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'. 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 1 6 Often, I remember, when a boy I used to pass in song the long summer days till sunset.' §3] ALEXANDRIAN LEARNING 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, or these, Tum canit, errantem Permessi ad flumina Gallum Omnia quae Phoebo quondam meditante beatus 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, Then he tells in song how Gallus as he strayed by the streams of Permessus was led by one of the sisters to the Aonian mount.' 'All those strains, which when attuned by Phoebus, Eurotas heard, enraptured, and bade his laurels learn by heart, he sings.' 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 susceptibility1 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 helpmate 2. 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, 1 Compare for this use of mollis in the sense of ' impressible' Cicero's description of his brother Quintus (Ep. ad Att. i. 17): Ñam, quanta sit in Quinto fratre meo comitas, quanta iucunditas, quam mollis animus et ad accipiendam et ad deponendam iniuriam, nihil attinet me ad te, qui ea nosti, scribere.' 2 'Fundit humo facilem victum iustissima tellus.' $ 3] FEELING OF NATURE ibi haec incondita solus Montibus et silvis studio iactabat inani 1. 165 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 suscep tibility 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 hyacintho 2, 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 1 There all alone he used to fling wildly to the mountains and the woods these unpremeditated words in unavailing longing.' 24 2 He, his snow-white side reposing on the tender hyacinth,--' 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- Spem gregis a, silice in nuda conixa reliquit Ite meae, quondam felix pecus, ite capellae1. 1 We leave the dear fields'- 'Therefore you will still keep your fields, large enough for your desires '- 'He allowed my herds to wander at their will, even as you see'-' Ah! the hope of all my flock, which she had just borne, she left on the bare flint pavement'-'Go on, my she goats, once a happy flock, go on.' |