Chapter VI (2)

Virgil is much more sparing than Lucretius in the proems to his other books. In the second book there is a brief invocation to Liber, who is introduced, with rich pictorial colouring, as the special god of the vintage; and at lines 39–46 there is an appeal to Maecenas, which disclaims, perhaps not without some reference to the contrary practice of Lucretius, all intention to detain his hearer ‘through digressions from the main theme and long preambles.’ In the fourth there is again a brief appeal to Maecenas, a statement of the subject, an admission of its homely character,—‘In tenui labor,’—an expression of the hope that, even out of these materials, great glory may ensue if Apollo hears the poet’s prayer and no unpropitious powers impede the course of his song. The introduction to the third book is more extended, and more interesting from the light which it throws on the motives which determined Virgil to the choice of the subject of his epic poem. Here, too, as in the first and second books, there is an appeal to the tutelary deities of the herds and flocks, the Italian Pales, and the ‘Pastor ab Amphryso,’—the Apollo νόμιος of Greek legend and rural worship. The associations of Greek poetry are also evoked in the reference to the woods and streams of Lycaeus, to the lowing herds of Cithaeron, to the dogs that range over Taygetus, and to the famous horses of the Argive plain. The choice of the subject is justified by the contrast suggested between its novelty—‘silvas saltusque sequamur Intactos’—and the hackneyed poems founded on mythological subjects which his immediate predecessors in poetry had written in imitation of their Alexandrine prototypes. But he indicates here, with a new application of the words of Ennius, the aspiration to compose a great national epic in celebration of the exploits of Caesar:—

temptanda via est, qua me quoque possim
Tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora(344).

Under the allegory of the games which he proposed to celebrate, and the marble temple which he proposed to raise on the banks of the Mincio, he associates the thought of his early home with his ambition to rival the great works of Greek genius (for this seems to be the meaning of the lines

Cuncta mihi, Alpheum linquens lucosque Molorchi,
Cursibus et crudo decernet Graecia cestu)(345),—

and to spread the fame of Caesar through distant ages. This invocation must have been written later than the crowning victory of Actium, but before the plan of the Aeneid had definitely assumed shape in the poet’s mind. From the allegorical representations of the designs in gold, ivory, and marble for the ornaments of the temple, and still more clearly from the direct statement

Mox tamen ardentis accingar dicere pugnas
Caesaris(346),

it may be inferred that his first idea was to make the contemporaneous events the main subject of his epic, and to introduce the glories of the Trojan line as accessories. Under what influence he changed this purpose, making contemporary events subsidiary and the ancient legend the main argument of his poem, will be considered in the chapters devoted to the examination of the Aeneid.

IV.

As affecting the arrangement and illustration of their materials, there is this essential difference between the poems of Lucretius and Virgil, that the one is a great continuous argument, the development of speculative truths depending on one another; and its professed aim is purely contemplative,—the production of a certain state of mind and feeling. The other is the orderly exposition of a number of precepts, depending on experience and special knowledge; its professed aim is the mastery over a great practical occupation. Lucretius uses poetry as the vehicle of science, Virgil as the instrument of a useful art. In the first we expect, and we find, in so far as the poem was left completed, rigorous concentration of thought, and an exhaustive treatment of the subject. In the second we expect, and we find, an orderly and convenient arrangement, and such a selection of topics as, while producing the impression of a thorough mastery of the subject, leaves also much to be filled up by the imagination or experience of the reader. Still, that Virgil regarded Lucretius as his technical model may be inferred from the use which he makes of several of his formulae, such as ‘Principio,’ ‘Quod superest,’ ‘His animadversis,’ ‘Nunc age,’ ‘Praeterea,’ by which the framework of his argument is held together. Virgil uses these more sparingly, and with a more careful selection, so as, while producing the impression of continuity of thought, not to impede the pure flow of his poetry with the mechanism of logical connexion. He follows Lucretius also, who here observed the practice of the Greek didactic poets, in maintaining the liveliness of a personal address by the frequent use of such appeals as these, ‘Nonne vides,’ ‘Contemplator,’ ‘Forsitan et ... quaeras,’ ‘Vidi,’ ‘Ausim,’ etc.

In illustrating and giving novelty to his various topics Virgil has the example of Lucretius to justify him in catching up and dwelling on every aspect of beauty or imaginative interest which they are capable of presenting. And it is here that the more careful art of Virgil, and the fact that he attached more value to the perfection of his art than to the knowledge he imparts, give him that technical superiority over the older writer which, notwithstanding the tamer interest of his subject, and perhaps the tamer character of his own genius, has made the Georgics a poem much more familiar to the world than the ‘De Rerum Natura.’ Virgil, for one thing, enjoys greater freedom of omitting any set of topics,—any of those details on which Cato or Varro would have felt themselves bound to be specially explicit,—which would detract unduly from the beauty and general amenity of his exposition; or by a simple touch (such as the ‘Ne saturare fimo pingui,’ etc.) he can suggest the necessity of attending to such topics, while leaving their full realisation to the reader. He thus, by greater selection and elimination of his materials, avoids the monotony and the long prosaic interspaces between the grander bursts of poetry which his vast argument imposes on Lucretius. But, further, he avails himself of many more resources to give variety of interest and literary charm to the topics which he successively deals with. Each and all of these topics,—the processes of ploughing and sowing, the signs of the weather, the grafting of trees and the pruning of the vine, the qualities of horses and cattle, the tending of sheep and goats, the observation of the habits of bees,—bring him into immediate contact with the genial influences of the outward world. The vastness as well as the abstract character of his subject forces Lucretius to pass through many regions which seem equally removed from this genial presence and from all human associations. It is only the enthusiasm of discovery—the delight in purely intellectual processes—that bears him buoyantly through these dreary spaces; and it is only the knowledge that from time to time glimpses of illimitable power and wonder are opened up to him, and admiration for the energy and clear vision of his guide, that compel the flagging reader to accompany him. But Virgil leads his readers through scenes, tamer indeed and more familiar, yet always bright and smiling with some homely charm, or rich and glowing with the ‘pomp of cultivated nature,’ or fresh and picturesque with the charm of meadow, river-bank, or woodland pasture.

The secret of the power of Lucretius as an interpreter of Nature lies in his recognition of the sublimity of natural law in ordinary phenomena. The secret of Virgil’s power lies in the insight and long-practised meditation through which he abstracts the single element of beauty from common sights and the ordinary operations of industry. Thus, to take one or two instances of the way in which the charm of Nature is communicated to the drudgery of rural labour:—what a sense of refreshment to eye and ear is conveyed by the lines which describe the practical remedies by which the farmer mitigates the burning drought of summer:—

Et cum exustus ager morientibus aestuat herbis,
Ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis undam
Elicit; illa cadens raucum per levia murmur
Saxa ciet, scatebrisque arentia temperat arva(347).

Again, what a picture of rich woodland beauty is created out of the occurrence, in the midst of practical directions, of some homely traditional maxims, in accordance with which farmers judged of the probable abundance of their crop:—

Contemplator item, cum se nux plurima silvis
Induet in florem et ramos curvabit olentis:
Si superant fetus, pariter frumenta sequentur,
Magnaque cum magno veniet tritura calore(348).

So too, in a technical account of the different varieties of soil, he brings before the mind, by a single descriptive touch, a picture of abundant harvest-fields,—

non ullo ex aequore cernes
Plura domum tardis decedere plaustra iuvencis(349);

and enables us to feel the charm of a rich pastoral country,—with its lonely woodland glades, its brimming river flowing past mossy and grassy banks, and the shelter and shade of its caves and rocks, in the midst of homely directions for the care of mares before they foal:—

Saltibus in vacuis pascunt et plena secundum
Flumina, muscus ubi et viridissima gramine ripa,
Speluncaeque tegant, et saxea procubet umbra(350).

In the inculcation of his practical precepts his aim is even more to exalt the dignity and to exhibit the delight of rural labour, than to explain its methods or inculcate its utility.

He imparts a peculiar vivacity, grace, and tenderness to his treatment of many topics by the analogy which he suggests between the life of Nature and of man. The perception of analogy originates in the philosophical and imaginative thought of Lucretius; and it is in the second Book, in the composition of which, as Mr. Munro has shown, Virgil’s mind was saturated with the ideas, feelings, and language of his predecessor, that this element of poetical interest is most conspicuous. The following examples, occurring in the technical exposition of the growth and tending of trees, are all taken from the second Book; and two of them, those marked _g_ and _h_, are immediately suggested by Lucretius:—

(351)_a._ Parva sub ingenti matris se subicit umbra.

_b._ tenero abscindens de corpore matrum.

_c._ Exuerint silvestrem animum.

_d._ Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma.

_e._ Mutatam ignorent subito ne semina matrem.

_f._ atque animos tollent sata.

_g._ Viribus eniti quarum et contemnere ventos
Adsuescant.

_h._ Ac dum prima novis adolescit frondibus aetas,
Parcendum teneris.

_i._ Ante reformidant ferrum.

_k._ Praecipue dum frons tenera imprudensque laborum.

Many more examples might be added from the other Books. The force of many of the epithets applied to material objects, such as ‘ignava,’ ‘laeta et fortia,’ ‘maligni,’ ‘infelix,’ etc., consists in the suggestion of a kind of personal life underlying and animating the silent processes of Nature.

Virgil, too, like Lucretius, shows the close observation of a naturalist, and a genuine sympathy with the pains and pleasures of all living things, especially of the animals associated with the toil or amusement of men. The interest of the third Book arises, to a great degree, from the truth and vivacity of feeling with which he observes and identifies himself with the ways and dispositions of these fellow-labourers of man,—with the pride and emulation of the horse, the fidelity and companionship of the dog, the combative courage of the bull and his sense of pain and dishonour in defeat, the patience of the steer and his brotherly feeling for his yoke-fellow in toil, and with the attachment of sheep and goats to their offspring and to their familiar haunts(352). The interest of the fourth Book, again, turns on the analogy implied between the pursuits, fortunes, wars, and state-policy of bee-communities and of men. It is the sense of this analogy that imparts a meaning deeper than that demanded by the obvious force of the words—a more pathetic feeling of the vanity of all earthly strife—to that final touch in the description of the combat in mid-air between two hosts, led by rival chiefs:—

Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui iactu compressa quiescunt(353).

In thus relieving the dryness of technical detail, by availing himself of every aspect of beauty associated with it, and by imparting the vivacity of human relations and sensibility to natural objects, Virgil makes use of the same resources as elicit springs of poetic feeling from many of the dry and stony wastes through which the argument of Lucretius leads him. There are others however employed by Virgil, which Lucretius uses more sparingly or not at all. There are, in the first place, all those which arise out of the conception of the ‘human force,’ impersonated in the ‘sturdy ditcher,’ the ‘farmer roused to anger,’ the ‘active peasant,’ contrasting with and conflicting with that other conception of the life of Nature. And as in Lucretius the speculative ideas, penetrating through every region of the wide domain traversed by him, elicit some poetic life out of its barrenest places, so the two speculative ideas, of Nature as a living force, and of man’s labour, vigilance, forethought in their relation to that force, impart a feeling of imaginative delight to Virgil’s account of the most common details of the husbandman’s toil. The strength and vivacity thus imparted to the style has been well illustrated by Professor Conington in his Introduction to the Georgics. It may be noted however that, even in this imaginative recognition of the strength and force of man in conflict with the force of Nature, Virgil is still following in the tracks of Lucretius. Such expressions as

Ingemere et terram pressis proscindere aratris—
ferro molirier arva—
magnos manibus divellere montes—

in the older poet first opened up this vein which was wrought with such effectual results by his successor. But Conington has, in his notes, drawn attention to another vein of feeling, which is all Virgil’s own, and which enables him to give further variety and charm to these homely details. The husbandman has not only his hard and incessant struggle—‘labor improbus’—but he has the delight of success, the joy of contemplating the new beauty and richness, created by the strength of his arm. This feeling breaks out in the ‘Ecce’ of the line already quoted,—

Ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis undam;

in the ‘iuvat’ of

iuvat Ismara Baccho
Conserere, atque olea magnum vestire Taburnum(354);—

and in the ‘canit’ of the line

Iam canit effectos extremus vinitor antes(355).

Another set of associations, interwoven with the rich and firm texture of the poem, are those derived from earlier science and poetry. Of the resources of learned allusion Lucretius makes a singularly sparing use. The localising epithets and mythological names in which Virgil’s poem abounds possessed no attraction for his austerer genius, nourished by the severe models of an older time, and rejecting the ornaments and distractions from the main interest familiar to Alexandrine literature. Virgil had already shown in the Eclogues this tendency to overlay his native thought with the spoils of Greek learning. Such phrases as ‘Strymoniae grues,’ ‘Pelusiacae lentis,’ ‘Amyclaeum canem,’ ‘Idumaeas palmas,’—the references to the ‘harvests of Mysia and Gargarus,’ to the ‘vines of Ismarus,’ ‘Cytorus, waving with boxwood,’ etc. etc., must have been charged, for Virgil’s contemporaries, in a way which they cannot be for a modern reader, with the memories of foreign travel or of residence in remote provinces, or with the interest attaching to lands recently made known. To us their chief interest is that by their strangeness they enhance the effect with which the more familiar names of Italian places are used. Thus the contrasted pictures of the illimitable pastures of Libya and of the wintry wastes of Scythia enable us to realise more exquisitely the charm of that fresh(356) Italian pastoral scene immediately preceding, the description of which combines the tender feeling of the Eclogues with the deeper realism of the Georgics. Thus too the great episode on the beauty and riches of Italy (ii. 136–176) is introduced in immediate contrast to the account of the prodigal luxuriance of Nature in the forests and jungles of the East. But even to a modern reader such expressions as these—

Vos silvae amnesque Lycaei—
vocat alta voce Cithaeron—
O, ubi campi
Spercheusque, et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis
Taygeta, etc.,

seem to bear with them faint echoes from a far-off time, of some ideal life of poetry and adventure in the free range and ‘otia dia’ of pastoral scenes,—of some more intimate union of the human soul with the soul of mountains and woodland than is granted to the common generations of men. On Virgil himself, to whom the whole of Greek poetry and legend was an open page, the spell which they exercised was of the same kind as that exercised by the magic of classical allusion on the poets and painters of the Renaissance.

The contrast between Lucretius and Virgil, as regards their relation to the ancient mythology, has already appeared in the examination of the Invocations to their respective poems. This contrast is still more brought out by the large use which Virgil makes of mythological allusions in the body of his poem, as compared with the rare, and generally polemical, references to the subject in Lucretius. Virgil recalls the tales and poetical representations of mythology sometimes by some suggestive epithet, or other qualifying expression, as in speaking of ‘poppies steeped in the sleep of Lethe,’ ‘Halcyons dear to Thetis,’ ‘the Cyllenian star,’ ‘the slow-rolling wains of the Eleusinian mother,’ and the like. More frequently however he does this by direct mention of some of the more familiar, and occasionally of some of the more recondite, tales which had supplied materials to earlier poets and painters. Thus, in connexion with the topic of lucky and unlucky days, he hints at the tale of the war of the Giants with the Olympian gods, at that of Scylla and Nisus in connexion with the signs of the weather, at that of the Centaurs and Lapithae—the ‘brawl fought to the death over the wine cup’—in the account of the vine, at that of the daughter of Inachus tormented in her wanderings by the vengeance of Juno in connexion with the plague of flies with which cattle were afflicted, etc. etc. Less familiar stories, of picturesque adventure or of a kind of weird mystery, are revived in the passages—

Talis et ipse iubam cervice effudit equina
Coniugis adventu pernix Saturnus, et altum
Pelion hinnitu fugiens implevit acuto(357),

and

Munere sic niveo lanae, si credere dignum est,
Pan deus Arcadiae captam te, Luna, fefellit,
In nemora alta vocans; nec tu aspernata vocantem(358).

Such allusions came much more home to an ancient than to a modern reader. They were familiar to him from the pages of poets, or from pictures adorning the walls of his own town and country-houses, or seen in the temples and other sacred places of famous Greek and Asiatic cities, and forming great part of the attraction of those cities to travellers then, as the pictures seen in the galleries, palaces, and churches of Rome, Florence, and Venice do to travellers now. But though the colours of these poetic fancies have faded for us, they are felt to be a legitimate source of variety in the poem, and to be an element of interest connecting the humbler cares of the country-people with the refined tastes of the educated class. They are not introduced as a substitute for truthful representation of fact, but rather as adding a new grace to this representation. Neither do they, as in Propertius, overlay the main subject of the poem by their redundant use. They probably produced the same kind of impression on an ancient reader, as allusions from the works of Latin or Italian poets in Spenser or Milton produce on a modern reader. Occasionally they may seem weak and faulty from their incongruity with the thought with which they are associated. Thus in the passage at i. 60, etc.,—

Continuo has leges aeternaque foedera certis
Imposuit natura locis, quo tempore primum
Deucalion vacuum lapides iactavit in orbem,
Unde homines nati, durum genus(359),

the mind is offended by the juxtaposition of the great thought, which Lucretius had striven so earnestly to impress on the world, with one of the most unmeaning fables that ever violated all possibilities of natural law. So too the contrast between the artistic and recondite elegance of the lines (iii. 549–550),

Quaesitaeque nocent artes; cessere magistri
Phillyrides Chiron, Amythaoniusque Melampus(360),

and the grand, solemn realism of the parallel passage in the account of the Plague of Athens,—

Mussabat tacito medicina timore(361),—

makes us feel how unapproachable by all the resources of art and learning is that direct force of insight united to fulness of feeling with which Lucretius was endowed above nearly every poet, ancient or modern.

Equally remote from the practice of Lucretius is the use made by Virgil of that amalgamation of mythological fancy with the rudiments of science which assigned names, personality, and a poetical history to the various constellations:—

Pleiadas, Hyadas, claramque Lycaonis Arcton.

But Virgil’s practice is in accordance with that of all the Greek poets from Homer and Hesiod down to the latest Alexandrine writers. He thus enriches the treatment of his subject with the interest of early science, and with the associations of the open-air life of hunters, herdsmen, and mariners in primitive times. Lucretius is impressed by the splendour, wonder, and severe majesty of the stars as they actually appear to us,—‘aeterni sidera mundi,’ ‘caeli labentia signa,’ ‘noctis signa severa,’—without any superadded association of mythology or antiquity. Neither does he use that other resource, by which Virgil adds an antique lustre to his subject—the introduction of quaint phrases and turns of speech, derived from Hesiod, such as ‘nudus ara, sere nudus,’ ‘laudato ingentia rura, Exiguum colito,’ or those derived from the traditional peasant-lore of Italy,—‘hiberno laetissima pulvere farra,’—which Virgil intermingles with the classic elegance of his style. Still less could Lucretius appeal to the associations of the popular religion. Such expressions as ‘fas et iura sinunt,’ ‘hiemes orate serenas,’ ‘nulla religio vetuit,’ and the mention of old religious ceremonies and practices prevalent in the country districts, such as that at i. 345,

Terque novas circum felix eat hostia fruges(362),

and at ii. 387,

Et te, Bacche, vocant per carmina laeta, tibique
Oscilla ex alta suspendunt mollia pinu(363),

not only afford a legitimate relief to the inculcation of practical precepts in the Georgics, but impress on the mind the dignity imparted to the most ordinary drudgery by the sense of its association with the religious life of man.

On the other hand, it is to be noticed how sparingly Virgil uses one of the grandest resources in the repertory of Lucretius,—that of imaginative analogies, through which familiar or unseen phenomena are made great or palpable by association with other phenomena which immediately affect the imagination with a sense of wonder and sublimity. The apprehension of these analogies between great things in different spheres proceeds from the inventive and intellectual faculty in the imagination,—that by which intuitions of vast discoveries are obtained before observation and reason can verify them; and in this faculty of imaginative reason Lucretius is as superior to Virgil, as Virgil is to him in artistic accomplishment. One of the few ‘similes’ in the Georgics is that often-quoted one, in which the difficulty which man has in holding his own against the natural deterioration of things is compared to the difficulty which a rower has in holding his own against a strong adverse current (i. 201–203):—

Non aliter, quam qui adverso vix flumine lembum
Remigiis subigit, si bracchia forte remisit
Atque illum in praeceps prono rapit alveus amni(364).

There is suggestiveness and verisimilitude in this image. But it does not make us feel the enlargement of mind and the poetic thrill of the thought which are produced by many of the great illustrative images in Lucretius. Virgil too is much inferior to the older poet, and much less original, in the general reflections on life which he occasionally introduces,—such as that at iii. 66,—

Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi
Prima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectus(365).

In so far as the thought here expressed is true, the truth cannot be said to be either new or profound.

The inferiority of Virgil to Lucretius, in that faculty of imagination, which perceives an inner identity between great forces in the material and in the spiritual world, is apparent also from a comparison of their respective diction. There is often a creativeness, a boldness of invention and insight into the deepest nature of things, in the language of Lucretius, such as did not reappear again in Italian poetry till more than thirteen centuries had passed, and which makes us feel how much nearer he was in many ways than any other Latin poet to our modern modes of thought and feeling. There is, on the other hand, scarcely any great poem from which so few striking and original images can be quoted as from the Georgics. The figurative language arising out of the perception of the analogy between the vital processes of Nature and various modes of human sensibility is rather like that unconscious identification of Nature with humanity out of which mythology arose, than the conscious recognition of some common force or law operating in totally distinct spheres. And even this identity or analogy between the life of Nature and of man is not conceived with such power and passion in Virgil as in Lucretius. But if Virgil’s language is inferior to that of his predecessor not only in vivid creative power, but in clearness and idiomatic purity, it is much superior in the uniform level of poetical excellence which it maintains. In this respect Virgil compares favourably with some of the greatest masters of style among English poets, for example with Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron. There is nothing redundant or monotonous in the style of the Georgics, nothing trivial or mean; while always rich and pregnant with suggestion, it is never overstrained or overloaded; while always elevated to the pitch of poetry, it never seems to soar too far above the familiar aspects of the world. Nothing shows the perfect sanity of Virgil’s genius more clearly than his entire exemption from the besetting sin of our own didactic poetasters of last century—a sin from which even Wordsworth himself is not altogether free—that of calling common things by pompous names, and of dignifying trifles by applying heroic phrases to them. If he seems sometimes to deviate from this habitual temperance of manner in the account of his bee communities, he does so purposely, to convey through this gentle vein of irony something of that pensive meditativeness of spirit which is produced in him by reflection on the transitory passions, joys, and vicissitudes of our mortal life.

The general superiority of Virgil’s art to that of Lucretius is equally apparent in his rhythm. The powerful movement of spirit which Lucretius feels in the presence of the sublimer spectacle of Nature and of the more solemn things of human life does indeed produce isolated effects of majestic speech and sonorously rhythmical cadence, swelling above the deep, strong, monotonous flow of his ordinary verse, which neither Virgil nor any other poet has surpassed. But in variety, equable smoothness and grandeur, in that tempered harmony of sound which never disappoints and never burdens the ear, it may be doubted whether the musical art of any poet has maintained such a uniform level of excellence as that maintained in the Georgics. Virgil produces more varied effects than Lucretius can do even in his more finished passages, while at the same time binding himself by stricter laws in the composition of his verse. This he does by the greater variety and greater frequency of his pauses, by uniformly placing the words of strength and emphasis in the strong positions of the line, and by a skilful regulation of the succession of long and short, of accentuated and unaccentuated syllables, and of lines of a more rapid or slower movement. The result is that the feeling of his rhythm becomes a main element in the realisation of his meaning.

The principal resources by which Virgil, in the didactic exposition of his subject, avoids that monotony of effect which was likely to arise from the strong Roman concentration of purpose with which his work was executed, and, without deviating from the true perception of facts, is able to invest a somewhat narrow range of interests with charm and dignity,—

angustis hunc addere rebus honorem,—

are thus seen to be, first his feeling of Nature, of man’s relation to it, of his joy in the results of his toil, and, secondly, the associations of strange lands, of mythology, of antiquity, and of religious custom. The instruments by which these resources are made available are the careful choice and combinations of words and the well-practised melody of his verse. These resources and instruments have been considered in relation to and contrast with those employed by Lucretius. There is, moreover, this difference between the method of the two poets, that Virgil is much more of a conscious artist, that he seems to go more in search of illustrations and the means of artistic embellishment, that he endeavours to make for himself a wreath, ‘undique decerptam;’ while the occasional accessions of a more powerful poetic interest to the ordinary exposition of Lucretius arise naturally in the process of his argument, from the habit of his mind to observe the outward world, the ways of all living things, and the condition of man in their intimate connexion with the great speculative ideas of his philosophy. His modes of varying the interest of his subject and adorning it are thus more simple and homogeneous; they work more in harmony with the purpose of his poem, so as to produce a pervading unity of sentiment and impression. The variety of resources used by Virgil gives, at first sight, a composite character to his art. But there is, deeper than this apparent composite character, an inner unity of tone and sentiment pervading the whole work. The source of this unity is the deep love and pride which he feels in every detail of his subject, from the great human interests with which these details are associated in his mind. What these human interests are is brought out prominently in the episodes of the poem, which still remain to be considered.

V.

The finest poetry in the didactic poems of Lucretius and of Virgil and the thoughts which give the highest interest to their respective poems are contained in passages of considerable length, rising out of the general level or undulations of the poem into elevations which at first sight seem isolated and unconnected with one another. It may be doubted whether even the power of thought and style in Lucretius could have secured immortality to a mere systematic exposition of the Atomic philosophy; nor could the mere didactic exposition of the precepts of agriculture, though varied by all the art and resources of Virgil, have gained for the Georgics the unique place that poem holds in literature. It is in their episodes that each poet brings out the moral grandeur, and thereby justifies the choice of his subject. In Lucretius, these passages are introduced sometimes in the ordinary march of his argument, more often at the beginning or completion of some important division of it, and are intended both to add poetical charm to the subject and to show man’s true relation to the Universe, and the attitude of mind which that relation demands of him. The object of Virgil in some of his minor and in one or two of his larger episodes may be merely to relieve the dryness of exposition by some descriptive or reflective charm. But even these passages will in general be found to draw attention to the religious, ethical, or national bearing of his subject.

Some of these passages have been suggested by parallel passages either in Hesiod or Lucretius. The largest of all the episodes, that with which the poem concludes, has, for reasons already considered, only a slight and external relation to the great ideas and interests with which the poem deals. But the three most important passages, those of most original invention and profound feeling, viz. those at Book I. 466 to the end of the Book, Book II. 136 to 177, and also from line 458 to the end, serve like those great cardinal passages in the Aeneid, in which the action is projected from a remote legendary past into the actual present, to bring into light the true central interest of the poem,—the bearing of the whole subject on the greatness and well-being of the Italian race.

Any of the passages which are not needed for the special practical purpose of the poem may be regarded as episodical, such, for instance, as that thoroughly Lucretian passage in Book I. in which the feelings of rooks are explained on purely physical principles, or that passage of Book IV. inspired by the teaching of an opposite school, in which the theory of a divine principle pervading the world—the same theory as that accepted as his own by Virgil in Aeneid VI.—is enunciated as a probable explanation of the higher instinct of the bees. And it is characteristic of the eclecticism of Virgil’s mode of thought, and also of the lingering regret with which he regards the evanescent fancies of the old mythology, that he not only combines these tenets of the most materialistic and most spiritualistic philosophies in the same poem, but that the philosophic or theosophic solution of Book IV. 219, etc. comes shortly after a passage in which the same phenomenon is accounted for on the ground of the service rendered by bees in feeding the infant Jove in the cavern of Mount Dicte. Another passage of a scientific rather than a philosophic character is that at Book I. 233, etc., in which the five zones girding the heaven and the earth are described in language closely translated from Eratosthenes. Besides the scientific interest which this passage must have had to the poet’s contemporaries, it serves to draw forth Virgil’s antagonism to the religious unbelief of Lucretius, in the expression

Munere concessae divom,

and also to imply his dissent from the emphatic denial which Lucretius gives, at Book I. 1065, to the Stoical belief in the existence of the Antipodes:—

Illi cum videant solem, nos sidera noctis
Cernere, et alternis nobiscum tempora caeli
Dividere, et noctes parilis agitare diebus(366).

Another passage of a semi-philosophical character is that at Book III. 242–283, in which the Lucretian idea of the all-pervading influence of the physical emotion of love over all living things in sea, earth, and air,—an idea in which Lucretius was anticipated by Euripides(367) and by other earlier Greek poets,—appears in combination with the purely mythological conception of the direct personal agency of Venus, and with the legend of ‘the mares of Glaucus of Potniae.’

More important than these, as illustrative of the main ideas and feelings of the poem, but still subsidiary to the greater episodes, are the following: Book I. 121–159, Book II. 323–345; and in the same class may be included III. 339–383, and IV. 125–148. The first of these, ‘Pater ipse colendi,’ etc., is immediately suggested by Hesiod’s account of the Golden Age; but the greater part of it, the account of the progress of the various arts of life, is simply a summary of the long account of human progress at the end of the fifth Book of Lucretius. The idea of the purpose with which Providence has imposed labour on man is Virgil’s own; and this thought contributes much of its ethical meaning to the poem. The passage ‘Ver adeo frondi nemorum,’ etc., in which all the glory of Nature as she unfolds herself in the exuberant life of an Italian spring is described in lines of surpassing beauty and tenderness, is thoroughly Lucretian in feeling, idea, and expression. The charm of climate, of vegetation, and of life is in complete harmony with the specially Italian character of the second Book. The digression at Book III. 339, ‘Quid tibi pastores Libyae,’ containing the elaborate picture of a Scythian winter, suggested by the winter scene in Hesiod, also serves through the effect of contrast to heighten the charm of the fresh pastoral life of Italy described in the lines immediately preceding.

The actual description of winter has been criticised unfavourably, and not altogether without justice, by one of the most independent and at the same time most scholarly of English critics(368), who compares it with a corresponding passage in Thomson. It is inferior in simplicity and direct force of representation to the corresponding picture in Hesiod. Virgil’s imagination seems to require that even where the objects or scenes he describes are taken from books, they should be such that he could verify them in his own experience. It is this apparent verification, where the subject is not originally suggested by his own observation, that imparts the marvellous truthfulness to his art. Such lines as those—

Aeraque dissiliunt volgo—

to

Stiriaque impexis induruit horrida barbis—(369)

convey a less real impression of winter than the single line—an idealised generalisation from many actual winters—which ends the description of the various occupations and field-sports which an Italian winter offers to the husbandman:—

Cum nix alta iacet, glaciem cum flumina trudunt(370).

Perhaps none of the minor episodes recurs to the mind so often with so keen a feeling of delight as the passage at IV. 125 to 148, beginning ‘Namque sub Oebaliae,’ etc. Virgil here introduces himself in his own person, and draws a picture of one whom he had known, and who had interested him as actually realising that life of labour and of happiness in the results of his labour, which in the body of the poem is held up as an abstract ideal. The scene of this vivid reminiscence,—the district

Qua niger umectat flaventia culta Galaesus(371),—

seems to have had peculiar attraction both for Virgil and Horace. It is there—

umbrosi subter pineta Galaesi—

that Propertius pictures to himself Virgil meditating his Aeneid and still conning over his earlier Eclogues—

Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin harundinibus.

It is to ‘that nook of earth’ that Horace looks, if the unkind Fates forbid his residence at his favourite Tibur, for a resting-place for his ‘age to wear away in.’ But it is not only to the local charm that attention is drawn, and to the beauty of plant, flower, and fruit, created by the labour of love which the old Cilician gardener—some survivor probably from the Eastern wars of Pompey—bestowed on his neglected spot of ground. Here also the true moral of the poem is pointed, that in the life of rural industry there is a deep source of happiness altogether independent of wealth, and which wealth cannot buy:—

Regum aequabat opes animis, seraque revertens
Nocte domum dapibus mensas onerabat inemptis(372).

A more prominent place is assumed by the two episodes with which the third and fourth Books close. In the first of these, which extends from line 478 to 566, and which describes a great outbreak of cattle-plague among the Noric Alps and the district round the Timavus,—a locality which seems to have had a special attraction to Virgil’s imagination(373),—he aims at painting a rival picture to that of the plague at Athens with which the poem of Lucretius ends. It would be unfair to compare the unfinished piece of the older poet, overcrowded as it is with detail and technical phraseology, with an elaborate specimen of Virgil’s descriptive power, exercised on a kind of subject in which the speculative genius of the one poet gave him no advantage over the careful and truthful art of the other. Yet, as has been already pointed out(374), there are here and there strokes of imaginative power in the larger sketch, and marks of insight into human nobleness, roughly indeed expressed, as at 1243–6—

Qui fuerant autem praesto, contagibus ibant
Atque labore, pudor quem tum cogebat obire
Blandaque lassorum vox mixta voce querellae.
Optimus hoc leti genus ergo quisque subibat(375)—

in which the sincerity of the older master still asserts itself. There is great beauty however of pastoral scene, of pathos and human sympathy, of ethical contrast between the simple wants of the lower animals and the artificial luxury of human life, in Virgil’s description. In the lines 520–522 one of those scenes in which he most delighted is brought before the imagination:—

Non umbrae altorum nemorum, non mollia possunt
Prata movere animum, non qui per saxa volutus
Purior electro campum petit amnis(376).

The last element in the picture suggests at once the ‘Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles’ of the Eclogues, and the lines earlier in the book—

Saltibus in vacuis pascunt et plena secundum
Flumina.

And the whole feeling of the passage is in harmony with that in Lucretius, ii. 361:—

Nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentes
Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis
Oblectare animum, sumptamque avertere curam(377).

And in thorough harmony both with the pathos and the ethical feeling in Lucretius are the following:—

it tristis arator,
Maerentem abiungens fraterna morte iuvencum(378):

and

Quid labor aut benefacta iuvant? quid vomere terras
Invertisse gravis? atqui non Massica Bacchi
Munera, non illis epulae nocuere repostae:
Frondibus et victu pascuntur simplicis herbae,
Pocula sunt fontes liquidi atque exercita cursu
Flumina, nec somnos abrumpit cura salubris(379).

If the space assigned to the different episodes is to be regarded as the measure of their importance, the long episode at the end of the fourth Book, from line 315 to 558, would have to be regarded as of nearly equal value to all the others put together. And yet, notwithstanding the metrical beauty of the passage, it must be difficult for any one who is penetrated by the pervading sentiment of the Georgics to reach this point in the poem without a strong feeling of regret that the jealousy of Augustus had interfered with its original conclusion. As a Greek fable, composed after some Alexandrine model, mainly concerned with the fortunes of Orpheus and Eurydice,—for the shepherd Aristaeus, the

cultor nemorum cui pinguia Ceae
Ter centum nivei tondent dumeta iuvenci(380),

really plays altogether a secondary part in the episode,—it has little to do with rural life, and nothing at all to do with Italy. Its professed object is to give a fabulous explanation of an impossible phenomenon, though one apparently accepted both by Mago and Democritus. To enrich this episode with a beauty not its own, Virgil has robbed his Aeneid—on the composition of which he must have been well advanced when he was called on, after the death of Gallus in 26 B.C., to provide a substitute for the passage written in his honour—of some beautiful lines which are more in keeping with the larger representation and profounder feeling of the epic poem, than with the transient interest attaching to this recast of a well-known story. Even regarded simply as an epyllion or epic idyl, it may be questioned whether the Pastor Aristaeus is of an interest equal to that of the epic idyl of Catullus, ‘Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus,’ etc. There is this coincidence between the poems, that they each contain one story or idyllic representation within another, and in each case it is to the secondary representation that the most pathetic and passionate interest belongs.

Opinions may differ as to whether the passion of Ariadne or the sorrow of Orpheus is represented with most skill. There seems this difference between the two, that in the one we feel we are reading a fable, that the situation is altogether remote from experience, that it is one suited for a picture or a poem of fancy. The beautiful picture of Ariadne, on the other hand, appears like one drawn from the life, and her passionate complaint is like that of a living woman. But still more undoubted is the superiority of Catullus in pictorial or statuesque reproduction seen in that part of his poem in which the original subject, the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, is described. Catullus, above all other Latin poets, except perhaps Ovid, can bring a picture from human life or from outward nature before the inward eye; and this power is, much more than Virgil’s power of suggesting deep and delicate shades of feeling, appropriate to the more limited compass of the idyl. It is no disparagement to Virgil to say that in this kind of art he is inferior to Catullus. Catullus, though a true Italian in temperament, largely endowed with and freely using the biting raillery—‘Italum acetum’—which ancient writers ascribe to the race, had in his genius, more than any Roman writer, the disinterested delight in art, irrespective of any personal associations, characteristic of the Greek imagination. Virgil’s art, on the other hand, produces its deepest impressions only when his heart is moved. Even in the Eclogues this is for the most part true. Something must touch his personal sympathies, his moral or religious nature, or his national feeling, before he is roused to his highest creative effort.

In the three cardinal passages which remain to be considered, in the composition of which the deeper elements of Virgil’s nature were powerfully moved, the impression which the changing state of the national fortunes produced upon him is vividly stamped. The first of these (i. 464 to the end) was written in the years of uncertainty and alarm preceding the outbreak of the last of the great Civil Wars. The unsettlement all over the Empire, from its eastern boundary to its furthest limits in Europe,—the agitation and impetuous sweep of the river before plunging into the abyss,—is described and symbolised in the concluding lines of the Book:—

Hinc movet Euphrates, illinc Germania bellum;
Vicinae ruptis inter se legibus urbes
Arma ferunt; saevit toto Mars impius orbe:
Ut cum carceribus sese effudere quadrigae,
Addunt in spatia, et frustra retinacula tendens
Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas(381).

This state of alarm is shown to be connected with the great national crime which Rome was still atoning,—the murder of Julius Caesar. The episode arises immediately out of the enumeration of the signs of the weather, which, from their importance to the husbandman, are treated of at considerable length in the body of the poem. As the sun is the surest index of change in the physical, so is he said to be in the political atmosphere. The eclipse which occurred soon after the murder of Caesar is regarded as a sign of compassion for his fate and of abhorrence of the crime. Then follows an enumeration of other omens which accompanied or preceded that event,—some of them violations of natural law, such as those which occur in the narrative of Livy, when any great disaster was impending over the Roman arms,—

pecudesque locutae,
Infandum—
Et maestum inlacrimat templis ebur, aeraque sudant(382):—

others arising out of a great sympathetic movement among the spirits of the dead,—

Vox quoque per lucos volgo exaudita silentis
Ingens, et simulacra modis pallentia miris
Visa sub obscurum noctis(383);

others showing themselves in ominous appearances of the sacrifices, or in strange disturbance of the familiar ways of bird and beast,—

Obscenaeque canes importunaeque volucres
Signa dabant—
Et altae
Per noctem resonare lupis ululantibus urbes(384);

others manifesting themselves through great commotion in the kingdom of Nature,—earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, great floods,—

‘The noise of battle hurtling in the air,’

lightnings in a clear sky, and the blaze of comets portending doom. These all succeed one another in Virgil’s verse according to no principle of logical connexion, but as they might be successively announced to the awe-struck citizens of Rome. The whole passage is pervaded by that strong sense of awe before an invisible Power—the ‘religio dira’—by which the Roman imagination was possessed in times of great national calamity. The issue of all these portents appeared in the second great battle in which Roman blood fattened the Macedonian plains. Then by a fine touch of imagination, and looking far forward into the future, the poet reminds us of the contrast, indicated in other passages of the poem, between the peaceful and beneficent industry of the husbandman and the cruel devastation of war:—

Scilicet et tempus veniet, cum finibus illis
Agricola, incurvo terram molitus aratro,
Exesa inveniet scabra robigine pila,
Aut gravibus rastris galeas pulsabit inanis,
Grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulchris(385).

Next follows the prayer to the national gods of Italy to preserve the life of him who could alone raise the world out of the sin and ruin into which it had fallen, and alone restore their ancient glory to the fields, which now lay waste from the want of men to till them:—

Non ullus aratro
Dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis,
Et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem(386).

In the second of the great episodes this sorrow for the past and foreboding for the future has entirely cleared away. The feeling now expressed is one of pride and exultation in Italy, as a land of rich crops and fruits, of vines and olives, a land famous for its herds and flocks and breed of horses, for its genial climate, for the beauty of the seas washing its coasts, for its great lakes and rivers, its ancient cities and other mighty works of men; famous too for its hardy, energetic, and warlike races,—

Haec genus acre virum Marsos pubemque Sabellam,
Adsuetumque malo Ligurem Volscosque verutos
Extulit(387),—

for its great men and families who had fought for it in old times, and for one greater still, who was then in the furthest East defending Rome against her enemies,—

Haec Decios magnosque Camillos,
Scipiadas duros bello, et te, maxime Caesar,
Qui nunc extremis Asiae iam victor in oris
Imbellem avertis Romanis arcibus Indum(388).

This passage, introduced as a counter-picture to the description of the rank luxuriance of Nature in the vast forests and jungles of the East, concentrates in itself the deepest meaning and inspiration of the poem. The glory of Italy is declared to be the motive for the revival of this ancient theme—

_Tibi_ res antiquae laudis et artis
Ingredior(389).

As Varro represents his speakers as looking on the great picture of Italy in the Temple of Tellus while they discuss the various ways of tilling and improving the soil, so Virgil in the midst of his didactic precepts holds up this ideal picture of the land to the love and admiration of his countrymen. By a few powerful strokes he combines the characteristic features and the great memories of Italian towns in lines which recur to every traveller as he passes through Italy,—

Adde tot egregias urbes operumque laborem,
Tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis,
Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros(390).

No expression of patriotic sentiment in any language is more pure and noble than this. It is a tribute of just pride and affection to the land which, from its beauty, its history, its great services to man, is felt to be worthy of the deep devotion with which Virgil commends it to the heart and imagination of the world.

In the last of the great episodes which remains to be considered, all the higher thoughts and feelings by which beauty, dignity, and moral grandeur are given to the subject are found concurring; and the presence of Lucretius is again felt as a pervading influence, though modified by Virgil’s own deepest convictions and sympathies. The charm of peaceful contemplation, of Nature in her serenest aspect and harmony with the human soul, of an ethical idea based on religious belief and national traditions, of a life of pure and tranquil happiness, remote from the clash of arms and the pride and passions of the world, is made present to us in a strain of continuous and modulated music, which neither Virgil himself nor any other poet has surpassed. Virgil creates a new ideal of happiness for the contemplation of his countrymen by combining the old realistic delight in the husbandman’s life with the imaginative longing for the peace and innocence of a Saturnian Age, and with that new delight in the living beauty of the world and in the charm of ancient memories which it was his especial office to communicate. This ideal is contrasted, as is the older poet’s ideal of ‘plain living and high thinking,’ with the pomp and magnificence of city life,—

Si non ingentem foribus domus alta superbis
Mane salutantum totis vomit aedibus undam—

Si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes
Lampadas igniferas manibus retinentia dextris(391),—

and, as in the older poet also, with the distractions, the restless passions, and the crimes of ambition. Virgil, as in other passages, compresses into a few lines the thought which Lucretius with simpler art follows through all its detail of concrete reality. Thus the

Gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum(392)

of Virgil is intended to recall and be explained by the more fully developed representation of the old cruelties of the times of Marius and Sulla, contained in the lines—

Sanguine civili rem conflant divitiasque
Conduplicant avidi, caedem caede accumulantes;
Crudeles gaudent in tristi funere fratris;
Et consanguineum mensas odere timentque(393).