read ten lines anywhere without coming across on those felicitous phrases the charm of which is bey question as it is beyond analysis. But these exter Virgil is a man of deep tho He is a patriot who loves far brought from out the stor past,' and his pride in her imperial greatness anima the whole poem and lives in many a majestic lin He has pondered long and painfully on the vicissitud and shortness of human life, but his sadness (whi some have censured as 'pessimism '), while it len pathos to his style, never degenerates into despa and the lesson which he draws from the certainty death is the necessity of action. He is deeply r ligious and a firm believer in an overruling Power wh rewards the goods and requites the evil, but the ridd of all-powerful Chance and inevitable Doom' 5 is eve before his mind, and this blending of belief and doub of faith and perplexity, congenial as it is to huma nature, has a singular attractiveness. It is unnecessary, after what has been already sai about the fourth Book, to point out what a strength o rhetorical force, what a reserve of passionate emotion underlies the habitual quiet and reflectiveness of Virgil's temper. That book indeed reveals an intensity of 1 Aen. 3. 157-9; 6. 852-4; 9. 448, 449. feeling and a dramatic power, of which the rest of his writings afford little sign; but there is another book of the Aeneid which rises to a still higher level and places Virgil in the foremost ranks of poetry. The sixth Book is beyond praise; to it Virgil chiefly owes his fame; it is here that he exhibits, in fullest measure, the highest poetic powers of imagination and invention; it is here that we find the Virgil who is worthy to walk side by side with Dante, and with whom John Bunyan and John Milton are to be compared. As we pass with him into the under world, by the sole force of genius. he makes a dream seem to us a living fact; he commands our thoughts to follow whithersoever he leads them, and they obey; under his guidance we tread with ghostly but unhesitating footsteps that dim and unknown highway which extends beyond the grave. The subject matter of the second half of the Aeneid is at once less generally interesting and less congenial to Virgil's Muse than that of the first six Books. It was impossible to weave a second Iliad out of such faded legends as may have existed in connexion with the obscure conflicts of Aeneas in Latium; nor is Virgil in any genuine sense a poet of the battlefield. The fierce joy' of combat neither thrills his veins nor pulses in his verse. Aeneas and Turnus each slay their due number of victims; spears pierce shields of more than epic bulk; Lyrnesian Acmon' hurls a stone which is 'no scanty fragment of a mountain,' and there is bloodshed in abundance; but purely as a tale of war these Books would, probably, find few readers. On the other hand they have high merits. They are rich in those aurea dicta which are perpetua semper dignissima vita. The episodes, such as the story of Nisus and Euryalus or that of Camilla, have an abiding charm. The debate in the eleventh Book deserves, as a model of rhetoric, to be ranked with Milton's account of the great council held 'At Pandemonium, the high capital Of Satan and his peers.' But, above all, it is in these Books that Virgil stands revealed as a consummate portrait-painter. The figures of Evander and Pallas, of Turnus and Mezentius, are drawn by a master hand. The first two have in all ages won unstinted admiration, but the poet's artistic power is, perhaps, more truly displayed in the delineation of the second pair. Rough and turbulent though he is, yet, as he stands at bay in the Trojan camp or in the council-chamber of Latinus, as he meets his doom beneath the sword of Aeneas, the figure of Turnus is one which kindles the imagination and touches the heart.2 So too it is with Mezentius. Hated he is justly by men and abhorred by gods; but, none the less, as he lies wounded and propped against a tree, with his great beard sweeping over his chest, while he sends messenger after messenger to bring tidings of his gallant son, the grim soldier is a pathetic figure, and the delineation of him (11. 856 seq.) as 1 Lucr. 3. 13. See, for example, 7. 598; 9. 185, 253; 10. III, 467; 11. 104; 12. 895. 2 Although Aeneas is Virgil's hero, still his natural feeling seems to be with Turnus, and, almost in spite of his will, he makes him the more interesting figure. So too in Hebrew story, although Jacob is the national hero, yet in the wonderful narrative of Gen. xxvii. it is with Esau, and not with Jacob, that the writer's human heart appears to beat in genuine sympathy. he mounts his old war-horse for the 1. st time is unequalled in Latin, perhaps in any, literatu e. For an ordinary man, however, to disc 'ss Virgil is almost an impertinence. It needs a poet to appreciate a poet, and the judgment of Alfred Tennyson outweighs that of a host of critics and commentators. There could be no more just and happy tribute from one master to another than the following Ode addressed by the English to the Roman Virgil.1 TO VIRGIL WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE MANTUANS FOR THE I Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire, Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre; II Landscape-lover, lord of language more than he that sang the Works and Days, All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase; III Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word; IV Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers ; Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers; 1 Printed by permission. V Chant of the Pollio, glorying in the blissful years again to be, Sumners of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea; VI Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind; Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind; VII Ligit among the vanish'd ages; star that gildest yet this phantom shore; Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to rise no more? VIII Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple Caesar's dome Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound for ever of Imperial Rome- IX Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd, and the Rome of freemen holds her place, I, from out the Northern Island sunder'd once from all the human race, X I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began, Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man. |