still recognised as the manifestation of the stability and power of the State. But the Roman imagination was at the same time beginning to be impressed by a new symbol of Divine agency, which was felt in all national concerns. The ideal majesty of Jove was merging, as an object of veneration, in the actual majesty of Caesar, regarded as the vicegerent of the Supreme Power. All these phases of religious belief, Greek and Italian, old and new, some appealing to the popular, some to the educated mind, meet in the poetry of the Augustan Age, and nowhere in more close conjunction than in this Invocation. They appear in still stranger connexion with the later results of science and philosophic thought. It is impossible to find any principle of reconcilement in accordance with which their proper place in the reasonable intelligence of the age may be assigned to each. They came together in Virgil as a composite result of the union of his literary and philosophic tastes with his religious feeling and national sympathies. So far as we can attach any truth of meaning to this Invocation, we must look upon it as a symbolical expression of Divine agency and superintendence in all the various fields of natural production. Virgil is much more sparing than Lucretius in the proems to his other books. In the second book there is a brief invocation to Liber, who is introduced, with rich pictorial colouring, as the special god of the vintage; and at lines 39-46 there is an appeal to Maecenas, which disclaims, perhaps not without some reference to the contrary practice of Lucretius, all intention to detain his hearer 'per ambages et longa exorsa.' In the fourth there is again a brief appeal to Maecenas, a statement of the subject, an admission of its homely character,-'In tenui labor,'-an expression of the hope that, even out of these materials, great glory may ensue if Apollo hears the poet's prayer and no unpropitious powers impede the course of his song. The introduction to the third book is more extended, and more interesting from the light which it throws on the motives which determined Virgil to the choice of the subject of his epic poem. Here, too, as in the first and second books, there is an appeal to the tutelary deities of the herds and flocks, the Italian Pales, and the 'Pastor ab Amphryso,' -the Apollo vóμtos of Greek legend and rural worship. The associations of Greek poetry are also evoked in the reference to the woods and streams of Lycaeus, to the lowing herds of Cithaeron, to the dogs that range over Taygetus, and to the famous horses of the Argive plain. The choice of the subject is justified by the contrast suggested between its novelty-'silvas saltusque sequamur Intactos-and the hackneyed poems founded on mythological subjects which his immediate predecessors in poetry had written in imitation of their Alexandrine prototypes. But he indicates here, with a new application of the words of Ennius, the aspiration to compose a great national epic in celebration of the exploits of Caesar : temptanda via est, qua me quoque possim Tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora. Under the allegory of the games which he proposed to celebrate, and the marble temple which he proposed to raise on the banks of the Mincio, he associates the thought of his early home with his ambition to rival the great works of Greek genius (for this seems to be the meaning of the lines Cuncta mihi, Alpheum linquens lucosque Molorchi, and to spread the fame of Caesar through distant ages. This invocation must have been written later than the crowning victory of Actium, but before the plan of the Aeneid had definitely assumed shape in the poet's mind. From the allegorical representations of the designs in gold, ivory, and marble for the ornaments of the temple, and still more clearly from the direct statement, Mox tamen ardentis accingar dicere pugnas it is evident that his first idea was to make the contemporary events the main subject of his epic, and to introduce the glories of the Trojan line as accessories. Under what influence he changed this purpose, making contemporary events subsidiary and the ancient legend the main argument of his poem, will be considered in the chapters devoted to the examination of the Aeneid. IV. Didactic exposition and illustration of Virgil compared with those of Lucretius. As affecting the arrangement and illustration of their materials, there is this essential difference between the poems of Lucretius and Virgil, that the one is a great continuous argument, the development of speculative truths depending on one another; and its professed aim is purely contemplative,—the production of a certain state of mind and feeling. The other is the orderly exposition of a number of precepts, depending on experience and special knowledge; its professed aim is the mastery over a great practical occupation. Lucretius uses poetry as the vehicle of science, Virgil as the instrument of a useful art. In the first we expect, and we find, in so far as the poem was left completed, rigorous concentration of thought, and an exhaustive treatment of the subject. In the second we expect, and we find, an orderly and convenient arrangement, and such a selection of topics as, while producing the impression of a thorough mastery of the subject, leaves also much to be filled up by the imagination or experience of the reader. Still, that Virgil regarded Lucretius as his technical model may be inferred from the use which he makes of several of his formulae, such as 'Principio,' 'Quod. superest,' His animadversis,' 'Nunc age,' 'Praeterea,' by which the framework of his argument is held together. Virgil uses these more sparingly, and with a more careful selection, so as, while producing the impression of continuity of thought, not to impede the pure flow of his poetry with the mechanism of logical connexion. He follows Lucretius also, who here observed the practice of the Greek didactic poets, in maintaining the liveliness of a personal address by the frequent use of such appeals as these, 'Nonne vides,' 'Contemplator,' 'Forsitan et... quaeras,' 'Vidi,' 'Ausim,' etc. In illustrating and giving novelty to his various topics Virgil has the example of Lucretius to justify him in catching up and dwelling on every aspect of beauty or imaginative interest which they are capable of presenting. And it is here that the more careful art of Virgil, and the fact that he attached more value to the perfection of his art than to the knowledge he imparts, give him that technical superiority over the older writer which, notwithstanding the tamer interest of his subject, and perhaps the tamer character of his own genius, has made the Georgics a poem much more familiar to the world than the 'De Rerum Natura.' Virgil, for one thing, enjoys greater freedom of omitting any set of topics, any of those details on which Cato or Varro would have felt themselves bound to be specially explicit, - which would detract unduly from the beauty and general amenity of his exposition; or by a simple touch (such as the 'Ne saturare fimo pingui,' etc.) he can suggest the necessity of attending to such topics, while leaving their full realisation to the reader. He thus, by greater selection and elimination of his materials, avoids the monotony and the long prosaic interspaces between the grander bursts of poetry which his vast argument imposes on Lucretius. But, further, he avails himself of many more resources to give variety of interest and literary charm to the topics which he successively deals with. Each and all of these topics, the processes of ploughing and sowing, the signs of the weather, the grafting of trees and the pruning of the vine, the qualities of horses and cattle, the tending of sheep and goats, the observation of the habits of bees,— bring him into immediate contact with the genial influences of the outward world. The vastness as well as the abstract character of his subject forces Lucretius to pass through many regions which seem equally removed from this genial presence and from all human associations. It is only the enthusiasm of discovery-the delight in purely intellectual processes-that bears him buoyantly through these dreary spaces; and it is only the knowledge that from time to time glimpses of illimitable power and wonder are opened up to him, and admiration for the energy and clear vision of his guide, that compel the flagging reader to accompany him. But Virgil leads his readers through scenes, tamer indeed and more familiar, yet always bright and smiling with some homely charm, or rich and glowing with the 'pomp of cultivated nature,' or fresh and picturesque with the charm of meadow, river-bank, or woodland pasture. The secret of the power of Lucretius as an interpreter of Nature lies in his recognition of the sublimity of natural law in ordinary phenomena. The secret of Virgil's power lies in the insight and long-practised meditation through which he abstracts the single element of beauty from common sights and the ordinary operations of industry. Thus, to take one or two instances of the way in which the charm of Nature is communicated to the drudgery of rural labour: what a sense of refreshment to eye and ear is conveyed by the lines which describe the practical remedies by which the farmer mitigates the burning drought of summer : Et cum exustus ager morientibus aestuat herbis, Elicit; illa cadens raucum per levia murmur Saxa ciet, scatebrisque arentia temperat arva1. Again, what a picture of rich woodland beauty is created out of the occurrence, in the midst of practical directions, of some homely traditional maxims, in accordance with which farmers judged of the probable abundance of their crop Contemplator item, cum se nux plurima silvis 1 i. 107-110. 2 i. 187-190. |