The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 11

The sentiment of Virgil is more like that of Tibullus; only Virgil gives utterance, though always in a dramatic form, to the real despair of unrequited affection (indigni amoris), while the tone of Tibullus is rather that of one yielding to the luxury of melancholy when in possession of all that his heart desires. They each give expression to that modern mood of pa.s.sion, in which the heart longs to exchange the familiar life of civilisation for the rougher life of the fields, and to share some humble cottage and the daily occupations of peasant life with the beloved object(260). In Virgil also there appears some antic.i.p.ation of that longing for lonely communing with Nature in her wilder and more desolate aspects which we a.s.sociate with romantic rather than with cla.s.sical poetry.

Though, unlike all other Latin poets, Virgil avoids all reference to the sensual side of this pa.s.sion, there is no ancient poet who has a.n.a.lysed and expressed, with equal truth and beauty and with such a chivalrous devotion, the fluctuations between hope and despair, the sense of personal unworthiness, the sweet memories, the heart-felt longings, the self-forgetful consideration and anxieties of an idealising affection. In such lines as these, expressing at once the sense of unworthiness and the rapid sinking of the heart from hope to despair-

Rusticus es Corydon, nec munera curat Alexis(261),

and again-

Tanquam haec sint nostri medicina furoris(262);

in the lines in which Damon traces back his love to its ideal source in early boyhood-

Saepibus in nostris, etc.;

in the fine simile at viii. 85-

Talis amor Daphnim, qualis c.u.m fessa iuvenc.u.m, etc.;

in the tender thought of the dying Gallus for the mistress who had forsaken him-

A, tibi ne teneras glacies secet aspera plantas(263),-

there is a delicate and subtle power of touch not unworthy of the master-hand which, with maturer art, delineated the queenly pa.s.sion and despair of Dido.

The supreme excellence of Virgil's art consists in the perfect harmony between his feeling and the medium through which it is conveyed. The style of his longer poems has many varied excellences, in accordance with the varied character of the thought and sentiment which it is called on to express. But the strong and full volume of diction and rhythm and the complex harmonies of the Georgics would have been an inappropriate vehicle for the luxurious sentiment of the Eclogues. The att.i.tude of the poet's mind in the composition of these earlier poems was that of a genial pa.s.siveness rather than that of creative activity. There are few poems of equal excellence in which so little use is made of that force of words which imparts new life to things. A few such expressions might be quoted, like that given by Wordsworth as 'an instance of a slight exertion of the faculty of imagination in the use of a single word'-

Dumosa _pendere_ procul de rupe videbo;

and we notice a similar exertion of the faculty in the line-

Hic viridis tenera _praetexit_ harundine ripam Mincius(264).

But this actively imaginative use of language seldom occurs in these poems. The general effect of the style is produced by the fulness of feeling, the sweetness or sonorousness of cadence, with which words, used in their familiar sense, are selected and combined. Such epithets as 'mollis,' 'lentus,' 'tener' are of frequent recurrence, yet the impression left by their use is not one of weakness, or of a satiating luxury of sentiment. The soft outlines and delicate bloom of Virgil's youthful style are as true emblems of health as the firmer fibre and richer colouring of his later diction. What an affluence of feeling, what a deep sense of the happiness of life, of the beauty of the world, of the glory of genius, is conveyed by the simple use of the words _fortunatus_, _formosus_, _divinus_ in the lines-

Fortunate senex, ergo tua rura manebunt- Nunc frondent silvae, nunc formosissimus annus- Formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse- Tale tuum carmen n.o.bis, divine poeta- Ut Linus haec illi divino carmine pastor.

The effect he produces by the sound and a.s.sociations of proper names is like that produced by Milton through the same instrument. Thus, to take one instance out of many, how suggestive of some golden age of pastoral song are the following lines, vague and conventional though their actual application appears to be in the pa.s.sage where they occur:-

Non me carminibus vincet nec Thracius Orpheus, Nec Linus, huic mater quamvis atque huic pater adsit, Orphei Calliopea, Lino formosus Apollo.

Pan etiam Arcadia mec.u.m si iudice certet, Pan etiam Arcadia dicat se iudice victum(265).

More even in his rhythm than in his diction does Virgil's superiority appear, not only over all the poets of his country, but perhaps over all other poets of past times, except Homer, Milton, and Shakspeare, in those pa.s.sages in which his dramatic art admits of a richly musical cadence. Our ignorance of the exact p.r.o.nunciation of Greek in the Alexandrian Age makes a comparison between the effect that would have been produced by the rhythm of Theocritus and the rhythm of the Eclogues in ancient times difficult or impossible. Yet it may be allowed to say this much, that if the rhythm of the Eclogues does not seem to us to attain to the natural and liquid flow of the Greek idyl, yet its tones are deeper, they seem to come from a stronger and richer source, than any which we can elicit from the Doric reed. Rarely has the soothing and reviving charm of the musical sounds of Nature and of the softer and grander harmonies of poetry been described and reproduced more effectively than in these lines:-

Hinc tibi, quae semper, vicino ab limite saepes Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti Saepe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro; Hinc alta sub rupe canet frondator ad auras; Nec tamen interea raucae, tua cura, palumbes, Nec gemere aeria cessabit turtur ab ulmo(266):

and in these which suggest the thought of that restorative power of genius which a poet of the present day has happily ascribed to Wordsworth(267):-

Tale tuum carmen n.o.bis, divine poeta, Quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per aestum Dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo(268):

and in these again, which give both true symbols and a true example of the 'deep-chested music' in which the poet gives utterance to the thought which has taken shape within his mind:-

Quae tibi, quae tali reddam pro carmine dona?

Nam neque me tantum venientis sibilus austri, Nec percussa iuvant fluctu tam litora, nec quae Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles(269).

The objections often urged against the poetical value of the Eclogues may be admitted. They are imitative in form. They do not reproduce scenes and characters from actual life, nor are they consistent creations of the imagination. They do not possess the interest arising from a contemplative insight into the hidden workings of Nature, nor from reflection on the problems of life. Their originality, their claim to be a representative work of genius, consists in their truth and unity of sentiment and tone.

If it be said that the sentiment which they embody is but a languid and effeminate sentiment, the admiration of two great poets, of the most masculine type of genius that modern times have produced, is a sufficient answer to this reproach. The admiration of Milton is proved by the conception and workmans.h.i.+p of his 'Lycidas,' the most richly and continuously musical even among his creations. Of Wordsworth's admiration there is more than one testimony,-this, from the recently published Memoir of the daughter of his early friend and a.s.sociate in poetry, perhaps the most direct: 'I am much pleased to see (writes S. Coleridge) how highly Mr. Wordsworth speaks of Virgil's style, and of his Bucolics which I have ever thought most graceful and tender. They are quite another thing from Theocritus, however they may be based on Theocritus(270).' The criticism which the same writer applies to 'Lycidas' suggests the true answer also to the objections urged against Virgil's originality. 'The best defence of Lycidas is not to defend the design of it at all, but to allege that the execution of it is perfect, the diction the _ne plus ultra_ of grace and loveliness, and that the spirit of the whole is as original as if the poem contained no traces of the author's acquaintance with ancient pastoral poetry from Theocritus downwards.' To the names of these two poets we can now add the name of one of the most ill.u.s.trious, and certainly one of the least effeminate, among the critics and men of letters whom this century has produced-Macaulay; who, after speaking of the Aeneid in one of his letters, adds this sentence, 'The Georgics pleased me better; the Eclogues best,-the second and tenth above all(271).'

The appreciation of Wordsworth is a certain touchstone of the genuineness of Virgil's feeling for Nature. It is true that the sentiment to which he gives expression in the Eclogues is only one, and not the most elevated, of the many modes in which the spirit of man responds to the forms and movement of the outward world. But the mood of the Eclogues is one most natural to man's spirit in the beautiful lands of Southern Europe. The freshness and softness of Italian scenes are present in the Eclogues, in the rich music of the Italian language, while it still retained the strength, fulness, and majesty of its tones. These poems are truly representative of Italy, not as a land of old civilisation, of historic renown, of great cities, of corn-crops, and vineyards,-'the mighty mother of fruits and men;'-but as a land of a soft and genial air, beautiful with the tender foliage and fresh flowers and blossoms of spring, and with the rich colouring of autumn; a land which has most attuned man's nature to the influences of music and of pictorial art. As a true and exquisite symbol of this vein of sentiment a.s.sociated with Italy, the Eclogues hold a not unworthy place beside the greater work-the 'temple of solid marble'-which the maturer art of Virgil dedicated to the genius of his country, and beside the more composite but stately and ma.s.sive monument which perpetuates the national glory of Rome.

CHAPTER V.

MOTIVES, FORM, NATIONAL INTEREST, AND SOURCES OF THE GEORGICS.

I.

The appearance of the Eclogues marked Virgil out among his contemporaries as the poet of Nature and rural life. That province was a.s.signed to him, as epic poetry was to Varius and tragedy to Pollio. It is to the Eclogues only that the lines in which Horace characterises his art can with propriety be applied. These lines were written before the appearance of the Georgics, and probably before any considerable part of the poem had been composed(272). The epithets which admirably characterise the receptive att.i.tude of Virgil's mind in the composition of his pastoral poems are quite inapplicable to the solid and severe workmans.h.i.+p and the earnest feeling of his didactic poem. The Eclogues are the poems of youth, and of a youth pa.s.sed in study and in contact with Nature rather than with the serious interests of life. Though Virgil indicates in them the ambition which was moving him to vaster undertakings, yet he shows at the same time his consciousness of the comparative triviality of his art. The cla.s.s of poem to which the word _ludere_ is applied was, even when not of a licentious character, regarded by the more serious minds of Rome, such as Cicero(273) for instance, with a certain degree of contempt, as being among the 'leviora studia,' partaking more of the 'Graeca levitas' than of the 'Roman gravitas(274).' The genuine Roman spirit demanded of its highest literature, as of its native architecture, that it should either have some direct practical use, or contribute in some way to enhance the sense of national greatness.

The literary impulse directing Virgil to the composition of the Georgics was probably the wish to be the Hesiod, as he had already been the Theocritus, of Rome. The poets of the Augustan Age selected some Greek prototype whose manner they professed to reproduce and make the vehicle for the expression of their own thought and experience. Thus Horace chose Alcaeus, Propertius chose Callimachus as his model. Virgil a.s.signs to Pollio the praise of alone composing poems 'worthy of the buskin of Sophocles.' In the Georgics he professes to find his own prototype in Hesiod:-

Ascraeumque cano Romana per oppida carmen.

Propertius also recognises him as the disciple of the sage of Ascra:-

Tu canis Ascraei veteris praecepta poetae, Quo seges in campo, quo viret uva iugo(275).

Though Hesiod can scarcely have taken the highest rank as a poet, yet a peculiar reverence attached to his name from his great antiquity, and from the ethical and theological spirit of his writings. As Virgil chose the mould of Theocritus into which to cast the lighter feelings and fancies of his youth, he naturally turned to 'The Works and Days of Hesiod' as a more suitable model for a poem on rural life, undertaken with a more serious purpose, and demanding a severer treatment.

The change in Virgil's life between the composition of the Eclogues and the Georgics had however much more influence in determining the difference in the character of the two poems, than the mere artistic desire to enter on a new path of poetry. During the composition of the earlier poems Virgil was living in a remote district of Italy, a.s.sociating with the country-people or with a few young poets like himself, and coming in contact with the great world of action and national interests only through the medium of his intercourse with the temporary governors of the province. Rome and its ruler and the powerful stream of events in which his own fortunes were finally absorbed affect his imagination as they might do that of one who heard of them from a distance, but who in his ordinary thoughts and sympathies was living quite apart from them;

Urbem quam dic.u.n.t Romam Meliboee putavi Stultus ego huic nostrae similem(276).

But before undertaking the task of writing the Georgics he had become an honoured member of the circle of Maecenas, the intimate friend of Varius and of Horace (who himself owed his introduction to that circle to the kindly offices of the two older poets) and of others distinguished in literature and public affairs. He had lived for a time near the centre of the world's movement, in close relations to the minds by which that movement was directed. As the most genuine of his Eclogues had been inspired by his personal share in the calamities of his country, it was natural that he should, now when his own fortunes were restored through the favour of those at the head of affairs, feel a stronger and more disinterested sympathy with the public condition, at a crisis to which no one capable of understanding its gravity could feel indifferent. It was natural that his new relations and the impulse of the new ideas which came to him through them should move him to undertake some work of art more suited to his maturer faculty, his graver temperament, and the firmer fibre of his genius. Nor is there any difficulty in believing that Maecenas may have had some influence in determining him to the choice of a subject which enabled him to range over the whole of that field of which he had already appropriated a part, which would afford scope to the literary ambition urging him to write a poem on a greater scale and of more enduring substance, and which, at the same time, might serve indirectly to advance the policy of reconciliation and national and social reorganisation which Caesar and his minister were anxious to promote.

Among 'the ancient arts by which the Latin name and the strength of Italy had waxed great,' none had fallen more into abeyance, through the insecurity of the times, than the cultivation of the land. The restoration of the old 'Coloni' of Italy and the revival of the great forms of national industry, a.s.sociated with the older and happier memories of Rome, had been a leading feature in the policy of the great popular leaders from the Gracchi down to Julius Caesar. Among the completed glories of the Augustan Age, Horace, some twenty years later, specially notes the restoration of security and abundance to the land:-

Tutus bos etenim rura perambulat, Nutrit rura Ceres almaque faust.i.tas(277),

and in the same Ode:-

Condit quisque diem collibus in suis, Et vitem viduas ducit ad arbores(278).

And in the brief summing up of the whole glories of the Augustan reign contained in his latest Ode he begins with the words,-