The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 33

Ceu septem surgens sedatis amnibus altus Per tacitum Ganges, aut pingui flumine Nilus c.u.m refluit campis et iam se condidit alveo(677).

Others again show the vivid interest mixed with poetical wonder which animated Virgil's power of observation in his Georgics-as for instance that at i. 430 of the busy workers in Carthage to bees in early summer toiling among the flowery fields-an image enn.o.bled also by Milton, who characteristically describes the bees as 'conferring their state-affairs,'

while it is not to their political, but to their industrial, martial, and social or domestic apt.i.tudes,

(c.u.m gentis adultos Educ.u.n.t fetus)

that Virgil draws attention. Of the same cla.s.s is the comparison at iv.

404, etc., of the Trojans preparing to leave the sh.o.r.es of Carthage to the movement of ants engaged in gathering together some heap of corn for their winter's store-

It nigrum campis agmen, etc.

Others again are suggested by his subtle and sympathetic discernment of the conditions of inward feeling; as the comparison at iv. 70, etc. of Dido to the hind, which, unsuspecting of danger, has received a mortal wound from a hand ignorant of the harm which it has inflicted-

haeret lateri letalis harundo.

The awe and mystery of the unseen world suggest the comparison of the crowd of shades pressing round Charon's boat to innumerable leaves falling in the woods, or to flocks of birds driven across the sea by the first cold of autumn-

Quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto Quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus Trans pontum fugat et terris inmitt.i.t apricis(678).

The point of comparison in this simile is not merely the obvious one of the number of leaves falling or birds flying across the sea in autumn, but rather the inner likeness between the pa.s.sive helplessness with which the leaves have yielded to the chill touch of the year, and that with which the shades-?e???? ?e???? ?????a-have yielded to the chill touch of death.

Nor perhaps is it pressing the language of Virgil too far to suppose that in the words 'terris inmitt.i.t apricis' he means to leave on the mind a feeling of some happier possibilities in death than the certainty of 'cold obstruction.' One of the most characteristically Virgilian similes-that at vi. 453-

qualem primo qui surgere mense Aut videt, aut vidisse putat per nubila Lunam-

is almost a translation of the lines of Apollonius (iv. 1447)-

t?? ?d?e??, ?? t?? te ??? ??? ?at? ????

? ?de?, ? ?d???se? ?pa?????sa? ?d?s?a?(679),-

but the whole poetical power of the pa.s.sage consists in the application of the image to the sudden recognition by Aeneas of the pale and shadowy form of his forsaken love, dimly discerned through the gloom of the lower world. Other images are suggested by the poet's delicate sense of grace in flower or plant, combined with his tender compa.s.sion for the beauty of youth peris.h.i.+ng prematurely. Such are those which enable us more vividly to realise the pathos of the death of Euryalus and of the burial of Pallas. Yet though these images are characteristically Virgilian, they also bear unmistakeable traces of imitation. The lines-

Purpureus veluti c.u.m flos succisus aratro Languescit moriens, la.s.sove papavera collo Demisere caput, pluvia c.u.m forte gravantur(680);

and again-

Qualem, virgineo demessum pollice, florem, Seu mollis violae, seu languentis hyacinthi, Cui neque fulgor adhuc, nec dum sua forma recessit; Non iam mater alit tellus, viresque ministrat(681)-

recall not only the thought and feeling of Homer-

???? d' ?? ?t???se ???? ??e? etc.,

but the cadences and most cherished ill.u.s.trations of Catullus, in whose imagination the grace of trees and the bloom of flowers are ever a.s.sociated with the grace and bloom of youth and youthful pa.s.sion.

Had Virgil lived to devote three more years to the revisal of his work, there is no reason to suppose that he would have added anything to its substance. Some inconsistencies of statement, as, for instance, that between iii. 256 and vii. 123, would have disappeared, and some difficulties would have been cleared up. But the chief part of the 'limae labor' would have been employed in bringing the rhythm and diction of the poem to a more finished perfection than that which they exhibit at present. The unfinished lines in the poem would certainly have been completed and more closely connected with the pa.s.sages immediately succeeding them. There is no indication that these lines were left purposely incomplete in order to give emphasis to some pause in the narrative. Virgil was the last poet likely to avail himself of so inartistic an innovation to give variety to his cadences. For the most part they appear to be weak props ('tibicines'(682)) used provisionally to fill up the gap between two pa.s.sages, and indicating but not completing the thought that was to connect them.

What more of elegance, of compact structure, or of varied harmony Virgil might have imparted to his rhythm, it is impossible to determine. We might conjecture that his aim would have been, as regards both expression and metrical effect, to act on the maxim 'ramos compesce fluentes,' than to give them ampler scope. In a long narrative poem like the Aeneid that perfect smoothness and solidity of rhythmical execution which characterise the Georgics-in which poem the position and weight of each single word in each single line is an element contributing to the whole effect-is hardly to be expected. A narrative poem demands a more easy, varied, and even careless movement than one of which the interest is contemplative, and which requires to be studied minutely line by line and paragraph by paragraph, before its full meaning is realised. If the movement in the Aeneid appears in some place rougher, or less compact, or more languid than in others, this may be explained not only by the imperfect state in which the poem was left, but by the difficulty or impossibility of maintaining the same uniform level of elevation in so long a flight. Yet it cannot be said that there is any loss of power, any trace of contentment with a lower ideal of perfection in the general structure of the verse of the Aeneid. The full capacities of the Latin hexameter for purposes of animated or impressive narrative, of solemn or pathetic representation, of grave or impa.s.sioned oratory, of tender, dignified, or earnest appeal to the higher emotions of man, are realised in many pa.s.sages of the poem. Virgil's instrument fails, or, at least, is much inferior to Homer's, in apt.i.tude for natural dialogue or for bringing familiar things in the freshness of immediate impression before the imagination. The stateliness of movement appropriate to such utterances as

Ast ego quae Divom incedo regina(683)

does not readily adapt itself to the description of the process of kindling a fire or preparing a meal-

Ac primum silici scintillam excudit Achates, Suscepitque ignem foliis atque arida circ.u.m Nutrimenta dedit rapuitque in fomite flammam(684).

To English readers the verse of the Aeneid may appear inferior in majesty and fulness of volume to that of Milton in his pa.s.sages of most sustained power; but it is easier and less enc.u.mbered and thus more adapted to express various conditions of human life than the ordinary movement of the modern epic. It flows in a more varied, weighty, and self-restrained stream than the more h.o.m.ogeneous and overflowing current of Spenser's verse. The Latin hexameter became for Virgil an exquisite and powerful medium for communicating to others a knowledge of his elevated moods and pensive meditativeness, and for calling up before their minds that spectacle of a statelier life and a more august order in the contemplation of which his spirit habitually lived.

The last revision would also have removed from the poem some redundancies, obscurities, and weakness of expression. There is a greater tendency to use 'otiose' epithets than in the Georgics, and a minute criticism has taken note of the number of times in which such words as 'ingens' and 'immanis' occur in the poem. Though the interpretation of the meaning of the Aeneid as a whole is probably as certain as that of any other great work of antiquity, yet there are pa.s.sages in it which still baffle commentators in deciding which of two or three possible meanings was in the mind of the poet, or whether he had himself finally resolved what turn he should give his thought. As there are lines left incomplete, so there are lame conclusions to lofty and impa.s.sioned utterances of feeling. Such for instance is the prosaic and tautological conclusion of the pa.s.sage in which Lausus is brought on the scene-

dignus, patriis qui laetior esset Imperiis et cui pater haud Mezentius esset(685).

But it is only a microscopic observation of the structure of the poem that detects such blemishes as these. In the Aeneid Virgil's style appears as great in its power of reaching the secrets of the human spirit, as in the Georgics it proved itself to be in eliciting the deeper meaning of Nature.

He combines nearly all the characteristic excellences of the great Latin writers. His language appears indeed inferior not only to that of Lucretius and Catullus but even to that of Ennius in reproducing the first vivid impressions of things upon the mind. The phrases of Virgil are generally coloured with the a.s.sociations and steeped in the feeling of older thoughts and memories. Yet if he seems inferior in direct force of presentation, he unites the two most marked and generally dissociated characteristics of the masters of Latin style,-the exuberance and vivacity of those writers in whom impulse and imagination are strong, such as Cicero, Livy, and Lucretius,-the terseness and compactness of expression, arising either from intensity of perception or reflective condensation, of which the shorter poems of Catullus, the Odes and Epistles of Horace, the writings of Sall.u.s.t, and the memorial inscriptions of the time of the Republic and of the Empire afford striking examples. Virgil's condensation of expression often resembles that of Tacitus, and seems to arise from the same cause, the restraint imposed by reflexion on the exuberance of a poetical imagination. By its combination of opposite excellences the style of the Aeneid is at once an admirable vehicle of continuous or compressed narrative, of large or concentrated description, of fluent and impa.s.sioned, or composed and impressive oratory. It possesses also the power, which distinguishes the older Latin writers, of stamping some grave or magnanimous lesson in imperishable characters on the mind-

Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.

Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem, Fortunam ex aliis.

Aude, hospes, contemnere opes et te quoque dignum Finge deo(686).

But Virgil is not only great as a Latin writer. The concurrent testimony of the most refined minds of all times marks him out as one of the greatest masters of the language which touches the heart or moves the manlier sensibilities, who has ever lived. A mature and mellow truth of sentiment, a conformity to the deeper experiences of life in every age, a fine humanity as well as a generous elevation of feeling, and some magical charm of music in his words, have enabled them to serve many minds in many ages as a symbol of some swelling thought or over-mastering emotion, the force and meaning of which they could scarcely define to themselves. A striking instance of this effect appears in the words in which Savonarola describes the impulse which forced him to abandon the career of worldly ambition, which his father pressed on him, in favour of the religious life. It was the voice of warning which he ever heard repeating to him the words-

Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge litus avarum(687).

And while his tenderness of feeling has made Virgil the familiar friend of one cla.s.s of minds, his high magnanimous spirit has equally gained for him the admiration of another cla.s.s. The words of no other poet, ancient or modern, have been so often heard in the great debates of the English Parliament, which more than any other deliberations among men have reproduced the dignified and masculine eloquence familiar to the Roman Senate. One of the greatest masters of expression among living English writers has pointed, as characteristic of the magic of Virgil's style, to 'his single words and phrases, his pathetic half-lines giving utterance, as the voice of Nature herself, to that pain and weariness yet hope of better things which is the experience of her children in every time(688).'

It is in the expression of this weariness and deep longing for rest, in making others feel his own sense of the painful toil and mystery of life and of the sadness of death, his sense too of vague yearning for some fuller and ampler being, that Virgil produces the most powerful effect by the use of the simplest words in their simplest application.

'O pa.s.si graviora-'

'Vobis parta quies-'

'Dis aliter visum-'

'Di, si qua est caelo pietas-'

'Heu vatum ignarae mentes-'

'Iam pridem invisus superis et inutilis annos Demoror-'

'Si pereo hominum manibus periisse iuvabit-'

'Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis-'

'Nesciaque humanis precibus mansuescere corda-'

'Impositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum-'

'Quod te per caeli iucundum lumen et auras-'

'Tendebantque ma.n.u.s ripae ulterioris amore-'

'Securos latices et longa oblivia potant-(689)'

these and many other pregnant sayings affect the mind with a strange potency, of which perhaps no account can be given except that they make us feel, as scarcely any other words do, the burden of the mystery of life, and by their marvellous beauty, the reflexion, it may be, from some light dimly discerned or imagined(690) beyond the gloom, they make it seem more easy to be borne.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES