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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 uvae',-

and again in these,

Certum est in silvis, inter spelaea ferarum

Malle pati, tenerisque meos incidere amores
Arboribus 2.

II.

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 halfrevealing, 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,

of

1 And would that I had been one of you, and had been either shepherd your flock or the gatherer of the ripe grape.'

2I am resolved rather to suffer among the woods, among the wild beasts' dens, and to carve my loves on the tender bark of the trees.'

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Nostra, neque erubuit silvas habitare Thalia1,

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 Adonis 2.

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 air3. 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,

1 'First my Muse deigned lightly to sing in the Sicilian strain, and blushed not to dwell among the woods.'

2 Nor need you be ashamed of your flock, O Godlike poet; even fair Adonis once fed his sheep by the river-banks.'

3 Compare the following passage from one of the prose idyls of G. Sand: 'Depuis les bergers de Longus jusqu'à ceux de Trianon, la vie pastorale est un Éden parfumé où les âmes tourmentées et lassées du tumulte du monde ont essayé de se réfugier. L'art, ce grand flatteur, ce chercheur complaisant de consolations pour les gens trop heureux, a traversé une suite ininterrompue de bergeries. Et sous ce titre, Histoire des bergeries, j'ai souvent désiré de faire un livre d'érudition et de critique où j'aurais passé en revue tous ces différents rêves champêtres dont les hautes classes se sont nourries avec passion.' François le Champi.

Per loca pastorum deserta atque otia dia',

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 тержÓμеVOL σúρуs, 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

οὐ μέν πως νῦν ἔστιν ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ ̓ ἀπὸ πέτρης
τῷ ὀαριζέμεναι, ἅ τε παρθένος ήίθεός τε,
παρθένος ἠίθεός τ ̓ ὀαρίζετον ἀλλήλοιιν

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,

'Among the lonely haunts of the shepherds and the deep peace of Nature.'

2 One may not now hold converse with him from a tree or from a rock, like a maid and youth, as a maid and youth hold converse with one another.'

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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 Sovкóλo, or herdsmen, like the song of the masked worshippers of Bacchus (rpayadia), 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 heat'. 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,

1 Compare the account of the origin of pastoral poetry in Müller's Literature of the Greeks.

αὐτὰρ ἐγώ τοι

Αὐσονικᾶς ὀδύνας μέλπω μέλος 1,—

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 objects. 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 them 3.

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 fudit*.

1 But I attune the plaintive Ausonian melody.' 100-101. (Ed. Ahrens.)

Incertorum Idyll. I.

2 Compare Symonds' Studies of Greek Poets, First Series, The Idyllists. 3 Wordsworth's great pastoral Michael' is a marked exception to this general statement. So, too, love can hardly be called the most prominent motive in Tennyson's 'Dora.'

46

'Poured forth its rustic banter in responsive strains.'

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