IV. VIRGIL'S BORROWINGS: HIS STYLE, METRE; AIM OF THE POEM Virgil's literary epithets are never found in Lucretius. He makes his borrowings his own and new. Change in the plan of the fourth Georgic. The simple and the elaborate style in poetry: Virgil's not simple. No poet so much quoted. Why? His metrical effects as compared with those of Milton and Tennyson. Sainte-Beuve's canon that "every true poem of any length must be grafted into its own age by applying some main events of the poet's time." This canon fulfilled in the Georgics. Virgil's world out of joint. Central idea of the Poem. The Georgics, though professing to be a didactic poem, is far more than this. Virgil handles each point of his subject with illustration and circumstances so well selected that it appeals not only to our heart and imagination but also to our sense of beauty. It is a true work of art. Ploughing and sowing, grafting and vine pruning, weathersigns, cattle and the ways of bees all provide him with pictures bright and genial and rich in human associations1. Comparing Millet's Angelus and Virgil's poem Mr T. E. Page has well said, “The art which from two peasants, a potato field and a church spire in the distance can create a great picture is strictly parallel with the art which Virgil exhibits in the Georgics"." A reader who might take the poem up without any previous knowledge of Augustan literature could not fail to be struck by the constant references to Greek literature and Greek associations of places and things. "Sometimes," says Sidgwick, "this is done with a mere epithet: the 'Chaonian' acorn, the 'Lethean' poppy, the 'Acheloian' cups of water, the 'Paphian' myrtle, 'Amyclean' dogs, 'Cretan' quiver, the 'Idaean' pitch, 'Cecropian' bees." So also the frequent references to Ariadne, Procne, Scylla, Parnassus, Helicon, etc. "If the poet mentions water1 See the instances cited by Sellar, Chap. VI, §2. 2 Edition of Virgil, Vol. 1, p. 23. M. V. d birds, they 'sport round Caystrian pools in the Asian meads,' an orchard reminds him of ' the groves of Alcinous,' the lightning strikes Athos or Rhodope or the Ceraunian rocks" and so on1. Not only Virgil but every man of any culture in Rome was familiar with Homer and the other Greek poets and he expresses himself in terms of these. In Georgic iv he transfers to his poem from the Odyssey the charming Sea-myth of Proteus, adapting it to his purpose. Could we imagine Lucretius using 'literary epithets' such as those just quoted? They are artificial, because they make the poetry of a thing to consist in its associations more than in the thing itself: they are absolutely alien to the direct strength of Virgil's poetic master. Probably no great poet ever owed so much to preceding ones as did Virgil. But he has an extraordinary power to make his own what he borrows and to present it in new aspects and with widened significance. I may refer to two similes in the sixth Aeneid, the comparison of the form of Dido dimly seen among the ghosts to the moon which one sees or fancies he has seen" among the clouds when the month is new, and to that other where the spirits crowding down to the bank of Styx are compared to the withered leaves that flutter and fall in the first frost of autumn. The originals are to be found in the poem of Apollonius of Rhodes, each of about a line and a half, but in each case this brief reference is by Virgil widened and ennobled into an altogether new poetic content2. The latter half of the fourth Georgic is puzzling. After assuring the reader that he will not detain him with retelling old myths, or with circuitous treatment of any kind3, Virgil closes the poem with a long episode which has 1 Sidgwick. Introduction, Vol. I, p. 34. 2 Both instances are excellently discussed by Professor R. Y. Tyrrell, Lectures on Latin Poetry, 1895, p. 142. 3 G. II, 46. nothing to do with Italy and almost nothing, in a strict sense, to do with country-life. Even were there no tradition that Augustus demanded the omission of the story of Gallus, any one who is familiar with Virgil's treatment in the rest of the poem, could hardly fail to infer that this concluding part was a later substitution, quite different from his original plan. He fails in his attempts to make it relevant but it contains some of his finest writing. How nobly does he here express his deep sense of the tragedy of human love and loss in Eurydice's last words to her husband while he clutches vainly at her form as she is swept away amid the darkness— Iamque vale: feror ingenti circumdata nocte. Who could ever translate this line1? In poetry there is room for more styles than one, just as in dress: there is a charm in simple dress and also in rich so long as both are in good taste. One would not wish every poet to be as unadorned in style as Wordsworth. As an instance of an absolutely direct and simple style one might name that old Scottish Ballad of The Twa Corbies, As I was walking all alane I heard twa corbies making a maen. "In behint yon auld fail2 dyke I wot there lies a new-slain knight, And naebody kens that he lies there But his hawk, his hound, and his lady faire.... concluding thus "O'er his white banes when they are bare, 1 In lines like this and "sunt lacrimae rerum" does not the very simplicity of the expression help to make rendering so very difficult? 2 Turf. da The least cultured person could understand every line of this while the person of most culture would alike feel what the nameless genius in some Border glen who wrote it felt and meant. How it comes home in its simplicity!— the Knight beset and slain while at his sport through the treachery of the woman he loves1! There is no question that Virgil's style is not simple. We might compare it to that of Tennyson which it resembles very closely. It is too condensed, too elaborated to be called simple. Yet this is consistent with a marvellous power and expressiveness. Take for instance one line which has always appeared to me very Virgilian, not indeed Virgilian in the best sense but in that of being somewhat artificial and yet powerful by reason of its very art. It is in Tennyson's Dream of fair women. Iphigenia is on the point of being sacrificed to appease the anger of Artemis. The priest is actually raising the knife to slay her when the goddess takes pity and carries her off in a cloud. Iphigenia speaks, The bright death quivered at the victim's throat, That is not a direct use of language. You could not imagine the poet of The Twa Corbies using such a phrase. Try to do so: you feel you could not, yet how vivid it is! Virgil's style is not simple in point of language but in thought and feeling he is perfectly natural and simple. The same is true of Tennyson. Probably from the time of Augustine down to Louis Stevenson, whether in books or in the debates of statesmen, no other poet has ever been so much quoted as Virgil. This is due to his wide and profound sympathy with human beings in all conditions and situations of life, the sympathy of a high and generous spirit that savours more of Christian than of Pagan times. He feels and makes us to feel the hopes and fears, the joys and sufferings 1 Note how the whole story of treachery, the deepest tragedy of the Ballad, is told in three words at the end of the eighth line. of persons of all classes whether it be of the great and highstrung or of ordinary people in the common round of life, of the husbandman at the plough as much as the hero in the battle-field. There is moreover a strong and compelling charm in his language, which is partly due to the fact that no other poet's verse suits so perfectly the thoughts and emotions expressed. This is why his lines haunt us and are unforgettable. Tennyson used to say that Virgil's finest hexameters occur in the Georgics and in the sixth Aeneid. He has a wondrous diversity of cadences. He produces a remarkable effect by his variety in the use of the pause. Thus, in his description of a summer tempest in the Georgics, the varying breaks in the verse bring out the successive phases of the storm1. We may compare Milton's wonderful lines on his blindness, which close. Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn, Nothing could surpass the music of the latter passage. This is not mere metrical art. It is the great breath of inspiration behind the words which causes them to drop spontaneously into harmonious order. Two well-known lines might also be instanced: Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus, The contrast between the swift flight of time and the fond lingering over things we delight in could not be better emphasized. Sometimes a single line gives Virgil scope for a metrical contrast as when he describes the 1 G. I, 328-34. See notes. 2. "Imagine this passage to be in prose 'Seasons return but not to me returns day' and we realize at once how much the 'natural pause' at the end of the line adds to the effect in verse." H. A. W. 3 G. III, 284-5. |