VII] ITALIAN LOVE OF LABOUR 267 other hand, help to remind us that the art and science of the past, as well as the material products of the world, had now been diverted to the enjoyment and use of the new inheritors of intellectual culture. 3. It was seen how assiduously Virgil, in the body of his poem, inculcates the necessity and duty of labour. And though the 'glorification of labour' was found to be rather a derivative and tributary stream than the main current of interest in the poem, yet it is impossible to doubt that to the mind of Virgil this assiduous toil of the husbandman, on a work so congenial and surrounded with such accessories of peaceful happiness, had a special attraction, even independent of its results. This recognition of the dignity of labour owes nothing to a Greek original. A life of intellectual leisure was the ideal of the Greeks. Hesiod indeed does dwell on the necessity of labour, as the ground both of worldly well-being and divine approval,-and this is another point of affinity between him and Virgil,-but the line in which he claims consideration for work, Εργον δ ̓ οὐδὲν ὄνειδος, ἀεργίη δέ τ' ὄνειδος', is apologetic in tone; and, moreover, Hesiod can hardly be regarded as a typical Greek. There seems to be no word in the Greek language equivalent to the grave Roman word 'industria.' Perhaps it is owing to the disesteem in which labour was held by Greek writers that industry is scarcely ranked among virtues, nor idleness among vices, even by modern moralists. When long after the time of Homer a new poet arose in Greece, appealing to a great popular sentiment, it was in their passion for the great public games that he found the point of contact with the hearts of his countrymen. The Romans, on the other hand, show a great capacity for labour in every field of exertion,-in war and the government of men, in law and literature, in business transactions, in the construction of vast works of utility, and in cultivating the land. And of these, next to war and government, the last was most congenial 1 Εργ. κ. Ἡμ. 310. to the national mind. The land was to the Romans the chief field of their industry and the original source of their wealth, as the sea was the scene of occupation and adventure to the Greeks, and, through the outlet which it gave to the results of their artistic ingenuity, the great source of their prosperity. The Odyssey is a poem inspired, in a great degree, by the impulse which first sent the Greek nation forth on its career of maritime and colonising enterprise. The Georgics are inspired by that impulse which first started the Latin race on its career of conquest, and which continued to animate the struggle with the reluctant forces of Nature, as it had animated the struggle with the other races of Italy for the possession of the soil. 4. Again, we find that the poem is pervaded by the poetical feeling of Nature. And Virgil, more than any other poet, presents that aspect of Nature in which the outward world appeared to the educated Italian mind. The personality and individual life attributed to natural objects, such as trees, rivers, winds, etc., belongs to a stage of conception between the Greek anthropomorphism and the recognition by the imagination of universal law and interdependence of phenomena. Modern poets consciously personify natural objects with more boldness and varied sympathy than Virgil. His conception of the life and personal attributes of natural objects appears to be less a conscious creative effort of the imagination, than an unconscious impression from outward things; an impression produced in a state of passive contemplation, rather than of active adventure; and an impression produced by qualities of a serene and tender beauty, rather than by those of a bolder or sublimer aspect. In all these respects Virgil represents a stage in the culture of the imagination between that of the early Greek poets and artists, and that of the most imaginative poets and painters of modern times. The familiar beauty of the outward world, as it was felt by a Roman or Italian, was expressed in the Latin word 'amoenum.' Thus Horace describes his retreat among the Sabine hills, as not only dear to him personally, but as beautiful in itself: VII] ITALIAN LOVE OF NATURE Hae latebrae dulces, etiam, si credis, amoenae1. 269 And it is to the attributes summed up in that word that Virgil imparts the ideal life of the imagination. But not only is the feeling of Nature in the Georgics characteristic of the highest culture of the Italian mind, but the spectacle of Nature,— The outward shows of sky and earth' brought before us, -is that which still delights the eye and moves the imagination in the various districts of Italy. The description of Spring at Georg. ii. 323-345, is one of which (though we can always feel its beauty) we cannot often verify the accuracy in our more northern latitudes. It is to an Italian spring, more than to any season in any other European country, that the words of the third Eclogue' nunc formosissimus annus,' are applicable. The varied pastoral beauty of the long summer day described at Georg. iii. 323-338,-from the early dawn when the fields are fresh beneath the morning-star; through the gathering warmth of the later hours, when the groves are loud with the chirping of the grasshoppers and the herds collect around the deep water-pools; through the burning heat of midday, from which the shade of some huge oak or some grove of dark ilexes affords a shelter; till the coolness of evening tempers the air, and the moon renews with dew the dry forest-glades,—— is a beauty quite distinct from the charm of freedom and solitude,—yet not too remote from human neighbourhood,—of the changing aspects of the sky, and of the picturesque environment of hill, river, and moorland, which abides in the pastoral regions of our own and other northern lands. The 'sweet interchange of hill and valley 2,' mountain range and rich 1 'This retreat-charming to me, nay, if you believe me, even beautiful in itself.' Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and plains.' Paradise Lost, Book ix. ll. 115-116. cultivated land, which northern and central Italy exhibits, must have made such scenes as that described at ii. 186-188, Qualem saepe cava montis convalle solemus Despicere 1, etc., and again the opening scene of the poem, at i. 43, Vere novo gelidus canis cum montibus umor Liquitur, et Zephyro putris se glaeba resolvit 2, familiar to Roman readers. And while the 'caeli indulgentia' characteristic of the Italian climate is felt as a pervading genial presence through the various books of the poem, the sudden and violent vicissitudes to which that climate is especially liable form part of the varied and impressive spectacle presented to us. The passage i. 316-321, Saepe ego cum flavis. . . . stipulasque volantis, records a calamity to which the labours of the Italian husbandman were peculiarly exposed. In the description of the storm of rain, immediately following, the words 'collectae ex alto nubes' remind us, like the description of a similar storm in Lucretius (vi. 256-261), that Virgil, as Lucretius may have done, must often have watched such a tempest gathering over the sea that washes the Campanian shores. The inundation of the Po is described among the omens accompanying the death of Caesar, in lines which may have been suggested by some scene actually witnessed by the poet, and which with vivid exactness represent for all times the destructive forces put forth by the great river that drains the vast mountain-ranges of Northern Italy: 16 Proluit insano contorquens vertice silvas Fluviorum rex Eridanus, camposque per omnes Such as we often look down on in some mountain dale.' 2 In early spring when chill waters are streaming down from the hoary sides of the hills, and the clod breaks up and crumbles beneath the west wind.' 3 Whirling whole forests in its mad eddies, Eridanus, monarch of rivers, swept them before it, and bore over all the plains herds of cattle with their stalls.' VII] ITALIAN SCENES 271 And while the general representation of Nature, in the freshness or serene glory of her beauty and in her destructive energy, is true to that aspect which she presents in Italian scenery, the characteristic features and products of particular localities in the various regions of Italy are recalled to memory with truthful effect. The love of Nature in Lucretius appears apart from local associations. In Horace this feeling seems to link itself to places dear to him from the memories of childhood, or from the personal experience of later years. In Virgil the feeling is both general as in Lucretius, and combined with attachment to or interest in particular places as in Horace. But Virgil is able to feel enthusiasm not only for places dear to him through personal association, but for all which appeal to his sentiment of national pride. As was seen in the last chapter, the episode, which perhaps more than any other brings out the inspiring thought of the poem, is devoted to a celebration of the varied beauties of the land; and the names of Clitumnus, of Larius, and Benacus are still dearer to the world because they are for ever intermingled with 'the rich Virgilian rustic measure 1.' In the body of the poem also we find many local references to the northern, central, and southern regions of Italy. The light bark, hollowed out of the alder, is launched on the rapid flood of the 1 The lines, 'And now we passed From Como, when the light was gray, The rich Virgilian rustic measure Like ballad-burthen music, kept,' etc., are so familiarly known that they hardly need to be quoted in support of this statement. But among other testimonies to the power of Virgilian associations, one may be quoted from another great poet, whose mind was less attuned to Latin than to Greek and English poetry. Goethe, in his 'Letters from Italy,' mentions, on coming to the Lago di Garda, that he was reminded of the line, Fluctibus et fremitu adsurgens, Benace, marino. He adds this remark: This is the first Latin verse, the subject of which ever stood visibly before me, and now, in the present moment, when the wind is blowing stronger and stronger, and the lake casts loftier billows against the little harbour, it is just as true as it was hundreds of years ago. Much, indeed, has changed, but the wind still roars about the lake, the aspect of which gains even greater glory from a line of Virgil. |