the second Book. The digression at Book III. 339, 'Quid tibi pastores Libyae,' containing the elaborate picture of a Scythian winter, suggested by the winter scene in Hesiod, also serves through the effect of contrast to heighten the charm of the fresh pastoral life of Italy described in the lines immediately preceding. The actual description of winter has been criticised unfavourably, and not altogether without justice, by one of the most independent and at the same time most scholarly of English critics', who compares it with a corresponding passage in Thomson. It is inferior in simplicity and direct force of representation to the corresponding picture in Hesiod. Virgil's imagination seems to require that even where the objects or scenes he describes are taken from books, they should be such that he could verify them in his own experience. It is this apparent verification, where the subject is not originally suggested by his own observation, that imparts the marvellous truthfulness to his art. Such lines as those to Aeraque dissiliunt volgo Stiriaque impexis induruit horrida barbis-2 convey a less real impression of winter than the single linean idealised generalisation from many actual winters-which ends the description of the various occupations and field-sports which an Italian winter offers to the husbandman: Cum nix alta iacet, glaciem cum flumina trudunt 3. Perhaps none of the minor episodes recurs to the mind so often with so keen a feeling of delight as the passage at IV. 125 to 148, beginning 'Namque sub Oebaliae,' etc. Virgil here introduces himself in his own person, and draws a picture 1 W. Savage Landor. 2 And their brazen vessels constantly split asunder, and the rough icicle froze on their unkempt beards.' 3When the snow lies deep, when the rivers force the masses of ice slowly down,' of one whom he had known, and who had interested him as actually realising that life of labour and of happiness in the results of his labour, which in the body of the poem is held up as an abstract ideal. The scene of this vivid reminiscence, -the district Qua niger umectat flaventia culta Galaesus', seems to have had peculiar attraction both for Virgil and Horace. It is there umbrosi subter pineta Galaesi— that Propertius pictures to himself Virgil meditating his Aeneid and still conning over his earlier Eclogues Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin harundinibus. It is to 'that nook of earth' that Horace looks, if the unkind Fates forbid his residence at his favourite Tibur, for a restingplace for his age to wear away in.' But it is not only to the local charm that attention is drawn, and to the beauty of plant, flower, and fruit, created by the labour of love which the old Cilician gardener-some survivor probably from the Eastern wars of Pompey-bestowed on his neglected spot of ground. Here also the true moral of the poem is pointed, that in the life of rural industry there is a deep source of happiness altogether independent of wealth, and which wealth cannot buy:- Regum aequabat opes animis, seraque revertens A more prominent place is assumed by the two episodes with which the third and fourth Books close. In the first of these, which extends from line 478 to 566, and which describes a great outbreak of cattle-plague among the Noric Alps and the district round the Timavus,-a locality which seems to have had a special attraction to Virgil's imagination 3,—he aims at painting a rival picture to that of the plague at Athens 1 Where dark Galaesus waters the yellowing cornfields.' 2 In his heart he enjoyed wealth equal to the wealth of kings; and as he returned late at night he loaded his board with a feast unbought.' 3 Cf. Ecl. viii. 6; Aen. i. 244. with which the poem of Lucretius ends. It would be unfair to compare the unfinished piece of the older poet, overcrowded as it is with detail and technical phraseology, with an elaborate specimen of Virgil's descriptive power, exercised on a kind of subject in which the speculative genius of the one poet gave him no advantage over the careful and truthful art of the other. Yet, as has been already pointed out', there are here and there strokes of imaginative power in the larger sketch, and marks of insight into human nobleness, roughly indeed expressed, as at 1243-6 Qui fuerant autem praesto, contagibus ibant in which the sincerity of the older master still asserts itself. There is great beauty however of pastoral scene, of pathos and human sympathy, of ethical contrast between the simple wants of the lower animals and the artificial luxury of human life, in Virgil's description. In the lines 520-522 one of those scenes in which he most delighted is brought before the imagination : Non umbrae altorum nemorum, non mollia possunt The last element in the picture suggests at once the 'Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles' of the Eclogues, and the lines earlier in the book— Saltibus in vacuis pascunt et plena secundum And the whole feeling of the passage is in harmony with that in Lucretius, ii. 361: 1 Cf. supra, p. 239. 2 Those who ministered to them, came into close contact and bore the labour, which a feeling of honour compelled them to undergo, and the appealing voice of the weary sufferers, mingling with the voice of their complaining. It was in this way accordingly that the best men died.' 3 Neither the shade of the high groves, nor the soft meadows can rouse any feeling, nor the river which rolling over stones in a stream purer than amber hurries to the plain.' Nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentes And in thorough harmony both with the pathos and the ethical feeling in Lucretius are the following: and it tristis arator, Maerentem abiungens fraterna morte iuvencum 2: Quid labor aut benefacta iuvant? quid vomere terras 1 'Nor can the tender willows and the grass fresh with dew, and the rivers gliding level with their banks, delight her heart, and banish her sorrow. 2 The ploughman goes sadly on his way, separating the sorrowing steer from his dead brother." The truth of this picture is confirmed by a modern writer, who, in her idyllic stories from the rural life of France, seems from time to time, better than any modern poet, to reproduce the Virgilian feeling of Nature. Dans le haut du champ un vieillard, dont le dos large et la figure sévère rappelaient celui d'Holbein, mais dont les vêtements n'annonçaient pas la misère, poussait gravement son areau de forme antique, traîné par deux boeufs tranquilles, à la robe d'un jaune pâle, véritables patriarches de la prairie, hauts de taille, un peu maigres, les cornes longues et rabattues, de ces vieux travailleurs qu'une longue habitude a rendus frères, comme on les appelle dans nos campagnes, et qui, privés l'un de l'autre, se refusent au travail avec un nouveau compagnon et se laissent mourir de chagrin. Les gens qui ne connaissent pas la campagne taxent de fable l'amitié du boeuf pour son camarade d'attelage. Qu'ils viennent voir au fond de l'étable un pauvre animal maigre, exténué, battant de sa queue inquiète ses flancs décharnés, soufflant avec effroi et dédain sur la nourriture qu'on lui présente, les yeux toujours tournés vers la porte, en grattant du pied la place vide à ses côtés, flairant les jougs et les chaînes que son compagnon a portés, et l'appelant sans cesse avec de déplorables mugissements. Le bouvier dira: "C'est une paire de boeufs perdue: son frère est mort, et celui-là ne travaillera plus. Il faudrait pouvoir l'engraisser pour l'abattre; mais il ne veut pas manger, et bientôt il sera mort de faim."' La Mare au Diable. G. Sand. The famous picture in Lucret. ii. 355-366, At mater viridis .... notumque requirit, shows a similar observation of the strength of bovine affection. What avail all their toil or their services to man? what that they have upturned the heavy earth with the plough-share? and yet they have received no harm from Massic vintages or luxurious banquets; their food is leaves and simple grass, their drink is the water of fresh springs, and rivers kept bright by their speed; and no care breaks their wholesome sleep.' If the space assigned to the different episodes is to be regarded as the measure of their importance, the long episode at the end of the fourth Book, from line 315 to 558, would have to be regarded as of nearly equal value to all the others put together. And yet, notwithstanding the metrical beauty of the passage, it must be difficult for any one who is penetrated by the pervading sentiment of the Georgics to reach this point in the poem without a strong feeling of regret that the jealousy of Augustus had interfered with its original conclusion. As a Greek fable, composed after some Alexandrine model, mainly concerned with the fortunes of Orpheus and Eurydice,—for the shepherd Aristaeus, the cultor nemorum cui pinguia Ceae Ter centum nivei tondent dumeta iuvenci 1, really plays altogether a secondary part in the episode,—it has little to do with rural life, and nothing at all to do with Italy. Its professed object is to give a fabulous explanation of an impossible phenomenon, though one apparently accepted both by Mago and Democritus. To enrich this episode with a beauty not its own, Virgil has robbed his Aeneid-on the composition. of which he must have been well advanced when he was called on, after the death of Gallus in 26 в.C., to provide a substitute for the passage written in his honour-of some beautiful lines which are more in keeping with the larger representation and profounder feeling of the epic poem, than with the transient. interest attaching to this recast of a well-known story. Even regarded simply as an epyllion or epic idyl, it may be questioned whether the Pastor Aristaeus is of an interest equal to that of the epic idyl of Catullus, 'Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus,' etc. There is this coincidence between the poems, that they each contain one story or idyllic representation within another, and in each case it is to the secondary representation that the most pathetic and passionate interest belongs. The guardian power of the groves, for whom three hundred snowwhite steers browse in the rich thickets of Cea.' |