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 Lapithaethe 'rixa super mero debellata '—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
Coniugis adventu pernix Saturnus, et altum
Pelion hinnitu fugiens implevit acuto,

Munere sic niveo lanae, si credere dignum est,

Pan deus Arcadiae captam te, Luna, fefellit,

In nemora alta vocans; nec tu aspernata vocantem.

Such allusions came much more home to an ancient than to a modern reader. They were familiar to him from the pages of 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
Imposuit natura locis, quo tempore primum
Deucalion vacuum lapides iactavit in orbem,
Unde homines nati, durum genus,

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,

and the grand, solemn realism of the parallel passage in the account of the Plague of Athens,

Mussabat tacito medicina timore,

makes us feel how unapproachable by all the resources of art and learning is that direct force of insight united to fulness of feeling with which Lucretius was endowed above nearly every poet, ancient or modern.

Equally remote from the practice of Lucretius is the use made by Virgil of that amalgamation of mythological fancy with the rudiments of science which assigned names, personality, and a poetical history to the various constellations :

Pleiadas, Hyadas, claramque Lycaonis Arcton.

But Virgil's practice is in accordance with that of all the Greek poets from Homer and Hesiod down to the latest Alexandrine writers. He thus enriches the treatment of his subject with the interest of early science, and with the associations of the open-air life of hunters, herdsmen, and mariners in primitive times. Lucretius is impressed by the splendour, wonder, and severe majesty of the stars as they actually appear to us,- aeterni sidera mundi,'' caeli labentia signa,' 'noctis signa severa,'-without any superadded association of mythology or antiquity. Neither does he use that other resource, by which Virgil adds an antique lustre to his subject-the introduction of quaint phrases and turns of speech, derived from Hesiod, such as 'nudus

ara, sere nudus,' 'laudato ingentia rura Exiguum colito,' or those derived from the traditional peasant-lore of Italy,— 'hiberno laetissima pulvere farra,'-which Virgil intermingles with the classic elegance of his style. Still less could Lucretius appeal to the associations of the popular religion. Such expressions as 'fas et iura sinunt,' 'hiemes orate serenas,' 'nulla religio vetuit,' and the mention of old religious ceremonies and practices prevalent in the country districts, such as that at i. 345,

Terque novas circum felix eat hostia fruges,

and at ii. 387,

Et te, Bacche, vocant per carmina laeta, tibique
Oscilla ex alta suspendunt mollia pinu,

not only afford a legitimate relief to the inculcation of practical precepts in the Georgics, but impress on the mind the dignity imparted to the most ordinary drudgery by the sense of its association with the religious life of man.

On the other hand, it is to be noticed how sparingly Virgil uses one of the grandest resources in the repertory of Lucretius,—that of imaginative analogies, through which familiar or unseen phenomena are made great or palpable by association with other phenomena which immediately affect the imagination with a sense of wonder and sublimity. The apprehension of these analogies between great things in different spheres proceeds from the inventive and intellectual faculty in the imagination,-that by which intuitions of vast discoveries are obtained before observation and reason can verify them; and in this faculty of imaginative reason Lucretius is as superior to Virgil, as Virgil is to him in artistic accomplishment. One of the few 'similes' in the Georgics is that often-quoted one, in which the difficulty which man has in holding his own against the natural deterioration of things is compared to the difficulty which a rower has in holding his own against a strong adverse current (i. 201-203):—

Non aliter, quam qui adverso vix flumine lembum
Remigiis subigit, si bracchia forte remisit

Atque illum in praeceps prono rapit alveus amni.

There is suggestiveness and verisimilitude in this image. But it does not make us feel the enlargement of mind and the poetic thrill of the thought which are produced by many of the great illustrative images in Lucretius. Virgil too is much inferior to the older poet, and much less original, in the general reflexions on life which he occasionally introduces,—such as that at iii. 66,—

Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi

Prima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectus.

In so far as the thought here expressed is true, the truth cannot be said to be either new or profound.

The inferiority of Virgil to Lucretius in that faculty of imagination which perceives an inner identity between great forces in the material and in the spiritual world, is apparent also from a comparison of their respective diction. There is often a creativeness, a boldness of invention and insight into the deepest nature of things, in the language of Lucretius, such as did not reappear again in Italian poetry till more than thirteen centuries had passed, and which makes us feel how near he was in many ways to our modern modes of thought and feeling. There is, on the other hand, scarcely any great poem from which so few striking and original images can be quoted than from the Georgics. The figurative language arising out .of the perception of the analogy between the vital processes of Nature and various modes of human sensibility is rather like that unconscious identification of Nature with humanity out of which mythology arose, than the conscious recognition of some common force or law operating in totally distinct spheres. And even this identity or analogy between the life of Nature and of man is not conceived with such power and passion in Virgil as in Lucretius. But if Virgil's language is inferior to that of his predecessor not only in vivid creative power, but in clearness and idiomatic purity, it is much superior in the uniform level of poetical excellence which it maintains. In this respect Virgil compares favourably with some of the

greatest masters of style among English poets, for example with Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron. There is nothing redundant or monotonous in the style of the Georgics, nothing trivial or mean; while always rich and pregnant with suggestion, it is never overstrained or overloaded; while always elevated to the pitch of poetry, it never seems to soar too far above the familiar aspects of the world. Nothing shows the perfect sanity of Virgil's genius more clearly than his entire exemption from the besetting sin of our own didactic poetasters of last century—a sin from which even Wordsworth himself is not altogether freethat of calling common things by pompous names, and dignifying trifles by applying heroic phrases to them. If he seems sometimes to deviate from this habitual temperance of manner in the account of his bee communities, he does so purposely, to convey through this gentle vein of irony something of that pensive meditativeness of spirit which is produced in him by reflexion on the transitory passions, joys, and vicissitudes of our mortal life.

The general superiority of Virgil's art to that of Lucretius is equally apparent in his rhythm. The powerful movement of spirit which Lucretius feels in the presence of the sublimer spectacle of Nature and of the more solemn things of human life does indeed produce isolated effects of majestic speech and sonorously rhythmical cadence, swelling above the deep, strong, monotonous flow of his ordinary verse, which neither Virgil nor any other poet has surpassed. But in variety, equable smoothness and grandeur, in that tempered harmony of sound which never disappoints and never burdens the ear, it may be doubted whether the musical art of any poet has maintained such a uniform level of excellence as that maintained in the Georgics. Even the more finished passages of Lucretius are, in these respects, inferior to the ordinary style of Virgil. To take for instance a passage, in the composition of which the feeling of Lucretius must have moved him to embody his thoughts in adequate words and metre,-the opening lines of Book II.,—