The song of Alphesiboeus represents a wife endeavouring to recall her truant, but not absolutely faithless, Daphnis from the city to his home. Though some of the illustrations in this song also are Greek, yet it contains several natural references to rustic superstitions which were probably common to Greek and Italian peasants, and the fine simile at line 85 (of which the first hint is to be found in Lucretius1) suggests purely Italian associations. The final incident in the poem, 'Hylax in limine latrat' (though the name given to the dog is Greek), is a touch of natural life, such as does not often occur in the Eclogues. On the whole, Virgil seems here to have struck on a vein which it may be regretted that he did not work more thoroughly. If, as has been suggested by Mr. Symonds, in his account and translations of popular Etruscan poems, any of the Eclogues of Virgil are founded on primitive love-songs current among the peasantry of Italy, the songs of Damon and Alphesiboeus are those which we should fix on as being the artistic development of these native germs. The tenth Eclogue was the last in order of composition, probably an after-thought written immediately before the final publication, or perhaps before the second edition, of the nine other poems. In this poem Virgil abandons the more realistic path on which he had entered in the eighth, and returns again to the vague fancies of the old pastoral lament for Daphnis, as it is sung in the first Idyl of Theocritus. Nothing can be more remote from actual fact than the representation of Gallus-the active and ambitious soldier and man of affairs, at that time engaged in the,, defence of the coasts of Italy--as dying among the mountains of Arcadia, in consequence of his desertion by Lycoris (a dancing-girl, and former mistress of Antony, whose real name was Cytheris), and wept for by the rocks and pinewoods of Maenalus and Lycaeus. Yet none of the poems is more rich in beauty, and grace, and happy turns of expression. As the idealised expression of unfortunate 1 Compare 85-86 with Lucret. ii. 355, etc. :— At mater viridis saltus orbata peragrans. love, this poem is of the same class as the second, and as the song of Damon in the eighth. That vein of modern romantic sentiment, already noticed in the second, the longing to escape from the ways of civilised life to the wild and lonely places of Nature, and to follow in imagination 'the homely, slighted shepherd's trade,' meets us also in the lines, Atque utinam ex vobis unus vestrique fuissem and again in these, Certum est in silvis, inter spelaea ferarum II. Relation of the Eclogues to the Greek Pastoral. The review of the Eclogues in the order of their composition shows that the early art of Virgil, like the lyrical art of Horace, begins in imitation, and, after attaining command over the form, rhythm, and diction of the type of poetry which it reproduces, gradually assumes greater independence in the choice of subject and the mode of treatment. The susceptibility of Virgil's mind to the grace and musical sweetness of Theocritus gave the first impulse to the composition of the Eclogues; but this susceptibility was itself the result of a natural sympathy with the sentiment and motives of the Greek idyl, especially with the love of Nature and the passion of love. He found this province of art unappropriated. He revealed a new vein of Greek feeling unwrought by any of his countrymen. He thus assumed at once the position of an original poet,-of one who brought something new into Latin literature. He gave another life to the beings, natural and supernatural, of ancient pastoral song, and awoke in his native land the sound of a strain hitherto unheard by Italian ears. The form of the Greek idyl, whether in dialogue or monologue, suited his genius, as a vehicle for the lighter fancies of youth, and for half-revealing, halfconcealing the pleasures and pains personal to himself, better than the forms of lyrical and elegiac poetry adopted by Catullus and his compeers. In the opening lines of the sixth Eclogue, Prima Syracosio dignata est ludere versu Nostra, neque erubuit silvas habitare Thalia, Virgil acknowledges at once the source of his inspiration and the lowly position which his genius was willing to assume. He may have consoled himself for this abnegation of a higher ambition by the thought suggested in the lines addressed to the ideal poet and hero of his imagination— Nec te paeniteat pecoris, divine poeta, Et formosus ovis ad flumina pavit Adonis. In order to understand the pastoral poetry of Virgil, both in its relation to a Greek ideal and in its original truth of feeling, it is necessary to remember the chief characteristics of its prototype in the age of Ptolemy Philadelphus of Alexandria and in the early years of the reign of Hiero of Syracuse. The pastoral poetry of Sicily was the latest creation of Greek genius, born after the nobler phases of religious and political life, and the epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry which arose out of them, had passed away. ancient, as in modern times, the pastoral idyl, as an artistic branch of literature, has arisen, not in a simplè age, living in unconscious harmony with Nature, but from the midst of a refined and luxurious, generally, too, a learned or rather bookish society, and has tried to give vent to the feelings of men weary of an artificial life and vaguely longing to breathe a freer air1. But as there have been two kinds of 1 In Compare the following passage from one of the prose idyls of G. Sand: 'Depuis les bergers de Longus jusqu'à ceux de Trianon, la vie pastorale est un Éden parfumé où les âmes tourmentées et lassées du tumulte du monde ont essayé de se réfugier. L'art, ce grand flatteur, ce chercheur complaisant de consolations pour les gens trop heureux, a traversé une suite ininterrompue de bergeries. Et sous ce titre, Histoire des bergeries, j'ai souvent desiré de faire un livre d'érudition et de critique où j'aurais passé en revue, tous ces différents rêves champêtres dont les hautes classes se sont nourries avec passion.' Fran. çois le Champi.' epic poetry, the products of two very different ages and states of society,-the primitive and the purely literary epic, so too there was in ancient times a primitive and popular, as well as a late and artistic pastoral. Of the primitive pastoral, springing out of rustic gatherings and festivals, or from lonely communion with Nature, Per loca pastorum deserta atque otia dia, and transmitted, from generation to generation, in the mouth of the people, no fragment has been preserved. Yet traces of the existence of this kind of pastoral song, and of the music accompanying it, at a time antecedent to the composition of the Homeric poems, may be seen in the representation, on the Shield of Achilles, of the boy in the vineyard 'singing the beautiful song Linus,'-a representation which is purely idyllic,—and of the shepherds, in the Ambuscade, who appear τeρñóμevoɩ σúpiyέi, as they accompany their flocks. The author of the Iliad absorbed the spirit of this primitive poetry in the greater compass of his epic creation, as Shakspeare has absorbed the Elizabethan pastoral within the all-embracing compass of his representation. Much of the imagery of the Iliad, several incidents casually introduced in connexion with the names of obscure persons perishing in battle, some of the supernatural events glanced at, as of the meeting of Aphrodite with Anchises while tending his herds on the spurs of Ida, a subject of allusion also in the Sicilian idyl,-are of a pastoral character and origin. In the lines which spring up with a tender grace in the midst of the stern grandeur of the final conflict between Hector and Achilles οὐ μέν πως νῦν ἔστιν ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ ̓ ἀπὸ πέτρης the familiar cadences as well as the sweetest sentiment of pastoral song may be recognised. This primitive pastoral poetry may have been spread over all Greece and the islands of the Aegean, from the earliest settlements of the Hellenic race, or of that older branch of the family to which the name Pelasgic has been vaguely given, and may have lingered on the same in spirit, though with many variations in form and expression, among the peasantry and herdsmen of the mountain districts till a late period. But the earliest writer who is said to have adopted this native plant of the mountains and the woods, and to have trained it to assume some form of art, was Stesichorus of Himera, who flourished about the beginning of the sixth century B. C. But nothing B.C. more is heard of it till it revived again at Syracuse in the early part of the third century. Some of the primitive modes of feeling which gave birth to the earliest pastoral song still survive, though in altered form, in this later Sicilian poetry. The song of the Bovкóλol, or herdsmen, like the song of the masked worshippers of Bacchus (rpayodía), may be traced to that stage in the development of the higher races in which Nature was the chief object of worship and religious sympathy. Under the symbols of Linus, Daphnis, or Adonis, the country people of early times lamented the decay of the fresh beauty of spring, under the burning midsummer heat1. This primitive germ of serious feeling has per- . petuated itself in that melancholy mood which runs through the pastoral poetry of all countries. From that tendency of the Greek imagination to give a human meaning to all that interested it, this dirge over the fading beauty of the early year soon assumed the form of a lament over the death of a young shepherd-poet, dear to gods and men, to the flocks, herds, and wild animals, to the rocks and mountains, among which he had lived.. In the Daphnis of Theocritus, the human passion of love produces that blighting influence on the life of the shepherd which in the original myth was produced by the fierce heat of summer on the tender life of the year. A still later development of the myth appears in the lament over the extinction of youthful genius by early death. 1 Compare the account of the origin of pastoral poetry in Müller's Litera; ture of the Greeks. |