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Suave mari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis,

E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem,
Non quia vexari quenquam 'st iucunda voluptas,
Sed quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave est;
Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri

Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli;

if one compares these lines with the first six lines in any paragraph of the Georgics, it is impossible not to be struck by the monotony of cadence and the monotonous repetition of words in that quoted. Virgil produces more varied effects while binding himself by stricter laws in the composition of his verse. This he does by the greater variety and greater frequency of his pauses, by uniformly placing the words of strength and emphasis in the strong positions of the line, and by a skilful regulation of the succession of long and short, of accentuated and unaccentuated syllables, and of lines of a more rapid or slower movement. The result is that the feeling of his rhythm becomes a main element in the realisation of his meaning.

The principal resources by which Virgil, in the didactic exposition of his subject, avoids that monotony of effect which was likely to arise from the strong Roman concentration of purpose with which his work was executed, and, without deviating from the true perception of facts, is able to invest a somewhat narrow range of interests with charm and dignity,—

angustis hunc addere rebus honorem,

are thus seen to be, first his feeling of Nature, of man's relation to it, of his joy in the results of his toil, and, secondly, the associations of strange lands, of mythology, of antiquity, and of religious custom. The instruments by which these resources are made available are the careful choice and combinations of words and the well-practised melody of his verse. These resources and instruments have been considered in relation to and contrast with those employed by Lucretius. There is, moreover, this difference between the method of the two poets, that Virgil is much more of a conscious artist, that he seems to go more in search of illustrations and the means of artistic embellishment, that he endeavours to make

for himself a wreath, ' undique decerptam;' while the occasional accessions of a more powerful poetic interest to the ordinary exposition of Lucretius arise naturally in the process of his argument, from the habit of his mind to observe the outward world, the ways of all living things, and the condition of man in their intimate connexion with the great speculative ideas of his philosophy. His modes of varying the interest of his subject and adorning it are thus more simple and homogeneous; they work more in harmony with the purpose of his poem, so as to produce a pervading unity of sentiment and impression. The variety of resources used by Virgil gives, at first sight, a composite character to his art. But there is, deeper than this apparent composite character, an inner unity of tone and sentiment pervading the whole work. The source of this unity is the deep love and pride which he feels in every detail of his subject, from the great human interests with which these details are associated in his mind. What these human interests are is brought out prominently in the episodes of the poem, which still remain to be considered.

V.

The Episodes in the Georgics.

The finest poetry in Lucretius and in Virgil and the thoughts which give the highest interest to their respective poems are contained in passages of considerable length, rising out of the general level or undulations of the poem into elevations which at first sight seem isolated and unconnected with one another. It may be doubted whether even the power of thought and style in Lucretius could have secured immortality to a mere systematic exposition of the Atomic philosophy; nor could the mere didactic exposition of the precepts of agriculture, though varied by all the art and resources of Virgil, have gained for the Georgics the unique place that poem holds in literature. It is in their episodes that each poet brings out the moral.

grandeur, and thereby justifies the choice of his subject. In Lucretius, these passages are introduced sometimes in the ordinary march of his argument, more often at the beginning or completion of some important division of it, and are intended both to add poetical charm to the subject and to show man's true relation to the Universe, and the attitude of mind which that relation demands of him. The object of Virgil in some of his minor and in one or two of his larger episodes may be merely to relieve the dryness of exposition by some descriptive or reflective charm. But even these passages will in general be found to draw attention to the religious, ethical, or national bearing of his subject.

Some of these passages have been suggested by parallel passages either in Hesiod or Lucretius. The largest of all the episodes, that with which the poem concludes, has, for reasons already considered, only a slight and external relation to the great ideas and interests with which the poem deals. But the three most important passages, those of most original invention and profound feeling, viz. those at Book I. 466 to the end of the Book, Book II. 136 to 177, and also from line 458 to the end, serve like those great cardinal passages in the Aeneid, in which the action is projected from a remote legendary past into the actual present, to bring into light the true central interest of the poem, the bearing of the whole subject on the greatness and well-being of the Italian race.

Any of the passages which are not needed for the special practical purpose of the poem may be regarded as episodical, such, for instance, as that thoroughly Lucretian passage in Book I. in which the feelings of the rooks are explained on purely physical principles, or that passage of Book IV. inspired by the teaching of an opposite school, in which the theory of a divine principle pervading the world—the same theory as that accepted as his own by Virgil in Aeneid VI.-is enunciated as a probable explanation of the higher instinct of the bees. And it is characteristic of the eclecticism of Virgil's mode of thought, and also of the

lingering regret with which he regards the evanescent fancies of the old mythology, that he not only combines these tenets of the most materialistic and most spiritualistic philosophies in the same poem, but that the philosophic or theosophic solution of Book IV. 219, etc. comes shortly after a passage in which the same phenomenon is accounted for on the ground of the service rendered by bees in feeding the infant Jove in the cavern of Mount Dicte. Another passage of a scientific rather than a philosophic character is that at Book I. 234, etc., in which the five zones girding the heaven and the earth are described in language closely translated from Eratosthenes. Besides the scientific interest which this passage must have had to the poet's contemporaries, it serves to draw forth Virgil's antagonism to the religious unbelief of Lucretius, in the expression

Munere concessae divom,

and also to imply his dissent from the emphatic denial which Lucretius gives, at Book I. 1065, to the Stoical belief in the existence of the Antipodes :

Illi cum videant solem, nos sidera noctis

Cernere, et alternis nobiscum tempora caeli
Dividere, et noctes parilis agitare diebus.

Another passage of a semi-philosophical character is that at Book III. 242-283, in which the Lucretian idea of the all-pervading influence of the physical emotion of love over all living things in sea, earth, and air,-an idea in which Lucretius was anticipated by Euripides1 and by other earlier Greek poets, appears in combination with the purely mythological conception of the direct personal agency of Venus, and with the legend of 'the mares of Glaucus of Potniae.'

More important than these, as illustrative of the main ideas and feelings of the poem, but still subsidiary to the greater episodes, are the following: Book I. 121-159, Book II. 323-345; and in the same class may be included III. 339-383, and IV. 125-148. The first of these, 'Pater ipse

1 The passage in the Georgics may be compared with those passages which Mr. Munro quotes in his note to Lucret.. i. I.

colendi,' etc., is immediately suggested by Hesiod's account of the Golden Age; but the greater part of it, the account of the progress of the various arts of life, is simply a summary of the long account of human progress at the end of the fifth Book of Lucretius. The idea of the purpose with which Providence has imposed labour on man is Virgil's own; and this thought contributes much of its ethical meaning to the poem. The passage 'Ver adeo nemorum frondi,' etc., in which all the glory of Nature as she unfolds herself in the exuberant life of an Italian spring is described in lines of surpassing beauty and tenderness, is thoroughly Lucretian in feeling, idea, and expression. The charm of climate, of vegetation, and of life is in complete harmony with the specially Italian character of the second Book. The digression at Book III. 339, 'Quid tibi pastores Libyae,' containing the elaborate picture of a Scythian winter, suggested by the winter scene in Hesiod, also serves through the effect of contrast to heighten the charm of the fresh pastoral life of Italy described in the lines immediately preceding.

The actual description of winter has been criticised unfavourably, and not altogether without justice, by one of the most vigorous and classical of English critics1, who compares it with a corresponding passage in Thomson. It is inferior in simplicity and direct force of representation to the corręsponding picture in Hesiod. Virgil's imagination seems to require that even where the objects or scenes he describes are taken from books, they should be such that he could verify them in his own experience. It is this apparent verification, where the subject is not originally suggested by his own observation, that imparts the marvellous truthfulness to his art. Such lines as those

to

Aeraque dissiliunt volgo

Stiriaque impexis induruit horrida barbis

convey a less real impression of winter than the single linean idealised generalisation from many actual winters-which

1 W. Savage Landor.

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