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 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 84] JOY OF THE HUSBANDMAN IN HIS WORK 235 Nature, Virgil is still following in the tracks of Lucretius. Ingemere et terram pressis proscindere aratris— 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 arm. This feeling breaks out in the 'Ecce' of the line already 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- 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. contrast is still more brought out by the large use which Virgil maxes of mythological allusions in the body of his poem, as compared with the rare, and generally polemical, references to the subject in Lucretius. Virgil recalls the tales and poetical representations of mythology sometimes by some suggestive epithet, or other qualifying expression, as in speaking of 'poppies steeped in the sleep of Lethe,' 'Halcyons dear to Thetis,' 'the Cyllenian star,' 'the slow-rolling wains of the Eleusinian mother,' and the like. More frequently however he does this by direct mention of some of the more familiar, and occasionally of some of the more recondite, tales which had supplied materials to earlier poets and painters. Thus, in connexion with the topic of lucky and unlucky days, he hints at the tale of the war of the Giants with the Olympian gods, at that of Scylla and Nisus in connexion with the signs of the weather, at that of the Centaurs and Lapithae-the 'brawl fought to the death over the wine cup'-in the account of the vine, at that of the daughter of Inachus tormented in her wanderings by the vengeance of Juno in connexion with the plague of flies with which cattle were afflicted, etc. etc. Less familiar stories, of picturesque adventure or of a kind of weird mystery, are revived in the passages and Talis et ipse iubam cervice effudit equina Munere sic niveo lanae, si credere dignum est, Pan deus Arcadiae captam te, Luna, fefellit, In nemora alta vocans; nec tu aspernata vocantem 2. Such allusions came much more home to an ancient than to a modern reader. They were familiar to him from the pages of 1 'So too looked even Saturn, when with nimble movement, at the approach of his wife, he let the mane toss on his neck, and, as he sped away, made high Pelion ring with his shrill neighing.' 2 'So with the snowy gift of wool, if one may believe the tale, did Pan, the God of Arcadia, charm and beguile thee, O Luna, calling thee into the deep groves; nor didst thou scorn his call.' poets, or from pictures adorning the walls of his own town and country-houses, or seen in the temples and other sacred places of famous Greek and Asiatic cities, and forming great part of the attraction of those cities to travellers then, as the pictures seen in the galleries, palaces, and churches of Rome, Florence, and Venice do to travellers now. But though the colours of these poetic fancies have faded for us, they are felt to be a legitimate source of variety in the poem, and to be an element of interest connecting the humbler cares of the country-people with the refined tastes of the educated class. They are not introduced as a substitute for truthful representation of fact, but rather as adding a new grace to this representation. Neither do they, as in Propertius, overlay the main subject of the poem by their redundant use. They probably produced the same kind of impression on an ancient reader, as allusions from the works of Latin or Italian poets in Spenser or Milton produce on a modern reader. Occasionally they may seem weak and faulty from their incongruity with the thought with which they are associated. Thus in the passage at i. 60, etc.,— Continuo has leges aeternaque foedera certis the mind is offended by the juxtaposition of the great thought, which Lucretius had striven so earnestly to impress on the world, with one of the most unmeaning fables that ever violated all possibilities of natural law. So too the contrast between the artistic and recondite elegance of the lines (iii. 549-550), Quaesitaeque nocent artes; cessere magistri Phillyrides Chiron, Amythaoniusque Melampus', 1 These laws and everlasting covenants were at once established by Nature for particular places, from the time when Deucalion first cast stones into the empty world, whence men, a hard race, were born.' 2 The resources of art prove baneful: its masters retired baffled, Chiron, son of Philyra, and Melampus, son of Amythaon.' |