INTRODUCTION.

In turning from the Eclogues and Georgics to the Aeneid, we are no longer confronted by the opinion which insists on Virgil's claims as a strictly original poet. The days are past when Scaliger could compare Virgil and Homer in detail, and pronounce that the scholar had in almost every instance excelled his master; nor would a modern reader easily tolerate even those less invidious parallels, such as were not infrequent in the last century, where Virgil was measured against Homer on the same principles on which Johnson has measured Pope against Dryden, and with substantially the same results. It is hard to read without a smile the apologetic tone in which Pope himself vindicates Homer against the admirers of Virgil, pleading that the old Greek has at all events the advantage of having written first; that if he had a less cool judgment, he holds the heart under a stronger enchantment, and that to endeavour to exalt Virgil at his expense is much the same as if one should think to raise the superstructure by undermining the foundation.' It is now the turn of the critic of the Aeneid to use the language of extenuation and speak with bated breath. On the one side it is admitted, as it is asserted on the other, that in undertaking the Aeneid at the command of a superior 2 Virgil was venturing beyond the province of his genius, and that all we can expect to find is the incidental success which could not fail to be obtained even on uncongenial ground by the poet of the Georgics. I have elsewhere explained the reasons which lead me to question the appropriateness of the special praise usually given to Virgil's agricultural poetry, and conceded, though with more hesitation, to his pastoral compositions, as if the true bent of his mind were to be found in his sympathy with external nature, at the same time that I have spoken as strongly as it was in my power to speak of the marvellous grace and delicacy, the evidence of a culture most elaborate and most refined, which shine out in the midst of a thousand incongruities of costume and outward circumstance, and make us forget 1 Preface to Homer.

2 [That the Aeneid was undertaken "at the command of a superior" there is no evidence. See p. lxvi.-H. N.]

that we are reading Bucolic poems of which line after line is to b found in Theocritus, and precepts about husbandry which are far mo intelligibly stated in Theophrastus or in the Geoponica. It is precisel this measure which I would wish now to extend to the Aeneid. S far it may seem that I am substantially at one with the opinion whic I have mentioned as that which is now generally entertained o Virgil's claims as an epic poet. It is possible, however, that th habit of sharply contrasting the characteristics of the several work of Virgil may have led to an exaggeration on the one side, as I believ it has on the other, that the Aeneid may have been brought to exclusively to the standard of the Iliad and Odyssey, and that Virg may have been blamed, as Pope complains that Homer has bee blamed, for not doing what he never intended.

There can be little doubt that too much has been made of Virgil' supposed disqualification or disinclination for epic poetry. We have hi own confession in the Sixth Eclogue that his early ambition was to sing of kings and battles: and though Phoebus may have whispered in hi ear that such themes were too high for one so young, so humble, and s unknown, we are not obliged to conclude that the aspiration was ther and there finally abandoned, or that as he rose naturally from short pastorals to a long didactic poem, he may not have cherished the hope of rising by an equally natural ascent to a still longer epic. If Pope's epic poem of Alcander was the dream of his boyhood, when he fancied himself the greatest poet that ever lived, his epic poem on Brutus was no less the vision of his later years, when he had come, as he thought, to take a just measure of his powers. That Augustus may have exercised some pressure on Virgil, urging him to undertake heroic poetry is very possible; but Virgil's words in the Third Georgic, and the similar language held by other poets, such as Horace and Propertius, would lead us to agree with a recent German editor,3 that what the emperor wished for was a direct celebration of his own actions; nor is there anything in the notices of Suetonius to compel us to any other conclusion. It was only natural that Augustus should take an interest, as we know him to have done, in the progress of a poem which, in grandeur of scope and compass, promised to transcend any previous effort of the Roman muse, and so could not but reflect indirect glory on his reign. We may observe, however, that in the only words of Virgil on the subject which have come down to us the poet expresses himself with considerable reserve, and is by no means forward to gratify the imperial curiosity. Nor need we lay any stress

3 Gossrau, Praef. ad Aeneidem.

[See Suetonius quoted on p. lxvi.—H. N.] • Macrobius, Sat. i. 24.

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7

on the story which, supported as it is by the authority of the elder Pliny, there seems no reason to doubt, that Virgil himself, when dying, condemned his Aeneid to the flames. Rightly understood, that story seems to contain, not a confession that he had mistaken his powers, but simply one more instance of the fastidious and exacting nature of his self-criticism. The explanation is consonant to all that we know of Virgil's character, as shown in his writings; and it can only be a private opinion which we may ourselves entertain about the merit of the poem that would lead us to seek for any other. Suetonius tells us that Virgil was overtaken by death at the time when he was intending to spend three years in polishing and elaborating the Aeneid: and we may imagine for ourselves what would be the value of three years of correction in the judgment of a poet like Virgil, and how abortive he might consider the work which had lost the advantage of so long a gestation. We cannot, indeed, tell, except in a very few obvious cases, such as the hemistichs, and perhaps also certain inconsistencies in the narrative, of which I have spoken elsewhere, what may have been the actual shortcomings of the poem as they appeared to its author. He may have introduced verses, as the story says he did, which were intended as mere temporary make-shifts, props to stay the building until more solid supports should be forthcoming; but modern criticism has not in general been very happy in pointing out these weak places, and for the present we must be content to admit that, as regards the execution of the poem, at any rate, our conceptions of what is required fall infinitely short of Virgil's own; and that though we may hope, in some measure, to appreciate what he has done, we can form no notion of what he left yet to do. Such an admission of ignorance is no more than the tribute which we pay, naturally and cheerfully, to a consummate artist. In any case, we need not doubt that the feeling which made Virgil wish to rob the world of his greatest poem was simply the mortification of leaving in a state of comparative imperfection a work which he had intended to be his masterpiece. To imagine that he was sensible of the unreality which, to a certain extent, characterizes the Aeneid, as compared with the Homeric poems, is to imagine an anachronism and an impossibility, to attribute to him a thought which is inconsistent with the whole tenor of his writings, and must have been alien to the entire current of sentiment among his contemporaries, whether admiring or adverse. He seems never to have tormented himself with doubts that he had not realized the rustic vigour of

Nat. Hist. vii. 114. Comp. Gell. xvii. 10 [Sueton., Vita Vergilii 39, Macrobius, Sat. 1. 24.-H. N.]

'See Introductions to Books 3 and 5.

8 Suetonius, Vita Vergilii 24.