the difference will be that your lines die in three days
whereas mine will last forever.'"
Assuming that this anecdote isn't original to Comenius, where does it
come from? From Donatus'"Life of Virgil" we know that Virgil in
composing the "Georgics" would dictate a large number of lines in the
morning and would then spend all day licking them into shape, leaving
very few by day's end. The Comenius anecdote seems to be a garbled
memory of Donatus. But who was the garbler? The anecdote seems somewhat
apocryphal in that Virgil, being a perfectionist, is unlikely to
complain about the number of his lines. Who is the other poet supposed
to be? Mævius,Bævius or Bathyllus?
Peter J V D Bryant
Perth
Western Australia
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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