No More Learning

C. 70–19)
BY WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON
CM
UBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO, purest, sweetest, gentlest, best be-
loved among all poets since the dawn of civilization, was
Su. born at Andes, a village near Mantua. His birthplace, his
name, perhaps too his wealth of romantic imagination, may indicate
Keltic origin. At any rate, his father was a man of humble station,
some say a potter, who married his master's daughter, Magia. (This
name of Virgil's mother helped on the wild mediæval invention of
Virgil the magician. ) As Transpadanes, the family naturally shared
the general gratitude toward the great Julius, always their especial
champion, who in 49 B. C. conferred full Roman citizenship upon
the provincials. Virgil apparently never had personal relations with
Catullus, Calvus, and their brilliant group of young aristocrats and
anti-Cæsarian poets.
His education was not defective, certainly. He studied both at
Milan and in Rome. A doubtful tradition makes him the fellow-
student of Antony and Augustus. In a youthful poem, perhaps au-
thentic, he takes reluctant farewell of verse, when devoting himself
to philosophy as the pupil of the Epicurean sage Siron :-
« Begone, O Muses: ay, begone,- although
Sweet Muses; for we will the truth confess,
Sweet have ye been! And on my pages look
Ye yet again,– but modestly, nor oft. ”
The undertone of doubt in these words proved doubly prophetic.
Much in the tranquil Epicurean acceptance of life,- and much indeed
of Lucretius's grandest harmonies and large view of nature's eternal
pageant, - the Augustan poet-laureate always retained. Perhaps he
even envies that most fearless and lofty of atheistic philosophers:-
(Happy the man whose steadfast eye surveys
The whole world's truth, its hidden works and ways,-
Happy, who thus beneath his feet has thrown
All fears and fates, and Hell's insatiate moan! »
((Georgics, ii. 490-492, translation of F. W. H. Myers. )


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VIRGIL
These lines are generally supposed to be a direct tribute to Lucre-
But Virgil's intensely religious and even mystical spirit clung
most anxiously to those two beliefs which Lucretius puts scornfully
behind him: the faith in all-wise, all-powerful Divine beings, and in
the soul's existence after death.
Virgil was certainly no untutored child of the soil, · like Burns.
Even more than his friend Horace, he everywhere reveals the lofti-
est refinement, and lifelong loving familiarity with the best in liter-
ature and art. He turns away, indeed, like Lucretius, and far more
heartily than worldly-minded Horace, from the splendor and the noisy
throng of clients in ministerial palaces, to seek refreshment on
nature's heart.
«Oh, happy beyond all happiness — did they
Their weal but know — those husbandmen obscure,
Whose life, deep hidden from strife of arms away,
The all-righteous earth and kind doth well secure.
What though for them no towering mansion pours
At early morning, forth of its haughty doors
And halls, a surge of courtiers untold,
Gaping on the rich portals, as they pass,
Fair with mosaic of tortoise-shell, the gold
Of broidered vestments and the Corinthian brass ?
“But they are at peace in life, in guile untaught,
And dowered with manifold riches. Theirs the ease
Of acres ample, and many a shady grot,
And slumber of sweetness under sheltering trees,
And living lakes, and the cool of Tempe's valley,
And the lowing of herds are theirs continually;
Theirs are the haunts of game on the wooded hill;
And theirs a hardy youth, unto humble ways
Attempered, and patient in their toil; and still
The old have honor of them, and the gods have praise.
Justice, methinks, when driven from earth away,
Left her last footprint among such as they. ”
('Georgics,' ii. 458-474, version of Harriet Waters Preston. )
There is abundant evidence here (as in the pictures of Carthaginian
splendor in Æneid,' Books i. and iv. ) that Virgil knew the luxury
of courts as thoroughly as he did the better beloved rural peace he
craves. The last phrase just quoted, furthermore, reminds us of the
melancholy tone, the vein of pathos, which all lovers of our poet
remember so well. There was much in the conditions of the time to
justify this; indeed, that sturdy patriot Livy, in his prelude, strikes a
more disconsolate note than any single passage in the epic.


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-
In truth, the best stage of the national life had already passed
with the age of the two Africani. The lordship of Italy fully at-
tained, Rome passed on to more fatal successes. She overthrew
Carthage and Corinth in a single year (146 B. C. ); but Cato was more
than half right,- the national character was rapidly undermined by
foreign wealth, and by culture too easily and swiftly won from
without, not bred steadily from within. Doubtless Ennius's historical
poem, or versified chronicle, if ever it shall come again to light, will
seem rugged and inartistic to us, as it certainly did to most of the
later Romans. Yet it was more truly an epic of manly freedom
and patriotic pride than was possible under the early empire.
The empire itself indeed was generally, and rightly, welcomed.
But it was —
“As he who, with distressful breath,
Forth issued from the sea upon the shore,
Turns to the water perilous and gazes. ”
was
on
Augustus's rule came as the only hope of peace and order after a
century full of civic strife, beginning with the death of the generous
far-sighted patrician radical, Tiberius Gracchus, under the clubs of an
aristocratic mob (133 B. C. ).
If ever conditions were such that the stanchest republican, who
a true and wise patriot as well, must welcome “the man
horseback," it was in the year after the great Julius's death (43 B. C. );
when the Roman State,--that is, the civilized world, -already rudely
shaken and drained of its life-blood by previous civil wars, now lay
utterly helpless, and rent asunder between the dissolute rapacity of
Mark Antony, and the impracticable imperious selfishness of wouldbe
reactionists like Cassius and Brutus. Rome and civilization seemed
about to sink together into that rift of civic strife, too wide for any
Curtius to close. It was at this juncture that the cold-hearted, long-
headed boy Octavian- heir to Julius's name and fortune, far more
than heir to his self-control and mastery of other men - came upon
the scene. Pretending to side with the assassins of Julius Cæsar,
he presently threw himself into Antony's arms; perhaps because he
saw that Antony could more easily be first utilized and then dis-
patched.
The next dozen years were to cost the commonwealth much
bloodshed still, in war and peace; many of her noblest lives were
yet to be cut short by the soldier's or the bravo's sword: for we
can hardly set earlier than the decisive battle of Actium (31 B. C. ),
the end of the century of turmoil opened by the death of Tiberius
Gracchus under Nasica's bludgeon. Yet even so, the mighty emperor
Augustus could point to a reign of fully forty-five years, marked by


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VIRGIL
are
prosperity and union within, and by foreign wars in the main suc-
cessful, when he passed on the firm-held sceptre to his unloved and
unloving kinsman, and took his own place beside Julius among the
deities of Rome. Did the august Augustus ever forget, as we
prone to do, his own identity with the dissolute stripling Octavianus
Cæsar, the murderer of his tutor Cicero? Through this long period,
- this cardinal half-century of the world's life, — the restoration of
civic order, the rebuilding of the city and especially of the temples,
the revival, so far as might be, of popular faith in the national gods,
the glorification of Rome (and of his own house) in art and literature,
were all purposes dear to Augustus's heart, all fused in the steady
central purpose of his life. In all these efforts, Virgil the poet was
as loyal and helpful as Agrippa and Mæcenas the soldier and diplo-
matist; and he met quite as generous appreciation as they, both from
his imperial master and from the Roman people.
Horace never forgot, nor ceased to be proud, that he had led his
battalion in the last hopeless struggle against the incoming despotism.
Nor did he ever wholly surrender his sturdy independence. Those
who love him best may well regret that his life fell in a time when
his genuine manliness and liberty-loving frankness must be so largely
hidden under the courtier's mask and cloak.
Virgil, on the contrary, more largely than any other great poet,
we evidently owe to the sunshine or perhaps more truly, to the
hot-house warmth - of imperial favor. The marvelous charm of his
verse, the exquisite commingling of clear-cut meaning and thousand-
fold haunting suggestion, is indeed the unique and inexplicable gift of
his genius. Yet his languid Theocritean mock-pastorals might have
perished with him, - at best he would probably have remained the
idle singer of a rather ignoble provincial life,— had Mæcenas not sum-
moned him before a far greater audience, and urged him on to more
ambitious themes.
Quite unlike Horace or any other Roman poet down to their
day, Virgil in his first undoubted utterance strikes the note of utmost
servility and adulation.
«Yea, for a god shall he be evermore unto me, and his altar
Often a tender lamb of our fold shall stain with his heart's blood ! »
cries the shepherd Tityrus in the first Eclogue. It is the voice of
Virgil himself, - one of the first to deify the half-reluctant Emperor.
The cause for gratitude was most inadequate. Virgil's little farm
by Mantua, wrongfully wrested from its loyal owner and bestowed
one of Octavian's veterans, had been tardily and reluctantly re-
stored. Moreover there is a tradition of a second expulsion, attended
with danger to the poet's life; and the urgent intercession of three
on


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VIRGIL
15417
powerful friends,- Varus, Gallus, and Pollio, - as well as Virgil's own
appeal at Rome to the dictator, were required to secure this act of
scanty justice (41 B. C. ). Indeed, some scholars doubt if Virgil ever
returned to his old home. Perhaps Augustus never lost sight of the
gifted and pliant youth whose value he promptly realized.
We cannot hope to find in this timid courtly poet the exultant
manliness and free stride of an Æschylus, an Ennius, or even of a
Dante, unbending in homeless exile, fearless of speech even under
imminent peril of death. More perhaps than any other artist, the
heroic poet needs to breathe the air of freedom. Virgil the man,
like his hero, is always conscious that his actual lot is, at best, but a
second choice. Æneas tells Dido:--
«If fate permitted me to shape my life
To my desire, and freely end my woes,
The precious remnant of my folk, and Troy,
I then would cherish. Priam's halls would rise;
With home-returning band I would have built
Again our citadel,- for vanquished men. ”
This note of mild regret for vanished hopes is so recurrent and con-
stant as to impress every listener at last. It is indeed the tone not
merely of the poet but of his whole race and generation. But sub-
mission to fate, the merging of the individual life in the larger and
more lasting current of destiny, is in all ages a peculiarly Roman
ideal. Perhaps his very limitations have helped Virgil to crystallize
into epic, more than any other artist has ever done, the whole
national life of so many centuries.
Honored and beloved though he was by all, Virgil's own earthly
life hardly seems to have been a happy one. His health was deli-
cate, his nature shy and sensitive, he had the bitterest misgivings as
to his ability to master the high themes assigned him; and his life
ends naturally with that unavailing appeal to his friends to destroy
the uncompleted and unsatisfying national epic on which so many
years of toil had been spent. But indeed the living Virgil is less
real to us than the stately shade, so gladly descried by the Floren-
tine pilgrim in the gloom of the Valley, the
(courteous Mantuan spirit,
Of whom the fame yet in the world endures,
And shall endure eternal as the world. ”
The ten brief pastorals known as the 'Bucolics' or 'Eclogues) were
published at Rome in 37 B. C. They are often mere paraphrases
from the more sincere Greek pastorals of the school of Theocritus.
>


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VIRGIL
The shepherds' names are Greek; Sicily and Arcadia are often men-
tioned, but commingled with the scenery and life of Lombardy, or
again, with thinly veiled allusions to Roman politics! The allegory
is hopelessly confused with realism, and there is for the most part
no adequate or serious purpose in the poems. These affectionate or
abusive dialogues of Græco-Roman shepherd-courtiers, their responsive
songs or contests for some rustic prize, are, none the less, rich in
beautiful phrases and tender thoughts. Already the hexameter takes
a more delicate and varied cadence than Lucretius or Catullus could
give it. Even the imitation of the Greek originals, though recurrent,
is never slavish. It is, at its closest, such free, joyous, artistic trans-
lation as delights us in Shelley's Homeric Hymns. Some of these
poems date apparently from the earlier time of Virgil's obscurity.
Others allude to passing events in the years 41 to 37 B. C. The tenth
and latest is actually dedicated to Virgil's friend, the soldier-poet
Gallus,- who is a gallant but incongruous figure, lying under the
shadow of an Arcadian rock, among the Hamadryads and piping shep-
herds, Silenus, Pan, and all their company.
The most important among the Eclogues is the fourth, addressed
to Pollio, announcing the recent or approaching birth, in Pollio's
consulate, of a child who shall bring back the golden age. Professor
Sellar thinks the actual child alluded to was the daughter of Augus-
tus, the brilliant and infamous Julia. The imagery of the poem is
often astonishingly like that of the Hebrew prophets. That the wide-
spread expectation of a Messiah may have been known to the schol-
arly poet seems possible. Still there is no single touch in the poem
which points unmistakably to Isaiah's influence. Every image can be
paralleled in earlier Greek or Latin literature.
The next seven years of Virgil's life (37–30 B. C. ) were devoted
to the Georgics. The general purpose of these four books is the
revival of agriculture in Italy; or as Merivale and Conington agree to
put it, the “Glorification of Labor. ” Instead of Theocritus, Hesiod's
(Works and Days' was most largely influential here, though Lucretius's
large and majestic treatment of natural scenery has also been closely
studied. The four sections treat of tillage for grain, of tree culture,
of cattle breeding, and the care of bees. Mythological digressions are
gracefully introduced, the poetic and religious tone of the whole work
is most perfect and harmonious, and in general no serious didactic
purpose was ever more perfectly accomplished in delightful verse.
Virgil is now the complete master of the hexameter. Its alien ori-
gin, its inherent difficulty, are forgotten. There are many noble
and historic Latin words, even, which cannot be used in its frame.
So much the worse for them. The sway of this rhythm became for
centuries as tyrannous as the heroic couplet under Dryden and Pope.
(


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Well might Tennyson end his loyal greeting to the Mantuan with the
words:-
«Wielder of the stateliest measure ever molded by the lips of man. ”
The fourth Georgic closes with the story of the Greek shepherd
Aristæus and his quest for bees. But Servius, the learned ancient
commentator, says of the poet Cornelius Gallus, mentioned several
times above: “He was so much the friend of Virgil, that the fourth
book of the Georgics, from the middle to the close, was taken up
with praise of him. This, at Augustus's bidding, the poet afterward
altered into the tale of Aristæus. ” The first part of this statement
is made quite probable by the Eclogue already outlined: the latter
is, it is to be feared, quite credible -- though not creditable, either
to patron or poet. Gallus's fall from favor and consequent suicide
occurred in 27 B. C. , so the earlier form of the poem must have been
in full circulation for years; yet no other trace of it survives save
this allusion. At present the fourth book opens with a
renewed
appeal to Mæcenas by name; and it closes with a half-dozen lines of
modest autobiographical tone. By the parallel allusions, however, in
this closing passage, to Augustus's victories in these same years, the
poet contrives to intimate a lofty claim for his own task and accom-
plishment; perhaps as bold a claim as Horace's “monument more
lasting than bronze. » Indeed, we are faintly reminded of Pindar's
proud greeting to Hiero at the close of the first Olympian.
As a rule, however, the allusions to Augustus, and also to Mæce-
nas, in the Georgics, voice the humility and adulation of the courtier.
Mæcenas's patronage is the poet's chief claim to honor or happiness.
“Cæsar” is the especial care of the gods, among whom he is to take
his place. This ascription of divinity to Julius and Augustus is par-
ticularly repugnant to our instincts. Full sincerity in these matters
can hardly claim for our poet. We could wish Virgil might
have heard Tiberius's calm words: “I, conscript Fathers, call you to
witness that I am but a mortal, and am performing human duties,
and consider it enough if I fill the foremost place. ” Perhaps in per-
fect freedom of utterance, Virgil would have confessed that only the
imperial task of keeping a world in order seemed to him divine. We
may recall that Cicero's popular orations, and Horace's public odes,
are full of orthodox piety; but the familiar satires and epistles of
the one, the private letters of the other, utterly ignore the divinities
of the folk! In Virgil's case we have only his poems, however; and
they indicate that the poet, if not the man, made a lifelong effort,
at least, to acquire full belief in that overcrowded Græco-Roman pan-
theon wherein every generation sets up new figures, - whether dead
we


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VIRGIL
rulers, vague abstractions like Faith, Honor, Necessity, or grotesque
special guardians, from Roma herself down to Volutina the goddess
of corn-husks! Much of allegorical meaning or poetic beauty he him-
self elicited from the faded forms of ancestral belief. Moreover, the
patriotic poet is not an analytical critic nor a radical. His task is
not to tear down whatever is traditional, popular, conservative, but
to revive, complete, and beautify it.
These questions cannot be separated from any account of the
great national epic, the Æneid, to which Virgil devoted the remain-
ing years of his life (30–19 B. C. ). The tale of the lonely Trojan
survivor, Venus's son, escaping from the doomed city, and reaching
Italy after world-wide wanderings, had been made familiar by poets
and popular tradition for centuries. The direct descent of the Julii
from this demigod Æneas was not to be questioned. A courtly
national epic could build on no other foundation than this. The
wonder is, that even under these cramping conditions the poet rose
to the full dignity of his true theme. Larger than imperial patron
or mythical ancestral hero, there marches through the epic the
Roman people itself,— that rude martial clan, that strides ever on
and on to the lordship of Latium, of Italy, of the Mediterranean, of
the civilized world!
Even if we be inclined to regret that Virgil employed again the
divine machinery, already familiar from Homer, to set his action in
movement, we must all feel the noble scope of the long prophecy
uttered by Jupiter early in the poem.
Here Æneas becomes a mere
link in the mighty chain. He is not even to be victorious nor long-
lived in Italy. He shall reign in his own city for three years, his
son for thirty, their Alban posterity through three centuries, – the
younger Romans forever.
Again, even the tragedy of Dido's approaching death is forgotten
in the memory of an infinitely grander drama, when from her dying
lips, as an imprecation on her faithless lover, comes the prophecy of
a deadly scourge for his descendants, destined to arise from her line,
and more and more boldly the figure of Hannibal shapes itself in her
vision.
Perhaps the most effective passage to be cited here, however, is
the apostrophe of Anchises in the underworld to his descendants :
«Others may mold more deftly the breathing bronze, I concede it,
Others out of the marble the living features will summon;
They shall surpass us in pleading of causes, delineate better
Motions of heavenly bodies, and tell of the stars and their risings.
Thou, O Roman, remember to curb with thy empire the peoples.
These thine arts shall be, and of peace to impose the conditions,
Sparing them that yield, but quelling in battle the haughty. ”


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Though uncompleted in many details, the Æneid is no fragment-
ary work. Its whole plan lies clear before the reader, all the salient
episodes are completely worked out. The after-world may read it by
preference in parts, and even the poet himself set the fashion in his
own lifetime. We could well spare, in truth, some of the rather petty
and wearisome battle scenes in the later books; and in general, the
Italian episodes can no longer interest us as they may have done
the original auditors. Yet it is a pity that such stately rigures as
royal Evander and the maiden Camilla should ever become unfamil-
iar. The latter seems to have appealed especially to Francesca's
grim Tuscan poet, and she is the first of Virgil's characters named
in the Commedia. Upon the whole, however, the sack of Troy, the
loves of Dido and Æneas, and the pageant of future Roman heroes,
defiling like Banquo's posterity before Æneas's eyes, will doubtless
always hold the supreme place in the hearts of Virgil's lovers. Per-
haps this superiority of the part over the whole is inevitable in any
poem of ten thousand verses. Certainly in this case we are justified,
since the poet himself selected these three books (ii. , iv. , vi. ) to read
in Augustus's presence.
Professor Sellar, in his copious study of Virgil, is too rarely epi-
grammatic; but he makes in a single sentence a striking antithesis,
calling Virgil perhaps the most imitative, yet one of the most origi-
nal, among the great classic poets. This suggests a few words upon
the striking position held by Virgil between the two most independ-
ent and creative of all poets, Homer and Dante.
It was apparently a general feeling among the Greeks, and espe-
cially with the Romans, that a thought once ideally well uttered, a
phrase rightly turned, could no longer be improved, but became in
large degree common property, belonging at last to him who could
set it in its fittest association. This high privilege is used above all
by Virgil. He borrows royally from nearly every older master of
style. Yet the result, if a mosaic, at least remains clear, beautiful,
even harmonious, in its general design and effect. His philosophic
and antiquarian lore, again, is much more completely fused into pure
and limpid poetry than Milton's similar treasures in Paradise Lost. '
Virgil's debt to Homer is especially heavy, and includes much
that essential, even, in the main framework of the plot. Of course
there is no reproach of “plagiarism” in this statement. Virgil's
audience was perhaps absolutely more familiar with Greek poetry
than with Latin. Horace actually began his poetical career with
Greek verses, as Dante and Petrarch did with Latin, — but sensibly
reverted to his own speech. A Roman gentleman's son went to
Athens as naturally as we go to college, to finish his education,
which had usually been begun by a Greek tutor, slave or free. The


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»
striking confession in the oration for the poet Archias will be re-
membered: «For if any one supposes less fame is acquired throug
Greek poetry than through Latin, he is greatly in error; since Greek
is read among nearly all nations, whereas Latin is confined within
our own rather narrow boundaries. ”
When Virgil, then, in his general plot, his incidents, his scenery,
his similes, constantly follows closely in Homer's footsteps, it can
only be regarded as a loyal acknowledgment of his supremacy.
often reminds us intentionally that his hero is retracing the route of
Odysseus: as, for instance, Æneas picks up on the Sicilian shore a
Greek of the Ithacan crew, left behind in their hasty flight from the
Cyclops's cave a few weeks before; and he even catches a terrified
glimpse of the blinded ogre Polyphemus himself. When the Trojan
wanderer hurries by the Sirens' shore or Circe's isle without pausing,
it may well be interpreted as a confession of Homer's unapproachable
mastery there.
In'the Virgilian account of Troy's downfall, such a
verse as
« The final day, the inevitable hour
Of Troy is come! )
is clearly an echo of Hector's foreboding -
« The day shall come when sacred Troy shall perish. ”
In the seventh year of his wanderings Æneas comes unexpectedly
upon Andromache, in her Grecian home of exile. She faints at the
sight, and the whole interview is saddened with bitter memories. In
the scene of farewell, Andromache's tenderest words are addressed
to the boy Ascanius, cousin of her own son by Hector: that son who
was murdered in the sack of Troy.
“O sole surviving image of my boy
Astyanax! Such eyes, such hands, had he,
Such features; and his budding youth would just
Have equaled thine in years. ”
Now, Virgil does not feel that the pathos of these words needs
the slightest hint of explanation: and rightly; for every Roman
reader had present before him in imagination the immortal group of
Hector with his wife and child, from the parting scene in Iliad vi.
Virgil often — but not always — justifies his claim to what he has
borrowed. Thus the description of Achilles's shield in the Iliad is a
beautiful series of idyllic pictures, but they form a mere digression
and interruption, while the stage waits; whereas Virgil's genius has
filled Æneas's shield with some of the most striking and noble scenes
in Roman story. So the idea of taking his hero to the underworld is


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15423
frankly borrowed from the Odyssey; but here again the ghostly
array of future Roman heroes is wholly Virgil's own addition. To
be sure, the general superiority of this grand Augustan picture of the
Inferno to the mere pallid replica of earthly life offered us in the
Greek poem, is largely due to the influence of Plato's splendid vis-
ions and noble philosophy. Still we may say in general that Virgil
never merely borrows,- and at the worst he is always the most inter-
esting of translators.
Dante's reasons for taking Virgil as his guide cannot be adequately
discussed here. Above all else, indeed, the belief in the empire, in a
supreme temporal power as a necessity to the orderly government of
the world, glowed far more fiercely, as a lifelong unattained desire,
in Dante's homeless heart, than in the more contented breast of the
poet who could see Augustus daily in the flesh. This very descent
of Æneas to Hades, just mentioned, suggested many details to Dante.
The later poet is indeed too loyal in saying that he learned from his
master “the fair style which has won him honor. ” The style, like
the metre, of Dante, is very remote from the more sweeping cadences
of the Latin epic; and it owes astonishingly little to any master.
But next only to Virgil's own poems (as Mr. Myers has remarked),
the Inferno) and Purgatorio' will help us to an adequate apprecia-
tion of the Roman poet.
This peculiar position of Virgil between two of the world's great-
est poets, — who never knew each other,- is one of his many claims
to our tender regard. The general opinion agrees with Mr. Norton's
statement on an earlier page, that Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare
stand alone. Each belongs to the world, not to a nation; for each in
a large sense created an ideal world of art. In his own class, how-
ever, as a poet in whose work a great nation's life, at least, has been
worthily typified and interpreted, the Roman Virgil will doubtless
long maintain the foremost position; perhaps until our own freer and
fuller life shall deserve, and receive, an adequate artistic expression
in epic.
Wirrian Cranston Lawion,
.
NOTE
a
It is impossible to cull, even, out of the countless loving tributes
to Virgil's genius; extending from Propertius's prophecy of a master-
piece to surpass the Iliad, to the eager cry of affection uttered in old
age by the last laureate, in whom so many of our poet's traits were
repeated. Not only as a mage, but as “prophet of the Gentiles,” he


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(
>
was honored, all but sainted, in the Middle Ages. He has never
been a lost author. Indeed, it is almost literally true, that had all
his manuscripts vanished, Virgil's poems could have been recovered
entire from the citations in later works of antiquity. There is, how-
ever, an abundance of MSS. , even those illustrated by drawings, be-
ginning in the fourth or fifth century.
Perhaps the one indispensable edition to-day is Conington's, in
three volumes in the Bibliotheca Classica, especially since the edi-
tor's generous taste has been reinforced by the more minute erudition
of Nettleship. The latter is also the authority on Ancient Lives
of Virgil' (Oxford, 1879). The ancient Virgilian commentators alone
make a small library; and Servius, especially, is more readable and
valuable than most modern editions.
Sellar's volume on Virgil in his (Roman Poets is diffuse but ex-
cellent. The most appreciative brief essay is by F. W. H. Myers, in
his book Essays, Classical. From these writers, or from Tyrrell's
'Latin Poetry,' abundant further references will be obtained. The
French have a high appreciation of this first Romantic poet. Men-
tion of Sainte-Beuve's early volume, and Boissier's delightful work,
must suffice here. Comparetti's Virgil in the Middle Ages' opens
a curious chapter of popular superstition.
Much of Virgil's greatest charm evaporates in any transfer to alien
speech.
He is, like all allusive artists, extremely difficult to translate
at all; and no version can be satisfying to the classical critic. Long-
fellow has experimented in hexameter on one or two Eclogues. Miss
Preston's "Georgics) have a very free rhythm, and far more of the
Virgilian charm than any other version. Among translators of the
Æneid, Conington again claims the first place, with two notable
renderings. We must protest against the brisk trot of “The stag
at eve” when forced upon the stately Roman Muse, yet the sense
is wonderfully well packed in. His prose rendering, again, is by no
means prosily literal; and for many a famous phrase it almost
achieves the impossible. Countless other versions there are, before
and since Dryden's; but no accepted favorite. Morris's skillful per-
formance disappointed his (and Virgil's) admirers. It is generally felt
that the method of the translator and the spirit of the original are
somewhat at variance. The version of Sir Charles Bowen, cited
largely below, has much of the Virgilian spirit and grace; and is
also an interesting experiment metrically, lacking only the last syl-
lable of the dactylic line.
Every lover of literature will complete this catalogue for himself.
The essayist desires to acknowledge especially his constant debt, here
and elsewhere, to Schanz, and also to Von Christ (in the Handbuch
der Alterthumswissenschaft').


## p. 15425 (#375) ##########################################

VIRGIL
15425
THE FIRST ECLOGUE
By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers
MELIBUS
T"
NVITYRUS, thou in the shade of a spreading beech-tree reclining,
Meditatest, with slender pipe, the Muse of the woodlands.
We our country's bounds and pleasant pastures relinquish,
We our country Aly; thou, Tityrus, stretched in the shadow,
Teachest the woods to resound with the name of the fair Amaryllis.
TITYRUS
O Melibæus, a god for us this leisure created,
For he will be unto me a god forever; his altar
Oftentimes shall imbue a tender lamb from our sheepfolds.
He, my heifers to wander at large, and myself, as thou seest,
On my rustic reed to play what I will, hath permitted.
MELIBEUS
Truly I envy not, I marvel rather; on all sides
In all the fields is such trouble. Behold, my goats I am driving,
Heartsick, further away: this one scarce, Tityrus, lead I;
For having here yeaned twins just now among the dense hazels,
Hope of the flock, ah me! on the naked fint she hath left them.
Often this evil to me, if my mind had not been insensate,
Oak-trees stricken by heaven predicted, as now I remember;
Often the sinister crow from the hollow ilex predicted.
Nevertheless, who this god may be, O Tityrus, tell me.
TITYRUS
O Melibæus, the city that they call Rome, I imagined,
Foolish 1! to be like this of ours, where often we shepherds
Wonted are to drive down of our ewes the delicate offspring.
Thus whelps like unto dogs had I known, and kids to their mothers,
Thus to compare great things with small had I been accustomed.
But this among other cities its head as far hath exalted
As the cypresses do among the lissome viburnums.
MELIBUS
And what so great occasion of seeing Rome hath possessed thee?
TITYRUS
Liberty, which, though late, looked upon me in my inertness,
After the time when my beard fell whiter from me in shaving, -
XXVI-965


## p. 15426 (#376) ##########################################

15426
VIRGIL
Yet she looked upon me, and came to me after a long while,
Since Amaryllis possesses and Galatea hath left me.
For I will even confess that while Galatea possessed me,
Neither care of my flock nor hope of liberty was there.
Though from my wattled folds there went forth many a victim,
And the unctuous cheese was pressed for the city ungrateful,
Never did my right hand return home heavy with money.
MELIBUS
I have wondered why sad thou invokedst the gods, Amaryllis,
And for whom thou didst suffer the apples to hang on the branches!
Tityrus hence was absent! Thee, Tityrus, even the pine-trees,
Thee, the very fountains, the very copses, were calling.
TITYRUS
What could I do? No power had I to escape from my bondage,
Nor had I power elsewhere to recognize gods so propitious.
Here I beheld that youth, to whom each year, Melibæus,
During twice six days ascends the smoke of our altars.
Here first gave he response to me soliciting favor:-
« Feed as before your heifers, ye boys, and yoke up your bullocks. ”
MELIBUS
Fortunate old man! So then thy fields will be left thee,
And large enough for thee, though naked stone and the marish
All thy pasture-lands with the dreggy rush may encompass.
No unaccustomed food thy gravid ewes shall endanger,
Nor of the neighboring flock the dire contagion infect them.
Fortunate old man! Here among familiar rivers
And these sacred founts, shalt thou take the shadowy coolness.
On this side, a hedge along the neighboring cross-road,
Where Hyblæan bees ever feed on the flower of the willow,
Often with gentle susurrus to fall asleep shall persuade thee.
Yonder beneath the high rock, the pruner shall sing to the breezes;
Nor meanwhile shall thy heart's delight, the hoarse wood-pigeons,
Nor the turtle-dove cease to mourn from aerial elm-trees.
TITYRUS
Therefore the agile stags shall sooner feed in the ether,
And the billows leave the fishes bare on the sea-shore,
Sooner, the border-lands of both overpassed, shall the exiled
Parthian drink of the Saone, or the German drink of the Tigris,
Than the face of him shall glide away from my bosom!


## p. 15427 (#377) ##########################################

VIRGIL
15427
MELIBUS
But we hence shall go, a part to the thirsty Africs,
Part to Scythia come, and the rapid Cretan Oaxes,
And to the Britons from all the universe utterly sundered.
Ah, shall I ever, a long time hence, the bounds of my country
And the roof of my lowly cottage covered with greensward
Seeing, with wonder behold ? my kingdoms, a handful of wheat-ears!
Shall an impious soldier possess these lands newly cultured,
And these fields of corn a barbarian ? Lo, whither discord
Us wretched people hath brought! for whom our fields we have
planted!
Graft, Melibæus, thy pear-trees now; put in order thy vineyards.
Go, my goats, go hence, my flocks so happy aforetime.
Never again henceforth outstretched in my verdurous cavern
Shall I behold you afar from the bushy precipice hanging.
Songs no more shall I sing; not with me, ye goats, as your shepherd.
Shall ye browse on the bitter willow or blooming laburnum.
TITYRUS
Nevertheless this night together with me canst thou rest thee
Here on the verdant leaves; for us there are mellowing apples,
Chestnuts soft to the touch, and clouted cream in abundance;
And the high roofs now of the villages smoke in the distance,
And from the lofty mountains are falling larger the shadows.
Translation of H. W. Longfellow.
MY HEART'S DESIRE
From the Georgics. Copyright 1881, by James R. Osgood & Co.
M
Y HEART's desire, all other desires above,
Is aye the minister and priest to be
Of the sweet Muses, whom I utterly love.
So might they graciously open unto me
The heavens, and the courses that the stars do run
Therein, and all the labors of moon and sun,
And the source of the earthquake, and the terrible swell
Of mounting tides, all barriers that break
And on themselves recoil. Me might they tell
Wherefore the suns of the wintry season make
Such haste to their bath in the ocean bed, and why
The reluctant nights do wear so slowly by.


## p. 15428 (#378) ##########################################

15428
VIRGIL
Yet if it be not given me to fulfill
This my so great desire to manifest
Some part of Nature's marvel, or ere the chill
Of age my abounding pulses do arrest, —
Yet will I joy the fresh wild vales among,
And the streams and the forest love, myself unsung !
Oh, would that I might along thy meadows roam,
Sperchēus, or the inspired course behold
Of Spartan maids on Taygetus! Who will come
And lead me into the Hæmian valleys cold,
Where, in the deep shade, I may sit me down?
For he is verily happy who hath known
The wonderful wherefore of the things of sense,
And hath trodden under foot implacable Fate,
And the manifold shapes of Fear, and the violence
Of roaring Acheron, the insatiate;
Yet blessed is he as well, that homely man,
Who knoweth the gods of the country-side and Pan,
Silvanus old, and the Nymphs their sisterhood!
Him not the purple of kings, the fagots of power,
Lure ever aside from his meek rectitude,
Nor the brethren false whom their own strifes devour,
Nor the Dacian hordes that down the Ister come,
Nor the throes of dying States, nor the things of Rome.
Not his the misery of another's need,
Nor envy of his abundance; but the trees
Glad unto his gathering their fruits concede,
And the willing fields their corn. He never sees
What madness is in the forum, nor hath awe
Of written codes, or the rigor of iron law.
There be who vex incessantly with their oars
The pathless billows of ocean; who make haste
Unto the fray, or hover about the doors
Of palace chambers, or carry ruthless waste
To the homes of men, and to their firesides woe.
One heapeth his wealth and hideth his gold, that so
He may drink from jeweled cups and take his rest
Upon purple of Tyre. One standeth in mute amaze
Before the Rostra, — vehemently possest
With greed of the echoing plaudits they upraise,
The plebs and the fathers in their places set.
These joy in hands with the blood of their brothers wet;
And forth of their own dear thresholds, many a time,
Driven into exile, they are fain to seek


## p. 15429 (#379) ##########################################

VIRGIL
15429
The alien citizenship of some far clime.
But the tillers of rth have only need to break,
Year after year, the clods with the rounded share,
And life is the fruit their diligent labors bear
For the land at large, and the babes at home, and the
beeves
In the stall, and the generous bullocks. Evermore
The seasons are prodigal of wheaten sheaves
And fruits and younglings, till, for the coming store
Of the laden lands, the barns too strait are grown:
For winter is near, when olives of Sicyon
Are bruised in press, and all the lusty swine
Come gorged from thickets of arbutus and oak;
Or the autumn is dropping increase, and the vine
Mellowing its fruit on sunny steeps, while the folk
Indoors hold fast by the old-time purity,
And the little ones sweetly cling unto neck and knee.
Plump kids go butting amid the grasses deep,
And the udders of kine their milky streams give down;
Then the hind doth gather his fellows, and they keep
The merry old feast-days, and with garlands crown,
Lenean sire, the vessels of thy libation,
By turf-built altar-fires with invocation!
And games are set for the herdsmen, and they fling
At the bole of the elm the rapid javelin,
Or bare their sturdy limbs for the rustic ring;
Oh, such, methinks, was the life the old Sabine
Led in the land, and the illustrious two,
Romulus and Remus! Thus Etruria grew
To greatness, and thus did Rome, beyond a doubt,
Become the crown of the cities of earth, and fling
A girdle of walls her seven hills round about,
Before the empire of the Dictæan king
Began, or the impious children of men were fain
To feast on the flesh of kindly oxen slain.
Ay, such the life that in the cycle of gold
Saturn lived upon earth, or ever yet
Men's ears had hearkened the blare of trumpets bold,
Or the sparkle of blades on cruel anvils beat.
But the hour is late, and the spaces vast appear.
We have rounded in our race, and the time is here
To ease our weary steeds of their steaming gear.
Translation of Harriet Waters Preston.


## p. 15430 (#380) ##########################################

15430
VIRGIL
THE FALL OF TROY
From the (Æneid)
[Priam's palace is sacked, and the old king himself is slain, with his son, by
Pyrrhus Neoptolemus, Achilles's youthful heir. The episode is part of
the long story related by Æneas in Carthage to Dido the queen. )
F
"ORWARD we fare,
Called to the palace of Priam by war-shouts rending the air.
Here of a truth raged battle, as though no combats beside
Reigned elsewhere, no thousands about all Ilion died.
Here we beheld in his fury the war-god; foemen the roof
Scaling, the threshold blocked with a penthouse, javelin-proof.
Ladders rest on the walls, armed warriors climb by the door
Stair upon stair, left hands, to the arrows round them that pour,
Holding a buckler, the battlement ridge in the right held fast.
Trojans in turn wrench loose from the palace turret and tower;
Ready with these, when the end seems visible,- death's dark hour
Closing around them now,- to defend their lives to the last.
Gilded rafters, the glory of Trojan kings of the past,
Roll on the enemy. Others, with javelins flashing fire,
Form at the inner doors, and around them close in a ring.
Hearts grow bolder within us to succor the palace, to bring
Aid to the soldier, and valor in vanquished hearts to inspire.
There was a gate with a secret door, that a passage adjoined
Thridding the inner palace - a postern planted behind.
Here Andromache, ill-starred queen, oft entered alone,
Visiting Hector's parents, when yet they sate on the throne;
Oft to his grandsire with her the boy Astyanax led.
Passing the covered way to the roof I mount overhead,
Where Troy's children were hurling an idle javelin shower.
From it a turret rose, on the topmost battlement height
Raised to the stars, whence Troy and the Danaan ships and the
white
Dorian tents were wont to be seen in a happier hour.
With bright steel we assailed it, and where high flooring of tower
Offered a joint that yielded, we wrenched it loose, and below
Sent it a-drifting. It fell with a thunderous crash on the foe,
Carrying ruin afar. But the ranks close round us again,
Stones and the myriad weapons of war unceasingly rain.
Facing the porch, on the threshold itself, stands Pyrrhus in bright
Triumph, with glittering weapons, a flashing mirror of light.


## p. 15431 (#381) ##########################################

VIRGIL
15431
As to the light some viper, on grasses poisonous fed,
Swollen and buried long by the winter's frost in his bed,
Shedding his weeds, uprises in shining beauty and strength,
Lifts, new-born, his bosom, and wreathes his slippery length,
High to the sunlight darting a three-forked flickering tongue, -
Periphas huge strides near, and the brave Automedon, long
Charioteer to Achilles, an armor-bearer to-day.
All of the flower of Scyros beside him, warriors young,
Crowd to the palace too, while flames on the battlement play.
Pyrrhus in front of the host, with a two-edged axe in his hand,
Breaches the stubborn doors, from the hinges rends with his brand
Brass-clamped timbers, a panel cleaves, to the heart of the oak
Strikes, and a yawning chasm for the sunlight gapes at his stroke.
Bare to the eye is the palace within: long vistas of hall
Open; the inmost dwelling of Priam is seen of them all:
Bare the inviolate chambers of kings of an earlier day,
And they descry on the threshold the armed men standing at bay.
Groaning and wild uproar through the inner palace begin;
Women's wailings are heard from the vaulted cloisters within.
Shrieks to the golden stars are rolled. Scared mothers in fear
Over the vast courts wander, embracing the thresholds dear,
Clasping and kissing the doors. On strides, as his father in might,
Pyrrhus: no gate can stay him, nor guard withstand him to-night;
Portals yield at the thunder of strokes plied ever and aye;
Down from the hinges the gates are flung on their faces to lie.
Entry is broken; the enemy's hosts stream inwards and kill
All in the van, each space with a countless soldiery fill.
Not so rages the river, that o'er its barriers flows
White with foam, overturning the earth-built mounds that oppose,
When on the fields as a mountain it rolls, by meadow and wold,
Sweeping to ruin the herd and the stall. These eyes did behold
Pyrrhus maddened with slaughter; and marked on the sill of the gat
Both the Atridæ brethren. I saw where Hecuba sate,
Round her a hundred brides of her sons,— saw Priam with blood
Staining the altar-fires he had hallowed himself to his god.
Fifty his bridal chambers within,- each seeming a sweet
Promise of children's children,- in dust all lie at his feet!
Doors emblazoned with spoils, and with proud barbarian gold,
Lie in the dust! Where flames yield passage, Danaans hold!
“What was the fate,” thou askest, befell King Priam withal ? »
When he beholds Troy taken, his gates in confusion fall,
Foes in the heart of his palace, the old man feebly essays
Round his trembling shoulders the armor of bygone days;


## p. 15432 (#382) ##########################################

15432
VIRGIL
Girds, now harmless forever, his sword once more to his side;
Makes for the midst of the foemen, to die as a chieftain had died.
Deep in the palace heart, and beneath heaven's canopy clear,
Lay a majestic altar; a veteran bay-tree near
Over it hung, and in shadow inclosed the Penates divine.
Hecuba here, and her daughters, in vain surrounding the shrine, -
Like doves swooping from heaven in a tempest's gloom to the
ground,
Sate all huddled, and clinging the god's great images round!
When in the arms of his youth she beheld her Priam arrayed –
“What wild purpose of battle, my ill-starred husband,” she said,
“Ails thee to don these weapons, and whither fondly away?
Not such succor as thine can avail us in this sad day:
No man's weapons,-
if even our Hector caine at the call.
Hither, I pray thee, turn. One shrine shall shelter us all,
Else one death overwhelm us. ” She spake, then reaching her hand,
Gently the old man placed by the hallowed gods of his land.
Lo! from the ravaging Pyrrhus, Polites flying for life,
One of the sons of the king! Through foes, through weapons of
strife,
Under the long colonnades, down halls now empty, he broke,
Wounded to death. On his traces aflame with murderous stroke,
Pyrrhus - behind - the pursuer! Behold, each minute of flight,
—
Hand outreaching to hold him, and spear uplifted to smite!
When in his parents' view and before their faces he stood,
Fainting he fell; in a torrent his life poured forth with his blood !
Then - t ugh about and around him already the death-shade
hung -
Priam held not his peace, gave rein to his wrath and his tongue!
“Now may the gods, thou sinner, for this impiety bold -
If there still be an eye in the heaven these deeds to behold -
Pay thee,” he cried, “all thanks that are owed thee, dues that are
meet,-
Thou who hast made me witness mine own son die at my feet,
Yea, in the father's presence the earth with slaughter hast stained.
Not this wise did Achilles, the sire thou falsely hast feigned,
Deal with his enemy Priam. His heart knew generous shame,
Felt for a suppliant's honor, a righteous suppliant's claim,-
Hector's lifeless body to lie in the tomb he restored;
Home to my kingdom sent me, to reign once more as its lord. ”
The old man spake, and his weapon, a harmless, impotent thing,
Hurled; on the brass of the buckler it smote with a hollow ring,
Hung from the eye of the boss all nerveless. Pyrrhus in ire-
“Take these tidings thou, and relate this news to my sire:


## p. 15433 (#383) ##########################################

VIRGIL
15433
Seek Pelides and tell him the shameless deeds I have done;
Fail not to say his Pyrrhus appears a degenerate son!
Die meanwhiles. ” And the aged king to the altar he haled,
Trembling, and sliding to earth in his own son's blood as he trailed;
Twined in the old man's tresses his left, with his right hand drew
Swiftly the sword, to the hilt in his heart then sheathed it anew.
This was the story of Priam, — the end appointed that came,
Sent by the Fates, — to behold as he died Troy's city aflame,
Pergama falling around him, who once in his high command
Swayed full many a people, in pride ruled many a land,
Asia's lord. He is lying a giant trunk on the shore,
Head from his shoulders severed, a corpse with a name no more.
Translation of Sir Charles Bowen.