Virgil is attested by the number of commentaries written on his works, the most famous of them being the still extant commentary of Servius, belonging to the latter part of the fourth century. The fortune of Virgil has in this respect been similar to that of his great countryman Dante. From the time of his death till the extinction of ancient classical culture, there was a regular succession of rhetoricians and grammarians who lectured and wrote treatises on his various poems. Among those who preceded Servius, the most famous names are those of Asconius Pedianus, Annaeus Cornutus, the friend of Persius, and Valerius Probus, in the first century A.D. These commentators supplied materials to Suetonius for the life on which that of Aelius Donatus, which is still extant, is founded. The frequent quotations from Virgil in the desultory criticism of Aulus Gellius and the systematic discussions in the Saturnalia of Macrobius attest the minute study of his poems in the interval between the second and the fifth centuries. Similar testimony to his continued influence is afforded by the early Christian writers, especially by Augustine. And though there may be traced in them a struggle between the pleasure which they derived from his poetry and the alienation of their sympathies owing to his paganism, yet it is probable that the favour shown to him and to Cicero during the first strong reaction from everything associated with the beauty of the older religion, was due as much to the pure and humane spirit of their teaching as to the fascination of their style: nor perhaps was this teaching inoperative in moulding the thought and giving form to the religious imagination of the Latin Church. The number and excellence of the MSS. of Virgil, the most famous of which date from the fourth and fifth centuries, confirm the impression of the continued favour which his works enjoyed before and subsequently to the overthrow of the Roman rule in the West. Wherever learning flourished during the darkest period of this later time, the poems of Virgil were held in special esteem. Thus we read in connexion with the literary studies of Bede: 'Virgil cast over him the same spell which he cast over Dante: verses from the Aeneid break his narratives of martyrdoms, and the disciple ventures on the track of the great master in a little eclogue descriptive of the approach of spring. His works were taught in the Church schools and the feeling with which he was regarded by the more tolerant minds of the mediaeval Church appears in a mass sung in honour of St. Paul at the end of the fifteenth century : Ad Maronis mausoleum Piae rorem lacrimae ; Poetarum maxime2! The traditional veneration attaching to his name, among the classes too ignorant to know anything of his works, survived during the middle ages in the fancies which ascribed to him the powers of a magician or beneficent genius, appearing in many forms and at various times and places widely separated from one another. With the first revival of learning and letters in different countries, the old pre-eminence of Virgil again asserts itself. In England 'the earliest classical revival' (to quote again the words of Mr. Green)' restored Cicero and Virgil to the list of monastic studies, and left its stamp on the pedantic style, the profuse classical quotations of writers like William of Malmesbury or John of Salisbury. One of the earliest works in Scottish literature is the translation of the Aeneid by Gawain Douglas. It is characteristic of the rudimentary state of learning at the time when this translation appeared that the Sibyl is represented as a nun, who directs Aeneas to tell his beads 3. But the greatest testimony to the persistence of Virgil's fame and influence in the western world is the homage which the genius of Dante pays to the shade of his great 1 Green's History of the English People, p. 37. 2 Quoted by Comparetti; and also in Bähr's Römische Literatur. 3 Works of Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, by John Small, M.A., vol. i. p. cxlv. countryman. May the long zeal avail me and the great love that made me search thy volume. Thou art my master and my author. Thou art he from whom I took the good style that did me honour 1.' The feeling with which Dante gives himself up to the guidance of Virgil through all the mystery of the lower realms is like that under which Ennius evokes the shade of Homer from the halls of Acheron' to interpret to him the secrets of creation. Dante combines the reverence for a great master, which seems to be more natural to the genius of Italy than to that of other nations, with a high self-confidence and a bold and original invention. Lucretius expresses a similar enthusiasm for Homer, Ennius, Empedocles, and Epicurus; and by Virgil the same feeling is, though not directly expressed, yet profoundly felt towards Homer and Lucretius. And in all these cases the admiration of their predecessors is an incentive, not to imitative reproduction, but to new creation. It was as the poet of 'that Italy for which Camilla the virgin, Euryalus, and Turnus and Nisus died of wounds' that the poet of mediaeval Florence paid homage to the ancient poet of Mantua. The admiration of Dante, like that of Tacitus, is the more corroborative of the spell exercised over the Italian mind by the art and style of Virgil from the difference in the type of genius and character which these poets severally represent. The influence of Virgil was exercised, with a power more overmastering and injurious to their originality, upon the later poets and scholars of Italy with whom the Renaissance begins. The progress of modern poetry was for a long time accompanied—and it would be difficult to say whether it was thereby more obstructed or advanced-by a new undergrowth of Latin poetry, for the higher forms of which Virgil served as the principal model. Petrarch attached more importance to his epic poem of 'Africa,' written in imitation of the rhythm and style of the Aeneid, than to his Sonnets. The influence of Virgil on the later Renaissance in Italy is abundantly proved in 1 Carlyle's Translation of the Inferno. § 1] ESTIMATE AT AND SINCE THE RENAISSANCE 67 the works of poets, scholars, and men of letters in that age. Ninety editions of his works are said to have been published before the year 15001. From Italy this influence passed to France and England, and was felt, not by scholars and critics only, but by the great poets and essayists, the orators and statesmen of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was discussed as an open question whether the Iliad or the Aeneid was the greater epic poem: and it was then necessary for the admirers of the Greek rather than of the Latin poet to assume an apologetic tone. Scaliger ranked Virgil above Homer and Theocritus. His prestige was greatest during the century of French ascendency in modern literature, that, namely, between the age of Milton and that of Lessing. The chief critical lawgiver in that century was Voltaire, and no great critic has ever expressed a livelier admiration of any poem than he has of the Aeneid. It is to him we owe the saying, 'Homère a fait Virgile, dit-on; si cela est, c'est sans doute son plus bel ouvrage. He claims elsewhere for the second, fourth, and sixth books of the Aeneid a great superiority over the works of all Greek poets. He says also that the Aeneid is the finest monument remaining from antiquity. As Spenser was called the 'poet's poet,' so Virgil might be called the orator's poet. Even by a rhetorician of the second century the question was discussed whether Virgil was more a poet or an orator 5.' Bossuet is said to have known his works by heart. In the great era of English oratory, no author seems to have been so familiarly known or was so often quoted. We read in a recent sketch of the life of Burke', 'Most writers have constantly beside them some favourite classical author, from whom they 1 Mr. Small, in his account of the writings of Bishop Gavin Douglas, says, The works of Virgil passed through ninety editions before the year 1500.' 2 See Conington's Introduction to the Aeneid. 3 Appendix to the Henriade. Dict. Philos., art. Epopée. 5 Quoted by Comparetti. 6 Sainte-Beuve, 'Causeries du Lundi.' 7 By Mr. Payne, in the Clarendon Press Series. endeavour to take their prevailing tone. . . . Burke, according to Butler, always had a ragged Delphin Virgil not far from his elbow.' A vestige of the attraction which his words had for an older school of English politicians may be traced in the survival of Virgilian quotation in some of the parliamentary warfare of recent times. The important place which Virgil has filled in the teaching of our public schools-the great nurses of our classic statesmen-has perhaps not been without some influence in shaping our national history'. It would be no exaggeration to say that the poems of Virgil, and especially the Aeneid, have contributed more than any other works of art in modern times, not only to stamp the impression of ancient Rome on the imagination, but to educate the sensibility to generous emotion as well as to literary beauty. There is probably no author, even at the present day, of whom some knowledge may be with more certainty assumed among cultivated people of every^ nation. II. This unbroken ascendency of eighteen centuries, which might almost be described in the words applied by Lucretius to the ascendency of Homer Adde Heliconiadum comites; quorum unus Homerus is as great a fortune as that which has fallen to the lot of any writer. If any one ever succeeded in securing that which 'Who shall say what share the turning over and over in their mind, and masticating, so to speak, in early life as models of their Latin verse, such things as Virgil's or Horace's Disce, puer, virtutem ex me, verumque laborem, Fortuna saevo laeta negotio, has not had in forming the high spirit of the upper class in France and England, the two countries where Latin verse has most ruled the schools, and the two countries which most have had, or have, a high upper class and a high upper class spirit?' High Schools and Universities in Germany, by M. Arnold. 2Add too the companions of the Muses of Helicon, amongst whom Homer, the peerless, after holding the sceptre-.' |