CHAPTER VII.

[pg 261]CHAPTER VII.The Georgics as the representative poem of Italy.The consideration of the motives which influenced Virgil to undertake the composition of the Georgics, of the form of art adopted by him, of the national interest attaching to his subject, of the materials used by him and the sources from which he derived them, of the author who most influenced him in speculative idea and in the general manner of treating his subject, leads to the conclusion that, in its essential characteristics, the poem is a genuine work of Italian art and inspiration. If the original motive influencing him was the ambition to treat of rural life in the serious spirit of Hesiod, as he had done in the lighter vein of Theocritus, that motive was soon lost in the strong impulse to invest with charm and dignity the kind of life in which the Italian mind placed its ideal of worth and happiness. By thus identifying himself with a great national object Virgil raised himself to a higher level of art than that attained by poets whose interests are purely personal and literary.Next to satire, there was no form of poetry which had more of a Roman character than didactic poetry. By becoming a province of Roman art, this form acquired all its dignity and capacity of greatness. And though the Georgics, being a work of Italian culture as well as of Italian inspiration, could not escape some relation, not in form only but in materials and mode of expression, to Greek originals, there is no great work of Latin genius, except the Satires and Epistles of Horace, in which the debt thus incurred is so small. And not only is the[pg 262]debt small in quantity, but it is incurred to authors much inferior to Virgil in creative power and poetical feeling. In using borrowed materials he makes the mind of Greece tributary to his own national design. But his most valuable materials are derived either from personal observation, or from Latin authors who had put on record the results of their observation: and his largest debt, in imaginative feeling and conception, is incurred not to any Greek author, but to the most powerful and original of Roman poets and thinkers. The speculative idea, which gives something of philosophical consistency to the poem, was, if not one of pure Italian conception, yet made more truly real and vital through the experience of the force and endurance exercised by the strong men of Italy in subduing the earth to their will, and in constructing their great material works (‘operum laborem’), such as their roads, baths, aqueducts, harbours, encampments, and great draining works, by which they provided the comforts of life (‘commoda vitae’) and defended themselves against their enemies or the maligner influence of the elements.The language of Virgil himself and the testimony of ancient commentators confirm the impression, that the object of which he was most distinctly conscious in the composition of the poem was the ‘glorification of Italy,’—of the land itself in its fertility and beauty, and of the life most congenial to Italian sentiment. Even to a greater extent than he may have intended, Virgil, through the national mould in which his thought was cast and the national colour of his sympathies, fulfils this representative office. Where the poem seems to a modern reader to fail in human interest, the interest which it had for the poet’s countrymen is revived by dwelling in thought on this representative character. When the associations appealed to are of Greek rather than of Italian origin, we have to remember that the poem was addressed to a highly educated class of readers, at the time when the Roman mind had been most enlarged and enriched, but had not yet been satiated by Greek studies. Yet this kind of appeal is quite subsidiary to that made to the[pg 263]native sensibilities of the Romans. It is to commend to their love and admiration a purely Italian ideal that Virgil employs the resources of Greek learning, as well as all the strength and delicacy of his own genius.A rapid review of the tastes, sympathies, and affections on the part of his readers to which Virgil appeals, both in the body of his poem and in its finer episodes, will show that they all contribute to produce this representative character. Where some of the details of the poem seem to fail in poetic interest, they still have the interest of being characteristic of the Italian mind.1. The poem professes to impart practical instruction on the best method of cultivating the land, of propagating trees, of breeding cattle, horses, etc., of profiting by the industry of bees:—Quare agite, O, proprios generatim discite cultus,Agricolae401.This is the obvious and ostensible purpose of the poem; and the truth and accuracy of the instruction were important elements in the estimate which the countrymen of the poet formed of its value. Columella and Pliny, while controverting him on a few minor points402, attest his practical knowledge as an agriculturist and a naturalist. Similar testimony is given by some modern writers competent to speak with authority on these subjects403. Neither ancient nor modern critics regard him as[pg 264]free from liability to mistake, and the tendency of his mind to believe in marvellous deviations from natural law exposed him to errors into which less imaginative writers were not likely to fall; but the substantial accuracy of his observations and acquired knowledge seems to be attested both by positive and negative evidence. It is not a question as to whether the operations described in Virgil satisfy the requirements of skilled or even of unskilled farming in the present day, or whether he does not fall into mistakes in natural history which a modern reader, with no scientific knowledge of the subject, may easily detect; but whether he has adequately represented the methods of ancient Italian agriculture, and whether he is a trustworthy exponent of the scientific beliefs of his age, and an accurate observer of those phenomena which were as accessible to an ancient as to a modern enquirer. On these points he satisfied the best critics among his countrymen. The general truth of his observation is further attested by the survival in Southern Europe, into comparatively recent times, of some of the processes described by him, which seem most remote from our ordinary experience404. It is attested also by the accuracy of his description of the unchanging phenomena of Nature, and of the habits of animals.A modern reader may think the value of his poetry little, if at all enhanced, by the rank which he may claim among the ‘scriptores rei rusticae.’ It may seem matter for regret that so much of the faculty, which should have given permanent delight[pg 265]to the world, should have been employed in conveying temporary instruction. His very fidelity to the office of a teacher detracts somewhat from his poetic office. Though it satisfies our curiosity to know how the ancient Italians tilled their lands and cultivated the vine, yet this satisfaction is quite distinct from the joy which the poetical treatment of a poetical subject gives to the imagination. It is not as repertories of useful information that the great writers of Greece and Rome are to be studied. Their importance in this way has long since been superseded. Each generation adds to the stock of knowledge in the world, modifies the results arrived at by the preceding generation, and dispenses with the works in which these results have been embodied. But a work of power, stimulating moral and intellectual feeling,—whether in the form of poem, history, speech, or philosophic dialogue,—may acquire from long antiquity even a stronger hold over the imagination than it originally possessed405. In the didactic poems of Lucretius and Virgil the information conveyed by them possesses permanent value, in so far as it is coloured by human feeling,—in so far as we recognise the passion or affection by which the poet was stirred in acquiring his knowledge and in conveying it to sympathetic readers. And as the scientific enthusiasm of Lucretius animates the driest details of his argument, so the love entertained for his subject by Virgil,—as an Italian, the son of a small Italian land-holder,—Veneto rusticis parentibus nato inter silvas et frutices educto406,—writing for Italians, for whom every detail of farm labour had a fascination unintelligible to us,—brightens with the gleam of human and poetical feeling the technical teaching of the traditional precepts of Italian husbandry. The position of a teacher assumed by him,—a position which no great Greek or[pg 266]English poet could gracefully maintain,—impresses us with the thorough adaptation of the form of the poem to the sober practical understanding of the Italian race. Horace mentions this love of teaching and learning as one of the notes distinguishing the Roman from the Greek genius:—Maiores audire, minori dicere per quaeCrescere res posset, minui damnosa libido407.It adds to our sense of Virgil’s thoroughness as an artist to know that he faithfully performed the office which he undertook; and the fact of his undertaking this office helps to bring home to us the practical, unspeculative genius of those to whom his poem was in the first place addressed.2. Not only the instruction directly conveyed in the poem, but the frequent illustrations from geography, mythology, and astronomy, have much less meaning to us than they had to the contemporaries of the poet. Yet they help to make us realise the relation in which the Rome and Italy of the Augustan Age stood to the rest of the world and to the culture of the past. By the references to the varied products of other lands we are reminded of the active commercial intercourse between Rome and the East,—a feature of the age of which we are also often reminded in the Odes, Satires, and Epistles of Horace. We see how the success of the Roman arms had made the products of the whole world—the ‘saffron dye of Tmolus,’ the ‘ivory of India,’ the ‘spices of Arabia,’ the ‘iron of the Chalybians,’ the ‘medicinal drugs of Pontus,’ the ‘brood-mares of Epirus408’—part of the possessions of Rome. We are reminded too of the fact that many Romans and Italians were settled as colonists in the provinces of the Empire, and that Virgil had them also in view in the instruction which he imparts409. The frequent allusions to Greek mythology and to the constellations, on the[pg 267]other hand, help to remind us that the art and science of the past, as well as the material products of the world, had now been diverted to the enjoyment and use of the new inheritors of intellectual culture.3. It was seen how assiduously Virgil, in the body of his poem, inculcates the necessity and duty of labour. And though the ‘glorification of labour’ was found to be rather a derivative and tributary stream than the main current of interest in the poem, yet it is impossible to doubt that to the mind of Virgil this assiduous toil of the husbandman, on a work so congenial and surrounded with such accessories of peaceful happiness, had a special attraction, even independent of its results. This recognition of the dignity of labour owes nothing to a Greek original. A life of intellectual leisure was the ideal of the Greeks. Hesiod indeed does dwell on the necessity of labour, as the ground both of worldly well-being and divine approval,—and this is another point of affinity between him and Virgil,—but the line in which he claims consideration for work,Ἔργον δ’ οὐδὲν ὄνειδος, ἀεργίη δέ τ’ ὄνειδος410,is apologetic in tone; and, moreover, Hesiod can hardly be regarded as a typical Greek. There seems to be no word in the Greek language equivalent to the grave Roman word ‘industria.’ Perhaps it is owing to the disesteem in which labour was held by Greek writers that industry is scarcely ranked among virtues, nor idleness among vices, even by modern moralists. When long after the time of Homer a new poet arose in Greece, appealing to a great popular sentiment, it was in their passion for the great public games that he found the point of contact with the hearts of his countrymen. The Romans, on the other hand, show a great capacity for labour in every field of exertion,—in war and the government of men, in law and literature, in business transactions, in the construction of vast works of utility, and in cultivating the land. And of these, next to war and government, the last was most congenial[pg 268]to the national mind. The land was to the Romans the chief field of their industry and the original source of their wealth, as the sea was the scene of occupation and adventure to the Greeks, and, through the outlet which it gave to the results of their artistic ingenuity, the great source of their prosperity. The Odyssey is a poem inspired, in a great degree, by the impulse which first sent the Greek nation forth on its career of maritime and colonising enterprise. The Georgics are inspired by that impulse which first started the Latin race on its career of conquest, and which continued to animate the struggle with the reluctant forces of Nature, as it had animated the struggle with the other races of Italy for the possession of the soil.4. Again, we find that the poem is pervaded by the poetical feeling of Nature. And Virgil, more than any other poet, presents that aspect of Nature in which the outward world appeared to the educated Italian mind. The personality and individual life attributed to natural objects, such as trees, rivers, winds, etc., belongs to a stage of conception between the Greek anthropomorphism and the recognition by the imagination of universal law and interdependence of phenomena. Modern poets consciously personify natural objects with more boldness and varied sympathy than Virgil. His conception of the life and personal attributes of natural objects appears to be less a conscious creative effort of the imagination, than an unconscious impression from outward things; an impression produced in a state of passive contemplation, rather than of active adventure; and an impression produced by qualities of a serene and tender beauty, rather than by those of a bolder or sublimer aspect. In all these respects Virgil represents a stage in the culture of the imagination between that of the early Greek poets and artists, and that of the most imaginative poets and painters of modern times. The familiar beauty of the outward world, as it was felt by a Roman or Italian, was expressed in the Latin word ‘amoenum.’ Thus Horace describes his retreat among the Sabine hills, as not only dear to him personally, but as beautiful in itself:—[pg 269]Hae latebrae dulces, etiam, si credis, amoenae411.And it is to the attributes summed up in that word that Virgil imparts the ideal life of the imagination.But not only is the feeling of Nature in the Georgics characteristic of the highest culture of the Italian mind, but the spectacle of Nature,—‘The outward shows of sky and earth’brought before us,—is that which still delights the eye and moves the imagination in the various districts of Italy. The description of Spring at Georg. ii. 323–345,Ver adeo frondi nemorum, ...... exciperet caeli indulgentia terras,is one of which (though we can always feel its beauty) we cannot often verify the accuracy in our more northern latitudes. It is to an Italian spring, more than to any season in any other European country, that the words of the third Eclogue ‘nunc formosissimus annus,’ are applicable. The varied pastoral beauty of the long summer day described at Georg. iii. 323–338,—from the early dawn when the fields are fresh beneath the morning-star; through the gathering warmth of the later hours, when the groves are loud with the chirping of the grasshoppers and the herds collect around the deep water-pools; through the burning heat of midday, from which the shade of some huge oak or some grove of dark ilexes affords a shelter; till the coolness of evening tempers the air, and the moon renews with dew the dry forest-glades,—is a beauty quite distinct from the charm of freedom and solitude,—yet not too remote from human neighbourhood,—of the changing aspects of the sky, and of the picturesque environment of hill, river, and moorland, which abides in the pastoral regions of our own and other northern lands. The ‘sweet interchange of hill and valley412,’ mountain range and rich[pg 270]cultivated land, which northern and central Italy exhibits, must have made such scenes as that described at ii. 186–188,Qualem saepe cava montis convalle solemusDespicere413, etc.,and again the opening scene of the poem, at i. 43,Vere novo gelidus canis cum montibus umorLiquitur, et Zephyro putris se glaeba resolvit414,familiar to Roman readers. And while the ‘caeli indulgentia’ characteristic of the Italian climate is felt as a pervading genial presence through the various books of the poem, the sudden and violent vicissitudes to which that climate is especially liable form part of the varied and impressive spectacle presented to us. The passage i. 316–321,Saepe ego cum flavis ... stipulasque volantis,records a calamity to which the labours of the Italian husbandman were peculiarly exposed. In the description of the storm of rain, immediately following, the words ‘collectae ex alto nubes’ remind us, like the description of a similar storm in Lucretius (vi. 256–261), that Virgil, as Lucretius may have done, must often have watched such a tempest gathering over the sea that washes the Campanian shores. The inundation of the Po is described among the omens accompanying the death of Caesar, in lines which may have been suggested by some scene actually witnessed by the poet, and which with vivid exactness represent for all times the destructive forces put forth by the great river that drains the vast mountain-ranges of Northern Italy:—Proluit insano contorquens vertice silvasFluviorum rex Eridanus, camposque per omnesCum stabulis armenta tulit415.[pg 271]And while the general representation of Nature, in the freshness or serene glory of her beauty and in her destructive energy, is true to that aspect which she presents in Italian scenery, the characteristic features and products of particular localities in the various regions of Italy are recalled to memory with truthful effect. The love of Nature in Lucretius appears apart from local associations. In Horace this feeling seems to link itself to places dear to him from the memories of childhood, or from the personal experience of later years. In Virgil the feeling is both general as in Lucretius, and combined with attachment to or interest in particular places as in Horace. But Virgil is able to feel enthusiasm not only for places dear to him through personal association, but for all which appeal to his sentiment of national pride. As was seen in the last chapter, the episode, which perhaps more than any other brings out the inspiring thought of the poem, is devoted to a celebration of the varied beauties of the land; and the names of Clitumnus, of Larius, and Benacus are still dearer to the world because they are for ever intermingled with ‘the rich Virgilian rustic measure416.’ In the body of the poem also we find many local references to the northern, central, and southern regions of Italy. The light bark, hollowed out of the alder, is launched on the rapid flood of the[pg 272]Po; the starwort, out of which wreaths are made to adorn the altars of the gods, is gathered by shepherds by the winding banks of the Mella (a river in Northern Italy mentioned also by Catullus); the meadow-land which unfortunate Mantua lost is adduced as a type of the best kind of pasture, and the land in the neighbourhood of Capua and the region skirting Mount Vesuvius as that most suitable for corn-crops. We read also of the rose-beds of Paestum,—of the olives clothing the sides of the Samnian Taburnus,—of the woodland pastures of Sila,—of those by the banks of the Silarus, on Alburnus green with ilexes, and by the dry torrent-bed of the Tanager,—and of the yellow cornfields through which the dark Galaesus flows. The Aeneid affords further testimony of the interest which Virgil awakens in the region which forms the distant environment of Rome. But the sentiment of the Georgics is a sentiment of peace inspired by the land, quite different from that inspired by the Imperial City, and from the memories of war and conquest with which the neighbourhood of Rome is associated. And though the aspect which Nature generally presents in the poem is that of her nobler mood, yet that air of indolent repose which characterises her presence in the Eclogues is not altogether absent from the severer poem. The sense of rest after toil—‘molles sub arbore somni,’—the quiet contemplation of wide and peaceful landscapes,—‘latis otia fundis,’—relieve the strain of strenuous labour which is enforced as the indispensable condition of realising the glory of the land.5. The religious and ethical thought of the poem is also in accordance with what was happiest and best in the old Italian faith and life. The poetical belief in many protecting agencies—Dique deaeque omnes studium quibus arva tueri417—watching over the labours of the husbandman, and present at his simple festival and ceremonies, is in accordance with the genial character of the rustic Paganism of Italy and with the[pg 273]attributes of the great gods of the land, Faunus and Saturnus. Human life appeared to Hesiod as well as to Virgil to be in immediate dependence on the gods. But the graver aspect of Virgil’s faith is purer and happier than that of Hesiod; as the trust in a just and beneficent father is purer and happier than the fear of a jealous task-master. But on the other hand, the faith of Virgil is less noble than that of Aeschylus and of Sophocles. It is more of a passive yielding to the longing of the human heart and to the impulses of an aesthetic emotion, than that union of natural piety with insight into the mystery of life which no great poets, Pagan or Christian (unless it may be Dante), exhibit in equal measure with the two great Athenian dramatists. In the religious spirit of Virgil, which accepts and does not question, which finds its resource in prayer rather than in reverent contemplation and searching out of the ways of God, we may recognise a true note of his nationality,—a submissive attitude in presence of the Invisible Power, derived from the race whose custom it was to veil the head in sacrifice and in approaching the images of their gods418.6. Equally true to the national character is the ethical ideal upheld in the Georgics. The negative elements in that ideal were seen to be exemption from the violent passions and pleasures of the world. And in these negative elements the ideal of the Georgics coincides with that of Lucretius. But, on the positive side, Virgil’s ideal implies the active performance of duties to the family and to the State. One has only to remember the low esteem in which women were held and the indifference to family ties in the palmiest days of Athenian civili[pg 274]sation, or to recall the ideal State of Plato’s imagination, to perceive how true to Italian, and how remote from Greek sentiment, are the pictures presented in such passages as these—Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati;Casta pudicitiam servat domus—and this—Interea longum cantu solata laboremArguto coniunx percurrit pectine telas419.Friendship among men, and even the social friendliness which makes life more pleasant and manners more humane, were ranked among the virtues by Greek philosophy; and the first is treated by Aristotle, not only as a single virtue, but as the condition under which all virtue can best be realised: but natural affection is regarded as a mere instinct, and the duties of family life do not fall under any of those conditions with which ethical philosophy concerns itself. On the other hand, the legendary history of the early Republic, and many great examples, in the midst of the corruption of the later Republic and of the Empire, prove that the ideal of domestic virtue and affection among the Romans was no mere passing fancy or dream of an age of primitive innocence, but was in harmony with the national conscience throughout the whole course of their history.In devotion to the good of the State no superiority can be claimed for the Romans over the Athenians of the times of Cleisthenes, Themistocles, and Pericles. And while each people, in its best days, was equally ready to serve the Republic in war and by the performance of public duties, and while the Roman perhaps more than the Athenian regarded the labour of his hands as a service due from him420, the Athenian freely gave the higher energy of his genius to make the life of his fellow-citizens brighter and nobler. And it is the peculiar glory of the Athenians of the fifth centuryB.C.,—the glory claimed for them[pg 275]in one of the speeches attributed to their great Statesman by their great Historian,—that they combined this devotion to the common good with a high development of all personal excellence. But in Athens this union of national and individual energy and virtue was of very brief duration. On the other hand, the lasting greatness of the Roman Commonwealth was purchased by the sacrifice of the energies and accomplishments which add to the grace and enjoyment of individual existence. The greatness and permanence of the race, not the varied development of the individual, was the object aimed at and attained in the vigorous prime of the Roman Republic421.If this aspect of national life is not directly brought before us by Virgil in the Georgics, it is brought into strong light in the representation of his mimic commonwealth—theMores et studia et populos et proelia422of the community of bees. It scarcely needs the reminder ofipsae regem parvosqueQuiritesSufficiunt423to convince us that, in this representation of an industrious and warlike community, earnest in labour from the love of the objects on which it was bestowed and from pride in its results—Tantus amor florum et generandi gloria mellis424,—resolute and unconquerable in battle, sacrificing life rather than abandoning the post of duty, inspired with more than Oriental devotion to their head, Virgil was teaching a lesson applicable to the Roman Commonwealth under its new government. While labour is shown to be a condition of individual happiness, or at least contentment, it is not in individual happiness, but in the permanent greatness of the community that its ultimate recom[pg 276]pense is to be sought. Though the individual life may be short and meagre in its attractions, and generation after generation may spend itself in an unceasing round of toil,At genus immortale manet, multosque per annosStat fortuna domus et avi numerantur avorum425.The training and discipline for the attainment of these virtues are to be sought in plain and frugal living, in hardy pastime as well as hardy industry426, in obedience to parents and reverent worship of the gods—Illic saltus et lustra ferarum,Et patiens operum exiguoque adsueta iuventus,Sacra deum sanctique patres427,—and in abstinence from the luxurious indulgence, the anxious business, and the enervating pleasures of a corrupt civilisation428. While the grace and beauty of the poem arise out of the feeling of the life of Nature, the dignity and sanctity with which the subject is invested are due to the sense of the intimate connexion between the cultivation of the land and the moral and religious life of the Italian race.7. The poem may be called a representative work of genius in respect also of its artistic execution. It is the finest work of Italian art, made perfect by the long education of Greek studies. More than any work in Latin literature the Georgics approach to the symmetry of form, the harmony of proportion, the unity of design and tone, characteristic of the purest art of Greece. But it is not in any sense a copy formed after any Greek pattern. It was seen that out of the more rudimentary attempts of Greek literature in this particular form of poetry Virgil[pg 277]created a new and nobler type, which never has been, and probably never will be, improved on. The execution of the poem is characterised by the genial susceptibility and enthusiasm of the Italian temperament, by the firm structure of all Roman work and the practical moderation and dignity of the Roman mind, and by a kind of meditative and pensive grace peculiar to the poet himself. The thought of the poem is not separable from the sentiment pervading it. And in this respect there is a marked difference between the genius of Virgil and of Lucretius. However much the speculative activity of Lucretius is charged with feeling, yet the thought stands out, clearly defined, through the atmosphere surrounding it. The melancholy of Lucretius, though it was the result partly of disposition,—the reaction perhaps of a strongly passionate temperament,—and partly of his relation to his age, was yet a state of mind for which he could assign definite grounds. That of Virgil was probably also in a great measure the result of temperament; but it seems to be a mood habitual to one who meditated much inwardly on the misery of the world, who was moved by compassion for all sights of sorrow or suffering429, and was yet unable to shape this sense of ‘the burthen of the mystery’ into articulate thought. The atmosphere of the poem has become one with its substance. The fusion of meditation and feeling derived from the individual genius of the poet imparts a distinctively original charm to the style of the Georgics.The style is thus, in a great degree, Virgil’s own, and owes little to the borrowed beauties of Greek expression. Though the language of the Alexandrine poets is sometimes reproduced, yet the beauty of those transferred passages arises from the grace given to them, not from that borrowed from them. The same[pg 278]may be said of the use sometimes made of the quaint diction of Hesiod. In one or two striking passages, such as thatEcce supercilio clivosi tramitis, etc.,Virgil has adopted the language of the Iliad430; and though it is impossible to improve on that, yet there is no slavish imitation of it; only a new picture is painted, recalling, by some vivid touches, a former piece by the great master. If detraction is to be made from the originality of expression in the Georgics, the debt due by Virgil was incurred to his own countryman. In adopting modes of expression from Lucretius, Virgil brings down the bold creativeness of his original to a tone more suited to the habitual sobriety of the Italian imagination. He often fixes into the form of some general thought what appears in Lucretius as a living movement or individualised action. And this tendency to abstract rather than concrete representation is in accordance with the Roman mould of mind. We notice also how much more sparingly he uses such compound words as ‘navigerum,’ ‘silvifragis,’ etc., by which the earlier poets endeavoured to force the harder metal of the Latin language into the flexibility of Greek speech. Virgil felt that these innovations were unsuited to the genius of the Latin tongue, and endeavoured to enlarge its capacities by novel constructions and by using old words with a new application rather than by novel formations of words. But this gain was perhaps more than compensated by the loss which the language suffered in idiomatic purity and clearness.In rhythmical movement the poem exhibits the highest perfection of which Latin verse is capable. Of Homer’s verse it has been happily said that it has ‘a tranquil deep strength, reminding us of his own line,Ἐξ ἀκαλαρρείταο βαθυρρόου ὠκεανοῖο431.[pg 279]The movement of Virgil’s verse reminds us rather of his own river—qui per saxa volutusPurior electro campum petit432.Occasionally we catch the sound of some more rapid rush and impetuous fall, as in the hurry and agitation and culminating grandeur of these lines—Continuo, ventis surgentibus, aut freta pontiIncipiunt agitata tumescere, et aridus altisMontibus audiri fragor, aut resonantia longeLitora misceri et nemorum increbrescere murmur433;—but generally the stream flows on, neither in rapid torrent nor with abrupt transitions, but ‘with a tranquil deep strength,’ fed by pure and abounding sources of affection, of contemplation, of moral and religious feeling, of delight from eye and ear, from memory and old poetic association.

The consideration of the motives which influenced Virgil to undertake the composition of the Georgics, of the form of art adopted by him, of the national interest attaching to his subject, of the materials used by him and the sources from which he derived them, of the author who most influenced him in speculative idea and in the general manner of treating his subject, leads to the conclusion that, in its essential characteristics, the poem is a genuine work of Italian art and inspiration. If the original motive influencing him was the ambition to treat of rural life in the serious spirit of Hesiod, as he had done in the lighter vein of Theocritus, that motive was soon lost in the strong impulse to invest with charm and dignity the kind of life in which the Italian mind placed its ideal of worth and happiness. By thus identifying himself with a great national object Virgil raised himself to a higher level of art than that attained by poets whose interests are purely personal and literary.

Next to satire, there was no form of poetry which had more of a Roman character than didactic poetry. By becoming a province of Roman art, this form acquired all its dignity and capacity of greatness. And though the Georgics, being a work of Italian culture as well as of Italian inspiration, could not escape some relation, not in form only but in materials and mode of expression, to Greek originals, there is no great work of Latin genius, except the Satires and Epistles of Horace, in which the debt thus incurred is so small. And not only is the[pg 262]debt small in quantity, but it is incurred to authors much inferior to Virgil in creative power and poetical feeling. In using borrowed materials he makes the mind of Greece tributary to his own national design. But his most valuable materials are derived either from personal observation, or from Latin authors who had put on record the results of their observation: and his largest debt, in imaginative feeling and conception, is incurred not to any Greek author, but to the most powerful and original of Roman poets and thinkers. The speculative idea, which gives something of philosophical consistency to the poem, was, if not one of pure Italian conception, yet made more truly real and vital through the experience of the force and endurance exercised by the strong men of Italy in subduing the earth to their will, and in constructing their great material works (‘operum laborem’), such as their roads, baths, aqueducts, harbours, encampments, and great draining works, by which they provided the comforts of life (‘commoda vitae’) and defended themselves against their enemies or the maligner influence of the elements.

The language of Virgil himself and the testimony of ancient commentators confirm the impression, that the object of which he was most distinctly conscious in the composition of the poem was the ‘glorification of Italy,’—of the land itself in its fertility and beauty, and of the life most congenial to Italian sentiment. Even to a greater extent than he may have intended, Virgil, through the national mould in which his thought was cast and the national colour of his sympathies, fulfils this representative office. Where the poem seems to a modern reader to fail in human interest, the interest which it had for the poet’s countrymen is revived by dwelling in thought on this representative character. When the associations appealed to are of Greek rather than of Italian origin, we have to remember that the poem was addressed to a highly educated class of readers, at the time when the Roman mind had been most enlarged and enriched, but had not yet been satiated by Greek studies. Yet this kind of appeal is quite subsidiary to that made to the[pg 263]native sensibilities of the Romans. It is to commend to their love and admiration a purely Italian ideal that Virgil employs the resources of Greek learning, as well as all the strength and delicacy of his own genius.

A rapid review of the tastes, sympathies, and affections on the part of his readers to which Virgil appeals, both in the body of his poem and in its finer episodes, will show that they all contribute to produce this representative character. Where some of the details of the poem seem to fail in poetic interest, they still have the interest of being characteristic of the Italian mind.

1. The poem professes to impart practical instruction on the best method of cultivating the land, of propagating trees, of breeding cattle, horses, etc., of profiting by the industry of bees:—

Quare agite, O, proprios generatim discite cultus,Agricolae401.

Quare agite, O, proprios generatim discite cultus,

Agricolae401.

This is the obvious and ostensible purpose of the poem; and the truth and accuracy of the instruction were important elements in the estimate which the countrymen of the poet formed of its value. Columella and Pliny, while controverting him on a few minor points402, attest his practical knowledge as an agriculturist and a naturalist. Similar testimony is given by some modern writers competent to speak with authority on these subjects403. Neither ancient nor modern critics regard him as[pg 264]free from liability to mistake, and the tendency of his mind to believe in marvellous deviations from natural law exposed him to errors into which less imaginative writers were not likely to fall; but the substantial accuracy of his observations and acquired knowledge seems to be attested both by positive and negative evidence. It is not a question as to whether the operations described in Virgil satisfy the requirements of skilled or even of unskilled farming in the present day, or whether he does not fall into mistakes in natural history which a modern reader, with no scientific knowledge of the subject, may easily detect; but whether he has adequately represented the methods of ancient Italian agriculture, and whether he is a trustworthy exponent of the scientific beliefs of his age, and an accurate observer of those phenomena which were as accessible to an ancient as to a modern enquirer. On these points he satisfied the best critics among his countrymen. The general truth of his observation is further attested by the survival in Southern Europe, into comparatively recent times, of some of the processes described by him, which seem most remote from our ordinary experience404. It is attested also by the accuracy of his description of the unchanging phenomena of Nature, and of the habits of animals.

A modern reader may think the value of his poetry little, if at all enhanced, by the rank which he may claim among the ‘scriptores rei rusticae.’ It may seem matter for regret that so much of the faculty, which should have given permanent delight[pg 265]to the world, should have been employed in conveying temporary instruction. His very fidelity to the office of a teacher detracts somewhat from his poetic office. Though it satisfies our curiosity to know how the ancient Italians tilled their lands and cultivated the vine, yet this satisfaction is quite distinct from the joy which the poetical treatment of a poetical subject gives to the imagination. It is not as repertories of useful information that the great writers of Greece and Rome are to be studied. Their importance in this way has long since been superseded. Each generation adds to the stock of knowledge in the world, modifies the results arrived at by the preceding generation, and dispenses with the works in which these results have been embodied. But a work of power, stimulating moral and intellectual feeling,—whether in the form of poem, history, speech, or philosophic dialogue,—may acquire from long antiquity even a stronger hold over the imagination than it originally possessed405. In the didactic poems of Lucretius and Virgil the information conveyed by them possesses permanent value, in so far as it is coloured by human feeling,—in so far as we recognise the passion or affection by which the poet was stirred in acquiring his knowledge and in conveying it to sympathetic readers. And as the scientific enthusiasm of Lucretius animates the driest details of his argument, so the love entertained for his subject by Virgil,—as an Italian, the son of a small Italian land-holder,—

Veneto rusticis parentibus nato inter silvas et frutices educto406,—

writing for Italians, for whom every detail of farm labour had a fascination unintelligible to us,—brightens with the gleam of human and poetical feeling the technical teaching of the traditional precepts of Italian husbandry. The position of a teacher assumed by him,—a position which no great Greek or[pg 266]English poet could gracefully maintain,—impresses us with the thorough adaptation of the form of the poem to the sober practical understanding of the Italian race. Horace mentions this love of teaching and learning as one of the notes distinguishing the Roman from the Greek genius:—

Maiores audire, minori dicere per quaeCrescere res posset, minui damnosa libido407.

Maiores audire, minori dicere per quae

Crescere res posset, minui damnosa libido407.

It adds to our sense of Virgil’s thoroughness as an artist to know that he faithfully performed the office which he undertook; and the fact of his undertaking this office helps to bring home to us the practical, unspeculative genius of those to whom his poem was in the first place addressed.

2. Not only the instruction directly conveyed in the poem, but the frequent illustrations from geography, mythology, and astronomy, have much less meaning to us than they had to the contemporaries of the poet. Yet they help to make us realise the relation in which the Rome and Italy of the Augustan Age stood to the rest of the world and to the culture of the past. By the references to the varied products of other lands we are reminded of the active commercial intercourse between Rome and the East,—a feature of the age of which we are also often reminded in the Odes, Satires, and Epistles of Horace. We see how the success of the Roman arms had made the products of the whole world—the ‘saffron dye of Tmolus,’ the ‘ivory of India,’ the ‘spices of Arabia,’ the ‘iron of the Chalybians,’ the ‘medicinal drugs of Pontus,’ the ‘brood-mares of Epirus408’—part of the possessions of Rome. We are reminded too of the fact that many Romans and Italians were settled as colonists in the provinces of the Empire, and that Virgil had them also in view in the instruction which he imparts409. The frequent allusions to Greek mythology and to the constellations, on the[pg 267]other hand, help to remind us that the art and science of the past, as well as the material products of the world, had now been diverted to the enjoyment and use of the new inheritors of intellectual culture.

3. It was seen how assiduously Virgil, in the body of his poem, inculcates the necessity and duty of labour. And though the ‘glorification of labour’ was found to be rather a derivative and tributary stream than the main current of interest in the poem, yet it is impossible to doubt that to the mind of Virgil this assiduous toil of the husbandman, on a work so congenial and surrounded with such accessories of peaceful happiness, had a special attraction, even independent of its results. This recognition of the dignity of labour owes nothing to a Greek original. A life of intellectual leisure was the ideal of the Greeks. Hesiod indeed does dwell on the necessity of labour, as the ground both of worldly well-being and divine approval,—and this is another point of affinity between him and Virgil,—but the line in which he claims consideration for work,

Ἔργον δ’ οὐδὲν ὄνειδος, ἀεργίη δέ τ’ ὄνειδος410,

is apologetic in tone; and, moreover, Hesiod can hardly be regarded as a typical Greek. There seems to be no word in the Greek language equivalent to the grave Roman word ‘industria.’ Perhaps it is owing to the disesteem in which labour was held by Greek writers that industry is scarcely ranked among virtues, nor idleness among vices, even by modern moralists. When long after the time of Homer a new poet arose in Greece, appealing to a great popular sentiment, it was in their passion for the great public games that he found the point of contact with the hearts of his countrymen. The Romans, on the other hand, show a great capacity for labour in every field of exertion,—in war and the government of men, in law and literature, in business transactions, in the construction of vast works of utility, and in cultivating the land. And of these, next to war and government, the last was most congenial[pg 268]to the national mind. The land was to the Romans the chief field of their industry and the original source of their wealth, as the sea was the scene of occupation and adventure to the Greeks, and, through the outlet which it gave to the results of their artistic ingenuity, the great source of their prosperity. The Odyssey is a poem inspired, in a great degree, by the impulse which first sent the Greek nation forth on its career of maritime and colonising enterprise. The Georgics are inspired by that impulse which first started the Latin race on its career of conquest, and which continued to animate the struggle with the reluctant forces of Nature, as it had animated the struggle with the other races of Italy for the possession of the soil.

4. Again, we find that the poem is pervaded by the poetical feeling of Nature. And Virgil, more than any other poet, presents that aspect of Nature in which the outward world appeared to the educated Italian mind. The personality and individual life attributed to natural objects, such as trees, rivers, winds, etc., belongs to a stage of conception between the Greek anthropomorphism and the recognition by the imagination of universal law and interdependence of phenomena. Modern poets consciously personify natural objects with more boldness and varied sympathy than Virgil. His conception of the life and personal attributes of natural objects appears to be less a conscious creative effort of the imagination, than an unconscious impression from outward things; an impression produced in a state of passive contemplation, rather than of active adventure; and an impression produced by qualities of a serene and tender beauty, rather than by those of a bolder or sublimer aspect. In all these respects Virgil represents a stage in the culture of the imagination between that of the early Greek poets and artists, and that of the most imaginative poets and painters of modern times. The familiar beauty of the outward world, as it was felt by a Roman or Italian, was expressed in the Latin word ‘amoenum.’ Thus Horace describes his retreat among the Sabine hills, as not only dear to him personally, but as beautiful in itself:—

Hae latebrae dulces, etiam, si credis, amoenae411.

And it is to the attributes summed up in that word that Virgil imparts the ideal life of the imagination.

But not only is the feeling of Nature in the Georgics characteristic of the highest culture of the Italian mind, but the spectacle of Nature,—

‘The outward shows of sky and earth’

brought before us,—is that which still delights the eye and moves the imagination in the various districts of Italy. The description of Spring at Georg. ii. 323–345,

Ver adeo frondi nemorum, ...... exciperet caeli indulgentia terras,

Ver adeo frondi nemorum, ...

... exciperet caeli indulgentia terras,

is one of which (though we can always feel its beauty) we cannot often verify the accuracy in our more northern latitudes. It is to an Italian spring, more than to any season in any other European country, that the words of the third Eclogue ‘nunc formosissimus annus,’ are applicable. The varied pastoral beauty of the long summer day described at Georg. iii. 323–338,—from the early dawn when the fields are fresh beneath the morning-star; through the gathering warmth of the later hours, when the groves are loud with the chirping of the grasshoppers and the herds collect around the deep water-pools; through the burning heat of midday, from which the shade of some huge oak or some grove of dark ilexes affords a shelter; till the coolness of evening tempers the air, and the moon renews with dew the dry forest-glades,—is a beauty quite distinct from the charm of freedom and solitude,—yet not too remote from human neighbourhood,—of the changing aspects of the sky, and of the picturesque environment of hill, river, and moorland, which abides in the pastoral regions of our own and other northern lands. The ‘sweet interchange of hill and valley412,’ mountain range and rich[pg 270]cultivated land, which northern and central Italy exhibits, must have made such scenes as that described at ii. 186–188,

Qualem saepe cava montis convalle solemusDespicere413, etc.,

Qualem saepe cava montis convalle solemus

Despicere413, etc.,

and again the opening scene of the poem, at i. 43,

Vere novo gelidus canis cum montibus umorLiquitur, et Zephyro putris se glaeba resolvit414,

Vere novo gelidus canis cum montibus umor

Liquitur, et Zephyro putris se glaeba resolvit414,

familiar to Roman readers. And while the ‘caeli indulgentia’ characteristic of the Italian climate is felt as a pervading genial presence through the various books of the poem, the sudden and violent vicissitudes to which that climate is especially liable form part of the varied and impressive spectacle presented to us. The passage i. 316–321,

Saepe ego cum flavis ... stipulasque volantis,

records a calamity to which the labours of the Italian husbandman were peculiarly exposed. In the description of the storm of rain, immediately following, the words ‘collectae ex alto nubes’ remind us, like the description of a similar storm in Lucretius (vi. 256–261), that Virgil, as Lucretius may have done, must often have watched such a tempest gathering over the sea that washes the Campanian shores. The inundation of the Po is described among the omens accompanying the death of Caesar, in lines which may have been suggested by some scene actually witnessed by the poet, and which with vivid exactness represent for all times the destructive forces put forth by the great river that drains the vast mountain-ranges of Northern Italy:—

Proluit insano contorquens vertice silvasFluviorum rex Eridanus, camposque per omnesCum stabulis armenta tulit415.

Proluit insano contorquens vertice silvas

Fluviorum rex Eridanus, camposque per omnes

Cum stabulis armenta tulit415.

And while the general representation of Nature, in the freshness or serene glory of her beauty and in her destructive energy, is true to that aspect which she presents in Italian scenery, the characteristic features and products of particular localities in the various regions of Italy are recalled to memory with truthful effect. The love of Nature in Lucretius appears apart from local associations. In Horace this feeling seems to link itself to places dear to him from the memories of childhood, or from the personal experience of later years. In Virgil the feeling is both general as in Lucretius, and combined with attachment to or interest in particular places as in Horace. But Virgil is able to feel enthusiasm not only for places dear to him through personal association, but for all which appeal to his sentiment of national pride. As was seen in the last chapter, the episode, which perhaps more than any other brings out the inspiring thought of the poem, is devoted to a celebration of the varied beauties of the land; and the names of Clitumnus, of Larius, and Benacus are still dearer to the world because they are for ever intermingled with ‘the rich Virgilian rustic measure416.’ In the body of the poem also we find many local references to the northern, central, and southern regions of Italy. The light bark, hollowed out of the alder, is launched on the rapid flood of the[pg 272]Po; the starwort, out of which wreaths are made to adorn the altars of the gods, is gathered by shepherds by the winding banks of the Mella (a river in Northern Italy mentioned also by Catullus); the meadow-land which unfortunate Mantua lost is adduced as a type of the best kind of pasture, and the land in the neighbourhood of Capua and the region skirting Mount Vesuvius as that most suitable for corn-crops. We read also of the rose-beds of Paestum,—of the olives clothing the sides of the Samnian Taburnus,—of the woodland pastures of Sila,—of those by the banks of the Silarus, on Alburnus green with ilexes, and by the dry torrent-bed of the Tanager,—and of the yellow cornfields through which the dark Galaesus flows. The Aeneid affords further testimony of the interest which Virgil awakens in the region which forms the distant environment of Rome. But the sentiment of the Georgics is a sentiment of peace inspired by the land, quite different from that inspired by the Imperial City, and from the memories of war and conquest with which the neighbourhood of Rome is associated. And though the aspect which Nature generally presents in the poem is that of her nobler mood, yet that air of indolent repose which characterises her presence in the Eclogues is not altogether absent from the severer poem. The sense of rest after toil—‘molles sub arbore somni,’—the quiet contemplation of wide and peaceful landscapes,—‘latis otia fundis,’—relieve the strain of strenuous labour which is enforced as the indispensable condition of realising the glory of the land.

5. The religious and ethical thought of the poem is also in accordance with what was happiest and best in the old Italian faith and life. The poetical belief in many protecting agencies—

Dique deaeque omnes studium quibus arva tueri417—

watching over the labours of the husbandman, and present at his simple festival and ceremonies, is in accordance with the genial character of the rustic Paganism of Italy and with the[pg 273]attributes of the great gods of the land, Faunus and Saturnus. Human life appeared to Hesiod as well as to Virgil to be in immediate dependence on the gods. But the graver aspect of Virgil’s faith is purer and happier than that of Hesiod; as the trust in a just and beneficent father is purer and happier than the fear of a jealous task-master. But on the other hand, the faith of Virgil is less noble than that of Aeschylus and of Sophocles. It is more of a passive yielding to the longing of the human heart and to the impulses of an aesthetic emotion, than that union of natural piety with insight into the mystery of life which no great poets, Pagan or Christian (unless it may be Dante), exhibit in equal measure with the two great Athenian dramatists. In the religious spirit of Virgil, which accepts and does not question, which finds its resource in prayer rather than in reverent contemplation and searching out of the ways of God, we may recognise a true note of his nationality,—a submissive attitude in presence of the Invisible Power, derived from the race whose custom it was to veil the head in sacrifice and in approaching the images of their gods418.

6. Equally true to the national character is the ethical ideal upheld in the Georgics. The negative elements in that ideal were seen to be exemption from the violent passions and pleasures of the world. And in these negative elements the ideal of the Georgics coincides with that of Lucretius. But, on the positive side, Virgil’s ideal implies the active performance of duties to the family and to the State. One has only to remember the low esteem in which women were held and the indifference to family ties in the palmiest days of Athenian civili[pg 274]sation, or to recall the ideal State of Plato’s imagination, to perceive how true to Italian, and how remote from Greek sentiment, are the pictures presented in such passages as these—

Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati;Casta pudicitiam servat domus—

Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati;

Casta pudicitiam servat domus—

and this—

Interea longum cantu solata laboremArguto coniunx percurrit pectine telas419.

Interea longum cantu solata laborem

Arguto coniunx percurrit pectine telas419.

Friendship among men, and even the social friendliness which makes life more pleasant and manners more humane, were ranked among the virtues by Greek philosophy; and the first is treated by Aristotle, not only as a single virtue, but as the condition under which all virtue can best be realised: but natural affection is regarded as a mere instinct, and the duties of family life do not fall under any of those conditions with which ethical philosophy concerns itself. On the other hand, the legendary history of the early Republic, and many great examples, in the midst of the corruption of the later Republic and of the Empire, prove that the ideal of domestic virtue and affection among the Romans was no mere passing fancy or dream of an age of primitive innocence, but was in harmony with the national conscience throughout the whole course of their history.

In devotion to the good of the State no superiority can be claimed for the Romans over the Athenians of the times of Cleisthenes, Themistocles, and Pericles. And while each people, in its best days, was equally ready to serve the Republic in war and by the performance of public duties, and while the Roman perhaps more than the Athenian regarded the labour of his hands as a service due from him420, the Athenian freely gave the higher energy of his genius to make the life of his fellow-citizens brighter and nobler. And it is the peculiar glory of the Athenians of the fifth centuryB.C.,—the glory claimed for them[pg 275]in one of the speeches attributed to their great Statesman by their great Historian,—that they combined this devotion to the common good with a high development of all personal excellence. But in Athens this union of national and individual energy and virtue was of very brief duration. On the other hand, the lasting greatness of the Roman Commonwealth was purchased by the sacrifice of the energies and accomplishments which add to the grace and enjoyment of individual existence. The greatness and permanence of the race, not the varied development of the individual, was the object aimed at and attained in the vigorous prime of the Roman Republic421.

If this aspect of national life is not directly brought before us by Virgil in the Georgics, it is brought into strong light in the representation of his mimic commonwealth—the

Mores et studia et populos et proelia422

of the community of bees. It scarcely needs the reminder of

ipsae regem parvosqueQuiritesSufficiunt423

ipsae regem parvosqueQuirites

Sufficiunt423

to convince us that, in this representation of an industrious and warlike community, earnest in labour from the love of the objects on which it was bestowed and from pride in its results—

Tantus amor florum et generandi gloria mellis424,—

resolute and unconquerable in battle, sacrificing life rather than abandoning the post of duty, inspired with more than Oriental devotion to their head, Virgil was teaching a lesson applicable to the Roman Commonwealth under its new government. While labour is shown to be a condition of individual happiness, or at least contentment, it is not in individual happiness, but in the permanent greatness of the community that its ultimate recom[pg 276]pense is to be sought. Though the individual life may be short and meagre in its attractions, and generation after generation may spend itself in an unceasing round of toil,

At genus immortale manet, multosque per annosStat fortuna domus et avi numerantur avorum425.

At genus immortale manet, multosque per annos

Stat fortuna domus et avi numerantur avorum425.

The training and discipline for the attainment of these virtues are to be sought in plain and frugal living, in hardy pastime as well as hardy industry426, in obedience to parents and reverent worship of the gods—

Illic saltus et lustra ferarum,Et patiens operum exiguoque adsueta iuventus,Sacra deum sanctique patres427,—

Illic saltus et lustra ferarum,

Et patiens operum exiguoque adsueta iuventus,

Sacra deum sanctique patres427,—

and in abstinence from the luxurious indulgence, the anxious business, and the enervating pleasures of a corrupt civilisation428. While the grace and beauty of the poem arise out of the feeling of the life of Nature, the dignity and sanctity with which the subject is invested are due to the sense of the intimate connexion between the cultivation of the land and the moral and religious life of the Italian race.

7. The poem may be called a representative work of genius in respect also of its artistic execution. It is the finest work of Italian art, made perfect by the long education of Greek studies. More than any work in Latin literature the Georgics approach to the symmetry of form, the harmony of proportion, the unity of design and tone, characteristic of the purest art of Greece. But it is not in any sense a copy formed after any Greek pattern. It was seen that out of the more rudimentary attempts of Greek literature in this particular form of poetry Virgil[pg 277]created a new and nobler type, which never has been, and probably never will be, improved on. The execution of the poem is characterised by the genial susceptibility and enthusiasm of the Italian temperament, by the firm structure of all Roman work and the practical moderation and dignity of the Roman mind, and by a kind of meditative and pensive grace peculiar to the poet himself. The thought of the poem is not separable from the sentiment pervading it. And in this respect there is a marked difference between the genius of Virgil and of Lucretius. However much the speculative activity of Lucretius is charged with feeling, yet the thought stands out, clearly defined, through the atmosphere surrounding it. The melancholy of Lucretius, though it was the result partly of disposition,—the reaction perhaps of a strongly passionate temperament,—and partly of his relation to his age, was yet a state of mind for which he could assign definite grounds. That of Virgil was probably also in a great measure the result of temperament; but it seems to be a mood habitual to one who meditated much inwardly on the misery of the world, who was moved by compassion for all sights of sorrow or suffering429, and was yet unable to shape this sense of ‘the burthen of the mystery’ into articulate thought. The atmosphere of the poem has become one with its substance. The fusion of meditation and feeling derived from the individual genius of the poet imparts a distinctively original charm to the style of the Georgics.

The style is thus, in a great degree, Virgil’s own, and owes little to the borrowed beauties of Greek expression. Though the language of the Alexandrine poets is sometimes reproduced, yet the beauty of those transferred passages arises from the grace given to them, not from that borrowed from them. The same[pg 278]may be said of the use sometimes made of the quaint diction of Hesiod. In one or two striking passages, such as that

Ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis, etc.,

Virgil has adopted the language of the Iliad430; and though it is impossible to improve on that, yet there is no slavish imitation of it; only a new picture is painted, recalling, by some vivid touches, a former piece by the great master. If detraction is to be made from the originality of expression in the Georgics, the debt due by Virgil was incurred to his own countryman. In adopting modes of expression from Lucretius, Virgil brings down the bold creativeness of his original to a tone more suited to the habitual sobriety of the Italian imagination. He often fixes into the form of some general thought what appears in Lucretius as a living movement or individualised action. And this tendency to abstract rather than concrete representation is in accordance with the Roman mould of mind. We notice also how much more sparingly he uses such compound words as ‘navigerum,’ ‘silvifragis,’ etc., by which the earlier poets endeavoured to force the harder metal of the Latin language into the flexibility of Greek speech. Virgil felt that these innovations were unsuited to the genius of the Latin tongue, and endeavoured to enlarge its capacities by novel constructions and by using old words with a new application rather than by novel formations of words. But this gain was perhaps more than compensated by the loss which the language suffered in idiomatic purity and clearness.

In rhythmical movement the poem exhibits the highest perfection of which Latin verse is capable. Of Homer’s verse it has been happily said that it has ‘a tranquil deep strength, reminding us of his own line,

Ἐξ ἀκαλαρρείταο βαθυρρόου ὠκεανοῖο431.

The movement of Virgil’s verse reminds us rather of his own river—

qui per saxa volutusPurior electro campum petit432.

qui per saxa volutus

Purior electro campum petit432.

Occasionally we catch the sound of some more rapid rush and impetuous fall, as in the hurry and agitation and culminating grandeur of these lines—

Continuo, ventis surgentibus, aut freta pontiIncipiunt agitata tumescere, et aridus altisMontibus audiri fragor, aut resonantia longeLitora misceri et nemorum increbrescere murmur433;—

Continuo, ventis surgentibus, aut freta ponti

Incipiunt agitata tumescere, et aridus altis

Montibus audiri fragor, aut resonantia longe

Litora misceri et nemorum increbrescere murmur433;—

but generally the stream flows on, neither in rapid torrent nor with abrupt transitions, but ‘with a tranquil deep strength,’ fed by pure and abounding sources of affection, of contemplation, of moral and religious feeling, of delight from eye and ear, from memory and old poetic association.

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