is a step towards the light and the ultimate revelation of the whole mystery. Virgil recognises the source of his own strength in the words ment. Flumina amem silvasque. It is the power of love which quickens his intuition and enables him to perceive the tenderness and beauty revealed in the living movement of Nature. He receives and applies the complete ideas of Lucretius, but he does not follow them with the eagerness of their author through the various phases of their developCertain results of a philosophic system affect his imagination, but he does not seem to feel how these results necessarily exclude other conclusions which he will not abandon. Hence arises his prevailing eclecticism, the existence of popular beliefs side by side in his mind with the tenets of Epicureans, Stoics, and Platonists,-of some conclusions of the Lucretian science along with the opposing doctrines expressed in the poetry of Alexandria. Even in the arrangement of his materials and the grouping of his landscapes, some chance association or rhythmical cadence seems to guide his hand, more often than the perception of the orderly connexion of phenomena with one another. II. The idea which Lucretius revealed to the world in fuller majesty and life than any previous poet or philosopher, was the idea of Nature, apprehended, not as an abstract conception, but as a power omnipresent, creative, and regulative throughout the great spheres of earth, sky, and sea, and the innumerable varieties of individual existence. The meaning conveyed by the Greek word puois, as employed by Democritus, Heraclitus, Empedocles, etc., is powerless to move the imagination or enlarge the sense of beauty, when compared with the illimitable content of 'Natura daedala rerum' as conceived by the Latin poet. Nature is to him the one power absolutely supreme and independent in the Universe, too vast and too manifold to be subject to any will but her own, Libera continuo dominis privata superbis. Her independent existence is incompatible with that of the multitude of beings, of limited power and intelligence, which the old mythologies established as lords over the world and man. The gods, abiding in a state of blessed ease and indifference, are themselves dependent on a power infinitely transcending their own. But in what relation does man stand to this power? He too is within her sphere, altogether subject to her, but no special object of her regard. He exists only through compliance with and resignation to her conditions. And these conditions are on the whole unfavourable to him. He can gain only a scanty subsistence by a continual struggle with reluctant and rebellious forces in the earth; and even after all his toil and care, causes over which he has no control, such as the inclemency of the skies and incalculable vicissitudes of heat and cold, frustrate his endeavours. Quod superest arvi tamen id natura sua vi Aut subiti perimunt imbris gelidaeque pruinae, 1 'What remains of tilled land, even that Nature by its own force would overgrow with briars did not the force of man resist it, inured, for the sake of living, to ply, with pain and labour, the stout mattock, and to split up the new earth with the deep-sunk ploughs: did not we, by turning up the fruitful clods with the plough-share, and subduing the soil of the earth, call forth the seeds to the birth, they could not of their own impulse come forth into the clear air. And after all, sometimes the products of much toil, when they are already in blade and in beauty over the earth, either the Sun in heaven scorches with excessive heat, or sudden rains and chill frosts ruin them, and the blasts of the winds in wild hurricane make them their sport.' Lucret. v. 206-217 (See Munro's note on the passage). Cf. How deeply the thought expressed in these lines-the thought of the hard struggle which man is forced to carry on with an unsympathetic Power-sank into the mind of Virgil, is evident from the various passages in the Georgics in which the phraseology as well as the idea expressed by Lucretius is reproduced. These lines in which the struggle between the 'vis humana,' impersonated in the husbandman, and the resistance offered by Nature to his energetic labours, is vividly described, suggest whatever there is of speculative thought in the Georgics. And though it would be misleading to speak of that poem as, in any sense, a philosophical poem, yet, as in all other great works of genius, some theory of life-of man's relation to his circumstances and of his place, either in a spiritual or natural dispensation pervades and gives its highest meaning to the didactic exposition. Lucretius further regards this state of things, so far from being remediable by man, as necessarily becoming worse. Each new generation of husbandmen and vinedressers finds its burden heavier: Iamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator Crebrius, incassum manuum cecidisse labores 1, etc. The earth which, under the genial influence of sun and rain, produced fair crops without the labour of the ploughman and vinedresser2, can now scarcely produce its fruits in sufficient quantity, though the strength of men and oxen is worn out by labouring on it3. The cause of this decay in productiveness he attributes to the waste or dissipation of the elemental matter of our world, which has become much greater and more rapid than the supply of new materials. In the long warfare waged from infinite time' Ex infinito contractum tempore bellum Georg. ii. 411; i. 198; i. 208; ii. 237; ii. 47; i. 197. Compare also Virgil's use of subigere and vertere as applied to the soil. And now the aged peasant, shaking his head, often sighs forth the complaint, that the labour of his hands has come to naught.' Lucret. ii. 1164, etc. 2 v. 932, etc. 3 ii. 1160, etc. 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 sky'. 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 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. 36 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. |