The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 17

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 cla.s.sical 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 G.o.ds, 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 pa.s.sages-

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 cla.s.s. They are not introduced as a subst.i.tute 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 a.s.sociated. Thus in the pa.s.sage 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. 549550),

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

and the grand, solemn realism of the parallel pa.s.sage 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 a.s.signed 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 a.s.sociations 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 a.s.sociation of mythology or antiquity.

Neither does he use that other resource, by which Virgil adds an antique l.u.s.tre 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 cla.s.sic elegance of his style. Still less could Lucretius appeal to the a.s.sociations 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 circ.u.m 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.n.a.logies, through which familiar or unseen phenomena are made great or palpable by a.s.sociation with other phenomena which immediately affect the imagination with a sense of wonder and sublimity. The apprehension of these a.n.a.logies 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. 201203):-

Non aliter, quam qui adverso vix flumine lemb.u.m Remigiis subigit, si bracchia forte remisit Atque illum in praeceps p.r.o.no 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 ill.u.s.trative 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 ident.i.ty 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 pa.s.sed, 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 a.n.a.logy 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 ident.i.ty or a.n.a.logy between the life of Nature and of man is not conceived with such power and pa.s.sion 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, Sh.e.l.ley, 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 pa.s.sions, 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 surpa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sages, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sociations 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 h.o.m.ogeneous; 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sages 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sages will in general be found to draw attention to the religious, ethical, or national bearing of his subject.

Some of these pa.s.sages have been suggested by parallel pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sages, 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sages which are not needed for the special practical purpose of the poem may be regarded as episodical, such, for instance, as that thoroughly Lucretian pa.s.sage in Book I. in which the feelings of rooks are explained on purely physical principles, or that pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 c.u.m videant solem, nos sidera noctis Cernere, et alternis n.o.bisc.u.m tempora caeli Dividere, et noctes parilis agitare diebus(366).

Another pa.s.sage of a semi-philosophical character is that at Book III.

242283, 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 ill.u.s.trative of the main ideas and feelings of the poem, but still subsidiary to the greater episodes, are the following: Book I. 121159, Book II. 323345; and in the same cla.s.s may be included III. 339383, and IV. 125148. 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 pa.s.sage '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 surpa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sage 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:-