Vergil History of Roman Literature

A History of Roman Literature by Charles Thomas Cruttwell

CHAPTER II.
VIRGIL (70-19 B.C.).
Part IV

Continued from Part III

The poet weakly consented, and filled up the gap by the story, beautiful, it is true, but singularly inappropriate, of Aristacus and Orpheus and Eurydice. This epic sketch, Alexandrine in form but abounding in touches of the richest native genius, [36] must have revealed to Rome something of the loftiness of which Virgil's muse was capable. With a felicity and exuberance scarcely inferior to Ovid, it united a power of awakening feeling, a dreamy pathos and a sustained eloquence, which marked its author as the heir of Homer's lyre, "_magnae spes altera Romae_." [37]

In a work like this it would be obviously out of place to offer any minute criticism either upon the beauties or the difficulties of the _Georgics_. We shall conclude this short notice with one or two remarks on that love of nature in Latin poetry of which the _Georgics_ are the most renowned example. Dunlop has called Virgil a landscape painter. [38] In so far as this implies a faithful and picturesque delineation of natural scenes, whether of movement or repose, [39] the criticism is a happy one: Virgil lingers over these with more affection than any previous writer. The absence of a strong feeling for the peaceful or the grand in nature has often been remarked as a shortcoming of the Greek mind, and it does not seem to have been innate even in the Italian. Alpine scenery suggested no associations but those of horror and desolation. Even the more attractive beauties of woods, rills, and flowers, were hailed rather as a grateful exchange from the turmoil of the city than from a sense of their intrinsic loveliness; it is the repose, the comfort, ease, in a word the _body_, not the _spirit_ of nature that the Roman poets celebrate. [40] As a rule their own retirement was not spent amid really rustic scenes. The villas of the great were furnished with every means of making study or contemplation attractive. Rich gardens, cool porticoes, and the shade of planted trees were more to the poet's taste than the rugged stile or the village green. Their aspirations after rural simplicity spring from the weariness of city unrealities rather than from the necessity of being alone with nature. As a fact the poems of Virgil were not composed in a secluded country retreat, but in the splendid and fashionable vicinity of Naples. [41] The Lake of Avernus, the Sibyl's cave, and the other scenes so beautifully painted in the _Aeneid_ are all near the spot. From his luxurious villa the poet could indulge his reverie on the simple rusticity of his ancestors or the landscapes famous in the scenery of Greek song. At such times his mind called up images of Greek legend that blended with his delineations of Italian peasant life: [42]

"O ubi campi
Spercheiosque, et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis
Taygeta; o qui me gelidis in vallibus Haemi
Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!"

The very name _Tempe_, given so often to shady vales, shows the mingled literary and aesthetic associations that entered into the love of rural ease and quiet. The deeper emotion peculiar to modern times, which struggles to find expression in the verse of Shelley or Wordsworth, in the canvass of Turner, in the life of restless travel, often a riddle so perplexing to those who cannot understand its source; the mysterious questionings which ask of nature not only what she says to us, but what she utters to herself; why it is that if she be our mother, she veils her face from her children, and will not use a language they can understand--

"Cur natum crudelis tu quoque falsis
Ludis imaginibus? Cur dextrae iungere dextram
Non datur, et veras audire et reddere voces?"

feelings like these which--though often but obscurely present, it would indeed be a superficial glance that did not read in much of modern thought, however unsatisfactory, in much of modern art, however imperfect --we can hardly trace, or, if at all, only as lightest ripples on the surface, scarcely ruffling the serene melancholy, deep indeed, but self- contained because unconscious of its depth, in which Virgil's poetry flows.

At what time of his life Virgil turned his thoughts to epic poetry is not known. Probably like most gifted poets he felt from his earliest years the ambition to write a heroic poem. He expresses this feeling in the _Eclogues_ [43] more than once; Pollio's exploits seemed to him worthy of such a celebration. [44] In the _Georgics_ he declares that he will wed Caesar's glories to an epic strain, [45] but though the emperor urged him to undertake the subject, which was besides in strict accordance with epic precedent, his mature judgment led him to reject it. [46]

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