The History of Roman Literature Part 19

After the battle of Philippi (42 B.C.) he appears settled in his native district cultivating pastoral poetry, but threatened with ejection by the agrarian a.s.signations of the Triumvirs. Pollio, who was then Prefect of Gallia Transpadana, interceded with Octavian, and Virgil was allowed to retain his property. But on a second division among the veterans, Varus having now succeeded to Pollio, he was not so fortunate, but with his father was obliged to fly for his life, an event which he has alluded to in the first and ninth Eclogues. The fugitives took refuge in a villa that had belonged to Siro, [7] and from this retreat, by the advice of his friend Cornelius Gallus, he removed to Rome, where, 37 B.C., he published his _Eclogues_. These at once raised him to eminence as the equal of Varius, though in a different department; but even before their publication he had established himself as an honoured member of Maecenas's circle. [8] The liberality of Augustus and his own thrift enabled him to live in opulence, and leave at his death a very considerable fortune.

Among other estates he possessed one in Campania, at or near Naples, which from its healthfulness and beauty continued till his death to be his favourite dwelling-place. It was there that he wrote the _Georgics_, and there that his bones were laid, and his tomb made the object of affectionate and even religious veneration. He is not known to have undertaken more than one voyage out of Italy; but that contemplated in the third Ode of Horace may have been carried out, as Prof. Sellar suggests, for the sake of informing himself by personal observation about the localities of the _Aeneid_; for it seems unlikely that the accurate descriptions of Book III. could have been written without some such direct knowledge. The rest of his life presents no event worthy of record. It was given wholly to the cultivation of his art, except in so far as he was taken up with scientific and antiquarian studies, which he felt to be effectual in elevating his thought and deepening his grasp of a great subject. [9] The _Georgics_ were composed at the instance of Maecenas during the seven years 37-30 B.C., and read before Augustus the following year. The _Aeneid_ was written during the remaining years of his life, but was left unfinished, the poet having designed to give three more years to its elaboration. As is well known, it was saved from destruction and given to the world by the emperor's command, contrary to the poet's dying wish and the express injunctions of his will. He died at Brundisium (19 B.C.) at the comparatively early age of 51, of an illness contracted at Megara, and aggravated by a too hurried return. The tour on which he had started was undertaken from a desire to see for himself the coasts of Asia Minor which he had made Aeneas visit. Such was the life and such the premature death of the greatest of Roman bards.

Even those who have judged the poems of Virgil most unfavourably speak of his character in terms of warmest praise. He was gentle, innocent, modest, and of a singular sweetness of disposition, which inspired affection even where it was not returned, and in men who rarely showed it. [10] At the same time he is described as silent and even awkward in society, a trait which Dante may have remembered when himself taunted with the same deficiency. His nature was pre-eminently a religious one. Dissatisfied with his own excellence, filled with a deep sense of the unapproachable ideal, he reverenced the ancient faith and the opinions of those who had expounded it. This habit of mind led him to underrate his own poetical genius and to attach too great weight to the precedents and judgment of others. He seems to have thought no writer so common-place as not to yield some thought that he might make his own; and, like Milton, he loves to pay the tribute of a pa.s.sing allusion to some brother poet, whose character he valued, or whose talent his ready sympathy understood. In an age when licentious writing, at least in youth, was the rule and required no apology, Virgil's early poems are conspicuous by its almost total absence; while the _Georgics_ and _Aeneid_ maintain a standard of lofty purity to which nothing in Latin, and few works in any literature, approach. His flattery of Augustus has been censured as a fault; but up to a certain point it was probably quite sincere. His early intimacy with Varius, the Caesarian poet, and possibly the general feeling among his fellow provincials, may have attracted him from the first to Caesar's name; his disposition, deeply affected by power or greatness, naturally inclined him to show loyalty to a person; and the spell of success when won on such a scale as that of Augustus doubtless wrought upon his poetical genius.

Still, no considerations can make us justify the terms of divine homage which he applies in all his poems, and with every variety of ornament, to the emperor. Indeed, it would be inconceivable, were it not certain, that the truest representative of his generation could, with the approbation of all the world, use language which, but a single generation before, would have called forth nothing but scorn.

Virgil was tall, dark, and interesting-looking, rather than handsome; his health was delicate, and besides a weak digestion, [11] he suffered like other students from headache. His industry must, in spite of this, have been extraordinary; for he shows an intimate acquaintance not only with all that is eminent in Greek and Latin literature, but with many recondite departments of ritual, antiquities, and philosophy, [12] besides being a true interpreter of nature, an excellence that does not come without the habit as well as the love of converse with her. Of his personal feelings we know but little, for he never shows that unreserve which characterises so many of the Roman writers; but he entertained a strong and lasting friends.h.i.+p for Gallus, [13] and the force and truth of his delineations of the pa.s.sion of love seem to point to personal experience. Like Horace, he never married, and his last days are said to have been clouded with regret for the unfinished condition of his great work.

The early efforts of Virgil were chiefly lyric and elegiac pieces after the manner of Catullus, whom he studied with the greatest care, and two short poems in hexameters, both taken from the Alexandrines, called _Culex_ and _Moretum_, of which the latter alone is certainly, the formerly possibly, genuine. [14] Among the short pieces called _Catalecta_ we have some of exquisite beauty, as the dedicatory prayer to Venus and the address to Siro's villa; [15] others show a vein of invective which we find it hard to a.s.sociate with the gentle poet; [16] others, again, are parodies or close imitations of Catullus; [17] while one or two [18] are proved by internal evidence to be by another hand than Virgil's. The _Copa_, "Mine Hostess," which closes the series, reminds us of Virgil in its expression, rhythm, and purity of style, but is far more lively than anything we possess of his. It is an invitation to a rustic friend to put up his beast and spend the hot hours in a leafy arbour where wine, fruits, and goodly company wait for him. We could wish the first four lines away, and then the poem would be a perfect gem. Its clear joyous ring marks the gay time of youth; its varied music sounds the prelude to the metrical triumphs that were to come, and if it is not Virgil's, we have lost in its author a _genre_ poet of the rarest power.

The _Moretum_ is a pleasing idyll, describing the daily life of the peasant Simplus, translated probably from the Greek of Parthenius. On it Teuffel says, "Suevius had written a _Moretum_, and it is not improbable that the desire to surpa.s.s Suevius influenced Virgil in attempting the same task again." [19] Trifling as this circ.u.mstance is, nothing that throws any light on the growth of Virgil's muse can be wanting in interest. Virgil was not one of those who startle the world by their youthful genius. His soul was indeed a poet's from the first, but the rich perfection of his verse was not developed until after years of severe labour, self-correction, and even failure. He began by essaying various styles; he gradually confined himself to one; and in that one he wrought unceasingly, always bringing method to aid talent, until, through various grades of immaturity, he pa.s.sed to a perfection peculiarly his own, in which thought and expression are fused with such exceeding art as to elude all attempts to disengage them. If we can accept the _Culex_ in its present form as genuine, the development of Virgil's genius is shown to us in a still earlier stage. Whether he wrote it at sixteen or twenty-six (and to us the latter age seems infinitely the more probable), it bears the strongest impress of immaturity. It is true the critics torment us by their doubts. Some insist that it cannot be by Virgil. Their chief arguments are derived from the close resemblances (which they regard as imitations) to many pa.s.sages in the _Aeneid_; but of these another, and perhaps a more plausible, explanation may be given. The hardest argument to meet is that drawn from the extraordinary imperfection of the plot, which mars the whole consistency of the poem; [20] but even this is not incompatible with Virgil's authors.h.i.+p. For all ancient testimony agrees in regarding the _Culex_ of Virgil as a poem of little merit. [21] Amid the uncertainty which surrounds the subject, it seems best not to disturb the verdict of antiquity, until better grounds are discovered for a.s.signing our present poem to a later hand. To us the evidence seems to point to the Virgilian authors.h.i.+p. The defect in the plot marks a fault to which Virgil certainly was p.r.o.ne, and which he never quite cast off. [22] The correspondences with the mythology, language, and rhythm of Virgil are just such as might be explained by supposing them to be his first opening conceptions on these points, which a.s.sumed afterwards a more developed form. [23] And this is the more probable because Virgil's mind created with labour, and cast and re-cast in the crucible of reflection ideas of which the first expression suggested itself in early life. Thus we find in the _Aeneid_ similes which had occurred in a less finished form in the _Georgics_; in both _Georgics_ and _Aeneid_ phrases or cadences which seem to brood over and strive to reproduce half-forgotten originals wrought out long before. Nothing is more interesting in tracing Virgil's genius, than to note how each fullest development of his talent subsumes and embraces those that had gone before it; how his mind energises in a continuous mould, and seems to harp with almost jealous constancy on strings it has once touched. The deeper we study him, the more clearly is this feature seen. Unlike other poets who throw off their stanzas and rise as if freed from a load, Virgil seems to carry the acc.u.mulated burden of his creations about with him. He imitates himself with the same elaborate a.s.similation by which he digests and reproduces the thoughts of others.

It is probable that Virgil suppressed all his youthful poetry, and intended the _Eclogues_ to be regarded as the first-fruits of his genius.

[24] The pastoral had never yet been cultivated at Rome. Of all the products of later Greece none could vie with it in truth to nature. Its Sicilian origin bespoke a fresh inspiration, for it arose in a land where the muse of h.e.l.las still lingered. Theocritus's vivid delineation of country scenes must have been full of charm to the Romans, and Virgil did well to try to naturalise it. Not even his matchless grace, however, could atone for the want of reality that pervades an imported type of art.

Sicilian shepherds, Roman _literati_, sometimes under a rustic disguise, sometimes in their own person; a landscape drawn, now from the vales round Syracuse, now from the poet's own district round Mantua; playful contests between rural bards interspersed with panegyrics on Julius Caesar and the patrons or benefactors of the poet; a continual mingling of allegory with fiction, of genuine rusticity with a.s.sumed courtliness; such are the incongruities which lie on the very surface of the _Eclogues_. Add to these the continual imitations, sometimes sinning against the rules of scholars.h.i.+p, [25] which make them, with all their beauties, by far the least original of Virgil's works, the artificial character of the whole composition; and the absence of that lofty self-consciousness on the poet's part [26] which lends so much fire to his after works: and it may seem surprising that the _Eclogues_ have been so much admired. But the fact is, their irresistible charm outweighs all the exceptions of criticism. While we read we become like Virgil's own shepherd; we cannot choose but surrender ourselves to the magic influence:

"Tale tuum carmen n.o.bis, divine poeta, Quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per herbam Dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo." [27]

This charm is due partly to the skill with which the poet has blended reality with allegory, fancy with feeling, partly to the exquisite language to which their music is attuned. The Latin language had now reached its critical period of growth, its splendid but transitory epoch of ripe perfection. Literature had arrived at that second stage of which Conington speaks, [28] when thought finds language no longer as before intractable and inadequate, but able to keep pace with and even a.s.sist her movements. Trains of reflection are easily awakened; a diction matured by reason and experience rivals the flexibility or sustains the weight of consecutive thought. It is now that an author's mind exhibits itself in its most concrete form, and that the power of style is first fully felt.

But language still occupies its proper place as a means and not an end; the artist does not pay it homage for its own sake; this is reserved for the next period when the meridian is already past.

It has already been said that the _Georgics_ were undertaken at the request of Maecenas. [29] From more than one pa.s.sage in the _Eclogues_ we should infer that Virgil was not altogether content with the light themes he was pursuing; that he had before his mind's eye dim visions of a great work which should give full scope to the powers he felt within him. But Virgil was deficient in self-reliance. He might have continued to trifle with bucolic poetry, had not Maecenas enlisted his muse in a practical object worthy of its greatness. This was the endeavour to rekindle the old love of husbandry which had been the nurse of Rome's virtue, and which was gradually dying out. To this object Virgil lent himself with enthusiasm.

To feel that his art might be turned to some real good, that it might advance the welfare of the state, this idea acted on him like an inspiration. He was by early training well versed in the details of country life. And he determined that nothing which ardour or study could effect should be wanting to make his knowledge at once thorough and attractive. For seven years he wrought into their present artistic perfection the technical details of husbandry; a labour of love wrought out of study and experience, and directed, as Merivale well says, to the glorification of labour itself as the true end of man.

Virgil's treatment is partially adapted from the Alexandrines; but, as he himself says, his real model is Hesiod. [30] The combination of quaint sententiousness with deep enthusiasm, which he found in the old poet, met his conception of what a practical poem should be. And so, although the desultory maxims of the _Works and Days_ give but a faint image of the comprehensive width and studied discursiveness of the _Georgics_, yet they present a much more real parallel to it than the learned trifling of Aratus or Nicander. For Virgil, like Lucretius, is no trifler: he uses verse as a serious vehicle for impressing his conviction; he acknowledges, so to say, the responsibility of his calling, [31] and writes in poetry because poetry is the clothing of his mind. Hence the _Georgics_ must be ranked as a link in the chain of serious treatises on agriculture, of which Cato's is the first and Varro's the second, designed to win the nation back to the study and discipline of its youth. And that Columella so understood it is clear both from his defending his opinions by frequent quotation from it as a standard authority, and from his writing one book of his voluminous manual in verses imitated from Virgil. The almost religious fervour with which Virgil threw himself into the task of arresting the decay of Italian life, which is the dominant motive of the _Aeneid_, is present also in the _Georgics_. The pithy condensation of useful experience characteristic of Cato,

"Utiliumque sagax rerum et divina futuri Sortilegis non discrepuit sententia Delphis," [32]

the fond antiquarianism of Varro, "laudator temporis acti," unite, with the newly-kindled hope of future glories to be achieved under Caesar's rule, to make the _Georgics_ the most complete embodiment of Roman industrial views, as the _Aeneid_ is of Roman theology and religion. [33]

Virgil aims at combining the stream of poetical talent, which had come mostly from outside, [34] with the succession of prose compositions on practical subjects which had proceeded from the burgesses themselves. Cato and Varro are as continually before his mind as Ennius, Catullus, and Lucretius. A new era had arrived: the systematising of the results of the past he felt was committed to him. Of Virgil's works the _Georgics_ is unquestionably the most artistic. Grasp of the subject, clearness of arrangement, evenness of style, are all at their highest excellence; the incongruities that criticism detects in the _Eclogues_, and the unrealities that often mar the _Aeneid_, are almost wholly absent. There is, however, one great artistic blemish, for which the poet's courage, not his taste, is to blame. We have already spoken of his affection for Gallus, celebrated in the most extravagant but yet the most ethereally beautiful of the Eclogues; [35] and this affection, unbroken by the disgrace and exile of its object, had received a yet more splendid tribute in the episode which closed the _Georgics_. Unhappily, the beauties of this episode, so honourable to the poet's constancy, are to us a theme for conjecture only; the narrow jealousy of Augustus would not suffer any honourable mention of one who had fallen under his displeasure; and, to his lasting disgrace, he ordered Virgil to erase his work. The poet weakly consented, and filled up the gap by the story, beautiful, it is true, but singularly inappropriate, of Aristacus and Orpheus and Eurydice. This epic sketch, Alexandrine in form but abounding in touches of the richest native genius, [36] must have revealed to Rome something of the loftiness of which Virgil's muse was capable. With a felicity and exuberance scarcely inferior to Ovid, it united a power of awakening feeling, a dreamy pathos and a sustained eloquence, which marked its author as the heir of Homer's lyre, "_magnae spes altera Romae_." [37]

In a work like this it would be obviously out of place to offer any minute criticism either upon the beauties or the difficulties of the _Georgics_.

We shall conclude this short notice with one or two remarks on that love of nature in Latin poetry of which the _Georgics_ are the most renowned example. Dunlop has called Virgil a landscape painter. [38] In so far as this implies a faithful and picturesque delineation of natural scenes, whether of movement or repose, [39] the criticism is a happy one: Virgil lingers over these with more affection than any previous writer. The absence of a strong feeling for the peaceful or the grand in nature has often been remarked as a shortcoming of the Greek mind, and it does not seem to have been innate even in the Italian. Alpine scenery suggested no a.s.sociations but those of horror and desolation. Even the more attractive beauties of woods, rills, and flowers, were hailed rather as a grateful exchange from the turmoil of the city than from a sense of their intrinsic loveliness; it is the repose, the comfort, ease, in a word the _body_, not the _spirit_ of nature that the Roman poets celebrate. [40] As a rule their own retirement was not spent amid really rustic scenes. The villas of the great were furnished with every means of making study or contemplation attractive. Rich gardens, cool porticoes, and the shade of planted trees were more to the poet's taste than the rugged stile or the village green. Their aspirations after rural simplicity spring from the weariness of city unrealities rather than from the necessity of being alone with nature. As a fact the poems of Virgil were not composed in a secluded country retreat, but in the splendid and fas.h.i.+onable vicinity of Naples. [41] The Lake of Avernus, the Sibyl's cave, and the other scenes so beautifully painted in the _Aeneid_ are all near the spot. From his luxurious villa the poet could indulge his reverie on the simple rusticity of his ancestors or the landscapes famous in the scenery of Greek song. At such times his mind called up images of Greek legend that blended with his delineations of Italian peasant life: [42]

"O ubi campi Spercheiosque, et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis Taygeta; o qui me gelidis in vallibus Haemi Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!"

The very name _Tempe_, given so often to shady vales, shows the mingled literary and aesthetic a.s.sociations that entered into the love of rural ease and quiet. The deeper emotion peculiar to modern times, which struggles to find expression in the verse of Sh.e.l.ley or Wordsworth, in the canva.s.s of Turner, in the life of restless travel, often a riddle so perplexing to those who cannot understand its source; the mysterious questionings which ask of nature not only what she says to us, but what she utters to herself; why it is that if she be our mother, she veils her face from her children, and will not use a language they can understand--

"Cur natum crudelis tu quoque falsis Ludis imaginibus? Cur dextrae iungere dextram Non datur, et veras audire et reddere voces?"

feelings like these which--though often but obscurely present, it would indeed be a superficial glance that did not read in much of modern thought, however unsatisfactory, in much of modern art, however imperfect --we can hardly trace, or, if at all, only as lightest ripples on the surface, scarcely ruffling the serene melancholy, deep indeed, but self- contained because unconscious of its depth, in which Virgil's poetry flows.

At what time of his life Virgil turned his thoughts to epic poetry is not known. Probably like most gifted poets he felt from his earliest years the ambition to write a heroic poem. He expresses this feeling in the _Eclogues_ [43] more than once; Pollio's exploits seemed to him worthy of such a celebration. [44] In the _Georgics_ he declares that he will wed Caesar's glories to an epic strain, [45] but though the emperor urged him to undertake the subject, which was besides in strict accordance with epic precedent, his mature judgment led him to reject it. [46] Like Milton, he seems to have revolved for many years the different themes that came to him, and, like him, to have at last chosen one which by mounting back into the distant past enabled him to indulge historical retrospect, and gather into one focus the entire subsequent development. As to his apt.i.tude for epic poetry opinions differ. Niebuhr expresses the view of many great critics when he says, "Virgil is a remarkable instance of a man mistaking his vocation; his real calling was lyric poetry; his small lyric poems show that he would have been a poet like Catullus if he had not been led away by his desire to write a great Graeco-Latin poem." And Mommsen, by speaking of "successes like that of the _Aeneid_" evidently inclines towards the same view. It must be conceded that Virgil's genius lacked heroic fibre, invention, dramatic power. He had not an idea of "that stern joy that warriors feel," so necessary to one who would raise a martial strain. The pa.s.sages we remember best are the very ones that are least heroic. The funeral games in honour of Anchises, the forlorn queen, the death of Nisus and Euryalus, owe all their charm to the sacrifice of the heroic to the sentimental. Had Virgil been able to keep rigidly to the lofty purpose with which he entered on his work, we should perhaps have lost the episodes which bring out his purest inspiration. So far as his original endowments went, his mind certainly was not cast in a heroic mould. But the counter-balancing qualifications must not be forgotten. He had an inextinguishable enthusiasm for his art, a heart

"Smit with the love of ancient song,"

a susceptibility to literary excellence never equalled, [47] and a spirit responsive to the faintest echo of the music of the ages. [48] The very faculties that bar his entrance into the circle of creative minds enable him to stand first among those epic poets who own a literary rather than an original inspiration. For in truth epic poetry is a name for two widely different cla.s.ses of composition. The first comprehends those early legends and ballads which arise in a nation's vigorous youth, and embody the most cherished traditions of its G.o.ds and heroes and the long series of their wars and loves. Strictly native in its origin, such poetry is the spontaneous expression of a people's political and religious life. It may exist in scattered fragments bound together only by unity of sentiment and poetic inspiration: or it may be welded into a whole by the genius of some heroic bard. But it can only arise in that early period of a nation's history when political combination is as yet imperfect, and scientific knowledge has not begun to mark off the domain of historic fact from the cloudland of fancy and legend. Of this cla.s.s are the Homeric poems, the _Nibelungen Lied_, the Norse ballads, the _Edda_, the _Kalewala_, the legends of Arthur, and the poem of the _Cid_: all these, whatever their differences, have this in common, that they sprang at a remote period out of the earliest traditions of the several peoples, and neither did nor could have originated in a state of advanced civilization. It is far otherwise with the other sort of epics. These are composed amid the complex influences of a highly developed political life. They are the fruit of conscious thought reflecting on the story before it and seeking to unfold its results according to the systematic rules of art. The stage has been reached which discerns fact from fable; the myths which to an earlier age seemed the highest embodiment of truth, are now mere graceful ornaments, or at most faint images of hidden realities. The state has a.s.serted its dominion over man's activity; science, sacred and profane, has given its stores to enrich his mind; philosophy has led him to meditate on his place in the system of things. To write an enduring epic a poet must not merely recount heroic deeds, but must weave into the recital all the tangled threads which bind together the grave and varied interests of civilized man.

It is the glory of Virgil that alone with Dante and Milton he has achieved this; that he stands forth as the expression of an epoch, of a nation.

That obedience to sovereign law, [49] which is the chief burden of the _Aeneid_, stands out among the diverse elements of Roman life as specially prominent, just as faith in the Church's doctrine is the burden of Mediaevalism as expressed in Dante, and as justification of G.o.d's dealings, as given in Scripture, forms the lesson of _Paradise Lost_, making it the best poetical representative of Protestant thought. None of Virgil's predecessors understood the conditions under which epic greatness was possible. His successors, in spite of his example, understood them still less. It has been said that no events are of themselves unsuited for epic treatment, simply because they are modern or historical. [50] This may be true; and yet, where is the poet that has succeeded in them? The early Roman poets were patriotic men; they chose for subjects the annals of Rome, which they celebrated in n.o.ble though unskilled verse. Naevius.

Ennius, Accius, Hostius, Bibaculus, and Varius before Virgil, Lucan and Silius after him, treated national subjects, some of great antiquity, some almost contemporaneous. But they failed, as Voltaire failed, because historical events are not by themselves the natural subjects of heroic verse. Ta.s.so chose a theme where history and romance were so blended as to admit of successful epic treatment; but such conditions are rare. Few would hesitate to prefer the histories of Herodotus and Livy to any poetical account whatever of the Persian and Punic wars; and in such preference they would be guided by a true principle, for the domain of history borders on and overlaps, but does not coincide with, that of poetry.

The perception of this truth has led many, epic poets to err in the opposite extreme. They have left the region of truth altogether, and confined themselves to pure fancy or legend. This error is less serious than the first; for not only are legendary subjects well adapted for epic treatment, but they may be made the natural vehicle of deep or n.o.ble thought. The _Orlando Furioso_ and the _Faery Queen_ are examples of this.

But more often the poet either uses his subject as a means for exhibiting his learning or style, as Statius, Cinna, and the Alexandrines; or loses sight of the deeper meaning altogether, and merely reproduces the beauty of the ancient myths without reference to their ideal truth, as was done by Ovid, and recently by Mr. Morris, with brilliant success, in his _Earthly Paradise_. This poem, like the _Metamorphoses_, does not claim to be a national epic, but both, by their vivid realization of a mythology which can never lose its charm, hold a legitimate place among the offshoots of epic song.

Virgil has overcome the difficulties and joined the best results of both these imperfect forms. By adopting the legend of Aeneas, which, since the Punic wars, had established itself as one of the firmest national beliefs, [51] he was enabled without sacrificing reality to employ the resources of Homeric art; by tracing directly to that legend the glorious development of Roman life and Roman dominion, he has become the poet of his nation's history, and through it, of the whole ancient world.

The elements which enter into the plan of the _Aeneid_ are so numerous as to have caused very different conceptions of its scope and meaning. Some have regarded it as the sequel and counterpart of the _Iliad_, in which Troy triumphs over her ancient foe, and Greece acknowledges the divine Nemesis. That this conception was present to the poet is clear from many pa.s.sages in which he reminds Greece that she is under Rome's dominion, and contrasts the heroes or achievements of the two nations. [52] But it is by no means sufficient to explain the whole poem, and indeed is in contradiction to its inner spirit. For in the eleventh Aeneid [53] Diomed declares that after Troy was taken he desires to have no more war with the Trojan race; and in harmony with this thought Virgil conceives of the two nations under Rome's supremacy as working together by law, art, and science, to advance the human race. [54] Roman talent has made her own all that Greek genius created, and fate has willed that neither race should be complete without the other. The germs of this fine thought are found in the historian Polybius, who dwelt on the grandeur of such a joint influence, and perhaps through his intercourse with the Scipionic circle, gave the idea currency. It is therefore rather the final reconciliation than the continued antagonism that the _Aeneid_ celebrates, though of course national pride dwells on the striking change of relations that time had brought.

Another view of the _Aeneid_ makes it centre in Augustus. Aeneas then becomes a type of the emperor, whose calm calculating courage was equalled by his piety to the G.o.ds, and care for public morals. Turnus represents Antony, whose turbulent vehemence (_violentia_) [55] mixed with generosity and real valour, makes us lament, while we accept his fate. Dido is the Egyptian queen whose arts fell harmless on Augustus's cold reserve, and whose resolve to die eluded his vigilance. Drances, [56] the brilliant orator whose hand was slow to wield the sword, is a study from Cicero; and so the other less important characters have historical prototypes. But there is even less to be said for this view than for the other. It is altogether too narrow, and cannot be made to correspond with, the facts of history, nor do the characters on a close inspection resemble their supposed originals. [57] Beyond doubt the stirring scenes Virgil had as a young man witnessed, suggested points which he has embodied in the story, but the Greek maxim that "poetry deals with universal truth," [58] must have been rightly understood by him to exclude all such dressing-up of historical facts.

There remains the view to which many critics have lent their support, that the _Aeneid_ celebrates the triumph of law and civilization over the savage instincts of man; and that because Rome had proved the most complete civilizing power, therefore it is to her greatness that everything in the poem conspires. This view has the merit of being in every way worthy of Virgil. No loftier conception could guide his verse through the long labyrinth of legend, history, religious and antiquarian lore, in which for ten years of patient study his muse sought inspiration.

Still it seems somewhat too philosophical to have been by itself his animating principle. It is true, patriotism had enlarged its basis; the city of Rome was already the world, [59] and the growth of Rome was the growth of human progress. Hence the muse, while celebrating the imperial state, transcends in thought the limits of s.p.a.ce and time, and swells, as it were, the great hymn of humanity. But this represents rather the utmost reach of the poet's flight after he has thrown himself into the empyrean than the original definitely conceived goal on which he fixed his mind. We should supplement this view by another held by Macrobius and many Latin critics, and of which Mr. Nettles.h.i.+p, in a recent admirable pamphlet [60]

recognises the justice, viz. that the _Aeneid_ was written with a religious object, and must be regarded mainly as a religious poem. Its burning patriotism glows with a religious light. Its hero is "religious"

(_pius_), not "beautiful" or "brave." [61] At the sacrifice even of poetical effect his religious dependence on the G.o.ds is brought into prominence. The action of the whole poem hinges on the Divine will, which, is not as in Homer, a mere counterpart of the human, far less is represented as in conflict with resistless destiny, but, cognizant of fate and in perfect union with it, as overruling all lower impulses, divine or human, towards the realization of the appointed end. This Divine Power is Jupiter, whom in the _Aeneid_ he calls by this name as a concession to conventional beliefs, but in the _Georgics_ prefers to leave nameless, symbolised under the t.i.tle Father. [62] Jupiter is not the Author, but he is the Interpreter and Champion of Destiny (_Fata_), which lies buried in the realm of the unknown, except so far as the father of the G.o.ds pleases to reveal it. [63] Deities of sufficient power or resource may defer but cannot prevent its accomplishment. Juno is represented doing this--the idea is of course from Homer. But Jupiter does not desire to change destiny, even if he could, though he feels compa.s.sion at its decrees (_e.g._ at the death of Turnus). The power of the Divine fiat to overrule human equity is shown by the death of Turnus who has right, and of Dido who has the lesser wrong, on her side. Thus punishment is severed from desert, and loses its higher meaning; the instinct of justice is lost in the a.s.sertion of divine power; and while in details the religion of the _Aeneid_ is often pure and n.o.ble, its ultimate conceptions of the relation of the human and divine are certainly no advance on those of Homer. The verdict of one who reads the poem from this point of view will surely be that of Sellar, who denies that it enlightens the human conscience. Every form of the doctrine that might is right, however skilfully veiled, as it is in the _Aeneid_ by a thousand beautiful intermediaries, must be cla.s.sed among the crude and uncreative theories which mark an only half-reflecting people. But when we pa.s.s from the philosophy of religion to the particular manifestation of it as a national wors.h.i.+p, we find Virgil at his greatest, and worthy to hold the position he held with later ages as the most authoritative expounder of the Roman ritual and creed. [64] He shared the palm of learning with Varro, and sympathy inclined towards the poet rather than the antiquarian. The _Aeneid_ is literally filled with memorials of the old religion. The glory of Aeneas is to have brought with him the Trojan G.o.ds, and through perils of every kind to have guarded his faith in them, and scrupulously preserved their wors.h.i.+p. It is not the Trojan race as such that the Romans could look back to with pride as ancestors; they are the _bis capti Phryges_, who are but heaven-sent instruments for consecrating the Latin race to the mission for which it is prepared.

"_Occidit_" says Juno, "_occideritque sinas c.u.m nomine Troja:_" [65] and Aeneas states the object of his proposal in these words--

"Sacra deosque dabo; socer arma Latinas habeto." [66]

This then being the lofty origin, the immemorial antiquity of the national faith, the moral is easily drawn, that Rome must never cease to observe it. The rites to import which into the favoured land cost heaven itself so fierce a struggle, which have raised that land to be the head of all the earth, must not be neglected now that their promise has been fulfilled.

Each ceremony embodies some glorious reminiscence; each minute technicality enshrines some special national blessing.

Here, as in the _Georgics_, Cato and Varro live in Virgil, but with far less of narrow literalness, with far more of rich enthusiasm. We can well believe that the _Aeneid_ was a poem after Augustus's heart, that he welcomed with pride as well as gladness the instalments which, before its publication, he was permitted to see, [67] and encouraged by unreserved approbation so thorough an exponent of his cherished views. To him the _Aeneid_ breathed the spirit of the old cult. Its very style, like that of Milton from the Bible, was borrowed in countless instances from the Sacred Manuals. When Aeneas offers to the G.o.ds four prime oxen (_eximios tauros_) the pious Roman recognised the words of the ritual. [68] When the nymph Cymodoce rouses Aeneas to be on his guard against danger with the words "_Vigilas ne deum gens? Aenea, vigila!_" [69] she recalls the imposing ceremony by which, immediately before a war was begun, the general struck with his lance the sacred s.h.i.+elds, calling on the G.o.d "_Mars, vigila!_"

These and a thousand other allusions caused many of the later commentators to regard Aeneas as an impersonation of the pontificate. This is an error a.n.a.logous to, but worse than, that which makes him represent Augustus; he is a poetical creation, imperfect no doubt, but still not to be tied to any single definition.

Pa.s.sing from the religious to the moral aspect of the _Aeneid_, we find a gentleness beaming through it, strangely contradicted by some of the b.l.o.o.d.y episodes, which out of deference to Homeric precedent Virgil interweaves. Such are the human sacrifices, the ferocious taunts at fallen enemies, and other instances of boasting or cruelty which will occur to every reader, greatly marring the artistic as well as the moral effect of the hero. Tame as he generally is, a resigned instrument in the divine hands, there are moments when Aeneas is truly attractive. As Conington says, his kindly interest in the young shown in Book V. is a beautiful trait that is all Virgil's own. His happy interview with Evander, where, throwing off the monarch, he chats like a Roman burgess in his country house; his pity for young Lausus whom he slays, and the mournful tribute of affection he pays to Pallas, are touching scenes, which without presenting Aeneas as a hero (which he never is), harmonise far better with the ideal Virgil meant to leave us. But after all said, that ideal is a poor one for purposes of poetry. Aeneas is uninteresting, and this is the great fault of the poem. Turnus enlists our sympathy far more, he is chivalrous and valiant; the wrong he suffers does not harden him, but he lacks strength of character. The only personage who is "proudly conceived"

[70] is Mezentius, the despiser of the G.o.ds. The absence of restraint seems to have given the poet a more masculine touch; the address of the old king to his horse, his only friend, is full of pathos. Among female characters Camilla is perhaps original; she is graceful without being pleasing. Amata and Juturna belong to the cla.s.s _virago_, a term applied to the latter by Virgil himself. [71] Lavinia is the modest maiden, a sketch, not a portrait. Dido is a character for all time, the _chef d'oeuvre_ of the _Aeneid_. Among the stately ladies of the imperial house --a Livia, a Scribonia, an Octavia, perhaps a Julia--Virgil must have found the elements which he has fused with such mighty power, [72] the rich beauty, the fierce pa.s.sion, the fixed resolve. Dido is his greatest effort: and yet she is not an individual living woman like Helen or Ophelia. Like Racine, Virgil has developed pa.s.sions, not created persons.

The divine gift of tender, almost Christian, feeling that is his, cannot see into those depths where the inner personality lies hidden. Among the traditional characters few call for remark. The G.o.ds maintain on the whole their Homeric attributes, only hardened by time and by a Roman moulding.

Venus is, however, touched with magic skill; it may be questioned whether words ever carried such suggestions of surpa.s.sing beauty as those in which, twice in the poem, her mystic form [73] is veiled rather than pourtrayed. The characters of Ulysses and Helen bear the debased, unheroic stamp of the later Greek drama; the last spark of goodness has left them, and even his careful study of Homer, seems to have had no effect in opening the poet's eyes to the gross falsification. Where Virgil did not feel obliged to create, he was to the last degree conventional.

A most interesting feature in the _Aeneid_--and with it we conclude our sketch--is its incorporation of all that was best in preceding poetry. All Roman poets had imitated, but Virgil carried imitation to an extent hitherto unknown. Not only Greek but Latin writers are laid under contribution in every page. Some idea of his indebtedness to Homer may be formed from Conington's commentary. Sophocles and the other tragedians, Apollonius Rhodius and the Alexandrines are continually imitated, and almost always improved upon. And still more is this the case with his adaptations from Naevius, Ennius, Lucretius, Hostius, Furius, &c. whose works he had thoroughly mastered, and stored in his memory their most striking rhythms or expressions. [74] Ma.s.sive lines from Ennius, which as a rule he has spared to touch, leaving them in all their rugged grandeur planted in the garden of his verse, to point back like giant trees to the time when that garden was a forest, bear witness at once to his reverence for the old bard and to his own wondrous art. It is not merely for literary effect that the old poets are transferred into his pages. A n.o.bler motive swayed him. The _Aeneid_ was meant to be, above all things, a National Poem, carrying on the lines of thought, the style of speech, which National Progress had chosen; it was not meant to eclipse so much us to do honour to the early literature. Thus those bards who like Naevius and Ennius had done good service to Rome by singing, however rudely, her history, find their _Imagines_ ranged in the gallery of the _Aeneid_.

There they meet with the flamens and pontiffs unknown and unnamed, who drew up the ritual formularies, with the antiquarians and pious scholars who had sought to find a meaning in the immemorial names, [75] whether of places or customs or persons; with the magistrates, moralists, and philosophers, who had striven to enn.o.ble or enlighten Roman virtue; with the Greek singers and sages, for they too had helped to rear the towering fabric of Roman greatness. All these meet together in the _Aeneid_ as if in solemn conclave, to review their joint work, to acknowledge its final completion, and predict its impending fall. This is beyond question the explanation of the wholesale appropriation of others' thought and language, which otherwise would be sheer plagiarism. With that tenacious sense of national continuity which had given the senate a policy for centuries, Virgil regards Roman literature as a gradually expanded whole; coming at the close of its first epoch, he sums up its results and enters into its labours. So far from hesitating whether to imitate, he rather hesitated whom not to include, if only by a single reference, in his mosaic of all that had entered into the history of Rome. His archaism is but another side of the same thing. Whether it takes the form of archaeological discussion, [76] of antiquarian allusion, [77] of a mode of narration which recalls the ancient source, [78] or of obsolete expressions, forms of inflection, or poetical ornament, [79] we feel that it is a sign of the poet's reverence for what was at once national and old. The structure of his verse, while full of music, often reminds us of the earlier writers. It certainly has more affinity with that of Lucretius than with that of Lucan. A learned Roman reading the _Aeneid_ would feel his mind stirred by a thousand patriotic a.s.sociations. The quaint old laws, the maxims and religious formulae he had learnt in childhood would mingle with the richest poetry of Greece and Rome in a stream flowing evenly, and as it would seem, from a single spring; and he who by his art had effected this wondrous union would seem to him the prophet as well as the poet of the era. That art, in spite of its occasional lapses, for we must not forget the work was unfinished, is the most perfect the world has yet seen. The poet's exquisite sense of beauty, the sonorous language he wielded, the n.o.ble rivalry of kindred spirits great enough to stimulate but not to daunt him, and the consciousness of living in a new time big with triumphs, as he fondly hoped, for the useful and the good, all united to make Virgil not only the fairest flower of Roman literature, but as the master of Dante, the beloved of all gentle hearts, and the most widely- read poet of any age, to render him an influential contributor to some of the deepest convictions of the modern world.

APPENDIX.

Note I.--_Imitations of Virgil in Propertius, Ovid, and Manilius._

The prestige of Virgil made him a subject for imitation even during his lifetime. Just as Carlyle, Tennyson, and other vigorous writers soon create a school, so Virgil stamped the poetical dialect for centuries. But he offered two elements for imitation, the declamatory or rhetorical, which is most prominent in his speeches, and in the second and sixth books; and detached pa.s.sages showing descriptive imagery, touches of pathos, similes, &c. These last might he imitated without at all unduly influencing the individuality of the imitator's style. In this way Ovid is a great imitator of Virgil; so to a less extent are Propertius, Manilius, and Lucan. Statius and Silius base their whole poetical art on him, and therefore particular instances of imitation throw no additional light on their style. We shall here notice a few of the points in which the Augustan poets copied him:--

(1) _In Facts._--Beside the great number of early historical points on which he was followed implicitly, we find even his errors imitated, _e.g._ the confusion which perhaps in Virgil is only apparent between Pharsalia and Philippi, has, as Merivale remarks, been adopted by Propertius (iv.

10,40), Ovid (M. xv, 824), Manilius (i. 906), Lucan (vii. 854), and Juvenal (viii. 242); not so much from ignorance of the locality as out of deference to Virgilian precedent. The lines may be quoted--Virgil (G. i.

489), _Ergo inter se paribus concurrere telis Romanas acies iterum videre Philippi;_ Propertius, _Una Philippeo sanguine inusta nota;_ Ovid, _Emathiaque iterum madefient caede Philippi;_ Manilius, _Arma Philippeos implerunt sanguine campos. Vixque etiam sicca miles Roma.n.u.s arena Ossa virum lacerosque prius superast.i.tit artus;_ Lucan, _Scelerique secundo Praestatis nondum siccos hoc sanguine campos;_ Juvenal, _Thessaliae campis Octavius abstulit ... famam...._ This is a.n.a.logous to the way in which the satirists use the names consecrated by Lucilius or Horace as types of a vice, and repeat the same symptoms _ad nauseam, e.g._ the miser who anoints his body with train oil, who locks up his leavings, who picks up a farthing from the road, &c. The veiled allusion to the poet Anser (Ecl.

ix. 36) is perhaps recalled by Prop. iii. 32, 83, _sqq._ So the portents described by Virgil as following on the death of Caesar are told again by Manilius at the end of Bk. I. and referred to by Lucan (_Phars._ i.) and Ovid. Again, the confusion between _Inarime_ and _ein Arimois_, into which Virgil falls, is borrowed by Lucan (_Phars._ v. 101).

(2) _In Metre._--As regards metre, Ovid in the _Metamorphoses_ is nearest to him, but differs in several points, He imitates him--(_a_) in not admitting words of four or more syllables, except very rarely, at the end of the line; (_b_) in rhythms like _vulnificus sus_ (viii. 358), and the not unfrequent _spondetazontes_; (_c_) in keeping to the two caesuras as finally established by him, and avoiding beginnings like _scilicet omnibus | est_, &c. In all these points Manilius is a little less strict than Ovid, _e.g._ (i. 35) _et veneranda_, (iii. 130) _sic breviantur_, (ii.

716) _altribuuntur_. He also follows Virgil in alliteration, which Ovid does not. They differ from Virgil in--(_a_) a much more sparing employment of elision. The reason of this is that elision marks the period of living growth; as soon as the language had become crystallised, each letter had its fixed force, the caprices of common p.r.o.nunciation no longer influencing it; and although no correct writer places the unelided _m_ before a vowel, yet the great rarity of elision not only of _m_ but of long and even short vowels (except _que_) shows that the main object was to avoid it, if possible. The great frequency of elision in Virgil must be regarded as an archaism. (_b_) In a much lesser variety of rhythm. This is, perhaps, rather an artistic defect, but it is designed. Manilius, however, has verses which Virgil avoids, _e.g. Delcetique sacerdotes_ (i.

47), probably as a reminiscence of Lucretius.

Imitations in language are very frequent. Propertius gives _ah pereat!