SOURCE: "The Augustan Age: Virgil," in Latin Literature, 1895. Reprint by Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900, pp. 91–105.

Mackail was an English critic, biographer, and educator whose books include The Springs of Helicon (1909) and Studies in Humanism (1938). Primarily devoted to the study of Greek and English poetry, his work displays the a scholarly approach to literature, as well as a belief that the development of poetry is an organic process. In the excerpt below, Mackail traces the development of Vergil's skill from the Eclogues through the Georgics, culminating in the mature style displayed in the Aeneid.

Publius Vergilius Maro was born at the village of Andes, near Mantua, on the 15th of October, 70 B.C. The province of Cisalpine Gaul, though not formally incorporated with Italy till twenty years later, had before this become thoroughly Romanised, and was one of the principal recruiting grounds for the legions. But the population was still...