Virgil's Eclogue 2
From Virgil's second Eclogue, spoken by the shepherd Corydon. The original context: a love-sick shepherd singing while weaving baskets, claiming it's enough that the gods heard his song.
hibisco—marshmallow, not tropical
The hibiscus here is marshmallow (Althaea), used for basket-weaving in classical times—flexible stems, not ornamental flowers. Virgil's pastoral realism.
Reading Notes
The Epigraph as Entire Poem
Barbauld published this in 1773 as a complete poem—just Virgil's Latin lines repeated twice, with no English translation or commentary. The title Poems (plural) for a six-line work consisting entirely of quotation is either ironic or programmatic.
The Virgil passage translates roughly: "This will be enough, goddesses, that your poet sang / while he sits and weaves a basket from slender marshmallow." In the original Eclogue, the shepherd Corydon uses these lines to frame his lovesick complaint—claiming modest aims (just weaving baskets and singing) while actually delivering elaborate poetry. Barbauld appropriates this gesture of false modesty.
The repetition matters. Printing the same couplet twice without explanation forces the reader to notice the act of quotation itself. Is this about women's education (Barbauld reading Virgil)? About the gendering of pastoral poetry? About claiming poetic authority through classical learning while appearing to disclaim it? The poem refuses to answer—it just sits there, weaving its Latin basket.
Barbauld's Classical Credentials
Anna Laetitia Barbauld learned Latin, Greek, French, and Italian from her father, a dissenting academy teacher—unusual for women in 1770s England. Her 1773 debut Poems was praised specifically for its classical learning. This piece appears in that collection.
By opening with untranslated Virgil, Barbauld demonstrates literacy that most of her female readers wouldn't share—but that male critics demanded as proof of "serious" poetry. The gesture is simultaneously exclusive (you need Latin) and defiant (women can have Latin too).
The choice of this particular passage is pointed. Virgil's shepherd claims his "slender" basket-weaving song is enough for the goddesses—the Muses. Barbauld, weaving her own fiscellam (little basket) of poems, makes the same claim. But where Corydon's modesty is undercut by his actual eloquence, Barbauld's is undercut by her refusal to translate or explain. The poem says "this is enough" while doing something quite assertive: claiming Virgil's voice as her own.