non ullo ex aequore cernes

Plura domum tardis decedere plaustra iuvencis1;

and enables us to feel the charm of a rich pastoral country,with its lonely woodland glades, its brimming river flowing past mossy and grassy banks, and the shelter and shade of its caves and rocks, in the midst of homely directions for the care of mares before they foal :—

Saltibus in vacuis pascunt et plena secundum

Flumina, muscus ubi et viridissima gramine ripa,
Speluncaeque tegant, et saxea procubet umbra 2.

In the inculcation of his practical precepts his aim is even more to exalt the dignity and to exhibit the delight of rural labour, than to explain its methods or inculcate its utility.

He imparts a peculiar vivacity, grace, and tenderness to his treatment of many topics by the analogy which he suggests between the life of Nature and of man. The perception of analogy originates in the philosophical and imaginative thought of Lucretius; and it is in the second Book, in the composition. of which, as Mr. Munro has shown, Virgil's mind was saturated with the ideas, feelings, and language of his predecessor, that this element of poetical interest is most conspicuous. The following examples, occurring in the technical exposition of the growth and tending of trees, are all taken from the second Book; and two of them, those marked g and h, are immediately suggested by Lucretius :

3a. Parva sub ingenti matris se subicit umbra.

1 'There is no other kind of plain from which you will see more wains wending their way home with the lagging steers.' ii. 205-2c6.

2 They let them feed in lonely pastures, and by the bank of brimming rivers, where moss abounds and the grass is greenest, and where caves give shelter, and the shadow of some rock is cast far in front.' iii. 143-145. a. The young plant shoots up under the mighty shadow of its

3

mother.'

b. Rending them from the loving body of their mother.' c. Will cast off their woodland spirit.'

h. Ac dum prima novis adolescit frondibus aetas,
Parcendum teneris.

i. Ante reformidant ferrum.

k. Praecipue dum frons tenera imprudensque laborum.

Many more examples might be added from the other Books. The force of many of the epithets applied to material objects, such as ignava,' 'laeta et fortia,' 'maligni,' 'infelix,' etc., consists in the suggestion of a kind of personal life underlying and animating the silent processes of Nature.

Virgil, too, like Lucretius, shows the close observation of a naturalist, and a genuine sympathy with the pains and pleasures of all living things, especially of the animals associated with the toil or amusement of men. The interest of the third Book arises, to a great degree, from the truth and vivacity of feeling with which he observes and identifies himself with the ways and dispositions of these fellow-labourers of man,-with the pride and emulation of the horse, the fidelity and companionship of the dog, the combative courage of the bull and his sense of pain and dishonour in defeat, the patience of the steer and his brotherly feeling for his yoke-fellow in toil, and with the attachment of sheep and goats to their offspring and to their familiar haunts 2. The interest of the fourth Book, again, turns on the analogy implied between the pursuits, d. 'And marvels at its strange leaves and fruits not its own.'

e. 'Lest the plants through the sudden change should fail to recognise their mother.'

f. And the plants will lift up their hearts.'

g. By their strength they may become accustomed to mount aloft and

despise the winds.'

h. And while they are still in the first stage of growth or their leaves are new, you must spare their infancy.'

i. Before that they shrink from the steel.'

k. 'Especially while the leaf is still tender, and all unwitting of its trials.'

2 As an instance of the last, cf. iii. 316, 317:

Atque ipsae memores redeunt in tecta, suosque
Ducunt.

fortunes, wars, and state-policy of bee-communities and of men. It is the sense of this analogy that imparts a meaning deeper than that demanded by the obvious force of the words— a more pathetic feeling of the vanity of all earthly strife-to that final touch in the description of the combat in mid-air between two hosts, led by rival chiefs :

Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui iactu compressa quiescunt1.

In thus relieving the dryness of technical detail, by availing himself of every aspect of beauty associated with it, and by imparting the vivacity of human relations and sensibility to natural objects, Virgil makes use of the same resources as elicit springs of poetic feeling from many of the dry and stony wastes through which the argument of Lucretius leads him. There are others however employed by Virgil, which Lucretius uses more sparingly or not at all. There are, in the first place, all those which arise out of the conception of the 'human force,' impersonated in the 'sturdy ditcher,' the 'farmer roused to anger,' the 'active peasant,' contrasting with and conflicting with that other conception of the life of Nature. And as in Lucretius the speculative ideas, penetrating through every region of the wide domain traversed by him, elicit some poetic life out of its barrenest places, so the two speculative ideas, of Nature as a living force, and of man's labour, vigilance, forethought in their relation to that force, impart a feeling of imaginative delight to Virgil's account of the most common details of the husbandman's toil. The strength and vivacity thus imparted to the style has been well illustrated by Professor Conington in his Introduction to the Georgics. It may be noted however that, even in this imaginative recognition of the strength and force of man in conflict with the force of

1 These passions of their hearts and these desperate battles are all stilled to rest, by the check of a little handful of dust.' Compare Horace's line, Od. i, 28. 3:

Pulveris exigui prope litus parva Matinum

Munera.

$4] JOY OF THE HUSBANDMAN IN HIS WORK 235

Nature, Virgil is still following in the tracks of Lucretius.
Such expressions as

Ingemere et terram pressis proscindere aratris-
ferro molirier arva-

magnos manibus divellere montes

in the older poet first opened up this vein which was wrought with such effectual results by his successor. But Conington has, in his notes, drawn attention to another vein of feeling, which is all Virgil's own, and which enables him to give further variety and charm to these homely details. The husbandman has not only his hard and incessant struggle—' labor improbus' -but he has the delight of success, the joy of contemplating the new beauty and richness, created by the strength of his This feeling breaks out in the 'Ecce' of the line already

arm.

quoted,―

Ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis undam;

in the 'iuvat' of

iuvat Ismara Baccho

Conserere, atque olea magnum vestire Taburnum1;

and in the canit' of the line

Iam canit effectos extremus vinitor antes 2.

Another set of associations, interwoven with the rich and firm texture of the poem, are those derived from earlier science and poetry. Of the resources of learned allusion Lucretius makes a singularly sparing use. The localising epithets and mythological names in which Virgil's poem abounds possessed no attraction for his austerer genius, nourished by the severe models of an older time, and rejecting the ornaments and distractions from the main interest familiar to Alexandrine literature. Virgil had already shown in the Eclogues this tendency to overlay his native thought with the spoils of Greek learning. Such phrases as 'Strymoniae grues,' 'Pelusiacae lentis,' 'Amyclaeum canem,' 'Idumaeas palmas,'--the refe

1 'What joy to plant Ismarus with the vine, or to clothe the mighty sides of Taburnus with the olive.'

2 And now the last vintager sings with joy at completing all his rows.'

rences to the 'harvests of Mysia and Gargarus,' to the 'vines of Ismarus,' 'Cytorus, waving with boxwood,' etc. etc., must have been charged, for Virgil's contemporaries, in a way which they cannot be for a modern reader, with the memories of foreign travel or of residence in remote provinces, or with the interest attaching to lands recently made known. To us their chief interest is that by their strangeness they enhance the effect with which the more familiar names of Italian places are used. Thus the contrasted pictures of the illimitable pastures of Libya and of the wintry wastes of Scythia enable us to realise more exquisitely the charm of that fresh1 Italian pastoral scene immediately preceding, the description of which combines the tender feeling of the Eclogues with the deeper realism of the Georgics. Thus too the great episode on the beauty and riches of Italy (ii. 136-176) is introduced in immediate contrast to the account of the prodigal luxuriance of Nature in the forests and jungles of the East. But even to a modern reader such expressions as these

Vos silvae amnesque Lycaei

vocat alta voce Cithaeron-
O, ubi campi

Spercheusque, et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis
Taygeta, etc.,

seem to bear with them faint echoes from a far-off time, of some ideal life of poetry and adventure in the free range and 'otia dia' of pastoral scenes,-of some more intimate union of the human soul with the soul of mountains and woodland than is granted to the common generations of men. On Virgil himself, to whom the whole of Greek poetry and legend was an open page, the spell which they exercised was of the same kind as that exercised by the magic of classical allusion on the poets and painters of the Renaissance.

The contrast between Lucretius and Virgil, as regards their relation to the ancient mythology, has already appeared in the examination of the Invocations to their respective poems. This

1 iii. 321-338.