The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 13

But, besides appealing to primitive religious and mythological a.s.sociations, the poet of Andes aims at reproducing some flavour of the sentiment of a remote antiquity and of the quaint _navete_ characteristic of the sage of Ascra. The very use of such an expression as '_quo sidere_ terram Vertere,'-the thought of the husbandman's labours as being regulated not by the Roman Calendar(302), with its prosaic divisions of the month by kalends, nones, and ides, but by the rise and setting of the constellations,-the picturesque signs of the change of the seasons, as in the line

Candida venit avis longis invisa colubris(303),-

the use of such quaint expressions as 'nudus ara, sere nudus,'-seem all intended to remind the reader that the subject is one 'antiquae laudis et artis,'-the most ancient and unchanging of the great arts of life,-that too in which man's dependence on Nature and the Spiritual power above Nature is most vividly realised(304). This infusion into the practical realities and prosaic details of his subject of something of the wonder and 'freshness of the early world' Virgil derives from the relation which he establishes between himself and his Boeotian prototype.

Though in spirit and poetical inspiration Virgil's debt to Hesiod is greater, yet the Georgics present more direct traces of imitation of the Alexandrine poets. It is in accordance with the learning and science of Alexandria that the subject is ill.u.s.trated by local epithets, such as 'Strymoniae grues,' by reference to the products of distant lands-

nonne vides croceos ut Tmolus odores, etc.,-

by recondite mythological and astronomical allusions and by the subst.i.tution of the names of various deities, such as Liber and Ceres, for the natural products which were supposed to be their gifts. But to several special authors his debt is more direct. Thus the pa.s.sage, i. 233-

Quinque tenent caelum zonae, etc.,-

is copied from Eratosthenes. The account of the signs of the weather, from i. 355 to 465, is taken from the ???s?e?a of Aratus, a work so popular at Rome, that it was not only imitated and almost incorporated in his poem by Virgil, but had been translated by Cicero in his youth, and was subsequently translated by Germanicus. Again, the description at iii. 425, of the dangerous serpent that haunts the Calabrian pastures, is closely imitated from the extant T???a?? of Nicander; nor can we doubt that there were in the fourth Book imitations of the lost ?e??ss??????? of the same author, who probably antic.i.p.ated Virgil in the use which he made of Aristotle's observations on the habits of bees.

A comparison of the pa.s.sages in the Georgics with those of which they are imitations produces the impression not only of Virgil's immense superiority as a poet over the Alexandrine Metaphrastae, but of the immense superiority of the Latin hexameter, as an organ for expressing the beauty and power of Nature, over the exotic jargon and unmusical jingle which those writers compounded out of their epic studies and their scientific nomenclature. To take one or two instances of Virgil's imitations from these writers:-in the pa.s.sage Georg. i. 233246, Virgil reproduces very closely scientific statements of Eratosthenes and Aratus.

But of the five lines which follow-

Illic, ut perhibent, aut intempesta silet nox Semper et obtenta densentur nocte tenebrae, Aut redit a n.o.bis Aurora diemque reducit; Nosque ubi primus equis Oriens adflavit anhelis, Illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper(305),-

where through the evanescent mists of early science we discern the enduring substance of poetic creation, there is no trace in either of the Greek writers. Again, in the pa.s.sage at i. 410, imitated from Aratus-

Tum liquidas corvi presso ter gutture voces, etc.,-

the mere natural phenomenon is given in greater detail in the original pa.s.sage; but the lines which communicate to it the touch of tender sympathy-

iuvat imbribus actis Progeniem parvam dulcesque revisere nidos(306),-

and the following lines-

Haud equidem credo quia sit divinitus illis, etc.,-

which elevate the whole description into the higher air of imaginative contemplation, are entirely Virgil's own. So too in nearly all the indications of stormy or bright weather, whether taken from natural phenomena or the habits of animals, we find in the Latin poet some suggestion of poetical a.n.a.logy giving new life to the thing described, or some touch of tender feeling, of which his original supplied him with no hint whatever.

For the true poetry of the Georgics-the colour of human and sympathetic feeling, the atmosphere of contemplative ideas, the ethical and national a.s.sociations with which the subject is surrounded-Virgil owes very little to Greek inspiration. Much of this poetry is the mode in which his own spirit interprets Nature and human life. But much also is due to the genius of his great predecessor in Latin poetry, who, though 'unnamed,' is 'not unowned,' but felt to be a pervading presence in the thought and feeling, the creative diction and the grander cadences, of the Georgics.

Yet this influence is perhaps as potent in the antagonism as in the sympathy which it evokes. Virgil is no mere disciple of Lucretius, either as regards his philosophy or his art. Though his imagination pays homage to that of the older poet; though he acknowledges his contemplative elevation; though he has a strong affinity with the deep humanity of his nature; yet in his profoundest convictions and aspirations he proclaims his revolt from him. The key to the secret of much in the composition of the Georgics,-of the condition of mind out of which this work of genius a.s.sumed the shape it has as a great literary possession,-is to be sought in the collision between the force of thought, imagination, and feeling which the active spirit of Lucretius stored up and left behind him as his legacy to the world, and the nature, strongly susceptible indeed, but, at the same time, firm in its own convictions, which first felt the shock of that force, in its attractive, stimulating, and repellent power.

CHAPTER VI.

STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF THE POEM, IN RELATION TO THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS.

I.

The influence, direct and indirect, exercised by Lucretius on the thought, composition, and even the diction of the Georgics was perhaps stronger than that ever exercised, before or since, by one great poet on the work of another. This influence is of the kind which is oftener seen in the history of philosophy than of literature. It was partly one of sympathy, partly of antagonism. Virgil's conception of Nature has its immediate origin in the thought of Lucretius; his religious convictions and national sentiment derive new strength by reaction from the att.i.tude of his predecessor. This powerful attraction and repulsion were alike due to the fact that Lucretius was the first not only to reveal a new power, beauty, and source of wonder in the world, but also to communicate to poetry a speculative impulse, opening up, with a more impa.s.sioned appeal than philosophy can do, the great questions underlying human life,-such as the truth of all religious tradition, the position of man in the Universe, and the att.i.tude of mind and course of conduct demanded by that position.

Nor was it a poetical and speculative impulse only that Virgil received from his predecessor. A new didactic poem, dealing largely with the same subject-matter as that treated by Lucretius,-such as the earth, the heavens, the great elemental forces, the growth of plants, the habits of animals, and the like-contemplating, among other objects, that of determining the relation of man to the sphere in which he is placed, and seeking to invest the ordinary processes of Nature with an ideal charm,-could not help a.s.suming a somewhat similar mould to that which had been originally cast for the philosophic thought and realistic observation of the older poet.

Again, in regard to the technical execution of his work, rhythm and expression, Virgil inherited the new wealth introduced into Latin literature by Lucretius. Lucretius had given to the Latin Hexameter a stronger and more unimpeded flow, a more sonorous and musical intonation than it had before his time. He stamped the force of his mind on new modes of vivid expression and of rhythmical cadence, which, though they might be modified, could not be set aside in any future representation of the 'species ratioque,' the outward spectacle and the moving principle of Nature.

Many circ.u.mstances conduced to bring Virgil, more powerfully than any other Latin poet, under the spell of Lucretius. As is remarked by Mr.

Munro(307), when the poem of his predecessor first appeared Virgil was at, or near, the age which is most immediately impressed and moulded by a contemporary work of genius. The enthusiasm for philosophy, expressed in the short poem written immediately before he began to study under Siron, implies that he had been already attracted by the subject of which Lucretius was the only worthy(308) Latin exponent; and his studies under that teacher must have prepared his mind to receive the higher instruction of the 'De Rerum Natura.' The song of Silenus in the sixth Eclogue and many expressions and cadences in other poems of the series attest the poetical, if not the speculative, impression thus produced. But the clearest testimony of Virgil's recognition of the influence of his predecessor is found in that pa.s.sage of the Georgics in which he speaks of himself most from his heart,-

Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, etc.,-(II. 475.)

and in which he declares his first wish to be that the Muses should reveal to him the secrets of Nature; but, if this were denied him, he next prays that 'the love of the woods and running streams in the valleys' might be his portion. He may not have meant the lines

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, etc.,-(II. 490.)

to be taken as a description of the individual Lucretius, or those containing the other picture, placed by its side,

Fortunatas et ille, deos qui novit agrestis, Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores, etc.,-(II. 493.)

as a description of himself. Such direct personal references are not in keeping with the allusive style in which he writes of himself and others.

He seems rather in these pa.s.sages to set forth two ideal states of mind, that of philosophic contemplation, on the one hand, that of the pure love of Nature and conformity with the simple beliefs of country-people, on the other, as equally capable of raising men above the vulgar pa.s.sions and pleasures of the world. But it is evident that he thought of Lucretius as the poet who had held up the one ideal to the imagination and the severer mood of his countrymen, and of himself as holding up the other to their poetical feeling and their human affections.

He would thus seem to have looked on Lucretius with something of that veneration with which Lucretius regards Epicurus, Empedocles, and Ennius, and with which Dante long after regarded Virgil himself. The two greatest among the Roman poets had many feelings in common,-the love of Nature, the love of study, especially the study of ancient poetry and of science, a natural shrinking from the pomp and luxury of city-life and from the schemes of worldly ambition, an abhorrence of the crimes and violence of civil war. They felt the charm of the same kind of outward scenes,-of rivers flowing through green pastures, of meadow and woodland, of rich corn-fields and vineyards. They had the same strong sympathy with the life of animals a.s.sociated with man's labour, the same fellow-feeling with the pain and the happiness of which human affection is the source. The numerous pa.s.sages in which phrases or cadences, thought or imagery in the Georgics recall phrases or representation in the earlier poem(309), leave no doubt that Virgil found in Lucretius a heart and spirit with which his own largely receptive nature could in many ways sympathise, as well as that he recognised in him a guide whom he could follow in imagination 'among the lonely heights of Parna.s.sus(310).'

Yet, on the other hand, it is quite true that both the character and genius of Virgil are essentially of a different type from those of Lucretius.-They are both thoroughly original representatives of different elements in the Roman and Italian character.-So far as he represents the mind and temper of Rome, Lucretius represents the old order which had pa.s.sed away. Though scarcely anything is known of the circ.u.mstances of his life, yet his _gentile_ name (as is shown by Mr. Munro), his relation of equality to Memmius, the stamp of his powerful personality impressed on his poem, point to the conclusion that he was one of the old Roman aristocracy, born into a time when many of its members had begun to retire in disgust from active interest in the Republic, which they were no longer able to govern. It was, as has been already remarked(311), to this cla.s.s among the Romans, almost exclusively, that the taste for literature was confined in the last age of the Republic; and it was among men of this cla.s.s, such as the Luculli and Hortensius, and the Velleius and Torquatus of Cicero's Dialogues, that the Epicurean philosophy found its chief adherents. The poem of Lucretius shows all the courage and energy, the power of command, the sense of superiority and the direct simplicity of manner emanating from it, which are the inheritance of a great governing cla.s.s. He is the one man of true genius for poetry whom that cla.s.s gave to Rome. His lofty pathos and tenderness of feeling are the graces of his own nature, refined and purified by the most humanising studies. His profound melancholy is a mood natural to one who looks on the pa.s.sing away of a great order of things, political, social, and religious, in the midst of scenes of turbulence and violence, and takes refuge from an alien world in the contemplation of another order of things, infinitely more majestic than either the old social state which was shaken and tottering to its fall, or the new which was yet 'powerless to be born.'

There could scarcely be any greater contrast, in social relations and the dispositions arising out of them, between any two men, than between the representative of the old governing families of the Republic, and the humbly-born native of the Cisalpine province,-delicate in health, modest and self-distrustful, yet endowed with a deep consciousness of genius and a resolution to follow that guidance only,-entering on manhood and beginning his career as poet contemporaneously with the events which determined the ascendency of the new order of things, and identified with it through his personal relations to the leading men of the new Empire,-a poet who derived from his birth and early nurture 'the spirit of the ages of Faith(312),'-one too who had been happy in his early home-affections and in the friendships of his manhood, and who was able to dedicate his mature years to his art under conditions of the greatest personal and national security. In considering the influence of the ideas of Lucretius on the mind of Virgil, we must accordingly make large allowance for the medium of alien sympathies, personal, social, and political, through which they were refracted. We must take into consideration also the wide difference between the philosophic poet and the pure poetic artist. The feeling of Virgil towards philosophy was apparently one of aspiration rather than of possession. He shows no interest in the processes of enquiry,-in tracing the operation of great laws in manifold phenomena,-in investigating one obscure subject after another, with the confident a.s.surance that every discovery is a step towards the light and the ultimate revelation of the whole mystery. Virgil recognises the source of his own strength in the words

Flumina _amem_ silvasque.

It is the power of love which quickens his intuition and enables him to perceive the tenderness and beauty revealed in the living movement of Nature. He receives and applies the complete ideas of Lucretius, but he does not follow them with the eagerness of their author through the various phases of their development. Certain results of a philosophic system affect his imagination, but he does not seem to feel how these results necessarily exclude other conclusions which he will not abandon.

Hence arises his prevailing eclecticism,-the existence of popular beliefs side by side in his mind with the tenets of Epicureans, Stoics, and Platonists,-of some conclusions of the Lucretian science along with the opposing doctrines expressed in the poetry of Alexandria. Even in the arrangement of his materials and the grouping of his landscapes, some chance a.s.sociation or rhythmical cadence seems to guide his hand, more often than the perception of the orderly connexion of phenomena with one another.

II.

The idea which Lucretius revealed to the world in fuller majesty and life than any previous poet or philosopher, was the idea of Nature, apprehended, not as an abstract conception, but as a power omnipresent, creative, and regulative throughout the great spheres of earth, sky, and sea, and the innumerable varieties of individual existence. The meaning conveyed by the Greek word f?s??, as employed by Democritus, Herac.l.i.tus, Empedocles, etc., is powerless to move the imagination or enlarge the sense of beauty, when compared with the illimitable content of 'Natura daedala rerum' as conceived by the Latin poet. Nature is to him the one power absolutely supreme and independent in the Universe, too vast and too manifold to be subject to any will but her own,-

Libera continuo dominis privata superbis.

Her independent existence is incompatible with that of the mult.i.tude of beings, of limited power and intelligence, which the old mythologies established as lords over the world and man. The G.o.ds, abiding in a state of blessed ease and indifference, are themselves dependent on a power infinitely transcending their own. But in what relation does man stand to this power? He too is within her sphere, altogether subject to her, but no special object of her regard. He exists only through compliance with and resignation to her conditions. And these conditions are on the whole unfavourable to him. He can gain only a scanty subsistence by a continual struggle with reluctant and rebellious forces in the earth; and even after all his toil and care, causes over which he has no control, such as the inclemency of the skies and incalculable vicissitudes of heat and cold, frustrate his endeavours.

Quod superest arvi _tamen id natura sua vi_ _Sentibus obducat_, ni _vis humana resistat_ Vitai causa valido consueta bidenti _Ingemere et terram pressis proscindere aratris_.