weighed the condition of the times in which he lived; that an entire
liberty was not to be retrieved; that the present settlement had the
prospect of a long continuance in the same family or those adopted into
it; that he held his paternal estate from the bounty of the conqueror, by
whom he was likewise enriched, esteemed, and cherished; that this
conqueror, though of a bad kind, was the very best of it; that the arts
of peace flourished under him; that all men might be happy if they would
be quiet; that now he was in possession of the whole, yet he shared a
great part of his authority with the senate; that he would be chosen into
the ancient offices of the commonwealth, and ruled by the power which he
derived from them, and prorogued his government from time to time, still,
as it were, threatening to dismiss himself from public cares, which he
exercised more for the common good than for any delight he took in
greatness—these things, I say, being considered by the poet, he concluded
it to be the interest of his country to be so governed, to infuse an
awful respect into the people towards such a prince, by that respect to
confirm their obedience to him, and by that obedience to make them happy.
This was the moral of his divine poem; honest in the poet, honourable to
the emperor (whom he derives from a divine extraction), and reflecting
part of that honour on the Roman people (whom he derives also from the
Trojans), and not only profitable, but necessary, to the present age, and
likely to be such to their posterity. That it was the received opinion
that the Romans were descended from the Trojans, and Julius Cæsar from
Iulus, the son of Æneas, was enough for Virgil, though perhaps he thought
not so himself, or that Æneas ever was in Italy, which Bochartus
manifestly proves. And Homer (where he says that Jupiter hated the house
of Priam, and was resolved to transfer the kingdom to the family of
Æneas) yet mentions nothing of his leading a colony into a foreign
country and settling there. But that the Romans valued themselves on
their Trojan ancestry is so undoubted a truth that I need not prove it.
Even the seals which we have remaining of Julius Cæsar (which we know to
be antique) have the star of Venus over them—though they were all graven
after his death—as a note that he was deified. I doubt not but one
reason why Augustus should be so passionately concerned for the
preservation of the “Æneis,” which its author had condemned to be burnt
as an imperfect poem by his last will and testament, was because it did
him a real service as well as an honour; that a work should not be lost
where his divine original was celebrated in verse which had the character
of immortality stamped upon it.
Neither were the great Roman families which flourished in his time less
obliged by him than the emperor. Your lordship knows with what address
he makes mention of them as captains of ships or leaders in the war; and
even some of Italian extraction are not forgotten. These are the single
stars which are sprinkled through the “Æneis,” but there are whole
constellations of them in the fifth book; and I could not but take
notice, when I translated it, of some favourite families to which he
gives the victory and awards the prizes, in the person of his hero, at
the funeral games which were celebrated in honour of Anchises. I insist
not on their names, but am pleased to find the Memmii amongst them,
derived from Mnestheus, because Lucretius dedicates to one of that
family, a branch of which destroyed Corinth. I likewise either found or
formed an image to myself of the contrary kind—that those who lost the
prizes were such as had disobliged the poet, or were in disgrace with
Augustus, or enemies to Mæcenas; and this was the poetical revenge he
took, for _genus irritabile vatum_, as Horace says. When a poet is
thoroughly provoked, he will do himself justice, how ever dear it cost
him, _animamque in vulnere ponit_. I think these are not bare
imaginations of my own, though I find no trace of them in the
commentators; but one poet may judge of another by himself. The
vengeance we defer is not forgotten. I hinted before that the whole
Roman people were obliged by Virgil in deriving them from Troy, an
ancestry which they affected. We and the French are of the same humour:
they would be thought to descend from a son, I think, of Hector; and we
would have our Britain both named and planted by a descendant of Æneas.
Spenser favours this opinion what he can. His Prince Arthur, or whoever
he intends by him, is a Trojan. Thus the hero of Homer was a Grecian; of
Virgil, a Roman; of Tasso, an Italian.
I have transgressed my bounds and gone farther than the moral led me; but
if your lordship is not tired, I am safe enough.
Thus far, I think, my author is defended. But as Augustus is still
shadowed in the person of Æneas (of which I shall say more when I come to
the manners which the poet gives his hero), I must prepare that subject
by showing how dexterously he managed both the prince and people, so as
to displease neither, and to do good to both—which is the part of a wise
and an honest man, and proves that it is possible for a courtier not to
be a knave. I shall continue still to speak my thoughts like a free-born
subject, as I am, though such things perhaps as no Dutch commentator
could, and I am sure no Frenchman durst. I have already told your
lordship my opinion of Virgil—that he was no arbitrary man. Obliged he
was to his master for his bounty, and he repays him with good counsel how
to behave himself in his new monarchy so as to gain the affections of his
subjects, and deserve to be called the “Father of His Country.” From
this consideration it is that he chose for the groundwork of his poem one
empire destroyed, and another raised from the ruins of it. This was just
the parallel. Æneas could not pretend to be Priam’s heir in a lineal
succession, for Anchises, the hero’s father, was only of the second
branch of the royal family, and Helenus, a son of Priam, was yet
surviving, and might lawfully claim before him. It may be, Virgil
mentions him on that account. Neither has he forgotten Priamus, in the
fifth of his “Æneis,” the son of Polites, youngest son to Priam, who was
slain by Pyrrhus in the second book. Æneas had only married Creusa,
Priam’s daughter, and by her could have no title while any of the male
issue were remaining. In this case the poet gave him the next title,
which is that of an Elective King. The remaining Trojans chose him to
lead them forth and settle them in some foreign country. Ilioneus in his
speech to Dido calls him expressly by the name of king. Our poet, who
all this while had Augustus in his eye, had no desire he should seem to
succeed by any right of inheritance derived from Julius Cæsar, such a
title being but one degree removed from conquest: for what was introduced
by force, by force may be removed. It was better for the people that
they should give than he should take, since that gift was indeed no more
at bottom than a trust. Virgil gives us an example of this in the person
of Mezentius. He governed arbitrarily; he was expelled and came to the
deserved end of all tyrants. Our author shows us another sort of
kingship in the person of Latinus. He was descended from Saturn, and, as
I remember, in the third degree. He is described a just and a gracious
prince, solicitous for the welfare of his people, always consulting with
his senate to promote the common good. We find him at the head of them
when he enters into the council-hall—speaking first, but still demanding
their advice, and steering by it, as far as the iniquity of the times
would suffer him. And this is the proper character of a king by
inheritance, who is born a father of his country. Æneas, though he
married the heiress of the crown, yet claimed no title to it during the
life of his father-in-law. _Socer arma Latinus hebeto_, &c., are
Virgil’s words. As for himself, he was contented to take care of his
country gods, who were not those of Latium; wherein our divine author
seems to relate to the after-practice of the Romans, which was to adopt
the gods of those they conquered or received as members of their
commonwealth. Yet, withal, he plainly touches at the office of the
high-priesthood, with which Augustus was invested and which made his
person more sacred and inviolable than even the tribunitial power. It
was not therefore for nothing that the most judicious of all poets made
that office vacant by the death of Pantheus, in the second book of the
“Æneis,” for his hero to succeed in it, and consequently for Augustus to
enjoy. I know not that any of the commentators have taken notice of that
passage. If they have not, I am sure they ought; and if they have, I am
not indebted to them for the observation. The words of Virgil are very
plain:—
“_Sacra suosque tibi commendat Troja Penates_.”
As for Augustus or his uncle Julius claiming by descent from Æneas, that
title is already out of doors. Æneas succeeded not, but was elected.
Troy was fore-doomed to fall for ever:—
“_Postquam res Asiæ_, _Priamique evertere gentem_,
_Immeritam visum superis_.”—ÆNEIS, I. iii., line 1.
Augustus, it is true, had once resolved to rebuild that city, and there
to make the seat of the Empire; but Horace writes an ode on purpose to
deter him from that thought, declaring the place to be accursed, and that
the gods would as often destroy it as it should be raised. Hereupon the
emperor laid aside a project so ungrateful to the Roman people. But by
this, my lord, we may conclude that he had still his pedigree in his
head, and had an itch of being thought a divine king if his poets had not
given him better counsel.
I will pass by many less material objections for want of room to answer
them. What follows next is of great importance, if the critics can make
out their charge, for it is levelled at the manners which our poet gives
his hero, and which are the same which were eminently seen in his
Augustus. Those manners were piety to the gods and a dutiful affection
to his father, love to his relations, care of his people, courage and
conduct in the wars, gratitude to those who had obliged him, and justice
in general to mankind.
Piety, as your lordship sees, takes place of all as the chief part of his
character; and the word in Latin is more full than it can possibly be
expressed in any modern language, for there it comprehends not only
devotion to the gods, but filial love and tender affection to relations
of all sorts. As instances of this the deities of Troy and his own
Penates are made the companions of his flight; they appear to him in his
voyage and advise him, and at last he replaces them in Italy, their
native country. For his father, he takes him on his back. He leads his
little son, his wife follows him; but losing his footsteps through fear
or ignorance he goes back into the midst of his enemies to find her, and
leaves not his pursuit till her ghost appears to forbid his farther
search. I will say nothing of his duty to his father while he lived, his
sorrow for his death, of the games instituted in honour of his memory, or
seeking him by his command even after death in the Elysian fields. I
will not mention his tenderness for his son, which everywhere is visible;
of his raising a tomb for Polydorus; the obsequies for Misenus; his pious
remembrance of Deiphobus; the funerals of his nurse; his grief for
Pallas, and his revenge taken on his murderer, whom otherwise, by his
natural compassion, he had forgiven: and then the poem had been left
imperfect, for we could have had no certain prospect of his happiness
while the last obstacle to it was unremoved.
Of the other parts which compose his character as a king or as a general
I need say nothing; the whole “Æneis” is one continued instance of some
one or other of them; and where I find anything of them taxed, it shall
suffice me (as briefly as I can) to vindicate my divine master to your
lordship, and by you to the reader. But herein Segrais, in his admirable
preface to his translation of the “Æneis,” as the author of the Dauphin’s
“Virgil” justly calls it, has prevented me. Him I follow, and what I
borrow from him am ready to acknowledge to him, for, impartially
speaking, the French are as much better critics than the English as they
are worse poets. Thus we generally allow that they better understand the
management of a war than our islanders, but we know we are superior to
them in the day of battle; they value themselves on their generals, we on
our soldiers. But this is not the proper place to decide that question,
if they make it one. I shall say perhaps as much of other nations and
their poets (excepting only Tasso), and hope to make my assertion good,
which is but doing justice to my country—part of which honour will
reflect on your lordship, whose thoughts are always just, your numbers
harmonious, your words chosen, your expressions strong and manly, your
verse flowing, and your turns as happy as they are easy. If you would
set us more copies, your example would make all precepts needless. In
the meantime that little you have written is owned, and that particularly
by the poets (who are a nation not over-lavish of praise to their
contemporaries), as a principal ornament of our language; but the
sweetest essences are always confined in the smallest glasses.
When I speak of your lordship, it is never a digression, and therefore I
need beg no pardon for it, but take up Segrais where I left him, and
shall use him less often than I have occasion for him. For his preface
is a perfect piece of criticism, full and clear, and digested into an
exact method; mine is loose and, as I intended it, epistolary. Yet I
dwell on many things which he durst not touch, for it is dangerous to
offend an arbitrary master, and every patron who has the power of
Augustus has not his clemency. In short, my lord, I would not translate
him because I would bring you somewhat of my own. His notes and
observations on every book are of the same excellency, and for the same
reason I omit the greater part.
He takes no notice that Virgil is arraigned for placing piety before
valour, and making that piety the chief character of his hero. I have
said already from Bossu, that a poet is not obliged to make his hero a
virtuous man; therefore neither Homer nor Tasso are to be blamed for
giving what predominant quality they pleased to their first character.
But Virgil, who designed to form a perfect prince, and would insinuate
that Augustus (whom he calls Æneas in his poem) was truly such, found
himself obliged to make him without blemish—thoroughly virtuous; and a
thorough virtue both begins and ends in piety. Tasso without question
observed this before me, and therefore split his hero in two; he gave
Godfrey piety, and Rinaldo fortitude, for their chief qualities or
manners. Homer, who had chosen another moral, makes both Agamemnon and
Achilles vicious; for his design was to instruct in virtue by showing the
deformity of vice. I avoid repetition of that I have said above. What
follows is translated literally from Segrais:—
“Virgil had considered that the greatest virtues of Augustus consisted in
the perfect art of governing his people, which caused him to reign for
more than forty years in great felicity. He considered that his emperor
was valiant, civil, popular, eloquent, politic, and religious; he has
given all these qualities to Æneas. But knowing that piety alone
comprehends the whole duty of man towards the gods, towards his country,
and towards his relations, he judged that this ought to be his first
character whom he would set for a pattern of perfection. In reality,
they who believe that the praises which arise from valour are superior to
those which proceed from any other virtues, have not considered, as they
ought, that valour, destitute of other virtues, cannot render a man
worthy of any true esteem. That quality, which signifies no more than an
intrepid courage, may he separated from many others which are good, and
accompanied with many which are ill. A man may be very valiant, and yet
impious and vicious; but the same cannot be said of piety, which excludes
all ill qualities, and comprehends even valour itself, with all other
qualities which are good. Can we, for example, give the praise of valour
to a man who should see his gods profaned, and should want the courage to
defend them? to a man who should abandon his father, or desert his king,
in his last necessity?”
Thus far Segrais, in giving the preference to piety before valour; I will
now follow him where he considers this valour or intrepid courage singly
in itself; and this also Virgil gives to his Æneas, and that in a
heroical degree.
Having first concluded that our poet did for the best in taking the first
character of his hero from that essential virtue on which the rest
depend, he proceeds to tell us that in the ten years’ war of Troy he was
considered as the second champion of his country, allowing Hector the
first place; and this even by the confession of Homer, who took all
occasions of setting up his own countrymen the Grecians, and of
undervaluing the Trojan chiefs. But Virgil (whom Segrais forgot to cite)
makes Diomede give him a higher character for strength and courage. His
testimony is this, in the eleventh book:—
“_Stetimus tela aspera contra_,
_Contulimusque manus_: _experto credite_, _quantus_
_In clypeum adsurgat_, _quo turbine torqueat hastam_.
_Si duo præterea tales Inachias venisset ad urbes_
_Dardanus_, _et versis lugeret Græcia fatis_.
_Quicquid apud duræ cessatum est mænia Trojæ_,
_Hectoris Æneæque manu victoria Grajûm_
_Hæsit_, _et in decumum vestigia retulit annum_.
_Ambo animis_, _ambo insignes præstantibus armis_:
_Hic pietate prior_.”
I give not here my translation of these verses, though I think I have not
ill succeeded in them, because your lordship is so great a master of the
original that I have no reason to desire you should see Virgil and me so
near together. But you may please, my lord, to take notice that the
Latin author refines upon the Greek, and insinuates that Homer had done
his hero wrong in giving the advantage of the duel to his own countryman,
though Diomedes was manifestly the second champion of the Grecians; and
Ulysses preferred him before Ajax when he chose him for the companion of
his nightly expedition, for he had a headpiece of his own, and wanted
only the fortitude of another to bring him off with safety, and that he
might compass his design with honour.
The French translator thus proceeds:—“They who accuse Æneas for want of
courage, either understand not Virgil or have read him slightly;
otherwise they would not raise an objection so easy to be answered.”
Hereupon he gives so many instances of the hero’s valour that to repeat
them after him would tire your lordship, and put me to the unnecessary
trouble of transcribing the greatest part of the three last Æneids. In
short, more could not be expected from an Amadis, a Sir Lancelot, or the
whole Round Table than he performs. _Proxima quæque metit galdio_ is the
perfect account of a knight-errant. If it be replied, continues Segrais,
that it was not difficult for him to undertake and achieve such hardy
enterprises because he wore enchanted arms, that accusation in the first
place must fall on Homer ere it can reach Virgil. Achilles was as well
provided with them as Æneas, though he was invulnerable without them; and
Ariosto, the two Tassos (Bernardo and Torquato), even our own Spenser—in
a word, all modern poets—have copied Homer, as well as Virgil; he is
neither the first nor last, but in the midst of them, and therefore is
safe if they are so. Who knows, says Segrais, but that his fated armour
was only an allegorical defence, and signified no more than that he was
under the peculiar protection of the gods? born, as the astrologers will
tell us out of Virgil (who was well versed in the Chaldean mysteries),
under the favourable influence of Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun? But I
insist not on this because I know you believe not there is such an art;
though not only Horace and Persius, but Augustus himself, thought
otherwise. But in defence of Virgil, I dare positively say that he has
been more cautious in this particular than either his predecessor or his
descendants; for Æneas was actually wounded in the twelfth of the
“Æneis,” though he had the same godsmith to forge his arms as had
Achilles. It seems he was no “war-luck,” as the Scots commonly call such
men, who, they say, are iron-free or lead-free. Yet after this
experiment that his arms were not impenetrable (when he was cured indeed
by his mother’s help, because he was that day to conclude the war by the
death of Turnus), the poet durst not carry the miracle too far and
restore him wholly to his former vigour; he was still too weak to
overtake his enemy, yet we see with what courage he attacks Turnus when
he faces and renews the combat. I need say no more, for Virgil defends
himself without needing my assistance, and proves his hero truly to
deserve that name. He was not, then, a second-rate champion, as they
would have him who think fortitude the first virtue in a hero.
But being beaten from this hold, they will not yet allow him to be
valiant, because he wept more often, as they think, than well becomes a
man of courage.
In the first place, if tears are arguments of cowardice, what shall I say
of Homer’s hero? Shall Achilles pass for timorous because he wept, and
wept on less occasions than Æneas? Herein Virgil must be granted to have
excelled his master; for once both heroes are described lamenting their
lost loves: Briseis was taken away by force from the Grecians, Creusa was
lost for ever to her husband. But Achilles went roaring along the salt
sea-shore, and, like a booby, was complaining to his mother when he
should have revenged his injury by arms: Æneas took a nobler course; for,
having secured his father and his son, he repeated all his former dangers
to have found his wife, if she had been above ground. And here your
lordship may observe the address of Virgil; it was not for nothing that
this passage was related, with all these tender circumstances. Æneas
told it, Dido heard it. That he had been so affectionate a husband was
no ill argument to the coming dowager that he might prove as kind to her.
Virgil has a thousand secret beauties, though I have not leisure to
remark them.
Segrais, on this subject of a hero’s shedding tears, observes that
historians commend Alexander for weeping when he read the mighty actions
of Achilles; and Julius Cæsar is likewise praised when out of the same
noble envy, he wept at the victories of Alexander. But if we observe
more closely, we shall find that the tears of Æneas were always on a
laudable occasion. Thus he weeps out of compassion and tenderness of
nature when in the temple of Carthage he beholds the pictures of his
friends who sacrificed their lives in defence of their country. He
deplores the lamentable end of his pilot Palinurus, the untimely death of
young Pallas his confederate, and the rest which I omit. Yet even for
these tears his wretched critics dare condemn him; they make Æneas little
better than a kind of St. Swithin hero, always raining. One of these
censors was bold enough to argue him of cowardice, when in the beginning
of the first book he not only weeps, but trembles, at an approaching
storm:—
“_Extemplo Æneæ solvuntur frigore membra_:
_Ingemit_, _et duplices tendens ad sidera palmas_,” &c.
But to this I have answered formerly that his fear was not for himself,
but for his people. And who can give a sovereign a better commendation,
or recommend a hero more to the affection of the reader? They were
threatened with a tempest, and he wept; he was promised Italy, and
therefore he prayed for the accomplishment of that promise;—all this in
the beginning of a storm; therefore he showed the more early piety and
the quicker sense of compassion. Thus much I have urged elsewhere in the
defence of Virgil: and since, I have been informed by Mr. Moyle, a young
gentleman whom I can never sufficiently commend, that the ancients
accounted drowning an accursed death. So that if we grant him to have
been afraid, he had just occasion for that fear, both in relation to
himself and to his subjects. I think our adversaries can carry this
argument no farther, unless they tell us that he ought to have had more
confidence in the promise of the gods. But how was he assured that he
had understood their oracles aright? Helenus might be mistaken; Phoebus
might speak doubtfully; even his mother might flatter him that he might
prosecute his voyage, which if it succeeded happily he should be the
founder of an empire: for that she herself was doubtful of his fortune is
apparent by the address she made to Jupiter on his behalf; to which the
god makes answer in these words:—
“_Parce metu_, _Cytherea_, _manent immota tuorum_
_Fata tibi_,” &c.