To English readers the verse of the Aeneid may appear inferior in majesty and fulness of volume to that of Milton in his passages of most sustained power; but it is easier and less encumbered and thus more adapted to express various conditions of human life than the ordinary movement of the modern epic. It flows in a more varied, weighty, and self-restrained stream than the more homogeneous and overflowing current of Spenser's verse. The Latin hexameter became for Virgil an exquisite and powerful medium for communicating to others a knowledge of his elevated moods and pensive meditativeness, and for calling up before their minds that spectacle of a statelier life and a more august order in the contemplation of which his spirit habitually lived. The last revision would also have removed from the poem some redundancies, obscurities, and weakness of expression. There is a greater tendency to use 'otiose' epithets than in the Georgics, and a minute criticism has taken note of the number of times in which such words as 'ingens' and 'immanis' occur in the poem. Though the interpretation of the meaning of the Aeneid as a whole is probably as certain as that of any other great work of antiquity, yet there are passages in it which still baffle commentators in deciding which of two or three possible meanings was in the mind of the poet, or whether he had himself finally resolved what turn he should give his thought. As there are lines left incomplete, so there are lame conclusions to lofty and impassioned utterances of feeling. Such for instance is the prosaic and tautological conclusion of the passage in which Lausus is brought on the scene dignus, patriis qui laetior esset Imperiis et cui pater haud Mezentius esset 1. But it is only a microscopic observation of the structure of the poem that detects such blemishes as these. In the Aeneid in some leaves, and cast dry sticks about them to feed them, and blew the spark within the fuel into a flame.' Worthy to be happier in a father's command and to have another father than Mezentius.' Virgil's style appears as great in its power of reaching the secrets of the human spirit, as in the Georgics it proved itself to be in eliciting the deeper meaning of Nature. He combines nearly all the characteristic excellences of the great Latin writers. His language appears indeed inferior not only to that of Lucretius and Catullus but even to that of Ennius in reproducing the first vivid impressions of things upon the mind. The phrases of Virgil are generally coloured with the associations and steeped in the feeling of older thoughts and memories. Yet if he seems inferior in direct force of presentation, he unites the two most marked and generally dissociated characteristics of the masters of Latin style,-the exuberance and vivacity of those writers in whom impulse and imagination are strong, such as Cicero, Livy, and Lucretius,the terseness and compactness of expression, arising either from intensity of perception or reflective condensation, of which the shorter poems of Catullus, the Odes and Epistles of Horace, the writings of Sallust, and the memorial inscriptions of the time of the Republic and of the Empire afford striking examples. Virgil's condensation of expression often resembles that of Tacitus, and seems to arise from the same cause, the restraint imposed by reflexion on the exuberance of a poetical imagination. By its combination of opposite excellences the style of the Aeneid is at once an admirable vehicle of continuous or compressed narrative, of large or concentrated description, of fluent and impassioned, or composed and impressive oratory. It possesses also the power, which distinguishes the older Latin writers, of stamping some grave or magnanimous lesson in imperishable characters on the mind Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito. Aude, hospes, contemnere opes et te quoque dignum 1 Yield not thou to thy hardships, but advance more boldly against them.' But Virgil is not only great as a Latin writer. The concurrent testimony of the most refined minds of all times marks him out as one of the greatest masters of the language which touches the heart or moves the manlier sensibilities, who has ever lived. A mature and mellow truth of sentiment, a conformity to the deeper experiences of life in every age, a fine humanity as well as a generous elevation of feeling, and some magical charm of music in his words, have enabled them to serve many minds in many ages as a symbol of some swelling thought or over-mastering emotion, the force and meaning of which they could scarcely define to themselves. A striking instance of this effect appears in the words in which Savonarola describes the impulse which forced him to abandon the career of worldly ambition, which his father pressed on him, in favour of the religious life. It was the voice of warning which he ever heard repeating to him the words-- Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge litus avarum1. And while his tenderness of feeling has made Virgil the familiar friend of one class of minds, his high magnanimous spirit has equally gained for him the admiration of another class. The words of no other poet, ancient or modern, have been so often heard in the great debates of the English Parliament, which more than any other deliberations among men have reproduced the dignified and masculine eloquence familiar to the Roman Senate. One of the greatest masters of expression among living English writers has pointed, as characteristic of the magic of Virgil's style, to his single words and phrases, his pathetic half-lines giving utterance, as the voice of Nature herself, to that pain and weariness yet hope of better things which is the experience of her children in every time 2. It is in 'Learn from me, my child, to bear thee like a man and to strive strenuously, from others learn to be fortunate.' 'Have the courage, stranger, to despise riches, and mould thyself too to be a fit companion of the God.' Ah! fly that cruel land, fly that covetous coast.' Mentioned by Mr. Symonds in his History of the Renaissance in Italy. 2 Grammar of Assent, by J. H. Newman, D.D. § 5] 'PATHETIC HALF-LINES ' 423 the expression of this weariness and deep longing for rest, in making others feel his own sense of the painful toil and mystery of life and of the sadness of death, his sense too of vague yearning for some fuller and ampler being, that Virgil produces the most powerful effect by the use of the simplest words in their simplest application. O passi graviora-' 'Dis aliter visum-' 'Di, si qua est caelo pietas-' 'Heu vatum ignarae mentes-' 'Iam pridem invisus superis et inutilis annos 'Si pereo hominum manibus periisse iuvabit-' these and many other pregnant sayings affect the mind with a strange potency, of which perhaps no account can be given except that they make us feel, as scarcely any other words do, the burden of the mystery of life, and by their marvellous beauty, the reflexion, it may be, from some light dimly discerned or imagined beyond the gloom, they make it seem more easy to be borne. 1 To attempt to translate these 'pathetic half-lines' etc., apart from their context, would only be to spoil them, without conveying any sense of the feeling latent in them. 2 Aut videt, aut vidisse putat. THE END. |