V.

V.That the passion of Dido is powerfully conceived and delineated, that it satisfies modern feeling more legitimately than the representation of the unhallowed impulses of Phaedra, or of the cruel and treacherous rancour of Medea, will scarcely be questioned. Yet perhaps it is doing no injustice to the genius of Virgil to say that his power in dealing with human life consists generally in conceiving some state of feeling, some pathetic or passionate situation, rather than in the creation and sustained development of living characters. How the great impersonations of poetry and prose fiction, which are more real to our imaginations than the personages of history or those whom we know in life, come into being, is a question which probably their authors themselves could not answer. Though reflexion on human nature and deliberate intention to exemplify some law of life may precede the creative act which gives them being, and though continued reflexion may be needed to sustain[pg 409]them in a consistent course, yet no mere analytic insight into the springs of action can explain the process by which a great artist works. The beings of his imagination seem to acquire an existence independent of the experience and of the deliberate intentions of their author, and to inform this experience and mould these intentions as much as they are informed and moulded by them. Virgil’s imagination in the creation of Dido seems to be possessed in this way. She grows more and more real as her passion deepens. Virgil’s intention in this representation may have been to show the tragic infatuation of a woman’s love—furens quid femina possit:but his sympathetic insight into this passion—an insight already shown in the Eclogues—stimulates the forces of his imagination to a nobler as well as a more vital creation than in any other of his impersonations. Dido ranks for all times as one of the great heroines of poetry. So long as she appears on the scene the interest in the exhibition of her nature overpowers all other interests. But this is not the case with Virgil’s other personages. We are more interested in what they say and in what happens to them than in what they are. In other words, it is by his oratorical and descriptive, rather than by his dramatic faculty, that he secures the attention of his readers. As oratory was one of the most important powers in ancient life, so it became a prominent element in ancient epic and dramatic poetry,—in Homer, Ennius, and Virgil, as well as in Sophocles, Euripides, and the Roman tragedians. The oratory of the Aeneid shows nothing of the speculative power—of the application of great ideas to life—which gives the profoundest value not only to many speeches in Sophocles, but also to some of those in the Iliad, and notably to such as proceed from the mouth of Odysseus. It cannot equal the vivid naturalness of the speeches of Nestor, nor the impassioned grandeur of those of Achilles. Neither is it characterised by the subtle psychological analysis which is the most interesting quality in the rhetoric of Euripides. On the other hand, it is not disfigured[pg 410]by the forensic special pleading and word-fencing which is an occasional flaw in the dramatic art of Sophocles, and a pervading mannerism in that of the younger poet. The impression of grave political deliberation is left on the mind by some of the fragments of Ennius more effectually than by anything uttered in the councils of gods or men in the Aeneid. But it is in the greatest of modern epics that the full force of intellect and feeling animating grave councils of state is most grandly idealised. The speeches in Virgil, though they want the intellectual power and the majestic largeness of utterance of those in Milton, are, like his, stately and dignified in expression; they are disfigured by no rhetorical artifice of fine-spun argument or exaggerated emphasis; they are rapid with the vehemence of scorn and indignation, fervid with martial pride and enthusiasm, or, occasionally, weighty with the power of controlled emotion. They have the ring of Roman oratory, as it is heard in the animated declamation of Livy, and sometimes seem to anticipate the reserved force and ‘imperial brevity’ of Tacitus. They give a true voice to ‘the high, magnanimous Roman mood,’ and to the fervour of spirit with which that mood was associated. And this effect is sometimes increased by the use which the polished poet of the Augustan Age makes of the grave, ardent, but unformed utterances—‘rudes et inconditae voces’—of the epic and tragic poets of the Republic.The descriptive faculty of Virgil is quite unlike that of Homer, but yet it has great excellences of its own. In the Iliad and Odyssey man appears ‘vigorous and elastic such as poetry saw him first, such as poetry would ever see him665;’ and the outward world is described in the clear forms and the animated movement which impress themselves immediately on the sense and mind of men thus happily organised. Virgil too presents to us the varied spectacle of human life and of the outward world under many impressive aspects. But these aspects of things do not affect the mind with the immediate[pg 411]impulse which the natural man receives from them, and of which he retains the vivid picture in his mind. As in his pastoral poems and in the Georgics Virgil seems to abstract from the general aspect of things the characteristic sentiment which Nature inspires in particular places and at particular times, and to see the scene which he describes under the influence of that sentiment, so in the Aeneid various human ‘situations’ are conceived under the influence of some sense of awe or wonder, of beauty or pathos, of local or antique association; and the whole description is so presented as to bring this central interest into prominent relief. The thought of the whole situation, not the sequence of events in time or causal connexion, is what determines the grouping and subordination of details.Thus in the description of the storm in Book i., the dominant feeling by the light of which the circumstances are to be realised is that of sudden and overwhelming power in the elements and of man’s impotence to contend against them. In the description of the harbour in which the ships of Aeneas find refuge we feel the sense of calm and peace after storm and danger. In the interview between Venus and her son the impression left on the mind is that of a mysterious supernatural grace enhancing the charm of human beauty, such as is produced by the pictorial representations of religious art. We seem to look on the rising towers and dwellings of Carthage with that joyful sense of wonder and novelty with which the thought of the beginning of great enterprises, or of the discovery of unknown lands, and the first view of ancient and famous cities, such as Rome or Venice, appeal to the imagination. In the second Book the effect of the whole representation is enhanced by the sentiment of awe and mystery with which night, and darkness, and the intermittent flashes of light which break the darkness, impress the mind. Thus as a prelude to the terrible and tragical scenes afterwards represented, the apparition of Hector comes before Aeneas in the deepest stillness of the night—[pg 412]Tempus erat quo prima quies mortalibus aegrisIncipit666.Then follow the confused sights and sounds of battle, like those of theνυκτομαχίαin the seventh Book of Thucydides and of that in the Vitellian war of Tacitus,—the spectacle revealed by the light of the burning city—Sigaea igni freta lata relucent667;the vivid gleams in which the death of Priam, the cowering figure of Helen, the majestic forms of the Olympian gods taking part in the work of destruction, are for a moment disclosed out of the surrounding darkness, the alarm and bewilderment of the escape from the house of Anchises and of the vain attempt of Aeneas to recover the lost Creusa—Horror ubique, animos simul ipsa silentia terrent668.The third Book is pervaded by the feeling of the sea,—not as in the Odyssey of its buoyant and inexhaustible life, nor yet of the dread which it inspired in the earliest mariners,—but in that more modern mood in which it unfolds to the traveller the animated spectacle of islands and coasts famous for their beauty or their historic and legendary associations. In the fifth Book, as is pointed out by Chateaubriand, the effect of the limitless and monotonous prospect of the open sea in producing a sense of weariness and melancholy, such as that expressed in ‘The Lotus-eaters’—‘but evermoreMost weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,Weary the wandering fields of barren foam,’is profoundly felt in the passage—At procul in sola secretae Troades actaAmissum Anchisen flebant cunctaeque profundumPontum adspectabant flentes; ‘heu tot vada fessisEt tantum superesse maris,’ vox omnibus una669.[pg 413]It was seen how the sense of supernatural awe adds to the tragic grandeur of the despair and death of Dido, as in the lines, which bear some trace of a vivid passage in Ennius—agit ipse furentemIn somnis ferus Aeneas: semperque relinquiSola sibi, semper longam incomitata videturIre viam, et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra670.Thus too the mind is prepared for the spectacle revealed in the Descent into Hell by the awful sublimity of the Invocation—Di quibus imperium est animarum umbraeque silentes671.The description of the funeral rites of Pallas produces that complex impression of sadness and solemnity mixed with proud memories and thoughts of the pomp and circumstance of war which affects men in the present day, when witnessing the spectacle of the funeral of some great soldier who has died full of years and honour—Post bellator equus positis insignibus AethonIt lacrimans guttisque umectat grandibus ora.Hastam alii galeamque ferunt, nam cetera TurnusVictor habet. Tum moesta phalanx Teucrique sequunturTyrrhenique omnes et versis Arcades armis672.In the employment of illustrative imagery Virgil is much more sparing than Homer. The varied forces of Nature and of animal life supplied materials to the Greek poet by which to enhance the poetical sense of the situation which he de[pg 414]scribes; and all these forces are apprehended by him with a vivid feeling of wonder, and presented to the imagination with a truthful observation of outward signs, and with a sympathetic insight into their innermost nature. Virgil is not only more sparing in the use of these figures; he is also tamer and less inventive in their application. In those drawn from the life of wild animals he, for the most part, reproduces the Homeric imagery, though we note as one touch of realism in them that the wolf, familiar to Italy, frequently takes the place of the lion, which was probably still an object of terror in Western Asia at the time when Homer lived. Another class of images reproduced from Homer is that of those in which a mortal is compared to an immortal, as at i. 498—Qualis in Eurotae ripis, aut per iuga Cynthi,Exercet Diana choros, etc.,though in this some variations are introduced from a simile in Apollonius. Another passage of the same kind is immediately derived from the Alexandrine poet—Qualis, ubi hibernam Lyciam Xanthique fluenta673, etc.There is, however, another class of ‘similes’ used by Virgil in his epic, after the example of the Alexandrines, which can scarcely be said to fulfil the function of a poetical analogy, but merely to give a realistic outward symbol of some movement of the mind or passions, without any imaginative enhancement of the situation. Such, for instance, is the comparison at vii. 377, etc. of the mind of Amata to a top whipped by boys round an empty court,—a comparison suggested by a passage in Callimachus674; and that again at viii. 22, etc. of the variations of purpose in the mind of Aeneas, produced by the surging sea of cares besetting him, to the variations of light reflected from the water in a copper cauldron,—a comparison directly imitated from Apollonius (iii. 754, etc.). There are others again of[pg 415]what may be called a somewhat conventional cast, which acquire individuality from the colour of local associations, such as the introduction (at xii. 715) of two bulls battling together (as they are also described in the Georgics)—ingenti Sila, summove Taburno;the comparison (at xii. 701 etc.) of Aeneas, towering in all his warlike power, to Athos or Eryx—aut ipse, coruscisCum fremit ilicibus, quantus, gaudetque nivaliVertice se attollens, pater Appenninus ad auras675;and that at ix. 680, etc., in which the two sons of Alcanor are likened to two tall oaks growing—Sive Padi ripis Athesim seu propter amoenum676.But there are other comparisons in Virgil indicative of more original invention, observation, and reflexion, which serve the true purpose of imaginative analogies, viz. that of exalting the peculiar sentiment with which the poet desires the situation he is describing to be regarded. In the perception of these analogies it is not merely intellectual curiosity that is gratified by the apprehension of theτοῦτο ἐκεῖνοin the phenomena; but the imagination is enlarged by the recognition of analogous forces operating in different spheres, which separately are capable of producing a vivid and noble emotion. As an instance of this perception of the analogy between great forces in different spheres, the one of human, the other of natural activity, we may take the comparison of the Italian host advancing in orderly march after its tumultuous gathering from many quarters, to the movement of mighty rivers when their component waters have found their appointed bed—Ceu septem surgens sedatis amnibus altusPer tacitum Ganges, aut pingui flumine NilusCum refluit campis et iam se condidit alveo677.[pg 416]Others again show the vivid interest mixed with poetical wonder which animated Virgil’s power of observation in his Georgics—as for instance that at i. 430 of the busy workers in Carthage to bees in early summer toiling among the flowery fields—an image ennobled also by Milton, who characteristically describes the bees as ‘conferring their state-affairs,’ while it is not to their political, but to their industrial, martial, and social or domestic aptitudes,(cum gentis adultosEducunt fetus)that Virgil draws attention. Of the same class is the comparison at iv. 404, etc., of the Trojans preparing to leave the shores of Carthage to the movement of ants engaged in gathering together some heap of corn for their winter’s store—It nigrum campis agmen, etc.Others again are suggested by his subtle and sympathetic discernment of the conditions of inward feeling; as the comparison at iv. 70, etc. of Dido to the hind, which, unsuspecting of danger, has received a mortal wound from a hand ignorant of the harm which it has inflicted—haeret lateri letalis harundo.The awe and mystery of the unseen world suggest the comparison of the crowd of shades pressing round Charon’s boat to innumerable leaves falling in the woods, or to flocks of birds driven across the sea by the first cold of autumn—Quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primoLapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab altoQuam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annusTrans pontum fugat et terris inmittit apricis678.The point of comparison in this simile is not merely the obvious[pg 417]one of the number of leaves falling or birds flying across the sea in autumn, but rather the inner likeness between the passive helplessness with which the leaves have yielded to the chill touch of the year, and that with which the shades—νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα—have yielded to the chill touch of death. Nor perhaps is it pressing the language of Virgil too far to suppose that in the words ‘terris inmittit apricis’ he means to leave on the mind a feeling of some happier possibilities in death than the certainty of ‘cold obstruction.’ One of the most characteristically Virgilian similes—that at vi. 453—qualem primo qui surgere menseAut videt, aut vidisse putat per nubila Lunam—is almost a translation of the lines of Apollonius (iv. 1447)—τὼς ἰδέειν, ὥς τίς τε νέῳ ἐνὶ ἤματι μήνηνἢ ἴδεν, ἢ ἐδόκησεν ἐπαχλύουσαν ἰδέσθαι679,—but the whole poetical power of the passage consists in the application of the image to the sudden recognition by Aeneas of the pale and shadowy form of his forsaken love, dimly discerned through the gloom of the lower world. Other images are suggested by the poet’s delicate sense of grace in flower or plant, combined with his tender compassion for the beauty of youth perishing prematurely. Such are those which enable us more vividly to realise the pathos of the death of Euryalus and of the burial of Pallas. Yet though these images are characteristically Virgilian, they also bear unmistakeable traces of imitation. The lines—Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratroLanguescit moriens, lassove papavera colloDemisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur680;and again—[pg 418]Qualem, virgineo demessum pollice, florem,Seu mollis violae, seu languentis hyacinthi,Cui neque fulgor adhuc, nec dum sua forma recessit;Non iam mater alit tellus, viresque ministrat681—recall not only the thought and feeling of Homer—μήκων δ’ ὣς ἑτέρωσε κάρη βάλενetc.,but the cadences and most cherished illustrations of Catullus, in whose imagination the grace of trees and the bloom of flowers are ever associated with the grace and bloom of youth and youthful passion.Had Virgil lived to devote three more years to the revisal of his work, there is no reason to suppose that he would have added anything to its substance. Some inconsistencies of statement, as, for instance, that between iii. 256 and vii. 123, would have disappeared, and some difficulties would have been cleared up. But the chief part of the ‘limae labor’ would have been employed in bringing the rhythm and diction of the poem to a more finished perfection than that which they exhibit at present. The unfinished lines in the poem would certainly have been completed and more closely connected with the passages immediately succeeding them. There is no indication that these lines were left purposely incomplete in order to give emphasis to some pause in the narrative. Virgil was the last poet likely to avail himself of so inartistic an innovation to give variety to his cadences. For the most part they appear to be weak props (‘tibicines’682) used provisionally to fill up the gap between two passages, and indicating but not completing the thought that was to connect them.What more of elegance, of compact structure, or of varied harmony Virgil might have imparted to his rhythm, it is impossible to determine. We might conjecture that his aim[pg 419]would have been, as regards both expression and metrical effect, to act on the maxim ‘ramos compesce fluentes,’ than to give them ampler scope. In a long narrative poem like the Aeneid that perfect smoothness and solidity of rhythmical execution which characterise the Georgics—in which poem the position and weight of each single word in each single line is an element contributing to the whole effect—is hardly to be expected. A narrative poem demands a more easy, varied, and even careless movement than one of which the interest is contemplative, and which requires to be studied minutely line by line and paragraph by paragraph, before its full meaning is realised. If the movement in the Aeneid appears in some place rougher, or less compact, or more languid than in others, this may be explained not only by the imperfect state in which the poem was left, but by the difficulty or impossibility of maintaining the same uniform level of elevation in so long a flight. Yet it cannot be said that there is any loss of power, any trace of contentment with a lower ideal of perfection in the general structure of the verse of the Aeneid. The full capacities of the Latin hexameter for purposes of animated or impressive narrative, of solemn or pathetic representation, of grave or impassioned oratory, of tender, dignified, or earnest appeal to the higher emotions of man, are realised in many passages of the poem. Virgil’s instrument fails, or, at least, is much inferior to Homer’s, in aptitude for natural dialogue or for bringing familiar things in the freshness of immediate impression before the imagination. The stateliness of movement appropriate to such utterances asAst ego quae Divom incedo regina683does not readily adapt itself to the description of the process of kindling a fire or preparing a meal—Ac primum silici scintillam excudit Achates,Suscepitque ignem foliis atque arida circumNutrimenta dedit rapuitque in fomite flammam684.[pg 420]To English readers the verse of the Aeneid may appear inferior in majesty and fulness of volume to that of Milton in his passages of most sustained power; but it is easier and less encumbered and thus more adapted to express various conditions of human life than the ordinary movement of the modern epic. It flows in a more varied, weighty, and self-restrained stream than the more homogeneous and overflowing current of Spenser’s verse. The Latin hexameter became for Virgil an exquisite and powerful medium for communicating to others a knowledge of his elevated moods and pensive meditativeness, and for calling up before their minds that spectacle of a statelier life and a more august order in the contemplation of which his spirit habitually lived.The last revision would also have removed from the poem some redundancies, obscurities, and weakness of expression. There is a greater tendency to use ‘otiose’ epithets than in the Georgics, and a minute criticism has taken note of the number of times in which such words as ‘ingens’ and ‘immanis’ occur in the poem. Though the interpretation of the meaning of the Aeneid as a whole is probably as certain as that of any other great work of antiquity, yet there are passages in it which still baffle commentators in deciding which of two or three possible meanings was in the mind of the poet, or whether he had himself finally resolved what turn he should give his thought. As there are lines left incomplete, so there are lame conclusions to lofty and impassioned utterances of feeling. Such for instance is the prosaic and tautological conclusion of the passage in which Lausus is brought on the scene—dignus, patriis qui laetior essetImperiis et cui pater haud Mezentius esset685.But it is only a microscopic observation of the structure of the poem that detects such blemishes as these. In the Aeneid[pg 421]Virgil’s style appears as great in its power of reaching the secrets of the human spirit, as in the Georgics it proved itself to be in eliciting the deeper meaning of Nature. He combines nearly all the characteristic excellences of the great Latin writers. His language appears indeed inferior not only to that of Lucretius and Catullus but even to that of Ennius in reproducing the first vivid impressions of things upon the mind. The phrases of Virgil are generally coloured with the associations and steeped in the feeling of older thoughts and memories. Yet if he seems inferior in direct force of presentation, he unites the two most marked and generally dissociated characteristics of the masters of Latin style,—the exuberance and vivacity of those writers in whom impulse and imagination are strong, such as Cicero, Livy, and Lucretius,—the terseness and compactness of expression, arising either from intensity of perception or reflective condensation, of which the shorter poems of Catullus, the Odes and Epistles of Horace, the writings of Sallust, and the memorial inscriptions of the time of the Republic and of the Empire afford striking examples. Virgil’s condensation of expression often resembles that of Tacitus, and seems to arise from the same cause, the restraint imposed by reflexion on the exuberance of a poetical imagination. By its combination of opposite excellences the style of the Aeneid is at once an admirable vehicle of continuous or compressed narrative, of large or concentrated description, of fluent and impassioned, or composed and impressive oratory. It possesses also the power, which distinguishes the older Latin writers, of stamping some grave or magnanimous lesson in imperishable characters on the mind—Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem,Fortunam ex aliis.Aude, hospes, contemnere opes et te quoque dignumFinge deo686.[pg 422]But Virgil is not only great as a Latin writer. The concurrent testimony of the most refined minds of all times marks him out as one of the greatest masters of the language which touches the heart or moves the manlier sensibilities, who has ever lived. A mature and mellow truth of sentiment, a conformity to the deeper experiences of life in every age, a fine humanity as well as a generous elevation of feeling, and some magical charm of music in his words, have enabled them to serve many minds in many ages as a symbol of some swelling thought or over-mastering emotion, the force and meaning of which they could scarcely define to themselves. A striking instance of this effect appears in the words in which Savonarola describes the impulse which forced him to abandon the career of worldly ambition, which his father pressed on him, in favour of the religious life. It was the voice of warning which he ever heard repeating to him the words—Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge litus avarum687.And while his tenderness of feeling has made Virgil the familiar friend of one class of minds, his high magnanimous spirit has equally gained for him the admiration of another class. The words of no other poet, ancient or modern, have been so often heard in the great debates of the English Parliament, which more than any other deliberations among men have reproduced the dignified and masculine eloquence familiar to the Roman Senate. One of the greatest masters of expression among living English writers has pointed, as characteristic of the magic of Virgil’s style, to ‘his single words and phrases, his pathetic half-lines giving utterance, as the voice of Nature herself, to that pain and weariness yet hope of better things which is the experience of her children in every time688.’ It is in[pg 423]the expression of this weariness and deep longing for rest, in making others feel his own sense of the painful toil and mystery of life and of the sadness of death, his sense too of vague yearning for some fuller and ampler being, that Virgil produces the most powerful effect by the use of the simplest words in their simplest application.‘O passi graviora—’‘Vobis parta quies—’‘Dis aliter visum—’‘Di, si qua est caelo pietas—’‘Heu vatum ignarae mentes—’‘Iam pridem invisus superis et inutilis annosDemoror—’‘Si pereo hominum manibus periisse iuvabit—’‘Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis—’‘Nesciaque humanis precibus mansuescere corda—’‘Impositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum—’‘Quod te per caeli iucundum lumen et auras—’‘Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore—’‘Securos latices et longa oblivia potant—689’these and many other pregnant sayings affect the mind with a strange potency, of which perhaps no account can be given except that they make us feel, as scarcely any other words do, the burden of the mystery of life, and by their marvellous beauty, the reflexion, it may be, from some light dimly discerned or imagined690beyond the gloom, they make it seem more easy to be borne.THE END.

That the passion of Dido is powerfully conceived and delineated, that it satisfies modern feeling more legitimately than the representation of the unhallowed impulses of Phaedra, or of the cruel and treacherous rancour of Medea, will scarcely be questioned. Yet perhaps it is doing no injustice to the genius of Virgil to say that his power in dealing with human life consists generally in conceiving some state of feeling, some pathetic or passionate situation, rather than in the creation and sustained development of living characters. How the great impersonations of poetry and prose fiction, which are more real to our imaginations than the personages of history or those whom we know in life, come into being, is a question which probably their authors themselves could not answer. Though reflexion on human nature and deliberate intention to exemplify some law of life may precede the creative act which gives them being, and though continued reflexion may be needed to sustain[pg 409]them in a consistent course, yet no mere analytic insight into the springs of action can explain the process by which a great artist works. The beings of his imagination seem to acquire an existence independent of the experience and of the deliberate intentions of their author, and to inform this experience and mould these intentions as much as they are informed and moulded by them. Virgil’s imagination in the creation of Dido seems to be possessed in this way. She grows more and more real as her passion deepens. Virgil’s intention in this representation may have been to show the tragic infatuation of a woman’s love—

furens quid femina possit:

but his sympathetic insight into this passion—an insight already shown in the Eclogues—stimulates the forces of his imagination to a nobler as well as a more vital creation than in any other of his impersonations. Dido ranks for all times as one of the great heroines of poetry. So long as she appears on the scene the interest in the exhibition of her nature overpowers all other interests. But this is not the case with Virgil’s other personages. We are more interested in what they say and in what happens to them than in what they are. In other words, it is by his oratorical and descriptive, rather than by his dramatic faculty, that he secures the attention of his readers. As oratory was one of the most important powers in ancient life, so it became a prominent element in ancient epic and dramatic poetry,—in Homer, Ennius, and Virgil, as well as in Sophocles, Euripides, and the Roman tragedians. The oratory of the Aeneid shows nothing of the speculative power—of the application of great ideas to life—which gives the profoundest value not only to many speeches in Sophocles, but also to some of those in the Iliad, and notably to such as proceed from the mouth of Odysseus. It cannot equal the vivid naturalness of the speeches of Nestor, nor the impassioned grandeur of those of Achilles. Neither is it characterised by the subtle psychological analysis which is the most interesting quality in the rhetoric of Euripides. On the other hand, it is not disfigured[pg 410]by the forensic special pleading and word-fencing which is an occasional flaw in the dramatic art of Sophocles, and a pervading mannerism in that of the younger poet. The impression of grave political deliberation is left on the mind by some of the fragments of Ennius more effectually than by anything uttered in the councils of gods or men in the Aeneid. But it is in the greatest of modern epics that the full force of intellect and feeling animating grave councils of state is most grandly idealised. The speeches in Virgil, though they want the intellectual power and the majestic largeness of utterance of those in Milton, are, like his, stately and dignified in expression; they are disfigured by no rhetorical artifice of fine-spun argument or exaggerated emphasis; they are rapid with the vehemence of scorn and indignation, fervid with martial pride and enthusiasm, or, occasionally, weighty with the power of controlled emotion. They have the ring of Roman oratory, as it is heard in the animated declamation of Livy, and sometimes seem to anticipate the reserved force and ‘imperial brevity’ of Tacitus. They give a true voice to ‘the high, magnanimous Roman mood,’ and to the fervour of spirit with which that mood was associated. And this effect is sometimes increased by the use which the polished poet of the Augustan Age makes of the grave, ardent, but unformed utterances—‘rudes et inconditae voces’—of the epic and tragic poets of the Republic.

The descriptive faculty of Virgil is quite unlike that of Homer, but yet it has great excellences of its own. In the Iliad and Odyssey man appears ‘vigorous and elastic such as poetry saw him first, such as poetry would ever see him665;’ and the outward world is described in the clear forms and the animated movement which impress themselves immediately on the sense and mind of men thus happily organised. Virgil too presents to us the varied spectacle of human life and of the outward world under many impressive aspects. But these aspects of things do not affect the mind with the immediate[pg 411]impulse which the natural man receives from them, and of which he retains the vivid picture in his mind. As in his pastoral poems and in the Georgics Virgil seems to abstract from the general aspect of things the characteristic sentiment which Nature inspires in particular places and at particular times, and to see the scene which he describes under the influence of that sentiment, so in the Aeneid various human ‘situations’ are conceived under the influence of some sense of awe or wonder, of beauty or pathos, of local or antique association; and the whole description is so presented as to bring this central interest into prominent relief. The thought of the whole situation, not the sequence of events in time or causal connexion, is what determines the grouping and subordination of details.

Thus in the description of the storm in Book i., the dominant feeling by the light of which the circumstances are to be realised is that of sudden and overwhelming power in the elements and of man’s impotence to contend against them. In the description of the harbour in which the ships of Aeneas find refuge we feel the sense of calm and peace after storm and danger. In the interview between Venus and her son the impression left on the mind is that of a mysterious supernatural grace enhancing the charm of human beauty, such as is produced by the pictorial representations of religious art. We seem to look on the rising towers and dwellings of Carthage with that joyful sense of wonder and novelty with which the thought of the beginning of great enterprises, or of the discovery of unknown lands, and the first view of ancient and famous cities, such as Rome or Venice, appeal to the imagination. In the second Book the effect of the whole representation is enhanced by the sentiment of awe and mystery with which night, and darkness, and the intermittent flashes of light which break the darkness, impress the mind. Thus as a prelude to the terrible and tragical scenes afterwards represented, the apparition of Hector comes before Aeneas in the deepest stillness of the night—

Tempus erat quo prima quies mortalibus aegrisIncipit666.

Tempus erat quo prima quies mortalibus aegris

Incipit666.

Then follow the confused sights and sounds of battle, like those of theνυκτομαχίαin the seventh Book of Thucydides and of that in the Vitellian war of Tacitus,—the spectacle revealed by the light of the burning city—

Sigaea igni freta lata relucent667;

the vivid gleams in which the death of Priam, the cowering figure of Helen, the majestic forms of the Olympian gods taking part in the work of destruction, are for a moment disclosed out of the surrounding darkness, the alarm and bewilderment of the escape from the house of Anchises and of the vain attempt of Aeneas to recover the lost Creusa—

Horror ubique, animos simul ipsa silentia terrent668.

The third Book is pervaded by the feeling of the sea,—not as in the Odyssey of its buoyant and inexhaustible life, nor yet of the dread which it inspired in the earliest mariners,—but in that more modern mood in which it unfolds to the traveller the animated spectacle of islands and coasts famous for their beauty or their historic and legendary associations. In the fifth Book, as is pointed out by Chateaubriand, the effect of the limitless and monotonous prospect of the open sea in producing a sense of weariness and melancholy, such as that expressed in ‘The Lotus-eaters’—

‘but evermoreMost weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,Weary the wandering fields of barren foam,’

‘but evermore

Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,

Weary the wandering fields of barren foam,’

is profoundly felt in the passage—

At procul in sola secretae Troades actaAmissum Anchisen flebant cunctaeque profundumPontum adspectabant flentes; ‘heu tot vada fessisEt tantum superesse maris,’ vox omnibus una669.

At procul in sola secretae Troades acta

Amissum Anchisen flebant cunctaeque profundum

Pontum adspectabant flentes; ‘heu tot vada fessis

Et tantum superesse maris,’ vox omnibus una669.

It was seen how the sense of supernatural awe adds to the tragic grandeur of the despair and death of Dido, as in the lines, which bear some trace of a vivid passage in Ennius—

agit ipse furentemIn somnis ferus Aeneas: semperque relinquiSola sibi, semper longam incomitata videturIre viam, et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra670.

agit ipse furentem

In somnis ferus Aeneas: semperque relinqui

Sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur

Ire viam, et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra670.

Thus too the mind is prepared for the spectacle revealed in the Descent into Hell by the awful sublimity of the Invocation—

Di quibus imperium est animarum umbraeque silentes671.

The description of the funeral rites of Pallas produces that complex impression of sadness and solemnity mixed with proud memories and thoughts of the pomp and circumstance of war which affects men in the present day, when witnessing the spectacle of the funeral of some great soldier who has died full of years and honour—

Post bellator equus positis insignibus AethonIt lacrimans guttisque umectat grandibus ora.Hastam alii galeamque ferunt, nam cetera TurnusVictor habet. Tum moesta phalanx Teucrique sequunturTyrrhenique omnes et versis Arcades armis672.

Post bellator equus positis insignibus Aethon

It lacrimans guttisque umectat grandibus ora.

Hastam alii galeamque ferunt, nam cetera Turnus

Victor habet. Tum moesta phalanx Teucrique sequuntur

Tyrrhenique omnes et versis Arcades armis672.

In the employment of illustrative imagery Virgil is much more sparing than Homer. The varied forces of Nature and of animal life supplied materials to the Greek poet by which to enhance the poetical sense of the situation which he de[pg 414]scribes; and all these forces are apprehended by him with a vivid feeling of wonder, and presented to the imagination with a truthful observation of outward signs, and with a sympathetic insight into their innermost nature. Virgil is not only more sparing in the use of these figures; he is also tamer and less inventive in their application. In those drawn from the life of wild animals he, for the most part, reproduces the Homeric imagery, though we note as one touch of realism in them that the wolf, familiar to Italy, frequently takes the place of the lion, which was probably still an object of terror in Western Asia at the time when Homer lived. Another class of images reproduced from Homer is that of those in which a mortal is compared to an immortal, as at i. 498—

Qualis in Eurotae ripis, aut per iuga Cynthi,Exercet Diana choros, etc.,

Qualis in Eurotae ripis, aut per iuga Cynthi,

Exercet Diana choros, etc.,

though in this some variations are introduced from a simile in Apollonius. Another passage of the same kind is immediately derived from the Alexandrine poet—

Qualis, ubi hibernam Lyciam Xanthique fluenta673, etc.

There is, however, another class of ‘similes’ used by Virgil in his epic, after the example of the Alexandrines, which can scarcely be said to fulfil the function of a poetical analogy, but merely to give a realistic outward symbol of some movement of the mind or passions, without any imaginative enhancement of the situation. Such, for instance, is the comparison at vii. 377, etc. of the mind of Amata to a top whipped by boys round an empty court,—a comparison suggested by a passage in Callimachus674; and that again at viii. 22, etc. of the variations of purpose in the mind of Aeneas, produced by the surging sea of cares besetting him, to the variations of light reflected from the water in a copper cauldron,—a comparison directly imitated from Apollonius (iii. 754, etc.). There are others again of[pg 415]what may be called a somewhat conventional cast, which acquire individuality from the colour of local associations, such as the introduction (at xii. 715) of two bulls battling together (as they are also described in the Georgics)—

ingenti Sila, summove Taburno;

the comparison (at xii. 701 etc.) of Aeneas, towering in all his warlike power, to Athos or Eryx—

aut ipse, coruscisCum fremit ilicibus, quantus, gaudetque nivaliVertice se attollens, pater Appenninus ad auras675;

aut ipse, coruscis

Cum fremit ilicibus, quantus, gaudetque nivali

Vertice se attollens, pater Appenninus ad auras675;

and that at ix. 680, etc., in which the two sons of Alcanor are likened to two tall oaks growing—

Sive Padi ripis Athesim seu propter amoenum676.

But there are other comparisons in Virgil indicative of more original invention, observation, and reflexion, which serve the true purpose of imaginative analogies, viz. that of exalting the peculiar sentiment with which the poet desires the situation he is describing to be regarded. In the perception of these analogies it is not merely intellectual curiosity that is gratified by the apprehension of theτοῦτο ἐκεῖνοin the phenomena; but the imagination is enlarged by the recognition of analogous forces operating in different spheres, which separately are capable of producing a vivid and noble emotion. As an instance of this perception of the analogy between great forces in different spheres, the one of human, the other of natural activity, we may take the comparison of the Italian host advancing in orderly march after its tumultuous gathering from many quarters, to the movement of mighty rivers when their component waters have found their appointed bed—

Ceu septem surgens sedatis amnibus altusPer tacitum Ganges, aut pingui flumine NilusCum refluit campis et iam se condidit alveo677.

Ceu septem surgens sedatis amnibus altus

Per tacitum Ganges, aut pingui flumine Nilus

Cum refluit campis et iam se condidit alveo677.

Others again show the vivid interest mixed with poetical wonder which animated Virgil’s power of observation in his Georgics—as for instance that at i. 430 of the busy workers in Carthage to bees in early summer toiling among the flowery fields—an image ennobled also by Milton, who characteristically describes the bees as ‘conferring their state-affairs,’ while it is not to their political, but to their industrial, martial, and social or domestic aptitudes,

(cum gentis adultosEducunt fetus)

(cum gentis adultos

Educunt fetus)

that Virgil draws attention. Of the same class is the comparison at iv. 404, etc., of the Trojans preparing to leave the shores of Carthage to the movement of ants engaged in gathering together some heap of corn for their winter’s store—

It nigrum campis agmen, etc.

Others again are suggested by his subtle and sympathetic discernment of the conditions of inward feeling; as the comparison at iv. 70, etc. of Dido to the hind, which, unsuspecting of danger, has received a mortal wound from a hand ignorant of the harm which it has inflicted—

haeret lateri letalis harundo.

The awe and mystery of the unseen world suggest the comparison of the crowd of shades pressing round Charon’s boat to innumerable leaves falling in the woods, or to flocks of birds driven across the sea by the first cold of autumn—

Quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primoLapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab altoQuam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annusTrans pontum fugat et terris inmittit apricis678.

Quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo

Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto

Quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus

Trans pontum fugat et terris inmittit apricis678.

The point of comparison in this simile is not merely the obvious[pg 417]one of the number of leaves falling or birds flying across the sea in autumn, but rather the inner likeness between the passive helplessness with which the leaves have yielded to the chill touch of the year, and that with which the shades—νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα—have yielded to the chill touch of death. Nor perhaps is it pressing the language of Virgil too far to suppose that in the words ‘terris inmittit apricis’ he means to leave on the mind a feeling of some happier possibilities in death than the certainty of ‘cold obstruction.’ One of the most characteristically Virgilian similes—that at vi. 453—

qualem primo qui surgere menseAut videt, aut vidisse putat per nubila Lunam—

qualem primo qui surgere mense

Aut videt, aut vidisse putat per nubila Lunam—

is almost a translation of the lines of Apollonius (iv. 1447)—

τὼς ἰδέειν, ὥς τίς τε νέῳ ἐνὶ ἤματι μήνηνἢ ἴδεν, ἢ ἐδόκησεν ἐπαχλύουσαν ἰδέσθαι679,—

τὼς ἰδέειν, ὥς τίς τε νέῳ ἐνὶ ἤματι μήνην

ἢ ἴδεν, ἢ ἐδόκησεν ἐπαχλύουσαν ἰδέσθαι679,—

but the whole poetical power of the passage consists in the application of the image to the sudden recognition by Aeneas of the pale and shadowy form of his forsaken love, dimly discerned through the gloom of the lower world. Other images are suggested by the poet’s delicate sense of grace in flower or plant, combined with his tender compassion for the beauty of youth perishing prematurely. Such are those which enable us more vividly to realise the pathos of the death of Euryalus and of the burial of Pallas. Yet though these images are characteristically Virgilian, they also bear unmistakeable traces of imitation. The lines—

Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratroLanguescit moriens, lassove papavera colloDemisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur680;

Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro

Languescit moriens, lassove papavera collo

Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur680;

and again—

Qualem, virgineo demessum pollice, florem,Seu mollis violae, seu languentis hyacinthi,Cui neque fulgor adhuc, nec dum sua forma recessit;Non iam mater alit tellus, viresque ministrat681—

Qualem, virgineo demessum pollice, florem,

Seu mollis violae, seu languentis hyacinthi,

Cui neque fulgor adhuc, nec dum sua forma recessit;

Non iam mater alit tellus, viresque ministrat681—

recall not only the thought and feeling of Homer—

μήκων δ’ ὣς ἑτέρωσε κάρη βάλενetc.,

but the cadences and most cherished illustrations of Catullus, in whose imagination the grace of trees and the bloom of flowers are ever associated with the grace and bloom of youth and youthful passion.

Had Virgil lived to devote three more years to the revisal of his work, there is no reason to suppose that he would have added anything to its substance. Some inconsistencies of statement, as, for instance, that between iii. 256 and vii. 123, would have disappeared, and some difficulties would have been cleared up. But the chief part of the ‘limae labor’ would have been employed in bringing the rhythm and diction of the poem to a more finished perfection than that which they exhibit at present. The unfinished lines in the poem would certainly have been completed and more closely connected with the passages immediately succeeding them. There is no indication that these lines were left purposely incomplete in order to give emphasis to some pause in the narrative. Virgil was the last poet likely to avail himself of so inartistic an innovation to give variety to his cadences. For the most part they appear to be weak props (‘tibicines’682) used provisionally to fill up the gap between two passages, and indicating but not completing the thought that was to connect them.

What more of elegance, of compact structure, or of varied harmony Virgil might have imparted to his rhythm, it is impossible to determine. We might conjecture that his aim[pg 419]would have been, as regards both expression and metrical effect, to act on the maxim ‘ramos compesce fluentes,’ than to give them ampler scope. In a long narrative poem like the Aeneid that perfect smoothness and solidity of rhythmical execution which characterise the Georgics—in which poem the position and weight of each single word in each single line is an element contributing to the whole effect—is hardly to be expected. A narrative poem demands a more easy, varied, and even careless movement than one of which the interest is contemplative, and which requires to be studied minutely line by line and paragraph by paragraph, before its full meaning is realised. If the movement in the Aeneid appears in some place rougher, or less compact, or more languid than in others, this may be explained not only by the imperfect state in which the poem was left, but by the difficulty or impossibility of maintaining the same uniform level of elevation in so long a flight. Yet it cannot be said that there is any loss of power, any trace of contentment with a lower ideal of perfection in the general structure of the verse of the Aeneid. The full capacities of the Latin hexameter for purposes of animated or impressive narrative, of solemn or pathetic representation, of grave or impassioned oratory, of tender, dignified, or earnest appeal to the higher emotions of man, are realised in many passages of the poem. Virgil’s instrument fails, or, at least, is much inferior to Homer’s, in aptitude for natural dialogue or for bringing familiar things in the freshness of immediate impression before the imagination. The stateliness of movement appropriate to such utterances as

Ast ego quae Divom incedo regina683

does not readily adapt itself to the description of the process of kindling a fire or preparing a meal—

Ac primum silici scintillam excudit Achates,Suscepitque ignem foliis atque arida circumNutrimenta dedit rapuitque in fomite flammam684.

Ac primum silici scintillam excudit Achates,

Suscepitque ignem foliis atque arida circum

Nutrimenta dedit rapuitque in fomite flammam684.

To English readers the verse of the Aeneid may appear inferior in majesty and fulness of volume to that of Milton in his passages of most sustained power; but it is easier and less encumbered and thus more adapted to express various conditions of human life than the ordinary movement of the modern epic. It flows in a more varied, weighty, and self-restrained stream than the more homogeneous and overflowing current of Spenser’s verse. The Latin hexameter became for Virgil an exquisite and powerful medium for communicating to others a knowledge of his elevated moods and pensive meditativeness, and for calling up before their minds that spectacle of a statelier life and a more august order in the contemplation of which his spirit habitually lived.

The last revision would also have removed from the poem some redundancies, obscurities, and weakness of expression. There is a greater tendency to use ‘otiose’ epithets than in the Georgics, and a minute criticism has taken note of the number of times in which such words as ‘ingens’ and ‘immanis’ occur in the poem. Though the interpretation of the meaning of the Aeneid as a whole is probably as certain as that of any other great work of antiquity, yet there are passages in it which still baffle commentators in deciding which of two or three possible meanings was in the mind of the poet, or whether he had himself finally resolved what turn he should give his thought. As there are lines left incomplete, so there are lame conclusions to lofty and impassioned utterances of feeling. Such for instance is the prosaic and tautological conclusion of the passage in which Lausus is brought on the scene—

dignus, patriis qui laetior essetImperiis et cui pater haud Mezentius esset685.

dignus, patriis qui laetior esset

Imperiis et cui pater haud Mezentius esset685.

But it is only a microscopic observation of the structure of the poem that detects such blemishes as these. In the Aeneid[pg 421]Virgil’s style appears as great in its power of reaching the secrets of the human spirit, as in the Georgics it proved itself to be in eliciting the deeper meaning of Nature. He combines nearly all the characteristic excellences of the great Latin writers. His language appears indeed inferior not only to that of Lucretius and Catullus but even to that of Ennius in reproducing the first vivid impressions of things upon the mind. The phrases of Virgil are generally coloured with the associations and steeped in the feeling of older thoughts and memories. Yet if he seems inferior in direct force of presentation, he unites the two most marked and generally dissociated characteristics of the masters of Latin style,—the exuberance and vivacity of those writers in whom impulse and imagination are strong, such as Cicero, Livy, and Lucretius,—the terseness and compactness of expression, arising either from intensity of perception or reflective condensation, of which the shorter poems of Catullus, the Odes and Epistles of Horace, the writings of Sallust, and the memorial inscriptions of the time of the Republic and of the Empire afford striking examples. Virgil’s condensation of expression often resembles that of Tacitus, and seems to arise from the same cause, the restraint imposed by reflexion on the exuberance of a poetical imagination. By its combination of opposite excellences the style of the Aeneid is at once an admirable vehicle of continuous or compressed narrative, of large or concentrated description, of fluent and impassioned, or composed and impressive oratory. It possesses also the power, which distinguishes the older Latin writers, of stamping some grave or magnanimous lesson in imperishable characters on the mind—

Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem,Fortunam ex aliis.Aude, hospes, contemnere opes et te quoque dignumFinge deo686.

Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.

Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem,

Fortunam ex aliis.

Aude, hospes, contemnere opes et te quoque dignum

Finge deo686.

But Virgil is not only great as a Latin writer. The concurrent testimony of the most refined minds of all times marks him out as one of the greatest masters of the language which touches the heart or moves the manlier sensibilities, who has ever lived. A mature and mellow truth of sentiment, a conformity to the deeper experiences of life in every age, a fine humanity as well as a generous elevation of feeling, and some magical charm of music in his words, have enabled them to serve many minds in many ages as a symbol of some swelling thought or over-mastering emotion, the force and meaning of which they could scarcely define to themselves. A striking instance of this effect appears in the words in which Savonarola describes the impulse which forced him to abandon the career of worldly ambition, which his father pressed on him, in favour of the religious life. It was the voice of warning which he ever heard repeating to him the words—

Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge litus avarum687.

And while his tenderness of feeling has made Virgil the familiar friend of one class of minds, his high magnanimous spirit has equally gained for him the admiration of another class. The words of no other poet, ancient or modern, have been so often heard in the great debates of the English Parliament, which more than any other deliberations among men have reproduced the dignified and masculine eloquence familiar to the Roman Senate. One of the greatest masters of expression among living English writers has pointed, as characteristic of the magic of Virgil’s style, to ‘his single words and phrases, his pathetic half-lines giving utterance, as the voice of Nature herself, to that pain and weariness yet hope of better things which is the experience of her children in every time688.’ It is in[pg 423]the expression of this weariness and deep longing for rest, in making others feel his own sense of the painful toil and mystery of life and of the sadness of death, his sense too of vague yearning for some fuller and ampler being, that Virgil produces the most powerful effect by the use of the simplest words in their simplest application.

‘O passi graviora—’‘Vobis parta quies—’‘Dis aliter visum—’‘Di, si qua est caelo pietas—’‘Heu vatum ignarae mentes—’‘Iam pridem invisus superis et inutilis annosDemoror—’‘Si pereo hominum manibus periisse iuvabit—’‘Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis—’‘Nesciaque humanis precibus mansuescere corda—’‘Impositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum—’‘Quod te per caeli iucundum lumen et auras—’‘Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore—’‘Securos latices et longa oblivia potant—689’

‘O passi graviora—’

‘Vobis parta quies—’

‘Dis aliter visum—’

‘Di, si qua est caelo pietas—’

‘Heu vatum ignarae mentes—’

‘Iam pridem invisus superis et inutilis annos

Demoror—’

‘Si pereo hominum manibus periisse iuvabit—’

‘Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis—’

‘Nesciaque humanis precibus mansuescere corda—’

‘Impositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum—’

‘Quod te per caeli iucundum lumen et auras—’

‘Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore—’

‘Securos latices et longa oblivia potant—689’

these and many other pregnant sayings affect the mind with a strange potency, of which perhaps no account can be given except that they make us feel, as scarcely any other words do, the burden of the mystery of life, and by their marvellous beauty, the reflexion, it may be, from some light dimly discerned or imagined690beyond the gloom, they make it seem more easy to be borne.

THE END.

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