discern the enduring substance of poetic creation, there is no trace in either of the Greek writers. Again, in the passage at i. 410, imitated from Aratus

Tum liquidas corvi presso ter gutture voces, etc.

the mere natural phenomenon is given in greater detail in the original passage; but the lines which communicate to it the touch of tender sympathy—

iuvat imbribus actis

Progeniem parvam dulcesque revisere nidos,—

and the following lines

Haud equidem credo quia sit divinitus illis, etc.,

which elevate the whole description into the higher air of imaginative contemplation, are entirely Virgil's own. So too in nearly all the indications of stormy or bright weather, whether taken from natural phenomena or the habits of animals, we find in the Latin poet some suggestion of poetical analogy giving new life to the thing described, or some touch of tender feeling, of which his original supplied him with no hint whatever.

For the true poetry of the Georgics—the colour of human and sympathetic feeling, the atmosphere of contemplative ideas, the ethical and national associations with which the subject is surrounded-Virgil owes very little to Greek inspiration. Much of this poetry is the mode in which his own spirit interprets Nature and human life. But much also is due to the genius of his great predecessor in Latin poetry, who, though 'unnamed,' is 'not unowned,' but felt to be a pervading presence in the thought and feeling, the creative diction and the grander cadences, of the Georgics. Yet this influence is perhaps as potent in the antagonism as in the sympathy which it evokes. Virgil is no mere disciple of Lucretius, either as regards his philosophy or his art. Though his imagination pays homage to that of the older poet; though he acknowledges his contemplative elevation; though he has a strong affinity with the deep humanity of his nature; yet in his profoundest convictions and aspirations

he proclaims his revolt from him. The key to the secret of the composition of the Georgics,-of the condition of mind out of which this work of genius assumed the shape it has as a great literary possession,-is to be sought in the collision between the force of thought, imagination, and feeling which the active spirit of Lucretius stored up and left behind him as his legacy to the world, and the nature, strongly susceptible indeed, but, at the same time, firm in its own convictions, which first felt its shock, in its attractive, its stimulating, and its repellent power.

CHAPTER VI.

RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO THE POEM OF

LUCRETIUS.

I.

Personal affinities and contrast between Lucretius and

Virgil.

THE influence, direct and indirect, exercised by Lucretius on the thought, the composition, and the style of the Georgics was perhaps stronger than that ever exercised, before or since, by one great poet on the work of another. This influence is of the kind which is oftener seen in the history of philosophy than of literature. It was partly one of sympathy, partly of antagonism. Virgil's feeling and conception of Nature have their immediate origin in the feeling and thought of Lucretius; while at the same time his religious convictions and national sentiment derive new strength by reaction from the attitude assumed by his predecessor. This powerful attraction and repulsion were alike due to the fact that Lucretius was the first not only to reveal a new power, beauty, and mystery in the world, but also to communicate to poetry a speculative impulse, opening up, with a more impassioned appeal than philosophy can do, the great questions. underlying human life,-such as the truth of all religious tradition, the position of man in the Universe, and the attitude of mind and course of conduct demanded by that position.

It was not however merely a poetical and speculative impulse that Virgil received from his predecessor. Lucretius was the only Latin poet since Ennius who had dealt with a great mass of materials and given to them the unity and continuity of a work of art of large dimensions and proportions. Neither the method of Ennius nor his vivid narrative power could serve as a model to Virgil in reducing his materials to order and imparting life and varied interest to them. A new didactic poem, dealing largely with the same subject-matter as that treated by Lucretius,-such as the earth, the heavens, the great elemental forces, the growth of plants, the habits of animals, and the like,-contemplating, among other objects, that of determining the relation of man to the sphere in which he is placed, and seeking to invest the real phenomena and ordinary processes of Nature with an ideal charm,— could not help assuming a somewhat similar mould to that which had been originally cast for the philosophic thought and realistic observation of the older poet.

Again, the influence which Ennius exercised on Lucretius was due in a great measure to his creative power in the use of language and in metrical invention. But in Lucretius himself there was a vaster range and more vivid power of imagination than in Ennius; and this greater force of mind, acting on the new capacities of language, developed by the literature and still more the oratory of an intervening century, produced in him not only greater elegance, but a more exuberant creativeness and a truer application of poetical expression. He could give to the Latin hexameter a stronger and more unimpeded flow, a more sonorous and musical modulation. He stamped the force of his mind and feeling on new modes of vivid expression and of rhythmical cadence, which, though they might be modified, could not be set aside in any future representation of the 'species ratioque,' the outward spectacle and the secret moving-principle of Nature.

Many circumstances conduced to bring Virgil, more powerfully than any earlier or later poet, under the spell of

Lucretius. As is remarked by Mr. Munro1, when the poem of his predecessor first appeared Virgil was at, or near, the age which is most immediately impressed and moulded by a contemporary work of genius. The enthusiasm for philosophy, expressed in the short poem written immediately before he began to study under Siron, implies that he had been already attracted by the subject of which Lucretius was the only worthy2 Latin exponent; and his studies under that teacher must have prepared his mind to receive the higher instruction of the 'De Rerum Natura.' The song of Silenus in the sixth Eclogue and many expressions and cadences in other poems of the series attest the poetical, if not the speculative, impression thus produced. But the clearest testimony of Virgil's recognition of the genius of his predecessor is found in that passage of the Georgics in which he speaks of himself most from his heart,

Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, etc.,—

and in which he declares his first wish to be that the Muses should reveal to him the secrets of Nature; but, if this were denied him, he next prays that 'the love of the woods and running streams in the valleys' might be his portion. He may not have meant the lines

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, etc.

to be taken as a description of the individual Lucretius, or those containing the other picture, placed by its side,

Fortunatus et ille, deos qui novit agrestis,

Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores,

as a description of himself. Such direct personal references are not in keeping with the allusive style in which he writes of himself and others. He seems rather in these passages to set forth two ideal states of mind, that of philosophic contemplation, on the one hand, that of the

1 Introduction to Notes, ii. p. 315.

2 Compare the contemptuous expressions used by Cicero, Tusc. Disp. ii. 3, of those who had written on the Epicurean philosophy in Latin. It seems strange, if he had any hand in editing his poems, that he makes no exception there in favour of Lucretius.