Chapter XVIII: Part 18

Of light, shadow, and darkness thus regarded, Homer had lively and most poetical conceptions. This description of objects by light and its absence tax his materials to the uttermost. His iron-grey, his ruddy, his starry heaven, are so many modes of light. His wine-coloured oxen and sea, his violet sheep, his things tawny, purple, sooty, and the rest, give us in fact a rich vocabulary of words for describing what is dark so far as it has colour, but what also varies between dull and bright, according to the quantity of light playing upon it. Here (for example) is the link between his αἴθοψ κάπνος and his αἴθοψ οἶνος.

As these words all follow in the train, so to speak, of μέλας, even so λευκὸς is attended by its own family, all falling under the meaning of the English adjective _light_. On the one hand χλωρὸς and πόλιος; on the other μαρμάρεος, ἀργὸς, and σιγαλόεις, all mean _light_; but the first two are dull, and represent the twilight of colour, or debateable ground between it and its negative, while the last three are bright and glistering.

Nothing can be more poetical than Homer’s ideas of dark and light. It was a redundancy of life in these ideas, that made him associate light with motion; as in those fine lines (Il. ii. 437),

ὣς τῶν ἐρχομένων ἀπὸ χαλκοῦ θεσπεσίοιο
αἴγλη παμφανόωσα δι’ αἰθέρος οὐρανὸν ἷκεν.

And, again, in the Arming of Achilles (Il. xix. 362),

αἴγλη δ’ οὐρανὸν ἷκε, γέλασσε δὲ πᾶσα περὶ χθών.

So, on the other hand, the idea of darkness went to animate metaphysical conceptions, as in black fate, black death, black clouds of death, black pains (Il. ii. 859, 834. xvi. 350. iv. 117).

Naturalists tell us, that there exist kinds of creatures respecting which it is known, that their organs are sensitive to light and darkness, but with no perception whatever either of colour or of form[856]. So far as respects form, Homer perceived keenly such forms as were beautiful: but of mere geometrical form he may have had very indistinct ideas, if we are to judge from his epithets for the form of a shield. The parallel is nearer in the case of colour; for even his perceptions were as yet undigested; as if they were novel, not aided by tradition, acquired very much by himself, and fixed as yet neither by custom nor nomenclature.

[856] Wilson’s Five Gateways of Knowledge, p. 4.

From the remains which have reached us of the colours of the ancients, it has been found practicable to treat of them in precise detail[857]. But, in examining the question from the works of Homer, we must bear in mind, first, their very early date, and, secondly, the likelihood that heroic Greece may probably have been far behind some countries of the east in the use and in the idea of colour, which has always had a privileged home there.

[857] See, for instance, ‘Ancient and Modern Colours, by William Linton.’ London 1852.

~_Colour in the later Greek language._~

The tendency, however, to a mixture of the two questions of light and colour appears to be traceable more or less in the popular language, and likewise in the philosophy, of the later Greeks.

In the classical period, the hues of the eye were divided, as μέλας the darkest, χάροπος the intermediate, and γλαυκὸς the lightest.

The word πράσινος, leek-green, appears to be quite adequate to the expression of the colour. It is used by Aristotle; but I do not know that it is found in the poets or writers of the best age. For the classical Greek the idea of greenness is expressed by χλωρὸς, as far as it is expressed at all. Now this word seems inadequate on two grounds. First, its predominant idea is that of ‘fresh’ or ‘recent;’ which is but accidentally, and not invariably, the property of those objects in nature that are green.

When we find the word χλωρὸς applied alike to objects of a green colour, and to others that have no colour, (or else not in respect of their colour,) but yet which are fresh or newly sprung, we are led to conclude that it was for freshness, and not for greenness, that the word was generally used. This idea is confirmed by two circumstances. First, that when χλωρὸς does signify colour, as in the case of paleness, (where it cannot mean what is fresh,) it signifies the most indefinite and feeble colour, little more indeed than a negative.

The meaning of χλωρὸν δεός is probably ashy-pale fear. In the green of the olive we see the point of connection between this use of the term on the one hand, and natural verdure on the other. So that the image of the colour green, to the Greeks, was neither lively and bright on the one hand, nor was it strong and deep on the other.

The second circumstance is this: that the word χλωρὸς is applied by the later Greeks to objects that have a colour, but a colour which is _not_ green: and this by authors who had the full use of sight. Thus, in Euripides, (Hecuba 124,) we have αἵματι χλωρῷ for blood freshly shed. It seems plain that, when the epithet could be thus used, colour could only be very carelessly and faintly conceived in the minds either of those who used the expression, or of those to whom it was addressed.

I shall not open the general subject of the treatment of colour by the later Greeks, or by the Latin poets. But that it continued to be both faint and indefinite down to a very late period, and in a degree which would now be deemed very surprising, we may judge both from the general tenour of the Æneid, and from the remarkable verse of Albinovanus, an Augustan poet, which applied the epithet ‘purpureus’ to snow;

Brachia purpureâ candidiora nive.

Neither do I enter into the question, whether the shadows of white may afford any ground for this epithet: because an answer, drawn from the secrets as it were of science or art, could not avail for the interpretation of the works of a poet, who must describe for the common eye.

So we may note the ‘cervix rosea’ of Horace[858], and of Virgil[859].

[858] Hor. Od. I. 13. 2.

[859] Virg. Æn. i. 402.

~_Greek philosophy of colour._~

Such examination as I have been able to make would lead me to suppose whatever of this kind was crude or defective in the common ideas of Greece was not without points of correspondence in its philosophy.

The treatise Περὶ χρωμάτων, popularly ascribed to Aristotle, would appear to belong to some other author. It, however, in conformity with Greek ideas[860], bases the system of colour not, as we do, upon the prismatic decomposition of light, but upon the four elements; of which it declares air, water, and even earth when dry, to be white, fire to be ξανθὸς or yellow; from the mixtures of these arise all other colours, and σκότος, or black, is the absence of light.

[860] Vid. Göthe, _Farbenlehre_, Works, vol. 53. p. 23.

Dr. Prantl, a recent editor of this Treatise, has, in a learned Essay of his own, gathered together the systems of the various Greek writers upon colour; and especially that of Aristotle, from the testimony afforded by his _Meteorologica_ and other works. It exhibits a curious combination of the aim at scientific exactness, with the want of the physical knowledge which is, in such matters, its necessary basis. Its leading ideas appear to be as follows.

If we pass by the mere metaphysical portion of the subject, the basis of colour is laid theoretically in transparency and motion. With the idea of whiteness are associated dryness and heat; and with blackness their counterparts, wet and cold[861]. The air is white, fire the highest form of white; water is black[862], earth the highest negation of colour, and blackest of all. All other colours are treated as intermediate between white and black[863]. An analogy prevails between the intervals of the principal colours, and those of sound, taste (χυμὸς), and other sensible objects. There are seven colours[864]: namely,

[861] Prantl’s Aristoteles über die Farben, pp. 101, 3.

[862] Ibid. pp. 104, 6.

[863] Ibid. p. 109. Ar. Metaph. I. 7. 1057 a. 23.

[864] Ibid. p. 116. Ar. de Sens. 4. 442 a. 12.

1. μέλαν black.
2. ξανθὸν gold.
3. λευκὸν white.
4. φοινικοῦν red.
5. ἁλουργὸν violet.
6. πράσινον green.
7. κυανοῦν blue.

The φαιὸν or grey is a mode of black (μέλαν τι); and the ξανθὸν is ingeniously described as having the same relation to light, which richness (λιπαρὸν) has to sweetness (γλυκύ). Red, φοινικοῦν or πορφυροῦν, is light seen through black. This is the most positive colour after ξανθόν; then comes green, and then (ἁλουργὸν) violet[865]. He proceeds, ἔτι δὲ τὸ πλεῖον οὔκετι φαίνεται; meaning, I suppose, that the κυανοῦν (the same thing is said by Prantl of ὄρφνιον, which he translates brown) is so closely akin to the negative, or blackness, as to be indistinguishable from it. Thus Aristotle appears to treat grey as outside his scale altogether; he gives πορφυροῦν sometimes to red and sometimes to blue[866]; and ὄρφνιον or brown is wholly omitted. His order likewise varies: for, in different passages, ἁλουργὸν and πράσινον change places.

[865] Ibid. p. 118. Met. III. 4. 374 b. 31.

[866] Comp. Met. I. 5. 342 b. 4. with III. 4. 374 a. 27.

~_Nature of our advantage over Homer._~

This condition of the philosophy of colour, so many centuries after Homer, and in the mind of such a man as Aristotle, may assist in explaining to us the undeveloped state of Homer’s perceptions in this particular department.

There appears to be a remarkable contrast between such undigested ideas, and the solidity, truth, and firmness of the remains of colour that have come down to us from the ancients. The explanation, I suppose, is, that those, who had to make practical use of colour, did not wait for the construction of a philosophy, but added to their apparatus from time to time all substances which, having come within their knowledge, were found to produce results satisfactory and improving to the eye. And even so Homer, though his organ was little trained in the discrimination of colours, and though he founded himself mainly upon mere modifications of light apart from its decomposition, yet has made very bold and effective use of these limited materials. His figures in no case jar, while they never fail to strike. Nor are we to suppose that we see in this department an exception to that comparative profusion of power which marked his endowments in general, and that he bore, in the particular point, a crippled nature; but rather we are to learn that the perceptions so easy and familiar to us are the results of a slow traditionary growth in knowledge and in the training of the human organ, which commenced long before we took our place in the succession of mankind. We exemplify, even in this apparently simple matter, the old proverbial saying: ‘The dwarf sees further than the giant, for he is lifted on the giant’s shoulders.’

_Note on the meaning of κύανος and χαλκός._

The first impression from the Homeric text is likely to be that
κύανος is a metal. For the substantive is mentioned but thrice in
Homer; and always in immediate connection with metals.

1. Il. xi. 24. Upon the buckler of Agamemnon there are, with twelve
οἶμοι, folds, rims, or plies, of gold, and twenty of tin, ten of
κύανος (μέλανος κυάνοιο).

2. Il. xi. 34. On the shield of the king, there were twenty white
bosses of tin, and, in the middle, one of κύανος (μέλανος κυάνοιο).

3. Od. vii. 86. The walls of the palace of Alcinous were coated with
χαλκὸς within, and round about them there was a cornice or fringe
(θριγκὸς) of κύανος.

There is no doubt that, in later Greek at least, the word acquired
other significations: such as _lapis lazuli_, the blue cornflower,
the rockbird (also as being blue), and, lastly, a blue dye or
lacquer[867]. But, moreover, it seems impossible to identify the
κύανος of Homer with any metal in particular.

[867] Liddell and Scott _in voc._ Millin, Minéralogie Homérique, p.
149.

Some have asserted the κύανος of Homer to be steel[868]. But to this
there seem to be conclusive objections. It appears very doubtful,
whether the Greeks were acquainted with the process of making steel
in masses by the immersion of iron in water. The English translation
of Beckmann’s History of Inventions ascribes the knowledge of the
process to Homer; but apparently in error[869]. There is no allusion
whatever to it: for it is not at all implied by the elementary
process of the manufacture of a tool in Od ix. 391-3. It was only
by fire that iron could be made malleable at all: and no doubt it
was known that by its immersion in water hardness was restored or
increased (τὸ γὰρ αὖτε σιδήρου γε κράτος ἐστίν). But we have no
trace either of the repetition of the process on the same piece of
metal, or of its application to unmanufactured iron, or of a new
denomination for iron when thus heated and cooled. On the contrary,
in this passage the metal when fully hardened is still declared to be
σίδηρος: and we have nowhere in Homer any trace of a relation between
κύανος and σίδηρος, except the merely negative one, that neither of
them is cast into the furnace for making the Shield of Achilles.

[868] Friedreich, Realien, § 21. p. 86.

[869] Vol. ii. p. 325.

Again, the hardness of iron was such as apparently met all their
wishes, and almost of itself constituted a difficulty. Hence it is
used along with stones as a symbol of hardness; ἐπεὶ οὔ σφι λίθος
χρὼς ἠὲ σίδηρος[870]. Again, we do not find it worked up with other
metals; for example, on the buckler or shield of Agamemnon. As we
have seen, it is not used by Vulcan in making the shield of Achilles.
The god casts into the fire gold and silver, copper and tin; lead
being apparently excluded as too soft, and iron as too hard for
working in masses with the other metals. But the idea of hardness
is never associated with κύανος; and, if it had been hard like
steel, certainly it would not have been a suitable material for the
intricate forms of dragons.

[870] Il. iv. 510.

Again, the adjective κυάνεος means in colour what is blue and what
is deep; and by no means corresponds with the ordinary colour of
steel. All this, besides the strength of the negative evidence, seems
inconsistent with the idea that κύανος can have been steel.

The Compiler of the Index to Eustathius makes κύανος (_in voc._)
simply a dark metal. But Millin argues that κύανος without an epithet
is tin, and that with the epithet μέλας it is lead. He observes that
Pliny[871] appears to call tin by the name of _plumbum_ simply, and
lead by the name of _plumbum nigrum_: so that the double use of
κύανος and κασσίτερος for tin would be like that of _plumbum_ and
_stannum_ for the same metal in Latin. This idea treats the substance
as taking its name from the colour: and is so far sustained by the
use of the German _blei_, which I presume is the same word as _blau_,
for lead. But it would be singular that Homer should thus have double
names for two metals, which of all classes of objects have perhaps
been most commonly designated by single ones. And this hypothesis
is not in accordance with the evident meaning of κυάνεος in Homer;
since the word indicates a dark and deep hue very far from that of
tin, which Homer describes as white. The after use of κύανος is
equally adverse to the interpretation suggested.

[871] H. N. xxxiv. 16. s. 47.

The most probable interpretation for this difficult word appears
to be that which is also in accordance with its subsequent use and
description as a colour. From Linton’s ‘Ancient and Modern Colours,’
(p. 21,) it appears that there was a κύανος αὐτοφυὴς, which was a
_native_ blue carbonate of copper: and that, according to the express
testimony of Dioscorides, this was obtained by the ancients from
the copper-mines: κύανος δὲ γεννᾶται μὲν ἐν Κύπρῳ ἐκ τῶν χαλκουργῶν
μετάλλων, v. 106. This interpretation would account for our finding
κύανος in Homer: for the rarity of its use: for the dark colour and
the affinity to πορφύρεος. Such a substance would make a good relief
for the cornice in the palace of Alcinous, against the copper-plated
walls: and would stand well in the rest of the passages where it
appears to be placed in relief with other metals, Il. xviii. 564,
xi. 39, and even on the buckler of Agamemnon, xi. 24. For on this
buckler, though the serpents, called κυάνεοι, are evidently placed
in contrast with the οἶμοι, and though among the οἶμοι there are ten
of κύανος, yet, as they are combined with twelve of gold and twenty
of tin, the general effect would be one such as we need not suppose
Homer to have rejected. This blue carbonate is still found among
other copper-ores, but less in our deep mines, than in the shallow
ones worked by the ancients. I understand from a gentleman versed
in metallurgy, that in its purest form it is crystalline, rarely
massive or earthy, of a deep azure, brittle, easily powdered, and
thus readily converted to use as a pigment.

I should therefore suppose that the κύανος is not a metal: that the
οἶμοι on the buckler mean lines or bands coloured in pigment: and
that the boss on the shield is probably a nodule of the substance
in its native state. We can thus understand why κύανος is not used
either with the gold, silver, χαλκὸς, and tin, in the forge of
Vulcan, or with the gold, silver, iron, and χαλκὸς of the chariot
of Juno[872]. We can also understand why, though κύανος is not used
in the forge, yet the trench round the vineyard on the shield of
Achilles is κυανεή[873]. This interpretation is also in conformity
with the Homeric employment of the adjective κυάνεος.

[872] Il. xviii. 474. v. 722.

[873] Ibid. 564.

I understand that there is, in the _Museo Borbonico_ at Naples, a
spoon or ladle, with a boss on the end of the handle, which is formed
of this native blue carbonate of copper bored through for the purpose.

Of the four significations given to χαλκὸς in Homer (copper, brass,
bronze, and iron[874]), I adhere to the first. It cannot be iron,
(1) because it is never mentioned as hard in the same way with it,
(2) because it is so much more common, (3) because these metals are
expressly distinguished one from the other, as in Il. v. 723.

[874] Eustath. Il. i. p. 93.

Neither can the χαλκὸς of Homer be bronze. Not, however, from
absolute want of hardness: for I learn from competent authority that
very good cutting instruments (not, of course, equal to steel) may be
made in a bronze composed of 87½ parts copper, and 12½ parts tin. But
for the following reasons:

1. Homer always speaks of it as a pure metal along with other pure
metals, even where Vulcan casts it into the furnace to be wrought;
Il. xviii. 474.

2. Again, because, although we must not argue too confidently from
Homer’s epithets of colour, yet in this case we may lay considerable
stress not only on his χαλκὸς ἐρυθρὸς (since the ἐρυθρὸς of Homer
leans to brightness), but upon the ἤνοψ and νώροψ, which mean bright
and gleaming. These epithets of light would not apply to bronze: nor
would Homer plate with bronze the walls of the palace of Alcinous.
Neither does it appear likely that he would give us a heaven of
bronze among the imposing imagery of battle, Il. xvii. 424.

3. It does not appear that Homer knew anything at all of the fusion
or alloying of metals.

We have, then, to conclude that χαλκὸς was copper, hardened by some
method; as some think by the agency of water: or else, and more
probably, according to a very simple process, by cooling slowly in
the air. (See Millin, Minéralogie Homérique, pp. 126-32.)

SECT. V.[875]

[875] The substance of this and the two following Sections formed two Articles in the Quarterly Review, Nos. 201 and 203, for January and July respectively, 1857. They are reprinted with the obliging approval of Mr. Murray.

_Homer and some of his Successors in Epic Poetry: in particular, Virgil and Tasso._

~_Milton and Dante in relation to Homer._~

The great Epic poets of the world are members of a brotherhood still extremely limited, and, as far as appears, not likely to be enlarged. It may indeed well be disputed, with respect to some of the existing claimants, whether they are or are not entitled to stand upon the Golden Book. There will also be differences of opinion as to the precedence among those, whose right to appear there is universally confessed. Pretensions are sometimes advanced under the influence of temporary or national partialities, which the silent action of the civilized mind of the world after a time effectually puts down. Among these there could be none more obviously untenable, than that set up on behalf of Milton in the celebrated Epigram of Dryden, which seemed to place him at the head of the poets of the world, and made him combine all the great qualities of Homer and of Virgil. Somewhat similar ideas were broached by Cowper in his Table Talk. The lines, as they are less familiarly remembered, may be quoted here:

Ages elapsed ere Homer’s lamp appeared,
And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard;
To carry Nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, asked ages more.

But this great master is also subject to undue depreciation, as well as flattered by extravagant worship. I myself have been assured in a company composed of Professors of a German University, who were ardent admirers of Shakespeare, that within the sphere of their knowledge Milton was only regarded as of equal rank with Klopstock. It is not, I trust, either national vanity or religious prejudice, nor is it the mere wonder inspired by the wide range of his attainments and performances, which makes England claim that he should be numbered in the first class of epic poets; in that class of which Homer is the head, distinguished before all competitors by a clear and even a vast superiority.

It would be difficult to institute any satisfactory comparison between Milton and Homer; so different, so wanting in points of contact, are the characters partly of the men, and even much more of their works. Perhaps the greatest and the most pervading merit of the Iliad is, its fidelity and vividness as a mirror of man and of the visible sphere in which he lived, with its infinitely varied imagery both actual and ideal. But that which most excites our admiration in Milton is the elasticity and force of genius, by which he has travelled beyond the human sphere, and bodied forth to us new worlds in the unknown, peopled with inhabitants who must be so immeasurably different from our own race. Homer’s task was one, which admitted of and received what we may call a perfect accomplishment; Milton’s was an undertaking beyond the strength of man, incapable of anything more than faint adumbration, and one of which, the more elevated the spectator’s point of view, the more keenly he must find certain defects glare upon him. The poems of Milton give us reason to think that his conceptions of character were masculine and powerful; but the subject did not admit of their being effectually tested. For his nearest approaches to perfection in his art, we must look beyond his epics.

A comparison between Milton and Dante would be somewhat more practicable, but it would not accord with the composition of the group, which I shall here attempt to present, and which has Homer for its centre. On the other hand, Dante might, far better than Milton, be compared with Homer; for while he is in the Purgatorio and Paradiso far more heavenly than Milton, he is also throughout the _Divina Commedia_ truly and profoundly human. He is incessantly conversant with the nature and the life of man; and though for the most part he draws us, as Flaxman has drawn him, in outline only, yet by the strength and depth of his touch he has produced figures, for example, Francesca and Ugolino, that have as largely become the common property of mankind, if not as Achilles and Ulysses, yet as Lear and Hamlet. Still the theological basis, and the extra-terrene theatre, of Dante’s poem remove him to a great distance from Homer, from whom he seems to have derived little, and with whom we may therefore feel assured he could have been but little acquainted.

The poets, whom it is most natural to compare with Homer, are those who have supplied us in the greatest abundance with points of contact between their own orbits and his, and who at the same time are such manifest children of genius as to entitle them to the honour of being worsted in such a conflict. These conditions I presume to be most clearly fulfilled by Virgil and Tasso; and we may begin with the elder of the pair.

Perhaps Chapman has gone too far when he says ‘Virgil hath nothing of his own, but only elocution; his invention, matter, and form, being all Homer’s[876].’ Yet no small part of this sweeping proposition can undoubtedly be made good.

[876] Commentary on Il. ii.

With an extraordinary amount of admitted imitation and of obvious similarity on the surface, the Æneid stands, as to almost every fundamental particular, in the strongest contrast with the Iliad. As to metre, figures, names, places, persons and times, the two works, where they do not actually concur, stand in as near relations one to another, as seem to be attainable without absolute identity of subject; yet it may be doubted whether any two great poems can be named, which are so profoundly discordant upon almost every point that touches their interior spirit; upon everything that relates to the truth of our nature, to the laws of thought and action, and to veracity in the management of the higher subjects, such as history, morality, polity, and religion.

~_Contrast between form and spirit in the Æneid._~

The immense powers of Virgil as a poet had been demonstrated before he wrote the Æneid. He had shown their full splendour in the Georgics; though the ἦθος, or (so to speak) the heart, even of that great work was touched with paralysis by his Epicurean and self-centring philosophy. The Æneid does not bear a fainter impression of his genius. The wonderfully sustained beauty and majesty of its verse, the imposing splendour of its most elaborate delineations, the power of the author in unfolding, when he strives to do it, the resources of passion, and even perhaps the skill which he has shown in the general construction of his plot, cannot be too highly praised. But while its general nature as an epic (for the epic poem is preeminently ethical) brought its defects into fuller view, the particular object he proposed to himself was fatal to the attainment of the very highest excellence. While Homer sang for national glory, the poem of Virgil is toned throughout to a spirit of courtierlike adulation. No muse, however vigorous, can maintain an upright gait under so base a burden.

~_Catalogue in the Iliad and in the Æneid._~

And yet, in regard to its external form, the Æneid is perhaps, as a whole, the most majestic poem that the European mind has in any age produced. We often hear of the lofty march of the Iliad; but though its versification is always appropriate and therefore never mean, it only rises into stateliness, or into a high-pitched sublimity, when Homer has occasion to brace his energies for an effort. He is invariably true to his own conception of the bard[877], as one who should win and delight the soul of the hearer; and so, when he has strung himself, like a bow, for some great passage of his action, ‘has brought the string to the breast, the iron to the wood,’ and has hit his mark, straightway he unbends himself again. Thus he ushers in with true grandeur the marshalling of the Greek army in the Second Book, partly by the invocation of the Muses, and partly by an assemblage of no less than six consecutive similes, which describe respectively the flash of the Greek arms, the resounding tramp, the swarming numbers, the settling down of the ranks as they form the line, the busy marshalling by the commanders, the majesty of Agamemnon preeminent among them[878]. Having done this, he sets himself about the Catalogue, with no contempt indeed of poetical embellishment by epithets, and with an occasional relief by short legends, but still in the main as a matter of business, historical, geographical, and topographical. And thus he proceeds, with perfect tranquillity, for near three hundred lines, until his work is done. We then find that he has given us, together with a most minute account of the forces, a living map of the territories occupied by the Greek races of the age. But Virgil, in his imitation of the Homeric Catalogue (upon which there will be further occasion to comment hereafter, with reference to other matters), has pursued a course quite different. Waiving Homer’s gorgeous introduction, which pours from a single point a broad stream of splendour over the whole, Virgil with vast, and indeed rather painful, effort, carries us through his long-drawn list at a laboriously-sustained elevation. To vary the wearisome task, he uses every diversity of turn that language and grammar can supply[879]. He passes from nominative to vocative, and from vocative to nominative. Somebody was present, and then somebody was not absent. Arms and accoutrements are got up as minutely, as if he had been a careful master of costumes dressing a new drama for the stage. That we may never be let down for a moment, he distributes here and there the similes, which Homer accumulated at the opening, and introduces, between the accounts of military contingents, legends of twenty or more lines. Upon the whole, the level of his verse through the Catalogue, instead of being, like Homer’s, decidedly lower, is even higher than is usual with him. There is not in it, I think, a single verse approaching to the _sermo pedestris_. His reader misses that tranquillizing relief so agreeable in Homer, which varies as it were the play of the muscles, and freshens the faculties for a return to higher efforts. Virgil seems to treat us, as horses at a certain stage of their decline are treated by experienced drivers, who keep them going from fear that, if they once let them stop or slacken, they will be unable to get up their pace again. He never unbends his bow. But a table-land may be as flat, and even wearisome, as a plain; and the ornaments in the Æneid frequently are not, and indeed could hardly be, more ornamental than the passages which they purport to embellish.

[877] Od. xvii. 385.

[878] Il. ii. 455-83.

[879] See also Lessing’s Laocoon, c. xviii. respecting the Shield in the Æneid.

The difference of the two Catalogues cannot be more clearly exhibited than by comparing Homer’s description of the very first contingent, that from Bœotia[880], with Virgil’s opening paragraph about Mezentius; or Homer’s last and nearly simplest, on the Magnesians[881], with the description of Camilla, (certainly a description of remarkable beauty,) with which is closed the glittering procession of the Italian army in the Æneid.

[880] Il. ii. 494-510. Æn. vii. 647-54.

[881] Il. ii. 756-9. Æn. vii. 803-17.

The sustained stateliness of diction, metre, and rhythm in the Æneid is a feat, and an astounding feat; but it is more like the performance of a trained athlete, between trick and strength, than the grandeur of free and simple Nature, such as it is seen in the ancient warrior, in Diomed or Achilles; or in Homer, the ancient warrior’s only bard. Different persons will, according to their temperaments, be apt to treat this augustness of diction as a merit or a fault: all, however, must acknowledge it to be a wonder. In this respect Virgil has been followed with no ordinary power, but yet not equalled, by Tasso. And the impression, created in this respect by the Æneid as it stands, must be heightened when we remember that it is still an unfinished poem, and that the author had at his decease by no means brought it, and the later books of it in particular, up to what he considered the proper standard.

The immense and untold amount of imitation in Virgil has perhaps tended to make us less than duly sensible of his vast original powers; and the mean and feeble effects produced by the character, if we can call it a character, of his Æneas, cheat us into an untrue supposition that he could not have possessed a real power of this the highest kind of delineation.

~_Character of Æneas._~

It is perhaps hardly possible to exhaust the topics of censure which may be justly used against the Æneas of Virgil. His moral deficiencies are not (so to speak) hidden amidst the accomplishments of a manly intellect, nor his intellectual mediocrity redeemed by any fresh and genuine virtues. He is not, to our knowledge, a statesman; nay more, he is not a warrior; for we feel that his battles and feats of war are the poet’s, and not his: and when he appears in arms we are tempted to ask, ‘Son of Venus, what business have you here?’ The violent exaggerations, by which Virgil attempts to vamp up his hero’s martial character, only produce the ψυχρὸν of Longinus; a cold reaction, approaching to a shudder, through the reader’s mind. As, for instance, when in the Shades below, the poet represents the Greek chieftains[882] as trembling and flying at the sight of him, the nobleness of the verses cannot excuse either the tasteless solecism of the thought, or the profanation offered to the memory of Homer in the person of his heroes, who indeed often made Æneas tremble, but never trembled at him themselves. But Virgil goes further yet, when he makes Diomed assert[883] that, having been engaged in single combat with Æneas, he knows by experience how terrible a warrior he will prove; and that, had there been two more such men, Troy would have conquered Greece, and not Greece Troy. Now, Æneas never in the Iliad even once executes a real feat of war; and as to the single combat between the two chiefs, Diomed first knocked him down with a stone[884], and then, after he had been carried off and apparently set to rights by his mother, he was thrice saved from the deadly charge of the same warrior by the single intervention of Apollo, who by divine force arrested the attack. In passing, it may be observed that, since Virgil could, with impunity, as it appears, so far as his popularity was concerned, thus mutilate and falsify the author from whose wealth he so largely borrowed, either the knowledge of Greek literature in its head and father, Homer, must have been very low among even the educated Romans, or else their standard of taste must have been seriously debased before they could accept such compliments.

[882] At Danaûm proceres, etc.--Æn. vi. 489.

[883] Æn. xi. 282-7.

[884] Il. v. 302-10.

It is common to find fault with Æneas for his vile conduct to Dido, and for the wretched excuse he offers in his own behalf, when he encounters her offended spirit in the regions of Aidoneus and Persephone. But the truth is, that this fairly exhibits and illustrates not only the total unreality of this particular character, but, as will be further noticed presently, the feeble and deteriorated conception of human nature at large, which Virgil seems to have formed. Man has been treated by him as, on the whole, but a shallow being: he had not sounded the depths of the heart, nor measured either the strength of good or the strength of evil that may abide in it. The Virgilian Æneas is a made up thing, far fitter to stand among the νεκύων ἀμένηνα κάρηνα, than among men of true flesh and blood.

Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with[885].

[885] Macbeth iii. 3.

Nor can we draw an apology for the defects of this primary character in Virgil from the Æneas of Homer. The Dardanian Prince is indeed in the Iliad, as to everything essential, a taciturn and background figure. He is placed very high in station and authority, and, as we have seen[886], he may probably have been, by the dignity of lineal descent, the head of the whole Trojan race. But Homer pays him off with generalities; for, as no Poet is greater in the really creative work of character, so none better understands how, where the purpose of his poem requires it, to take a lay figure, and stuff him out with straw. In what may be called the vital action of the Iliad, Æneas has no considerable share, either martial or political. He is very far indeed behind the noble Sarpedon in the first capacity, and Polydamas in the second, as well as Hector in both. Still, if there is in the Homeric Æneas nothing grand, nothing vigorous, nothing profound, there is on the other hand nothing over-prominent or pretentious, and therefore nothing mean, nothing inconsistent, nothing untrue. All the Homeric characters, down to Thersites, are drawn each in its way with a master’s hand; Æneas forms no exception: on the contrary, we have to admire the skill with which, in a kind of middle distance, his outline is filled up, and he is kept entirely clear of any confusion with either those greater characters on the Trojan side, who have been named, or with the effeminate Paris. This is the more worthy of note, because, as the favourite child of Venus, he bore a qualified and dim resemblance to her chief minion; as we may see by certain traits of his very negative bearing in the field, and by Apollo’s putting him (if the phrase may be allowed) to bed in Pergamus[887], when he had been rescued from Diomed, just as Venus had done with Paris, after she had saved him in the Third Book from Menelaus[888].

[886] Achæis, or Ethnology, sect. ix. p. 491.

[887] Il. v. 445.

[888] Il. iii. 382.

Neither did Virgil fail in the delineation of his hero, or ‘protagonist,’ from simple want of power to portray human character. No such want can be ascribed to the poet of the Fourth Book of the Æneid. And if it be true that, amidst all the stormy wildness and intensity of the passion of Dido, there is something not quite natural--something that recalls the very remarkable imitation of it in the ‘Duchesse de la Vallière’ of Madame de Genlis, and leaves us almost at a loss to say which of the two has most the character of a copy, and which of an original--what are we to say of the genuine and manly character of Turnus? The whole of that sketch is as good and true as we can desire; and the noble speech in particular, in which he rebukes the trim cowardice of Drances, is a work of such extraordinary power and merit, that it is fit (and this I take for the summit of all eulogies) even to have been spoken by the Achilles of Homer. In vigorous reasoning, in biting sarcasm, in chivalrous sentiment, and in indignant passion, it presents a combination not easily to be matched; and it is, as a whole, admirably adapted to the oratorical purpose, for which it is presumed to have been delivered. But, indeed, from our first view of Turnus to our last, we do not find in him a single trait feeble in itself, or unworthy of the masculine idea and intention of the portrait, except where, in the very last passage of his life, his free agency seems to be taken, as it were by force, out of his hands.

~_The false position of Virgil._~

The failure in the Æneas of Virgil cannot be compared with the case of any modern romance, such as the Waverley or Old Mortality of Scott, where the hero may be an insipid person. All the greater modern inventors have been compelled to lay their foundations in the palpable breadth of some historic event: it was the prouder distinction of the Homeric epic, that it had a living centre; it hung upon a man; there was enough of vital power in Homer for this end: his Achilles and his Ulysses were each an Atlas, that sustained the world in which they also moved. Virgil made his poem an Æneid, instead of following the example of the Cyclic poets; he thus pledged himself to his readers, that Æneas should be its centre, its pole, its inward light and life. But he did not keep his word: he had drawn the bow of Homer without Homer’s force. He marks perhaps the final transition from the old epic of the first class to the new. After him we have the epics of fact, the Pharsalia, the Thebaid, and so forth. But Æneas stands before us with the pretensions of Achilles and Ulysses; and the failure is great in proportion to the gigantic scale of the attempt. When, in the Italian romance, the character of the ideal man, as shown in Orlando, again became the basis of new epic poems, we again find in the protagonist great weakness indeed, as compared with Achilles and Ulysses; but strength and success as compared with the Æneas of Virgil.

Upon the whole we are thrown back on the supposition that this crying vice of the Æneid, the feebleness and untruth of the character of Æneas, was due to the false position of Virgil, who was obliged to discharge his functions as a poet in subjection to his dominant obligations and liabilities as a courtly parasite of Augustus. As the entire poem, so the character of its hero, was, before all other things, an instrument for glorifying the Emperor of Rome. It at once followed, that in all respects must that character be such as to avoid suggesting a comparison disadvantageous to the person whose dignity, for political ends, had already been elevated even into the unseen world; nay, whose forestalled divinity was to be kept in a relation of absolute and broad superiority to the image of his human ancestor. Æneas is himself addressed in the action of the Æneid, as

Dîs genite, et geniture deos.

In order to arrive at the disastrous effects of this mental servitude, take, first, the measure of the cold and unheroic character of Augustus; then estimate the degree of relative superiority, which it was essential to Virgil’s position that he should preserve for him throughout; and thus we may come to some practical conception of the straitness of the space within which Virgil had to develop his Æneas, or, in other words, to run his match against Homer. All the faults, and all the faultiness, of his poem may be really owing, in a degree none can say how great, to this original falseness of position.

On account of the personal principle on which the ancient epic was constructed, failure in the character of the hero must almost of necessity have entailed failure in the poem. Most of all would this follow in a case where, as in the Æneid, the hero is never out of view, and where the action does not, as in the Iliad, travel away from his person, in order then to enhance the splendour and effectiveness of his reappearance. Thus the falseness of Virgil’s position was not confined to an individual character, but extended to his entire work. Living, too, in an age less natural and more critical than that of Homer, he provided against criticism, so far as regarded its merely technical functions, more, and he studied nature less. He had to construct his epic for a court, and a corrupt court, not for mankind at large; it followed, that he could not take his stand upon those deep and broad foundations in human nature itself, which gave Homer a position of universal command. Hence as a general rule he does not sing from the heart, nor to the heart. His touches of genuine nature are rare. Such of them as occur have been carefully noted and applauded, for he is always studious to set them off by choice and melodious diction. For my own part, I find scarcely any among them so true as the simile of the mother labouring with her maidens at night, which he owes to Homer[889]:

[889] Hom. Il. xii. 433.

Castum ut servare cubile
Conjugis, et possit parvos educere natos[890].

[890] Æn. viii. 407-13.

~_As to religion, liberty, and nationality._~

With rare exceptions, the reader of Virgil finds himself utterly at a loss to see at any point the soul of the poet reflected in his work. We cannot tell, amidst the splendid phantasmagoria, where is his heart, where lie his sympathies. In Homer a genial spirit, breathed from the Poet himself, is translucent through the whole; in the Æneid we look in vain almost for a single ray of it. Again, Virgil lived at a time when the prevailing religion had lost whatever elements of real influence that of Homer’s era either possessed in its own right, or inherited from pristine tradition. It was undermined at once by philosophy and by licentiousness; and it subsisted only as a machinery, a machinery, too, already terribly discredited, for civil ends. Thus he lost one great element of truth and nature, as well as of sublimity and pathos. The extinction of liberty utterly deprived him of another. Homer saw before him both a religion and a polity young, fresh, and vigorous; for Virgil both were practically dead: and whatever this world has of true greatness is so closely dependent upon them, that it was not his fault if his poem felt and bears cogent witness to the loss. Even the sphere of personal morality was not open to him; for what principle of truth or righteousness could he worthily have glorified, without passing severe condemnation on some capital act of the man, whom it was his chief obligation to exalt?

And once more. Homer sang to his own people of the glorious deeds of their sires, to whom they were united by fond recollection, and by near historic and local ties. This was at once a stimulus and a check; it cheered his labour, and at the same time it absolutely required him to study moral harmony and consistency. Virgil sang to Romans of the deeds of those who were not Romans, and whom only a most hollow fiction connected with his hearers, through the dim vista of a thousand years, and under circumstances which made the pretence to historical continuity little better than ridiculous. Or rather, he sang thus, not to Romans, but to their Emperor; he had to bear in mind, not the great fountains of emotion in the human heart, but his town-house on the Esquiline, and his country-house on the road from Naples to Pozzuoli. In dealing with Greeks, with Trojans, with Carthaginians, he again lost Homer’s double advantage: he had nothing to give a healthy stimulus to his imagination, and nothing to bring him or to keep him to the standard of truth and nature. And here, perhaps, we hit upon some clue to the superior character and attractions of Turnus. The Poet was now for once upon true national ground: he was an Italian minstrel, singing to Italians, whether truly or mythically is of less consequence, about an Italian hero. Thus he had something like the proper materials to work with; and the result is one worthy of his noble powers, though it has the strange consequence of setting all the best sympathies of his readers, and of implying that his own were already set, in direct opposition to the ostensible purpose of his poem.

It appears, however, as if this great and splendid Poet, being thrown out of his true bearings in regard to all the deeper sources of interest on which an epic writer must depend, such as religion, patriotism, and liberty, became consequently reckless, alike in major and in minor matters, as to all the inner harmonies of his work, and contented himself with the most unwearied and fastidious labours in its outward elaboration, where he could give scope to his extraordinary powers of versification and of diction without fear of stumbling upon anything unfit for the artificial atmosphere of the Roman court. The consequence is, that a vein of untruthfulness runs throughout the whole Æneid, as strong and as remarkable as is the genuineness of thought and feeling in the Homeric poems. Homer walks in the open day, Virgil by lamplight. Homer gives us figures that breathe and move, Virgil usually treats us to waxwork. Homer has the full force and play of the drama, Virgil is essentially operatic. From Virgil back to Homer is a greater distance, than from Homer back to life.

~_Homer is misapprehended through Virgil._~

But more. Virgil is at once the copyist of Homer, and, for the generality of educated men, his interpreter[891]. In all modern Europe taken together, Virgil has had ten who read him, and ten who remember him, for one that Homer could show. Taking this in conjunction with the great extent of the ground they occupy in common, we may find reason to think that the traditional and public idea of Homer’s works, throughout the entire sphere of the Western civilization, has been formed, to a much greater degree than could at first be supposed, by the Virgilian copies from him. This is only to say, in other words, that it has been sadly impaired, not to say seriously falsified; for there is scarcely a point of vital moment, in which Virgil follows Homer faithfully, or represents him either fairly or completely. Now this traditional idea is not only the stock idea that governs the indifferent public, but it is likewise the idea with which the individual student starts, and which governs him until he has reached such a point in his progress as to discover the necessity, and be conscious moreover of the strength, to throw it off. This, however, is a point that, from the nature of human life and its pursuits, very few students indeed can reach at all. Elsewhere we shall see, with what evil and untrue effect Virgil has handled some of the Homeric characters. It is the same in every minor trait; and it seems strange that so great a Poet should not have had enough of reverence for another Poet, greater still and enshrined in almost the worship of all ages, to have restrained him from such constant and wanton, as well as wilful, mutilations of the Homeric tradition. It would, however, appear that Virgil’s miscarriages are not all due to carelessness, in the common sense of it. In many instances, unless so far as they can be referred to the necessities that press upon a courtier, it would seem as if they must be ascribable to torpor in the faculties, or defect in the habit of mind, by which Homer should have been appreciated. Nay, sometimes he appears to have been moved simply by metrical convenience to alter the traditions of Homer. Let us take first a minor instance to test this assertion.

[891] In Dibdin’s ‘Editions of the Greek and Latin Classics,’ we find nineteen editions of Virgil between 1469 and 1478. The _Princeps_ of Homer was only printed in 1488. Panzer, according to Dibdin, enumerates ninety editions of Virgil in the 15th century (ii. 540.). Mr. Hallam says (Lit. Eur., i. 420.), ‘Ariosto has been _after Homer_ the favourite poet of Europe.’ I presume this distinguished writer does not mean to imply that Homer has been more read than any other poet. Can his words mean that Homer has been more approved? It is worth while to ask the question: for the judgments of Mr. Hallam are like those of Minos, and reach into the future.