Cum tabulis animum censoris sumet honesti.
HOR. Lib. ii. Ep. ii. 110.
Bold be the critick, zealous to his trust,
Like the firm judge inexorably just.
TO THE ADVENTURER.
SIR,
IN the papers of criticism which you have given to
the publick, I have remarked a spirit of candour
and love of truth equally remote from bigotry and
captiousness; a just distribution of praise amongst
the ancients and the moderns: a sober deference to
reputation long established, without a blind adoration
of antiquity; and a willingness to favour later
performances, without a light or puerile fondness
for novelty.
I shall, therefore, venture to lay before you, such
observations as have risen to my mind in the
consideration of Virgil's pastorals, without any inquiry
how far my sentiments deviate from established rules
or common opinions.
If we survey the ten pastorals in a general view,
it will be found that Virgil can derive from them
very little claim to the praise of an inventor. To
search into the antiquity of this kind of poetry is
not my present purpose; that it has long subsisted in
the east, the Sacred Writings sufficiently inform us;
and we may conjecture, with great probability, that
it was sometimes the devotion, and sometimes the
entertainment of the first generations of mankind.
Theocritus united elegance with simplicity; and
taught his shepherds to sing with so much ease and
harmony, that his countrymen, despairing to excel,
forbore to imitate him; and the Greeks, however
vain or ambitious, left him in quiet possession of the
garlands which the wood-nymphs had bestowed
upon him.
Virgil, however, taking advantage of another
language, ventured to copy or to rival the Sicilian bard:
he has written with greater splendour of diction, and
elevation of sentiment: but as the magnificence of
his performances was more, the simplicity was less;
and, perhaps, where he excels Theocritus, he sometimes
obtains his superiority by deviating from the
pastoral character, and performing what Theocritus
never attempted.
Yet, though I would willingly pay to Theocritus
the honour which is always due to an original author,
I am far from intending to depreciate Virgil: of
whom Horace justly declares, that the rural muses
have appropriated to him their elegance and sweetness,
and who, as he copied Theocritus in his design,
has resembled him likewise in his success; for,
if we except Calphurnius, an obscure author of the
lower ages, I know not that a single pastoral was
written after him by any poet, till the revival of
literature.
But though his general merit has been universally
acknowledged, I am far from thinking all the
productions of his rural Thalia equally excellent; there
is, indeed, in all his pastorals a strain of versification
which it is vain to seek in any other poet; but if we
except the first and the tenth, they seem liable either
wholly or in part to considerable objections.
The second, though we should forget the great
charge against it, which I am afraid can never be
refuted, might, I think, have perished, without any
diminution of the praise of its author; for I know
not that it contains one affecting sentiment or pleasing
description, or one passage that strikes the
imagination or awakens the passions.
The third contains a contest between two
shepherds, begun with a quarrel of which some particulars
might well be spared, carried on with sprightliness
and elegance, and terminated at last in a reconciliation:
but, surely, whether the invectives with which
they attack each other be true or false, they are too
much degraded from the dignity of pastoral innocence;
and instead of rejoicing that they are both
victorious, I should not have grieved could they
have been both defeated.
The poem to Pollio is, indeed, of another kind:
it is filled with images at once splendid and pleasing,
and is elevated with grandeur of language
worthy of the first of Roman poets; but I am not
able to reconcile myself to the disproportion between
the performance and the occasion that produced it:
that the golden age should return because Pollio
had a son, appears so wild a fiction, that I am ready
to suspect the poet of having written, for some
other purpose, what he took this opportunity of
producing to the publick.
The fifth contains a celebration of Daphnis, which
has stood to all succeeding ages as the model of
pastoral elegies. To deny praise to a performance
which so many thousands have laboured to imitate,
would be to judge with too little deference for the
opinion of mankind: yet whoever shall read it with
impartiality, will find that most of the images are of
the mythological kind, and therefore easily invented;
and that there are few sentiments of rational praise
or natural lamentation.
In the Silenus he again rises to the dignity of
philosophick sentiments, and heroick poetry. The
address to Varus is eminently beautiful: but since
the compliment paid to Gallus fixes the transaction
to his own time, the fiction of Silenus seems
injudicious: nor has any sufficient reason yet been found,
to justify his choice of those fables that make the
subject of the song.
The seventh exhibits another contest of the tuneful
shepherds: and, surely, it is not without some
reproach to his inventive power, that of ten
pastorals Virgil has written two upon the same plan.
One of the shepherds now gains an acknowledged
victory, but without any apparent superiority, and
the reader, when he sees the prize adjudged, is not
able to discover how it was deserved.
Of the eighth pastoral, so little is properly the
work of Virgil, that he has no claim to other praise
or blame than that of a translator.
Of the ninth, it is scarce possible to discover the
design or tendency; it is said, I know not upon
what authority, to have been composed from fragments
of other poems; and except a few lines in
which the author touches upon his own misfortunes,
there is nothing that seems appropriated to any time
or place, or of which any other use can be discovered
than to fill up the poem.
The first and the tenth pastorals, whatever be
determined of the rest, are sufficient to place their
author above the reach of rivalry. The complaint
of Gallus disappointed in his love, is full of such
sentiments as disappointed love naturally produces; his
wishes are wild, his resentment is tender, and his
purposes are inconstant. In the genuine language
of despair, he soothes himself awhile with the pity
that shall be paid him after his death.
--------Tamen cantabitis, arcades, inquit,
Montibus hoec vestris: soli cantare periti
Arcades. O mihi tum quam molliter ossa quiescant,
Vestra meos olim si fistula dicat amores! Virg. Ec. x. 31.
--------Yet, O Arcadian swains,
Ye best artificers of soothing strains!
Tune your soft reeds, and teach your rocks my woes,
So shall my shade in sweeter rest repose.
O that your birth and business had been mine;
To feed the flock, and prune the spreading vine! WARTON.
Discontented with his present condition, and
desirous to be any thing but what he is, he wishes
himself one of the shepherds. He then catches the
idea of rural tranquillity; but soon discovers how
much happier he should be in these happy regions,
with Lycoris at his side:
Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori:
Hic nemus, hic ipso tecum consumerer oevo.
Nunc insanus amor duri me Martis in armis
Tela inter media atque adversos detinet hostes.
Tu procul a patria (nec sit mihi credere) tantum
Alpinas, ah dura, nives, et frigora Rheni
Me sine sola vides. Ah te ne frigora laedant!
Ah tibi ne teneras glacies secet aspera plantas! Ec. x. 42.
Here cooling fountains roll through flow'ry meads,
Here woods, Lycoris, lift their verdant heads;
Here could I wear my careless life away,
And in thy arms insensibly decay.
Instead of that, me frantick love detains,
'Mid foes, and dreadful darts, and bloody plains:
While you--and can my soul the tale believe,
Far from your country, lonely wand'ring leave
Me, me your lover, barbarous fugitive!
Seek the rough Alps where snows eternal shine,
And joyless borders of the frozen Rhine.
Ah! may no cold e'er blast my dearest maid,
Nor pointed ice thy tender feet invade. WARTON.
He then turns his thoughts on every side, in quest
of something that may solace or amuse him: he proposes
happiness to himself, first in one scene and
then in another: and at last finds that nothing will
satisfy:
Jam neque Hamodryades rursum, nec carmina nobis
Ipsa placent: ipsoe rursum concedite sylvae.
Non illum nostri possunt mutare labores;
Nec si frigoribus mediis Hebrumque bibamus,
Sithoniasque nives hyemis subeamus aquosae:
Nec si, cum moriens alta liber aret in ulmo
AEthiopum versemus oves sub sidere Cancri.
Omnia vincit amor; et nos cedamus amori. Ec. x. 62.
But now again no more the woodland maids,
Nor pastoral songs delight--Farewell, ye shades--
No toils of ours the cruel god can change,
Tho' lost in frozen deserts we should range;
Tho' we should drink where chilling Hebrus flows,
Endure bleak winter blasts, and Thracian snows:
Or on hot India's plains our flocks should feed,
Where the parch'd elm declines his sickening head,
Beneath fierce-glowing Cancer's fiery beams,
Far from cool breezes and refreshing streams.
Love over all maintains resistless sway,
And let us love's all-conquering power obey. WARTON.
But notwithstanding the excellence of the tenth
pastoral, I cannot forbear to give the preference to
the first, which is equally natural and more diversified.
The complaint of the shepherd, who saw his old
companion at ease in the shade, while himself was
driving his little flock he knew not whither, is such
as, with variation of circumstances, misery always
utters at the sight of prosperity:
Nos patriae fines, et dulcia linquimus arva;
Nos patriam fugimus: Tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra
Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas. Ec. i. 3.
We leave our country's bounds, our much-lov'd plains;
We from our country fly, unhappy swains!
You, Tit'rus, in the groves at leisure laid,
Teach Amaryllis' name to every shade. WARTON.
His account of the difficulties of his journey, gives
a very tender image of pastoral distress:
------------En ipse capellas
Protenus aeger ago: hanc etiam vix, Tityre, duco:
Hic inter densas corylos modo namque gemellos,
Spem gregis, ah! silice in nuda connixa reliquit. Ec. i. 12.
And lo! sad partner of the general care.
Weary and faint I drive my goats afar!
While scarcely this my leading hand sustains,
Tired with the way, and recent from her pains;
For 'mid yon tangled hazels as we past,
On the bare flints her hapless twin she cast,
The hopes and promise of my ruin'd fold! WARTON.
The description of Virgil's happiness in his little
farm, combines almost all the images of rural pleasure;
and he, therefore, that can read it with indifference,
has no sense of pastoral poetry:
Fortunate senex! ergo tua rura manebunt,
Et tibi magna satis; quamvis lapis omnia nudus,
Limosoque palus obducat pascua junco:
Non insueta graves tentabunt pabula foetas,
Nec mala vicini pecoris contagia loedent.
Fortunate senex! hic inter flumina nota,
Et fontes sacros, frigus captabis opacum.
Hinc tibi, quae semper vicino ab limite sepes,
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. Ec. i. 47.
Happy old man! then still thy farms restored,
Enough for thee, shall bless thy frugal board.
What tho' rough stones the naked soil o'erspread,
Or marshy bulrush rear its wat'ry head,
No foreign food thy teeming ewes shall fear,
No touch contagious spread its influence here.
Happy old man! here 'mid th' accustom'd streams
And sacred springs, you'll shun the scorching beams;
While from yon willow-fence, thy picture's bound,
The bees that suck their flow'ry stores around,
Shall sweetly mingle with the whispering boughs
Their lulling murmurs, and invite repose:
While from steep rocks the pruner's song is heard;
Nor the soft-cooing dove, thy fav'rite bird,
Meanwhile shall cease to breathe her melting strain,
Nor turtles from th' aerial elm to 'plain. WARTON.
It may be observed, that these two poems were
produced by events that really happened; and may,
therefore, be of use to prove, that we can always feel
more than we can imagine, and that the most artful
fiction must give way to truth.