The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil

The Eclogues.

I.

The name by which the earliest of Virgil’s recognised works is known tells us nothing of the subject of which it treats. The word ‘Eclogae’ simply means selections. As applied to the poems of Virgil, it designates a collection of short unconnected poems. The other name by which these poems were known in antiquity, ‘bucolica,’ indicates the form of Greek art in which they were cast and the pastoral nature of their subjects. Neither word is used by Virgil himself; but the expressions by which he characterises his art, such as ‘Sicelides Musae,’ ‘versus Syracosius,’ ‘Musa agrestis’ and ‘silvestris,’ show that he writes in a pastoral strain, and that he considered the pastoral poetry of Greece as his model. He invokes not only the ‘Sicilian Muses,’ but the ‘fountain of Arethusa.’ He speaks too of Pan, and Arcadia, and the ‘Song of Maenalus.’ His shepherd-poets are described as ‘Arcadians.’ The poets whom he introduces as his prototypes are the ‘sage of Ascra,’ and the mythical Linus, Orpheus, and Amphion. He alludes also to Theocritus under the name of the ‘Syracusan shepherd.’ The names of the shepherds who are introduced as contending in song or uttering their feelings in monologue—Corydon, Thyrsis, Menalcas, Meliboeus, Tityrus, etc.—are Greek, and for the most part taken from the pastoral idyls of Theocritus. There is also frequent mention of the shepherd’s pipe, and of the musical accompaniment to which some of the songs chanted by the shepherds are set.

The general character of the poems is further indicated by the frequent use of the word ‘ludere,’ a word applied by [pg 131]Catullus, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, and others to the poems of youth, of a light and playful character, and, for the most part, expressive of various moods of the passion of love. Thus at the end of the Georgics Virgil speaks of himself thus:—

Carmina qui lusi pastorum, audaxque iuventa,

Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi 186.

This reference shows further that the poem which stands first in order was placed there when the edition of the Eclogues was given to the world. But other references (at v. 86–87 and vi. 12) seem to imply that the separate poems were known either by distinct titles, such as Varus, the title of the sixth, or from their opening lines, as the ‘Formosum Corydon ardebat Alexim,’ and the ‘Cuium pecus? an Meliboei?’ It has been also suggested, from lines quoted in the ninth, which profess to be the opening lines of other pastoral poems, that the ten finally collected together were actual ‘selections’ from a larger number, commenced if not completed (‘necdum perfecta canebat’) by Virgil. But these passages seem more like the lines attributed to the contending poets in the third and seventh Eclogues, i.e. short unconnected specimens of pastoral song.

Nearly all the poems afford indications of the time of their composition and of the order in which they followed one another; and that order is different from the order in which they now appear. It is said, on the authority of Asconius, that three years, from 42 B.C. to 39 B.C., were given to the composition of the Eclogues. But an allusion in the tenth (line 47) to the expedition of Agrippa across the Alps in the early part of 37 B.C. proves that a later date must be assigned to that poem. The probable explanation is that Virgil had intended to end the series with the eighth, which celebrated the triumph of Pollio over the Parthini in 39 B.C.,—

A te principium, tibi desinet,—

but that his friendship for Gallus induced him to add the tenth, [pg 132]two years later, either before the poems were finally collected for publication, or in preparing a new edition of them. They were written at various places and at various stages of the poet’s fortunes. They appear to have obtained great success when first published, and some of them were recited with applause upon the stage. The earliest in point of time were the second and third, and these, along with the fifth, may be ascribed to the year 42 B.C. The seventh, which has no allusion to contemporary events and is a mere imitative reproduction of the Greek idyl, may also belong to this earlier period, although some editors rank it as one of the latest. The first, which is founded on the loss of the poet’s farm, belongs to the next year, and the ninth and sixth probably may be assigned to the same year, or to the early part of the following year. The date of the fourth is fixed by the Consulship of Pollio to the year 40 B.C.; that of the eighth to the year 39 B.C. by the triumph of Pollio over the Parthini. The opening words of the tenth show that it was the last of the series; and the reference to the expedition of Agrippa implies that it could not have been written earlier than the end of 38 B.C. or the beginning of 37 B.C. The first, second, third, and fifth187, were in all probability written by the poet in his native district, the sixth, ninth, and perhaps the seventh, at the villa which had formerly [pg 133]belonged to Siron (‘villula quae Sironis eras’), the rest at Rome. The principle on which the poems are arranged seems to be that of alternating dialogue with monologue. The eighth, though not in dialogue, yet resembles the latter part of the fifth, in presenting two continuous songs, chanted by different shepherds. The poem first in order may have occupied its place from its greater interest in connexion with the poet’s fortunes, or from the honour which it assigns to Octavianus, whose pre-eminence over the other competitors for supreme power had sufficiently declared itself before the first collected edition of the poems was published.

In the earliest poems of the series the art of Virgil, like the lyrical art of Horace in his earlier Odes, is more imitative and conventional than in those written later. He seems satisfied with reproducing the form, rhythm, and diction of Theocritus, and mingling some vague expression of personal or national feeling with the sentiment of the Greek idyl. That the fifth was written after the second and third appears from the lines v. 86–87, in which Menalcas, under which name Virgil introduces himself in the Eclogues, presents his pipe to Mopsus:—

Haec nos ‘Formosum Corydon ardebat Alexin,’

Haec eadem docuit ‘Cuium pecus? an Meliboei188?’

From these lines also it may be inferred as probable that the second poem, ‘Formosum pastor Corydon,’ was written before the third, ‘Dic mihi, Damoeta, cuium pecus? an Meliboei?’

A tradition, quoted by Servius and referred to (though inaccurately) by Martial189, attributes the composition of the second Eclogue to the admiration excited in Virgil by the beauty of a young slave, Alexander, who was presented to him by Pollio and carefully educated by him. A similar story is told of his having received from Maecenas another slave, named Cebes, who also obtained from him a liberal education [pg 134]and acquired some distinction as a poet. It is not improbable that Virgil may have been warmly attached to these youths, and that there was nothing blameable in his attachment. Even Cicero, a man as far removed as possible from any sentimental weakness, writes to Atticus of the death of a favourite slave, a young Greek, and evidently, from the position he filled in Cicero’s household, a boy of liberal accomplishments, in these words: ‘And, I assure you, I am a good deal distressed. For my reader, Sositheus, a charming boy, is just dead; and it has affected me more than I should have thought the death of a slave ought to affect one190.’ It remains true however that in one or two of those Eclogues in which he most closely imitates Theocritus, Virgil uses the language of serious sentiment, and once of bantering raillery, in a way which justly offends modern feeling. And this is all that can be said against him.

There are more imitations of the Greek in this and in the next poem than in any of the other Eclogues191. The scenery of the piece, in so far as it is at all definite, combines the mountains and the sea-landscape of Sicily with Italian woods and vineyards. Corydon seems to combine the features of an Italian vinedresser with the conventional character of a Sicilian shepherd. The line

Aspice aratra iugo referunt suspensa iuvenci192

applies rather to an Italian scene than to the pastoral district of Sicily; and this reference to ploughing seems inconsistent with the description of the fierce midsummer heat, and with the introduction of the ‘fessi messores’ in the opening lines of the poem. These inconsistencies show how little thought Virgil had for the objective consistency of his representation. The poem however, in many places, gives powerful expression to the feelings of a despairing lover. There are here, as in the Gallus, besides that vein of feeling which the Latin poet shares with [pg 135]Theocritus, some traces of that ‘wayward modern mood’ of longing to escape from the world and to return to some vague ideal of Nature, and to sacrifice all the gains of civilisation in exchange for the homeliest dwelling shared with the object of affection:—

O tantum libeat mecum tibi sordida rura

Atque humiles habitare casas, et figere cervos193;

and again,

Habitarunt di quoque silvas

Dardaniusque Paris. Pallas quas condidit arces

Ipsa colat, nobis placeant ante omnia silvae194.

The third Eclogue, which is in dialogue, and reproduces two features of the Greek idyl, the natural banter of the shepherds and the more artificial contest in song, is still more imitative and composite in character. It shows several close imitations, especially of the fourth, fifth, and eighth Idyls of Theocritus195. In this poem only Virgil, whose muse even in the Eclogues is almost always serious or plaintive, endeavours to reproduce the playfulness and vivacity of his original. Both in the bantering dialogue and in the more formal contest of the shepherds, the subjects introduced are for the most part of a conventional pastoral character, but with these topics are combined occasional references to the tastes and circumstances of the poet himself. Thus in lines 40–42,

In medio duo signa ... curvus arator haberet,

allusion is made to the astronomical studies of which Virgil made fuller use in the Georgics. In the line

Pollio amat nostram quamvis est rustica Musam,

and again,

Pollio et ipse facit nova carmina196,

[pg 136]

he makes acknowledgment of the favour and pays honour to the poetical tastes of his earliest patron, whom he celebrates also in the fourth and eighth Eclogues. The line

Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Maevi197

has condemned to everlasting notoriety the unfortunate pair, who have served modern satirists as types of spiteful critics and ineffectual authors. At lines 10–11 there is, as in Eclogue ii., an apparent blending of the occupations of the Italian vinedresser with those of the Sicilian shepherd. In the contest of song there is no sustained connexion of thought, as indeed there is not in similar contests in Theocritus. These contests are supposed to reproduce the utterances of improvisatori, of whom the second speaker is called to say something, either in continuation of or in contrast to the thought of the first. The shepherds in these strains seek to glorify their own prowess, boast of their successes in love, or call attention to some picturesque aspect of their rustic life.

The fifth Eclogue is also in dialogue. It brings before us a friendly interchange of song between two pastoral poets, Mopsus and Menalcas. Servius mentions that Menalcas (here, as in the ninth Eclogue) stands for Virgil himself, while Mopsus stands for his friend Aemilius Macer of Verona. Mopsus laments the cruel death of Daphnis, the legendary shepherd of Sicilian song, and Menalcas celebrates his apotheosis. Various accounts were given in antiquity of the meaning which was to be attached to this poem. One account was that Virgil here expressed his sorrow for the death of his brother Flaccus198. Though the time of his death may have coincided with that of the composition of this poem, the language of the lament and of the song celebrating the ascent of Daphnis to heaven is quite unlike the expression of a private or personal sorrow. There seems no reason to doubt another explanation which has come [pg 137]down from ancient times, that under this pastoral allegory Virgil laments the death and proclaims the apotheosis of Julius Caesar. It is probable199 that the poem was composed for his birthday, the 4th of July, which for the first time was celebrated with religious rites in the year 42 B.C., when the name of the month Quintilis was changed into that which it has retained ever since. The lines 25–26,

Nulla neque amnem

Libavit quadrupes nec graminis attigit herbam200,

are supposed201 to refer to a belief which had become traditional in the time of Suetonius, that the horses which had been consecrated after crossing the Rubicon had refused to feed immediately before the death of their master202. In the lines expressing the sorrow for his loss, and in those which mark out the divine office which he was destined to fulfil after death,—

Ut Baccho Cererique, tibi sic vota quotannis

Agricolae facient, damnabis tu quoque votis203,—

as in the lines of the ninth, referring to the Julium Sidus,—

Astrum quo segetes gauderent frugibus, et quo

Duceret apricis in collibus uva colorem204,—

allusion is made to the encouragement Caesar gave to the husbandman and vine-planter in his lifetime, and to the honour due to him as their tutelary god in heaven. And these allusions help us to understand the ‘votis iam nunc adsuesce vocari’ of the invocation in the first Georgic.

Nothing illustrates more clearly the unreal conceptions of the pastoral allegory than a comparison of the language in the [pg 138]‘Lament for Daphnis,’ with the strong Roman realism of the lines at the end of the first Georgic, in which the omens portending the death of Caesar are described. Nor can anything show more clearly the want of individuality with which Virgil uses the names of the Theocritean shepherds than the fact that while the Daphnis of the fifth Eclogue represents the departed and deified soldier and statesman, the Daphnis of the ninth is a living husbandman whose fortunes were secured by the protecting star of Caesar,—

Insere, Daphni, piros, carpent tua poma nepotes205.

The peace and tranquillity restored to the land under this protecting influence are foreshadowed in the lines 58–61—

Ergo alacris ... amat bonus otia Daphnis;

and the earliest reference to the divine honours assigned in life and death to the later representatives of the name of Caesar, is heard in the jubilant shout of wild mountains, rocks, and groves to the poet—

Deus, deus ille, Menalca.

Although the treatment of the subject may be vague and conventional, yet this poem possesses the interest of being Virgil’s earliest effort, directed to a subject of living and national interest; and many of the lines in the poem are unsurpassed for grace and sweetness of musical cadence by anything in Latin poetry.

There is no allusion to contemporary events by which the date of the seventh can be determined; but the absence of such allusion and the ‘purely Theocritean206’ character of the poem suggest the inference that it is a specimen of Virgil’s earlier manner. Two shepherds, Corydon and Thyrsis, are introduced as joining Daphnis, who is seated under a whispering ilex; they engage in a friendly contest of song, which is listened to also by the poet himself, who here calls himself Meliboeus. [pg 139]They assert in alternate strains their claims to poetic honours, offer prayers and vows to Diana as the goddess of the chase and to Priapus as the god of gardens, draw rival pictures of cool retreat from the heat of summer and of cheerfulness by the winter fire, and connect the story of their loves with the varying aspect of the seasons, and with the beauty of trees sacred to different deities or native to different localities. Though the shepherds are Arcadian, the scenery is Mantuan:—

Hic viridis tenera praetexit harundine ripam

Mincius, eque sacra resonant examina quercu207.

Meliboeus decides the contest in favour of Corydon:—

Haec memini, et victum frustra contendere Thyrsin.

Ex illo Corydon Corydon est tempore nobis208.

These poems, in which the conventional shepherds of pastoral poetry sing of their loves, their flocks and herds, of the beauty of the seasons and of outward nature, in tones caught from Theocritus, or revive and give a new meaning to the old Sicilian dirge over ‘the woes of Daphnis,’ may be assigned to the eventful year in which the forces of the Republic finally shattered themselves against the forces of the new Empire. There is a strange contrast between these peaceful and somewhat unreal strains of Virgil and the drama which was at the same time enacted on the real stage of human affairs. No sound of the ‘storms that raged outside his happy ground’ disturbs the security with which Virgil cultivates his art. But the following year brought the trouble and unhappiness of the times home to the peaceful dwellers around Mantua, and to Virgil among the rest. Of the misery caused by the confiscations and allotments of land to the soldiers of Octavianus, the first Eclogue is a lasting record. Yet even in this poem, based as it is on genuine feeling and a real experience, Virgil seems to care only for the truth of feeling [pg 140]with which Tityrus and Meliboeus express themselves, without regard for consistency in the conception of the situation, the scenery, or the personages of the poem. Tityrus is at once the slave who goes to Rome to purchase his freedom, and the owner of the land and of the flocks and herds belonging to it209. He is advanced in years210, and at the same time a poet lying indolently in the shade, and making the woods ring with the sounds of ‘beautiful Amaryllis211,’ like the young shepherds in Theocritus. The scenery apparently combines some actual features of the farm in the Mantuan district—

Quamvis lapis omnia nudus

Limosoque palus obducat pascua iunco212,

with the ideal mountain-land of pastoral song—

Maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae213.

A further inconsistency has been suggested between the time of year indicated by the ‘shade of the spreading beech’ in the first line, and that indicated by the ripe chestnuts at line 81214. The truth of the poem consists in the expression of the feelings of love which the old possessors entertained for their homes, and the sense of dismay caused by this barbarous irruption on their ancient domains:—

Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit?

Barbarus has segetes? En quo discordia civis

Produxit miseros215!

Virgil’s feeling for the movement of his age, which henceforth becomes one of the main sources of his inspiration, has its origin [pg 141]in the effect which these events had on his personal fortunes, and in the sympathy awakened within him by the sorrows of his native district.

The ninth Eclogue, written most probably in the same year, and in form imitated from the seventh Idyl—the famous Thalysia—of Theocritus, repeats the tale of dejection and alarm among the old inhabitants of the Mantuan district,—

Nunc victi, tristes, quoniam fors omnia versat216,—

and touches allusively on the story of the personal danger which Virgil encountered from the violence of the centurion who claimed possession of his land. The speakers in the dialogue are Moeris, a shepherd of Menalcas,—the pastoral poet, who sings of the nymphs, of the wild flowers spread over the ground, and of the brooks shaded with trees,—and Lycidas, who, like the Lycidas of the Thalysia, is also a poet:—

Me quoque dicunt

Vatem pastores, sed non ego credulus illis.

Nam neque adhuc Vario videor nec dicere Cinna

Digna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores217.

After the account of the fray, given by Moeris, and the comments of Lycidas, in which he introduces the lines referred to in the previous chapter, as having all the signs of being a real description of the situation of Virgil’s farms—

qua se subducere colles incipiunt—

Moeris sings the opening lines of certain other pastoral poems, some his own, some the songs of Menalcas. Two of these—[pg 142]‘Tityre dum redeo’ and ‘Huc ades O Galatea’—are purely Theocritean. Two others—

Vare tuum nomen, superet modo Mantua nobis,

and

Daphni quid antiquos signorum suspicis ortus218—

indicate the new path which Virgil’s art was striking out for itself. There is certainly more real substance in this poem than in most of the earlier Eclogues. Lycidas and Moeris speak about what interests them personally. The scene of the poem is apparently the road between Virgil’s farm and Mantua. There seem to be no conventional and inconsistent features introduced from the scenery of Sicily or Arcadia, unless it be the ‘aequor’ of line 57—

Et nunc omne tibi stratum silet aequor219.

But may not that be either the lake, formed by the overflow of the river, some distance above Mantua, or even the great level plain, with its long grass and corn-fields and trees, hushed in the stillness of the late afternoon?

The sixth Eclogue was written probably about the same time and at the same place, the villa of Siron, in which Virgil had taken refuge with his family. It is inscribed with the name of Varus, who is said to have been a fellow-student of Virgil under the tuition of Siron. But, with the exception of the dedicatory lines, there is no reference to the circumstances of the time. Though abounding with rich pastoral illustrations, the poem is rather a mythological and semi-philosophical idyl than a pure pastoral poem. It consists mainly of a song of Silenus, in which an account is given of the creation of the world in accordance with the Lucretian philosophy; and, in connexion with this theme (as is done also by Ovid in his Metamorphoses), some of the oldest mythological traditions, such as the tale of Pyrrha and Deucalion, the reign of Saturn on earth, the theft and punishment of Prometheus, etc., are introduced. The opening [pg 143]lines—Namque canebat uti—are imitated from the song of Orpheus in the first book of the Argonautics220, but they bear unmistakable traces also of the study of Lucretius. There seems no trace of the language of Theocritus in the poem.

Three points of interest may be noted in this song: (1) Virgil here, as in Georgic ii. 475, etc., regards the revelation of physical knowledge as a fitting theme for poetic treatment. So in the first Aeneid, the ‘Song of Iopas’ is said to be about ‘the wandering moon and the toils of the sun; the origin of man and beast, water and fire,’ etc. The revelation of the secrets of Nature seems to float before the imagination of Virgil as the highest consummation of his poetic faculty. (2) We note here how, as afterwards in the Georgics, he accepts the philosophical ideas of creation, side by side with the supernatural tales of mythology. He seems to regard such tales as those here introduced as part of the religious traditions of the human race, and as a link which connects man with the gods. In the Georgics we find also the same effort to reconcile, or at least to combine, the conceptions of science with mythological fancies. In this effort we recognise the influence of other Alexandrine poets rather than of Theocritus. (3) The introduction of Gallus in the midst of the mythological figures of the poem, and the account of the honour paid to him by the Muses and of the office assigned to him by Linus, are characteristic of the art of the Eclogues, which is not so much allegorical as composite. It brings together in the same representation facts, personages, and places from actual life and the figures and scenes of a kind of fairy-land. In the tenth Eclogue Gallus is thus identified with the Daphnis of Sicilian song, and is represented as the object of care to the Naiads and Pan and Apollo. While Pollio is the patron whose protection and encouragement Virgil most cordially acknowledges in his earlier poems, Gallus is the man among his contemporaries who has most powerfully touched his imagination and gained his affections.

[pg 144]

The Eclogue composed next in order of time is the ‘Pollio.’ It was written in the consulship of Pollio, B.C. 40, immediately after the reconciliation between Antony and Octavianus effected by the treaty of Brundisium, and gives expression to that vague hope of a new era of peace and prosperity which recurs so often in the poetry of this age. In consequence of the interpretation given to it in a later age, this poem has acquired an importance connected with Virgil’s religious belief second only to the importance of the sixth Aeneid. Early Christian writers, perceiving a parallel between expressions and ideas in this poem and those in the Messianic prophecies, believed that Virgil was here the unconscious vehicle of Divine inspiration, and that he prophesies of the new era which was to begin with the birth of Christ. And though, as Conington and others have pointed out, the picture of the Golden Age given in the poem is drawn immediately from Classical and not from Hebrew sources, yet there is no parallel in Classical poetry to that which is the leading idea of the poem, the coincidence of the commencement of this new era with the birth of a child whom a marvellous career awaited.

The poem begins with an invocation to the Sicilian Muses and with the declaration that, though the strain is still pastoral, yet it is to be in a higher mood, and worthy of the Consul to whom it is addressed. Then follows the announcement of the birth of a new era. The world after passing through a cycle of ages, each presided over by a special deity, had reached the last of the cycle, presided over by Apollo, and was about to return back to the Golden or Saturnian Age of peace and innocence, into which the human race was originally born. A new race of men was to spring from heaven. The first-born of this new stock was destined hereafter to be a partaker of the life of the gods and to ‘rule over a world in peace with the virtues of his father.’ Then follow the rural and pastoral images of the Golden Age, like those given in the first Georgic in the description of the early world before the reign of Jove. The full glory of the age should not be reached till this child [pg 145]should attain the maturity of manhood. In the meantime some traces of ‘man’s original sin’ (‘priscae vestigia fraudis’) should still urge him to brave the dangers of the sea, to surround his cities with walls, and to plough the earth into furrows. There should be a second expedition of the Argonauts, and a new Achilles should be sent against another Troy. The romantic adventures of the heroic age were to precede the rest, innocence, and spontaneous abundance of the age of Saturn. Next the child is called upon to prepare himself for the ‘magni honores’—the great offices of state which awaited him; and the poet prays that his own life and inspiration may be prolonged so far as to enable him to celebrate his career.

There seem to be no traces of imitation of Theocritus in this poem. The rhythm which in the other Eclogues reproduces the Theocritean cadences is in this more stately and uniform, recalling those of Catullus in his longest poem. The substance of the poem is quite unlike anything in the Sicilian idyl. Though this substance does not stand out in the clear light of reality, but is partially revealed through a haze of pastoral images and legendary associations, yet it is not altogether unmeaning. The anticipation of a new era was widely spread and vividly felt over the world; and this anticipation—the state of men’s minds at and subsequent to the time when this poem was written—probably contributed to the acceptance of the great political and spiritual changes which awaited the world221.

Two questions which have been much discussed in connexion with this poem remain to be noticed; (1) who is the child [pg 146]born in the consulship of Pollio of whom this marvellous career is predicted? (2) is it at all probable that Virgil, directly or indirectly, had any knowledge of the Messianic prophecies or ideas?

In answer to the first we may put aside at once the supposition that the prediction is made of the child who was born in that year to Octavianus and Scribonia. The words ‘nascenti puero’ are altogether inapplicable to the notorious and unfortunate Julia, who was the child of that marriage. If Virgil was sanguine enough to predict the sex of the child, we can hardly imagine him allowing the words to stand after his prediction had been falsified. We may equally dismiss the supposition that the child spoken of was the offspring of the marriage of Antony and Octavia. Not to mention other considerations adverse to this supposition222, it would have been impossible for Virgil, the devoted partisan of Caesar, to pay this special compliment to Antony, even after he became so closely connected with his rival. There remains a third supposition, that the child spoken of is the son of Pollio, Asinius Gallus, who plays an important part in the reign of Tiberius. This last interpretation is supported by the authority of Asconius, who professed to have heard it from Asinius Gallus himself. The objection to this interpretation is that Virgil was not likely to assign to the child of one who, as compared with Octavianus and Antony, was only a secondary personage in public affairs, the position of ‘future ruler of the world’ and the function of being ‘the regenerator of his age.’ Still less could a poem bearing this meaning have been allowed to retain its place among Virgil’s works after the ascendency of Augustus became undisputed. Further, the line

Cara deum suboles, magnum Iovis incrementum

(whatever may be its exact meaning223) appears an extreme [pg 147]exaggeration when specially applied to the actual son of a mortal father and mother. These difficulties have led some interpreters to suppose that the child spoken of is an ideal or imaginary representative of the future race. But if we look more closely at the poem, we find that the child is not really spoken of as the future regenerator of the age; he is merely the first-born of the new race, which was to be nearer to the gods both in origin and in actual communion with them. Again, the words

Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem224

would not convey the same idea in the year 40 B.C. as they would ten or twenty years later. At the time when the poem was written the consulship was still the highest recognised position in the State. The Consuls for the year, nominally at least, wielded the whole power of the Empire. The words ‘reget orbem’ remain as a token that the Republic was not yet entirely extinct. The child is called upon to prepare himself for the great offices of State in the hope that he should in time hold the high place which was now held by his father. The words ‘patriis virtutibus’ imply that he is no ideal being, but the actual son of a well-known father. Virgil takes occasion in this poem to commemorate the attainment of the highest office by his patron, to celebrate the birth of the son born in the year of his consulship, and at the same time to express, by mystical and obscure allusions, the trust that the peace of Brundisium was the inauguration of that new era for which the hearts of men all over the world were longing.

In turning to the second question, discussed in connexion with this Eclogue, the great amount and recondite character of Virgil’s learning, especially of that derived from Alexandrine sources, must be kept in view. Macrobius testifies to this in several places. Thus he writes, ‘for this poet was learned with not only a minute conscientiousness, but even with a kind of reserve and mystery, so that he introduced into his works much [pg 148]knowledge the sources of which are difficult to discover225.’ In another place he speaks of those things, ‘what he had introduced from the most recondite learning of the Greeks226.’ And again he says, ‘this story Virgil has dug out from the most recondite Greek literature227.’ It is indeed most improbable that Virgil had a direct knowledge of the Septuagint. If he had this knowledge it would have shown itself by other allusions in other parts of his works. But it is quite possible that, through other channels of Alexandrine learning, the ideas and the language of Hebrew prophecy may have become indirectly known to him. One channel by which this may have reached him would be the new Sibylline prophecies, manufactured in the East and probably reflecting Jewish as well as other Oriental ideas, which poured into Rome after the old Sibylline books had perished in the burning of the Capitol during the first Civil War.

Still, admitting these possibilities, we are not called upon to go beyond classical sources for the general substance and idea of this poem. It has more in common with the myth in the Politicus of Plato than with the Prophecies of Isaiah. The state of the world at the time when the poem was written produced the longing for an era of restoration and a return to a lost ideal of innocence and happiness, and the wish became father to the thought.

There still remain the eighth and tenth Eclogues to be examined. The first, like the fourth, is associated with the name of Pollio, the second with that of Gallus. The date of the eighth is fixed to 39 B.C. by the victory of Pollio in Illyria and by his subsequent triumph over the Parthini. The words

Accipe iussis

Carmina coepta tuis228

[pg 149]

testify to the personal influence under which Virgil wrote these poems. The title of ‘Pharmaceutria,’ by which the poem is known, indicates that Virgil professes to reproduce, in an Italian form, that passionate tale of city life which forms the object of the second idyl of Theocritus. But while the subject and burden of the second of the two songs contained in this Eclogue are suggested by that idyl, the poem is very far from being a mere imitative reproduction of it.

Two shepherds, Damon and Alphesiboeus, meet in the early dawn—

Cum ros in tenera pecori gratissimus herba229,

(one of those touches of truthful description which reappear in the account of the pastoral occupations in Georgic iii). They each sing of incidents which may have been taken from actual life, or may have formed the subject of popular songs traditional among the peasantry of the district. In the first of these songs Damon gives vent to his despair in consequence of the marriage of his old love Nysa with his rival Mopsus. Though the shepherds who sing together bear the Greek names of Damon and Alphesiboeus, though they speak of Rhodope and Tmaros and Maenalus, of Orpheus and Arion, though expressions and lines are close translations, and one a mistranslation, from the Greek (p??ta d’ ??a??a ?????t? being rendered ‘omnia vel medium fiant mare’), and though the mode by which the lover determines to end his sorrows,

Praeceps aerii specula de montis in undas

Deferar230,

is more appropriate to a shepherd inhabiting the rocks overhanging the Sicilian seas than to one dwelling in the plain of Mantua, yet both this song and the accompanying one sung by Alphesiboeus approach more nearly to the impersonal and dramatic representation of the Greek idyl than any of those [pg 150]already examined. The lines of most exquisite grace and tenderness in the poem,—lines which have been pronounced the finest in Virgil and the finest in Latin literature by Voltaire and Macaulay231,—

Saepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala,

Dux ego vester eram, vidi cum matre legentem:

Alter ab undecimo tum me iam acceperat annus,

Iam fragiles poteram ab terra contingere ramos:

Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error232—

are indeed close imitations of lines of similar beauty from the song of the Cyclops to Galatea:—

???s??? ?? ????a te???, ???a, ????a p??t??

???e? ?? s?? at?? ?????s’ ?a??????a f???a

?? ??e?? d???as?a?, ??? d’ ?d?? ??e??e???·

pa?sas?a? d’ ?s?d?? t? ?a? ?ste??? ??d’ ?t? p? ???

?? t??? d??aa?· t??’ d’ ?? ??e?, ?? ? ??’ ??d??233.

But they are so varied as to suggest a picture of ease and abundance among the orchards and rich cultivated land of Italy, instead of the free life and natural beauties of the Sicilian mountains. The descriptive touches suggesting the picture of the innocent romance of boyhood are also all Virgil’s own.

The song of Alphesiboeus represents a wife endeavouring to recall her truant, though still faithful, Daphnis from the city to his home. Though some of the illustrations in this song also are Greek, yet it contains several natural references to rustic [pg 151]superstitions which were probably common to Greek and Italian peasants; and the fine simile at line 85 (of which the first hint is to be found in Lucretius234) suggests purely Italian associations. The final incident in the poem, ‘Hylax in limine latrat’ (though the name given to the dog is Greek), is a touch of natural life, such as does not often occur in the Eclogues. On the whole, Virgil seems here to have struck on a vein which it may be regretted that he did not work more thoroughly. If, as has been suggested by Mr. Symonds, in his account and translations of popular Tuscan poems, any of the Eclogues of Virgil are founded on primitive love-songs current among the peasantry of Italy, the songs of Damon and Alphesiboeus are those which we should fix on as being the artistic development of these native germs.

The tenth Eclogue was the last in order of composition, probably an after-thought written immediately before the final publication, or perhaps before the second edition, of the nine other poems. In this poem Virgil abandons the more realistic path on which he had entered in the eighth, and returns again to the vague fancies of the old pastoral lament for Daphnis, as it is sung in the first idyl of Theocritus. Nothing can be more remote from actual fact than the representation of Gallus—the active and ambitious soldier and man of affairs, at that time engaged in the defence of the coasts of Italy—dying among the mountains of Arcadia, in consequence of his desertion by Lycoris (a dancing-girl, and former mistress of Antony, whose real name was Cytheris), and wept for by the rocks and pine-woods of Maenalus and Lycaeus. Yet none of the poems is more rich in beauty, and grace, and happy turns of phrase. As the idealised expression of unfortunate love, this poem is of the same class as the second, and as the song of Damon in the eighth. That vein of modern romantic sentiment, already noticed in the second, the longing to escape from the ways of civilised life to the wild and lonely places of Nature, and to [pg 152]follow in imagination ‘the homely, slighted shepherd’s trade,’ meets us also in the lines,

Atque utinam ex vobis unus vestrique fuissem

Aut custos gregis aut maturae vinitor uvae235,—

and again in these,

Certum est in silvis, inter spelaea ferarum

Malle pati, tenerisque meos incidere amores

Arboribus236.

Relation of the Eclogues to the Greek Pastoral.

The review of the Eclogues in the order of their composition shows that the early art of Virgil, like the lyrical art of Horace, begins in imitation, and, after attaining command over the form, rhythm, and diction of the type of poetry which it reproduces, gradually assumes greater independence in the choice of subject and the mode of treatment. The susceptibility of Virgil’s mind to the grace and musical sweetness of Theocritus gave the first impulse to the composition of the Eclogues; but this susceptibility was itself the result of a natural sympathy with the sentiment and motives of the Greek idyl, especially with the love of Nature and the passion of love. He found this province of art unappropriated. He revealed a new vein of Greek feeling unwrought by any of his countrymen. He gave another life to the beings, natural and supernatural, of ancient pastoral song, and awoke in his native land the sound of a strain hitherto unheard by Italian ears. The form of the Greek idyl, whether in dialogue or monologue, suited his genius, as a vehicle for the lighter fancies of youth, and for half-revealing, half-concealing the pleasures and pains personal to himself, better than the forms of lyrical and elegiac poetry adopted by Catullus and his compeers. In the opening lines of the sixth Eclogue,

[pg 153]

Prima Syracosio dignata est ludere versu

Nostra, neque erubuit silvas habitare Thalia237,

Virgil acknowledges at once the source of his inspiration and the lowly position which his genius was willing to assume. He may have consoled himself for this abnegation of a higher ambition by the thought suggested in the lines addressed to the ideal poet and hero of his imagination—

Nec te paeniteat pecoris, divine poeta,

Et formosus ovis ad flumina pavit Adonis238.

In order to understand the pastoral poetry of Virgil, both in its relation to a Greek ideal and in its original truth of feeling, it is necessary to remember the chief characteristics of its prototype in the age of Ptolemy Philadelphus of Alexandria and in the early years of the reign of Hiero of Syracuse. The pastoral poetry of Sicily was the latest creation of Greek genius, born after the nobler phases of religious and political life, and the epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry which arose out of them, had passed away. In ancient, as in modern times, the pastoral idyl, as an artistic branch of literature, has arisen, not in a simple age, living in unconscious harmony with Nature, but from the midst of a refined and luxurious, generally, too, a learned or rather bookish society, and has tried to give vent to the feelings of men weary of an artificial life and vaguely longing to breathe a freer air239. But there was in ancient times a primitive and popular, as well as a late and artistic pastoral. Of the primitive pastoral, springing out of rustic gatherings and festivals, or from lonely communion with Nature,

[pg 154]

Per loca pastorum deserta atque otia dia240,

and transmitted, from generation to generation, in the mouth of the people, no fragment has been preserved. Yet traces of the existence of this kind of pastoral song, and of the music accompanying it, at a time antecedent to the composition of the Homeric poems, may be seen in the representation, on the Shield of Achilles, of the boy in the vineyard ‘singing the beautiful song Linus,’—a representation which is purely idyllic,—and of the shepherds, in the Ambuscade, who appear te?p?e??? s??????, as they accompany their flocks. The author of the Iliad absorbed the spirit of this primitive poetry in the greater compass of his epic creation, as Shakspeare has absorbed the Elizabethan pastoral within the all-embracing compass of his representation. Much of the imagery of the Iliad, several incidents casually introduced in connexion with the names of obscure persons perishing in battle, some of the supernatural events glanced at, as of the meeting of Aphrodite with Anchises while tending his herds on the spurs of Ida,—a subject of allusion also in the Sicilian idyl,—are of a pastoral character and origin. In the lines which spring up with a tender grace in the midst of the stern grandeur of the final conflict between Hector and Achilles—

?? ?? p?? ??? ?st?? ?p? d???? ??d’ ?p? p?t???

t? ?a????e?a?, ? te pa?????? ???e?? te,

pa?????? ???e?? t’ ?a???et?? ????????241—

the familiar cadences as well as the sweetest sentiment of pastoral song may be recognised.

This primitive pastoral poetry may have been spread over all Greece and the islands of the Aegean, from the earliest settlements of the Hellenic race, or of that older branch of the family to which the name Pelasgic has been vaguely given, [pg 155]and may have lingered on the same in spirit, though with many variations in form and expression, among the peasantry and herdsmen of the mountain districts till a late period. But the earliest writer who is said to have adopted this native plant of the mountains and the woods, and to have trained it to assume some form of art, was Stesichorus of Himera, who flourished about the beginning of the sixth century B.C. But nothing more is heard of it till it revived again at Syracuse in the early part of the third century.

Some of the primitive modes of feeling which gave birth to the earliest pastoral song still survive, though in altered form, in this later Sicilian poetry. The song of the ???????, or herdsmen, like the song of the masked worshippers of Bacchus (t?a??d?a), may be traced to that stage in the development of the higher races in which Nature was the chief object of worship and religious sympathy. Under the symbols of Linus, Daphnis, or Adonis, the country people of early times lamented the decay of the fresh beauty of spring, under the burning midsummer heat242. This primitive germ of serious feeling has perpetuated itself in that melancholy mood which runs through the pastoral poetry of all countries. From that tendency of the Greek imagination to give a human meaning to all that interested it, this dirge over the fading beauty of the early year soon assumed the form of a lament over the death of a young shepherd-poet, dear to gods and men, to the flocks, herds, and wild animals, to the rocks and mountains, among which he had lived. In the Daphnis of Theocritus, the human passion of love produces that blighting influence on the life of the shepherd which in the original myth was produced by the fierce heat of summer on the tender life of the year. A still later development of the myth appears in the lament over the extinction of youthful genius by early death. It is not in any poem of Theocritus, but in the ‘Lament of Bion,’—the work of a later writer, apparently an Italian-Greek,—

[pg 156]

a?t?? ??? t??

??s?????? ?d??a? ??p? ????243,—

that we find the finest ancient specimen of this later development. It is from this new form of the old dirge of Linus or Daphnis that the fancies and feelings of the ancient pastoral have been most happily adapted to modern poetry, as in the Lycidas, the Adonais, and the Thyrsis of English literature.

Another traditional theme of ‘pastoral melancholy,’ of which Theocritus makes use, is the unrequited love of the Cyclops for Galatea. This too had its origin in the personification of natural objects244. But, unlike the song of Daphnis, the myth of which it was the expression was purely local, and confined to the shores of Sicily. It also illustrates the tendency of all pastoral song to find its chief human motive in the passion of love. While the original motive of the primitive lament for Daphnis or Linus was the unconscious sympathy of the human heart with Nature, the most prominent motive of artistic pastoral or idyllic poetry, from the ‘Song of Songs’ to the ‘Hermann and Dorothea’ and ‘The Long Vacation Pastoral’ of these later times, has been the passion of the human heart for the human object of its affection, blending with either an unconscious absorption in outward scenes or a refined contemplation of them245.

But there is another very distinct mode of primitive feeling traceable in Theocritus, which dictates the good-humoured, often licentious, banter with which the shepherds encounter one another. As the pastoral monologue continued to betray the serious character of the Lament out of which it sprung, so this natural dialogue continued to bear traces of that old licence of the harvest-home and the vintage-season, which

Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit246.

[pg 157]

The ‘lusit amabiliter’ of Horace’s lines, which soon became inapplicable to the biting and censorious Italian spirit, expresses happily the tone of the dialogue in the fourth and fifth Idyls of Theocritus, which Virgil attempts to reproduce in his third Eclogue. This source of rural poetry was known to the ‘Ausonian husbandmen’ as well as to the country people of Greece and Sicily: and its native force passed not only into the Greek pastoral idyl, but into the Sicilian comedy of Epicharmus and the old comedy of Athens, and, through a totally different channel, into Roman satire. There is, however, another form in which the pastoral dialogue appears both in Theocritus and Virgil, namely, of extemporaneous contests in song. Probably these more artistic contests and the award of prizes to the successful competitor had their origin in the bantering dialogue of the shepherds; as the tragic contests at the Dionysian festivals had their origin in the rivalry with which the masked votaries of Dionysus poured forth their extemporaneous verses, in sympathy with the sufferings of their god.

Such were the first rude utterances of the deeper as well as the gayer emotions of men, living in the happy security of the country districts or the ‘otia dia’ of the mountains in Greece, Sicily, and perhaps Southern Italy, which the art of Theocritus and his successors cast into artistic forms and measures suited to the taste of educated readers. How far, in the manner in which he accomplished this, Theocritus had been anticipated by ‘the grave muse of Stesichorus,’ and whether this wild product of the mountains was of a native Siculian or an Hellenic stock, it is not possible to determine. A citizen of Syracuse, in the palmy days of Hiero, before there was any dream of Roman conquest; deeply susceptible of the beauty of his native island, but, like a Greek, seeing this beauty in relation to human associations; familiar with the songs and old traditions of the land, as well as with the fancies of earlier poets; living his life in friendly association with his literary compeers, such as the Alexandrine Aratus247 and Nicias, the physician and poet248,—he [pg 158]sought to people the familiar scenery of mountain, wood, brook, and sea-shore with an ideal race of shepherds, in whom the natural emotions and grotesque superstitions of actual herdsmen should be found in union with the refinement, the mythological lore, the keen sense of the beauty, not unmixed with the melancholy, of life, characteristic of a circle of poets and scholars enjoying their youth in untroubled and uneventful times. All his materials, old and new, assumed the shape of pictures from human life in combination with the representations of the sounds, sights, and living movement of Nature. The essential characteristic both of his pastoral Idyls and of those drawn from city-life, such as the second, fourteenth, and fifteenth, is what has been well called the ‘disinterested objectivity249’ of Greek art: and this is the chief note of their difference from Virgil’s pastorals. Even where, as in the seventh, the poet introduces himself on the scene, he appears as one, and not the most important, of the personages on it. He does not draw attention to his own feelings or fortunes, only to his playful converse and rivalry in song with the young shepherd-poet Lycidas, ‘with the bright laughing eye and the smile ever playing on his lip250.’

It may be urged against these Idyls that, as compared with the best modern Idyls, in prose or verse, they are, for the most part, wanting in incident or adventure; and this charge is equally applicable to Virgil’s pastorals. But there is always dramatic vivacity and consistency in the personages of Theocritus, and this cannot equally be said of those introduced into the Eclogues. It might be urged also against the representations of Theocritus, and still more against those of Virgil, that the ‘vestigia ruris’ have been too carefully obliterated. Yet, though not drawn immediately from life, this picture of Sicilian shepherds and peasants, possessed with the vivid belief in Pan and the Nymphs, singing the old dirge of the herdsman Daphnis [pg 159]among the mountain pastures, or the love-song of the Cyclops and Galatea on the rocks overhanging the Sicilian sea, or the song of Lityerses among the ripe corn-fields251, challenging each other to compete in song or plying each other with careless tending their flocks rather as a picturesque pastime than as a toilsome occupation, and living a life of free social enjoyment in the open air, was a genuine ideal of the Greek imagination, not perhaps, too far removed from the actual reality.

Before the time of Virgil there had been no attempt to introduce this form of art into Italy. Though the germ of a rude rustic poetry existed in the ‘Fescennine verses,’ no connexion can be traced between them and the highly artificial pastoral of the Augustan Age. The Eclogues of Virgil are in form and even in substance a closer reproduction of a Greek original than any other branch of Latin literature, with the exception of the comedy of Terence. The ‘Lament of Daphnis,’ the song of unrequited love, the bantering dialogues of the shepherds and their more formal contests in song, reappear in Latin tones and with some new associations of individual and national life, but in such a manner as to recall the memory of the Sicilian idyl rather than to suggest a new experience from life. And yet Virgil is not satisfied, like the authors of Latin comedy, with presenting to the imagination types of Greek life, Greek sentiment and manners, and Greek scenes. He desires not only to reproduce in new words and music the charm which had fascinated him in Theocritus, but to blend the actual feeling and experience of an Italian living in the Augustan Age with this ideal restored from a by-gone time. The result is something composite, neither purely Greek nor purely Italian; not altogether of the present time nor yet of a mythical foretime; but a blending of various elements of poetic association and actual experience, as in those landscapes of the Renaissance which combine aspects of real scenes with the suggestions of classical poetry, and introduce figures of the day in modern dress [pg 160]along with the fantastic shapes of mythological invention. The scenes and personages of the Eclogues are thus one stage further removed from actuality than those of the Greek pastoral. They do not reproduce, as Keats has done, the Greek ideal of rural life, and they do not create a purely Italian ideal. There was, indeed, latent in the Italian imagination an ideal of a homely rustic life, finding its happiness in the annual round of labour and in the blessing of a virtuous home, and that ideal Virgil loved to draw with ‘magic hand;’ but that was altogether unlike the ideal of the Greek imagination. The life of industry and happiness which Virgil glorifies in the Georgics,—that of the ‘primitive, stout-hearted, and thrifty husbandmen’ of Horace,—whose pride was in their ‘glad harvests,’ their ‘trim fields,’ their ‘vineyards,’ and in the use which they derived from their flocks, herds, and beehives, had nothing in common with that of the ‘well-trimmed sunburnt shepherds’ whom Greek fancy first created, and whom Keats has made live for us again, enjoying the fulness of actual existence in union with the dreams of an ‘Elysian idleness252.’ Least of all could the pastoral life of Arcadia or Sicily have been like the habitual ways of men in the rich plains of Mantua. The district of Italy most like the scenes of the Greek idyl was Calabria, where, among the desolate forest-glades, the herds and flocks of some rich senator or eques were now tended by barbarous slaves, with whose daily existence the ideal glories of pastoral song were not likely to intermingle.

[pg 161]

III.

It is easy for those who wish to depreciate the art of Virgil to point out very many instances of imitation and artificial treatment in the Eclogues, and to establish their manifest inferiority to the Greek idyl in direct truth and vividness of representation. They are not purely objective, like the Greek idyl, nor purely subjective as the Latin elegy generally is. They are very much inferior to the Greek originals in dramatic power; and the idyl is really a branch of dramatic poetry. Like the pure drama, it depends on the power of living in the thoughts, situations, and feelings of beings quite distinct from the poet himself. Some of the Eclogues, those in which the passion of love and the Italian passion for the land are the motives, are dramatic in spirit, though the conception of the situation is not consistently maintained. But in most cases, where he is not merely imitative, the dramatic form is to Virgil as a kind of veil under which he may partially reveal what moved him most in connexion with his own personal fortunes, and may express his sympathies with literature, with outward nature, and with certain moods and sentiments of the human heart. It is not in virtue of the originality and consistency of their conception, but of their general truth of feeling and the perfection of the medium through which that feeling is conveyed, that those who admire the Eclogues must vindicate their claim to poetic honour.

The reserve with which all his personal relations are indicated, and the allusive way in which the story of his fortunes is told, are in keeping with the delicacy and modesty of Virgil’s nature. He tells us nothing directly of his home-life or occupations, though his attachment to the scenes familiar to him from childhood is felt in the language with which Meliboeus felicitates Tityrus on the restitution of his land, and in that in which Moeris and Lycidas discourse together. We know of no actual Galatea or Amaryllis associated with the joy or the pain of his youth; though his subtle perception of the various moods of the passion of love can hardly be a mere poetic intuition, unen[pg 162]lightened by personal experience. The eminent men with whom he was brought into contact, Octavianus, Pollio, Varus, and Gallus, are not individualised; though the different feelings of reverential or loyal respect, of colder deference, or admiring enthusiasm, which they severally excited in him, can be clearly distinguished. In the undesigned revelation of himself, which every author makes in his writings, there are few indications of the religious and moral feeling and of the national sentiment which are among the principal elements in Virgil’s maturer poems: but we find abundantly the evidence of a mind open to all tender and refined influences, free from every taint of envy or malice, serious and pensive, and finding its chief happiness in making the charm, which fascinated him in books, in Nature, and in life, heard in the deep and rich music of the language, of which he first drew out the full capabilities:—

Saepe ego longos

Cantando puerum memini me condere soles 253.

The Eclogues also present Virgil to us as not only a poet, but, as what he continued to be through all his life, a student of the writings of the past. Like Milton he was eminently a learned poet, and, like Milton, he knew the subtle alchemy by which the duller ore of learned allusion is transmuted into gold. The tales of the Greek mythology and the names of places famous in song or story act on his imagination, not so much through their own intrinsic interest, as through the associations of literature. It is under this reflex action that he recalls to memory the tales of Pasiphae, of Scylla and Nisus, of Tereus and Philomela; introduces Orpheus, Amphion, and Linus as the ideal poets of pastoral song; and alludes to Hesiod, Euphorion, and Theocritus in the phrases ‘the sage of Ascra,’ ‘the verse of Chalcis,’ ‘the Sicilian Shepherd.’ It is in this spirit that he associates the musical accompaniment of his song with the names of Maenalus and Eurotas, of Rhodope and Ismarus; and that he [pg 163]speaks of bees and thyme as ‘the bees and thyme of Hybla,’ of doves as ‘the Chaonian doves,’ of vultures as ‘the birds of Caucasus.’ He also characterises objects by local epithets, suggestive rather of the associations of geographical science than of poetry. Thus he speaks of ‘Ariusian wine,’ of ‘Cydonian arrows,’ ‘Cyrnean yews,’ ‘Assyrian spikenard,’ and the like. The interest in physical enquiries appears in the allusion in Ecl. iii. 40,

In medio duo signa Conon, etc.,

and in the rapid summary of the Epicurean theory of creation at vi. 31, etc.,

Namque canebat uti magnum per inane coacta, etc.

In these last passages it is not so much by the scientific or philosophical speculations themselves, as by their literary treatment by former writers, that Virgil appears to be attracted. Perhaps the frequent recurrence of these localising epithets, where there is nothing in the context to call up any thought of the locality indicated, may appear to a modern reader an unfortunate result of his Alexandrine studies; yet the grace with which old poetic associations are evoked and new associations created by such lines as these,

Tum canit, errantem Permessi ad flumina Gallum

Aonas in montis ut duxerit una sororum,

or these,

Omnia quae Phoebo quondam meditante beatus

Audiit Eurotas, iussitque ediscere laurus,

Ille canit254,

attests the cumulative force which ancient names, identified with the poetic life of the world, gather in their transmission through the literatures of different ages and nations.

In the Georgics and Aeneid, as well as in the Eclogues, [pg 164]Virgil shows a great susceptibility to the beauty and power of Nature. But Nature presents different aspects and awakens a different class of feelings in these poems. In the Eclogues he shows a great openness and receptivity of mind, through which all the softer and more delicate influences of the outward world enter into and become part of his being. The ‘molle atque facetum’ of Horace denotes the yielding susceptibility255 to outward influences, and the vivacity which gives them back in graceful forms. In the Georgics, the sense of the relation of Nature to human energy imparts greater nobleness to the conception. She appears there, not only in her majesty and beauty, but as endowed with a soul and will. She stands to man at first in the relation of an antagonist: but, by compliance with her conditions, he subdues her to his will, and finds in her at last a just and beneficent helpmate256. In the Eclogues she takes rather the form of an enchantress, who, by the charm of her outward mien and her freely-offered gifts, fascinates him into a life of indolent repose. If the one poem may in a sense be described as the ‘glorification of labour,’ the other might be described as the ‘glorification of the dolce far niente’ of Italian life. The natural objects described by Virgil are often indeed the same as those out of which the representation of Theocritus is composed; but in Theocritus the human figures are, after all, the prominent objects in the picture: the speakers in his dialogue, though not unconscious of the charm proceeding from the scenes in which they are placed, yet are not possessed by it; they do not lose their own being in the larger life of Nature environing them. Theocritus shows everywhere the social temperament of the Greeks. It is an Italian, not perhaps without something of the Celtic fibre in his composition, who utters his natural feelings in the lines,

[pg 165]

ibi haec incondita solus

Montibus et silvis studio iactabat inani257.

In Virgil’s representation neither the scenes nor the human figures are so distinctly present to the eye; but there is diffused through it a subtle influence from the outward world, bringing man’s nature into conformity with itself. The genius in modern times, which shows most of this yielding susceptibility to the softer aspects and motions of Nature, is that of Rousseau; but in the manner in which he gives way to this sentiment there is a want of restraint, a strain of excited feeling, suggestive of the contrast between this transient intoxication of happiness and the abiding unrest and misery of all his human relations. In reading Virgil there is no sense of any such jarring discord; yet it is rather as a pensive emotion, not unallied to melancholy, than as the joy of a sanguine temperament, that his susceptibility to outward impressions is made manifest.

The objects through which Nature exercises this spell are, as was said, much the same as those out of which the landscape of Theocritus is composed. Virgil, like Theocritus, enables us to feel the charm of ‘the sparkling stream of fresh water,’ of ‘mossy fountains and grass softer than sleep,’ of ‘the cool shade of trees,’ and of caves ‘with the gadding vine o’ergrown.’ The grace and tender hues of wild flowers—violets, poppies, narcissus, and hyacinth—and of fruits, such as the ‘cerea pruna’ and the ‘tenera lanugine mala,’—the luxuriant vegetation clothing the rocks and the ideal mountain glades,—

Ille latus niveum molli fultus hyacintho258,—

the plants and trees,—osiers and hazels, ilex and beech,—the woods, and meadow-pastures, and rich orchards of his native district, have communicated the soul and secret of their being to the mellow tones of his language and the musical cadences of his verse. He makes us hear again, with a strange delight, the murmur of bees feeding on the willow hedge, the moan of [pg 166]turtle-doves from the high elm tree, the sound of the whispering south wind, of waves breaking on the shore, of rivers flowing down through rocky valleys, the song of the woodman plying his work, the voice of the divine poet chanting his strain. By a few simple words he calls up before our minds the genial luxuriance of spring, the freshness of early morning, the rest of all living things in the burning heat of noon, the stillness of evening, the gentle imperceptible motions of Nature, in the shooting up of the young alder-tree and in the gradual colouring of the grapes on the sunny hill-sides. If the labour of man is mentioned at all, it is in the form of some elegant accomplishment or picturesque task—pruning the vine or grafting the pear-tree, closing the streams that water the pastures, watching the flocks and herds feeding at their own will. The new era on which the world was about to enter is seen by his imagination, like the vision of some pastoral valley, half hidden, half glorified through a golden haze. The peculiar blessings anticipated in that era are the rest from labour, the spontaneous bounty of Nature, the peace that is to reign among the old enemies of the animal kingdom.

The human affections which mingle with these representations of Nature are the love of home, and the romantic sentiment, rather than the passion, of love. The common human feeling of the love of home Virgil realises more intensely from his love of the beauty associated with his own home. Many of the sayings of Tityrus and Meliboeus bear witness to the strong hold which their lands and flocks had on men of their class:—

nos dulcia linquimus arva—

ergo tua rura manebunt, Et tibi magna satis—

Ille meas errare boves ut cernis—

Spem gregis a, silice in nuda conixa reliquit—

Ite meae, quondam felix pecus, ite capellae259.

[pg 167]

In the passage of the same Eclogue, from 68–79,

En unquam patrios ... salices carpetis amaras,

Virgil tells, in language of natural pathos and exquisite grace, of the poor man’s sorrow in yielding his thatched hut, his well-trimmed fields, his corn crops, his pear-trees and his vines, the familiar sight of his goats feeding high up among the thickets of the rocks, to some rude soldier, incapable either of enjoying the charm or profiting by the richness of the land.

The three poems—the second, eighth, and tenth—of which love is the theme are all of a serious and plaintive cast. There are few touches in Virgil’s art descriptive either of the happier or the lighter and more playful experiences of the passion, which are the common theme of Horace’s Odes. Still less does he treat the subject in the style of Propertius and Ovid. The sentiment of Virgil is more like that of Tibullus; only Virgil gives utterance, though always in a dramatic form, to the real despair of unrequited affection (indigni amoris), while the tone of Tibullus is rather that of one yielding to the luxury of melancholy when in possession of all that his heart desires. They each give expression to that modern mood of passion, in which the heart longs to exchange the familiar life of civilisation for the rougher life of the fields, and to share some humble cottage and the daily occupations of peasant life with the beloved object260. In Virgil also there appears some anticipation of that longing for lonely communing with Nature in her wilder and more desolate aspects which we associate with romantic rather than with classical poetry.

Though, unlike all other Latin poets, Virgil avoids all reference to the sensual side of this passion, there is no ancient poet who has analysed and expressed, with equal truth and beauty and with such a chivalrous devotion, the fluctuations [pg 168]between hope and despair, the sense of personal unworthiness, the sweet memories, the heart-felt longings, the self-forgetful consideration and anxieties of an idealising affection. In such lines as these, expressing at once the sense of unworthiness and the rapid sinking of the heart from hope to despair—

Rusticus es Corydon, nec munera curat Alexis261,

and again—

Tanquam haec sint nostri medicina furoris262;

in the lines in which Damon traces back his love to its ideal source in early boyhood—

Saepibus in nostris, etc.;

in the fine simile at viii. 85—

Talis amor Daphnim, qualis cum fessa iuvencum, etc.;

in the tender thought of the dying Gallus for the mistress who had forsaken him—

A, tibi ne teneras glacies secet aspera plantas263,—

there is a delicate and subtle power of touch not unworthy of the master-hand which, with maturer art, delineated the queenly passion and despair of Dido.

The supreme excellence of Virgil’s art consists in the perfect harmony between his feeling and the medium through which it is conveyed. The style of his longer poems has many varied excellences, in accordance with the varied character of the thought and sentiment which it is called on to express. But the strong and full volume of diction and rhythm and the complex harmonies of the Georgics would have been an inappropriate vehicle for the luxurious sentiment of the Eclogues. The attitude of the poet’s mind in the composition of these earlier poems was that of a genial passiveness rather than that of creative activity. There are few poems of equal excellence [pg 169]in which so little use is made of that force of words which imparts new life to things. A few such expressions might be quoted, like that given by Wordsworth as ‘an instance of a slight exertion of the faculty of imagination in the use of a single word’—

Dumosa pendere procul de rupe videbo;

and we notice a similar exertion of the faculty in the line—

Hic viridis tenera praetexit harundine ripam

Mincius264.

But this actively imaginative use of language seldom occurs in these poems. The general effect of the style is produced by the fulness of feeling, the sweetness or sonorousness of cadence, with which words, used in their familiar sense, are selected and combined. Such epithets as ‘mollis,’ ‘lentus,’ ‘tener’ are of frequent recurrence, yet the impression left by their use is not one of weakness, or of a satiating luxury of sentiment. The soft outlines and delicate bloom of Virgil’s youthful style are as true emblems of health as the firmer fibre and richer colouring of his later diction. What an affluence of feeling, what a deep sense of the happiness of life, of the beauty of the world, of the glory of genius, is conveyed by the simple use of the words fortunatus, formosus, divinus in the lines—

Fortunate senex, ergo tua rura manebunt—

Nunc frondent silvae, nunc formosissimus annus—

Formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse—

Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta—

Ut Linus haec illi divino carmine pastor.

The effect he produces by the sound and associations of proper names is like that produced by Milton through the same instrument. Thus, to take one instance out of many, how suggestive of some golden age of pastoral song are the following lines, vague and conventional though their actual application appears to be in the passage where they occur:—

[pg 170]

Non me carminibus vincet nec Thracius Orpheus,

Nec Linus, huic mater quamvis atque huic pater adsit,

Orphei Calliopea, Lino formosus Apollo.

Pan etiam Arcadia mecum si iudice certet,

Pan etiam Arcadia dicat se iudice victum265.

More even in his rhythm than in his diction does Virgil’s superiority appear, not only over all the poets of his country, but perhaps over all other poets of past times, except Homer, Milton, and Shakspeare, in those passages in which his dramatic art admits of a richly musical cadence. Our ignorance of the exact pronunciation of Greek in the Alexandrian Age makes a comparison between the effect that would have been produced by the rhythm of Theocritus and the rhythm of the Eclogues in ancient times difficult or impossible. Yet it may be allowed to say this much, that if the rhythm of the Eclogues does not seem to us to attain to the natural and liquid flow of the Greek idyl, yet its tones are deeper, they seem to come from a stronger and richer source, than any which we can elicit from the Doric reed. Rarely has the soothing and reviving charm of the musical sounds of Nature and of the softer and grander harmonies of poetry been described and reproduced more effectively than in these lines:—

Hinc tibi, quae semper, vicino ab limite saepes

Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti

Saepe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro;

Hinc alta sub rupe canet frondator ad auras;

Nec tamen interea raucae, tua cura, palumbes,

Nec gemere aeria cessabit turtur ab ulmo266:

and in these which suggest the thought of that restorative [pg 171]power of genius which a poet of the present day has happily ascribed to Wordsworth267:—

Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta,

Quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per aestum

Dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo268:

and in these again, which give both true symbols and a true example of the ‘deep-chested music’ in which the poet gives utterance to the thought which has taken shape within his mind:—

Quae tibi, quae tali reddam pro carmine dona?

Nam neque me tantum venientis sibilus austri,

Nec percussa iuvant fluctu tam litora, nec quae

Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles269.

The objections often urged against the poetical value of the Eclogues may be admitted. They are imitative in form. They do not reproduce scenes and characters from actual life, nor are they consistent creations of the imagination. They do not possess the interest arising from a contemplative insight into the hidden workings of Nature, nor from reflection on the problems of life. Their originality, their claim to be a representative work of genius, consists in their truth and unity of sentiment and tone. If it be said that the sentiment which they embody is but a languid and effeminate sentiment, the admiration of two great poets, of the most masculine type of genius that modern times have produced, is a sufficient answer to this reproach. The admiration of Milton is proved by the conception and workmanship of his ‘Lycidas,’ the most richly and continuously musical even among his creations. Of Wordsworth’s admiration there is more than one testimony,—this, from [pg 172]the recently published Memoir of the daughter of his early friend and associate in poetry, perhaps the most direct: ‘I am much pleased to see (writes S. Coleridge) how highly Mr. Wordsworth speaks of Virgil’s style, and of his Bucolics which I have ever thought most graceful and tender. They are quite another thing from Theocritus, however they may be based on Theocritus270.’ The criticism which the same writer applies to ‘Lycidas’ suggests the true answer also to the objections urged against Virgil’s originality. ‘The best defence of Lycidas is not to defend the design of it at all, but to allege that the execution of it is perfect, the diction the ne plus ultra of grace and loveliness, and that the spirit of the whole is as original as if the poem contained no traces of the author’s acquaintance with ancient pastoral poetry from Theocritus downwards.’ To the names of these two poets we can now add the name of one of the most illustrious, and certainly one of the least effeminate, among the critics and men of letters whom this century has produced—Macaulay; who, after speaking of the Aeneid in one of his letters, adds this sentence, ‘The Georgics pleased me better; the Eclogues best,—the second and tenth above all271.’

The appreciation of Wordsworth is a certain touchstone of the genuineness of Virgil’s feeling for Nature. It is true that the sentiment to which he gives expression in the Eclogues is only one, and not the most elevated, of the many modes in which the spirit of man responds to the forms and movement of the outward world. But the mood of the Eclogues is one most natural to man’s spirit in the beautiful lands of Southern Europe. The freshness and softness of Italian scenes are present in the Eclogues, in the rich music of the Italian language, while it still retained the strength, fulness, and majesty of its tones. These poems are truly representative of Italy, not as a land of old civilisation, of historic renown, of great cities, of corn-crops, and vineyards,—‘the mighty mother of fruits and men;’—but as a land of a soft and genial air, beautiful with the tender [pg 173]foliage and fresh flowers and blossoms of spring, and with the rich colouring of autumn; a land which has most attuned man’s nature to the influences of music and of pictorial art. As a true and exquisite symbol of this vein of sentiment associated with Italy, the Eclogues hold a not unworthy place beside the greater work—the ‘temple of solid marble’—which the maturer art of Virgil dedicated to the genius of his country, and beside the more composite but stately and massive monument which perpetuates the national glory of Rome.

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