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the destructive forces are gaining the superiority over the restorative forces of Nature; and this process is hastening on the advent of that 'single day' which will overwhelm in ruin the whole framework of earth, sea, and sky1.

What then under these irremediable conditions is it best for man to do? Lucretius has no other answer to give him than to study the laws of Nature, so as to understand his position, and thus to limit his wants and reconcile himself to what he cannot alter. Yet in other passages of the poem, which Virgil also remembered 2, he did recognise the fact that human skill and the knowledge acquired by observation had done much to enrich and beautify the earth:

Inde aliam atque aliam culturam dulcis agelli

Temptabant, fructusque feros mansuescere terram
Cernebant indulgendo blandeque colendo 3.

But he seems to have no idea of further progress. Though he contemplates with imaginative sympathy the trials of the 'grandis arator' and the 'vetulae vitis sator,' he has no guidance to offer them. The lessons taught by Lucretius are not those of active energy, applicable to every condition of life, but the lessons of a resigned quietism and a contemplative energy, adapted only to men of leisure, enjoying ample resources for the gratification of their intellectual tastes.

That this opinion of the decay in the natural productiveness of the earth made a strong impression on the Roman mind may be inferred from the fact that Columella opens his treatise by arguing against it. And that the idea of the struggle with Nature was one familiar to the prose writers on such subjects appears from an expression in the first book of the same writer: 'that the land ought to be weaker than the husbandman, since he has to struggle with it.' Cicero too puts into Cato's

1 ii. 1146; v. 95.

2 Compare Lucret. v. 1367-1369 with Georg. ii. 36. Compare also Virgil's use of indulgere and indulgentia.

After that they essayed now one, now another, mode of tilling the dear plot of ground, and they saw that the earth made wild fruits into fruits of the garden, by a kindly and caressing culture.'

mouth1 the sentiment that the earth, if rightly dealt with, never refuses the 'imperium' of man. And this too is Virgil's doctrine and it was to give that guidance which Lucretius, though he discerned the evil, did not supply, that the didactic directions of the Georgics were given.

The Lucretian idea of Nature, both in its philosophical and poetical significance, runs through the Georgics; but it is modified by other considerations, and it is rather latent than prominent in the poetry and in the practical teaching of the poem. The mind of Virgil is not possessed, as the mind of Lucretius was possessed, by the thought of the immensity of her sphere and the universality of her presence. He sees her presence in the familiar scenes and objects around him. The idea adds variety, grace, and liveliness to his description of every detail of rural industry. A sense of the ministering agency of Nature is a more pervading element in his poetry than that of her power and majesty. Objects are still regarded by him as separate and individual. The conceptions of Nature which created mythology contend in his mind with the halfapprehended conceptions of universal law and of the interdependence of phenomena on one another. Thus the poetical element in his descriptions of the life of plants and trees, or of the forces of flood and storm, does not spring from such deep sources in the imagination as the same element in the descriptions of the older poet. But neither is it limited to the perception of the outward shows' of things which gratify the eye, or the sounds which delight the ear. Even in the Eclogues the intuition into Nature is deeper than that. The study of Lucretius has enriched the Georgics with the most pervading charm of the poem-the sense of a secret, unceasing, tranquil power (like that ascribed by Wordsworth to May

Thy help is with the weed that creeps

Along the barest ground, etc.),

communicating to outward things the grace and tenderness.

1 De Senectute, xv.

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of human sentiment, the variety and vivacity of human energy.

But the Lucretian conception of Nature in its relation to human wants has been greatly modified by the religious tendency of Virgil's thought, his respect for traditional opinion, his sense of man's dependence on a higher Spiritual Power. Nature he regards as no more independent in her sphere than man is in his. The laws and conditions imposed on her have been appointed with reference to the relation in which she stands to man. Where these conditions are unfavourable, they have been appointed to quicken man's faculties and force him into the ways of industry. Lucretius dwells on the fact that two-thirds of our globe are unsuited for human habitation, as disproving the opinion of a Divine creation of the world for the benefit of man1: Virgil dwells on the fact that two temperate regions have been assigned to weak mortals as a proof of Divine beneficence 2. Virgil also accepts the idea that the earth once was more productive than it is 3, but he accepts it in the spirit of Hesiod rather than of Lucretius. In the Golden Age, under Saturn, the earth bore all things spontaneously. It was Jove-or Providence-who imposed on man, and continues to impose on him, the necessity of labouring for his subsistence; and this he did, not, as Hesiod believed, in anger at the deceit of Prometheus, but as a discipline and incentive to exertion. The poetical references to the Saturnian Age and the subsequent reign of Jove need not imply a literal belief in the fables of mythology, any more than the allusion at Georg. i. 62 to the fable of Pyrrha and Deucalion implies the literal acceptance of the explanation there given of the existence of the present race of men. But as that allusion seems meant to convey the belief in a Divine creative act, so the former allusion seems to convey a belief in a Divine moral dispensation. The idea of Providential guidance, of a Supreme Father, wielding the forces of Nature, shaping the destinies of man, acting for the most part by regular processes in order 2 Georg. i. 237-8.

1 V. 204, etc.

VOL. I.

P

3 Ib. 128.

that man may learn to understand his ways', but making his personal agency more manifest from time to time, as after the death of Caesar, by signs and wonders interrupting the order of Nature, supersedes or largely modifies the conception of natural law. The other powers of the Greek Olympus and of the Roman Pantheon are no longer, as the former are in the Iliad, at war with one another, but all work in harmony with the Supreme Will. Like the fables just referred to, the names of these deities seem to be introduced symbolically, to signify the different modes of activity of the one Supreme Spiritual Power, and the different forms under which he is to be reverenced.

The speculative idea of the Georgics is thus rather a theological than a philosophical idea. The ultimate fact which Virgil endeavours to set forth and justify is the relation of man to Nature, under a Divine dispensation. He too, as well as Lucretius, recognises the tendency of all things to degenerate; but this tendency he attributes, not to natural loss of force, but to the fiat of Omnipotence

sic omnia fatis

In peius ruere.

He too recognises the liability to failure and loss from causes over which man has no direct control,-the violence of storms, the inclemency of seasons, etc.,-as well as from others which he is able to provide against by constant vigilance. What resource has he against these untoward conditions? First he is bound to watch the signs of impending change which Providence has appointed, so as to leave as little as possible at the mercy of the elements. Next he has the resource of prayer, and the power of propitiating Heaven by customary rites and sacrifices, and by a life of piety and innocence. The ethical precepts of the poem, as is said by a distinguished French.

1 Cf. Georg. i. 351-353

Atque haec ut certis possemus discere signis,
Aestusque pluviasque et agentis frigora ventos,
Ipse Pater statuit, quid menstrua Luna moneret.

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writer, may be summed up in the medieval maxim, ‘Laborare est orare 1.'

To inculcate the necessity of a constant struggle with the reluctant forces of Nature, and to show how this struggle may be successfully conducted by incessant labour, vigilance, propitiation of the Supreme Will by prayer and piety, thus appears to be the main ethical teaching of the Georgics. And this statement of Virgil's aim is not inconsistent with the interpretation of his meaning, first suggested by Mr. Merivale, and accepted and admirably illustrated by Conington. But the phrase 'glorification of labour' suggests modern rather than ancient associations. Labour is not glorified as an end in itself; it is inculcated as a duty, as the condition appointed by Providence for attaining the peace, abundance, happiness, and worth of the life of the fields. As of old

Τῆς ἀρετῆς ἱδρῶτα θεοὶ προπάροιθεν ἔθηκαν,

so now they make the sweat of man's brow the means through which the 'divini gloria ruris' can be realised. By the labour spent in drawing into actual existence the glory and beauty of the land man best fulfils his duty and secures his happiness. There is no truer source for him of material and moral good, of simple pleasures, of contemplative delight. Yet if we wish rightly to appreciate the purely didactic parts of the poem, it is impossible, as has been fully shown by Conington in his General Introduction to the Georgics, to overrate the stress which Virgil puts on the ceaseless industry, foresight, vigilance, and actual force which must be put forth by the husbandman, as the condition of success in the struggle in which he is

1 Travailler et prier, voilà la conclusion des Georgiques.' From an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes (vol. 104), called Un Poëte Théologien, by Gaston Boissier.

2 Compare, among many other similar instances, such expressions as these:

Agricolis redit.

Labor actus in orbem

Omnia quae multo ante memor provisa repones.

Quae vigilanda viris.

Continuo in silvis magna vi flexa domatur, etc.

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