economy and disposition of it—these are the things which distinguish
copies from originals. The Poet who borrows nothing from others is yet
to be born; he and the Jews’ Messias will come together. There are parts
of the “Æneis” which resemble some parts both of the “Ilias” and of the
“Odysses;” as, for example, Æneas descended into hell, and Ulysses had
been there before him; Æneas loved Dido, and Ulysses loved Calypso: in
few words, Virgil hath imitated Homer’s “Odysses” in his first six books,
and in his six last the “Ilias.” But from hence can we infer that the
two poets write the same history? Is there no invention in some other
parts of Virgil’s “Æneis?” The disposition of so many various matters,
is not that his own? From what book of Homer had Virgil his episode of
Nysus and Euryalus, of Mezentius and Lausus? From whence did he borrow
his design of bringing Æneas into Italy? of establishing the Roman Empire
on the foundations of a Trojan colony? to say nothing of the honour he
did his patron, not only in his descent from Venus, but in making him so
like her in his best features that the goddess might have mistaken
Augustus for her son. He had indeed the story from common fame, as Homer
had his from the Egyptian priestess. _Æneadum genetriæ_ was no more
unknown to Lucretius than to him; but Lucretius taught him not to form
his hero, to give him piety or valour for his manners—and both in so
eminent a degree that, having done what was possible for man to save his
king and country, his mother was forced to appear to him and restrain his
fury, which hurried him to death in their revenge. But the poet made his
piety more successful; he brought off his father and his son; and his
gods witnessed to his devotion by putting themselves under his
protection, to be replaced by him in their promised Italy. Neither the
invention nor the conduct of this great action were owing to Homer or any
other poet; it is one thing to copy, and another thing to imitate from
nature. The copier is that servile imitator to whom Horace gives no
better a name than that of animal; he will not so much as allow him to be
a man. Raffaelle imitated nature; they who copy one of Raffaelle’s
pieces, imitate but him, for his work is their original. They translate
him, as I do Virgil; and fall as short of him as I of Virgil. There is a
kind of invention in the imitation of Raffaelle; for though the thing was
in nature, yet the idea of it was his own. Ulysses travelled, so did
Æneas; but neither of them were the first travellers: for Cain went into
the land of Nod before they were born, and neither of the poets ever
heard of such a man. If Ulysses had been killed at Troy, yet Æneas must
have gone to sea, or he could never have arrived in Italy; but the
designs of the two poets were as different as the courses of their
heroes—one went home, and the other sought a home.
To return to my first similitude. Suppose Apelles and Raffaelle had each
of them painted a burning Troy, might not the modern painter have
succeeded as well as the ancient, though neither of them had seen the
town on fire? For the drafts of both were taken from the ideas which
they had of nature. Cities have been burnt before either of them were in
being. But to close the simile as I began it: they would not have
designed it after the same manner; Apelles would have distinguished
Pyrrhus from the rest of all the Grecians, and showed him forcing his
entrance into Priam’s palace; there he had set him in the fairest light,
and given him the chief place of all his figures, because he was a
Grecian and he would do honour to his country. Raffaelle, who was an
Italian, and descended from the Trojans, would have made Æneas the hero
of his piece, and perhaps not with his father on his back, his son in one
hand, his bundle of gods in the other, and his wife following (for an act
of piety is not half so graceful in a picture as an act of courage); he
would rather have drawn him killing Androgeus or some other hand to hand,
and the blaze of the fires should have darted full upon his face, to make
him conspicuous amongst his Trojans. This, I think, is a just comparison
betwixt the two poets in the conduct of their several designs. Virgil
cannot be said to copy Homer; the Grecian had only the advantage of
writing first. If it be urged that I have granted a resemblance in some
parts, yet therein Virgil has excelled him; for what are the tears of
Calypso for being left, to the fury and death of Dido? Where is there
the whole process of her passion and all its violent effects to be found
in the languishing episode of the “Odysses”? If this be to copy, let the
critics show us the same disposition, features, or colouring in their
original. The like may be said of the descent to hell, which was not of
Homer’s invention either; he had it from the story of Orpheus and
Eurydice. But to what end did Ulysses make that journey? Æneas
undertook it by the express commandment of his father’s ghost. There he
was to show him all the succeeding heroes of his race, and next to
Romulus (mark, if you please the address of Virgil) his own patron,
Augustus Cæsar. Anchises was likewise to instruct him how to manage the
Italian war, and how to conclude it with his honour—that is, in other
words, to lay the foundations of that empire which Augustus was to
govern. This is the noble invention of our author, but it hath been
copied by so many sign-post daubers that now it is grown fulsome, rather
by their want of skill than by the commonness.
In the last place. I may safely grant that by reading Homer, Virgil was
taught to imitate his invention—that is to imitate like him (which is no
more than if a painter studied Raffaelle that he might learn to design
after his manner). And thus I might imitate Virgil if I were capable of
writing an heroic poem, and yet the invention be my own; but I should
endeavour to avoid a servile copying. I would not give the same story
under other names, with the same characters, in the same order, and with
the same sequel, for every common reader to find me out at the first
sight for a plagiary, and cry, “This I read before in Virgil in a better
language and in better verse.” This is like Merry-Andrew on the low rope
copying lubberly the same tricks which his master is so dexterously
performing on the high.
I will trouble your lordship but with one objection more, which I know
not whether I found in Le Febvre or Valois, but I am sure I have read it
in another French critic, whom I will not name because I think it is not
much for his reputation. Virgil in the heat of action—suppose, for
example, in describing the fury of his hero in a battle (when he is
endeavouring to raise our concernments to the highest pitch)—turns short
on the sudden into some similitude which diverts, say they, your
attention from the main subject, and misspends it on some trivial image.
He pours cold water into the caldron when his business is to make it
boil.
This accusation is general against all who would be thought heroic poets,
but I think it touches Virgil less than any; he is too great a master of
his art to make a blot which may so easily be hit. Similitudes (as I
have said) are not for tragedy, which is all violent, and where the
passions are in a perpetual ferment; for there they deaden, where they
should animate; they are not of the nature of dialogue unless in comedy.
A metaphor is almost all the stage can suffer, which is a kind of
similitude comprehended in a word. But this figure has a contrary effect
in heroic poetry; there it is employed to raise the admiration, which is
its proper business; and admiration is not of so violent a nature as fear
or hope, compassion or horror, or any concernment we can have for such or
such a person on the stage. Not but I confess that similitudes and
descriptions when drawn into an unreasonable length must needs nauseate
the reader. Once I remember (and but once) Virgil makes a similitude of
fourteen lines, and his description of Fame is about the same number. He
is blamed for both, and I doubt not but he would have contracted them had
be lived to have reviewed his work; but faults are no precedents. This I
have observed of his similitudes in general—that they are not placed (as
our unobserving critics tell us) in the heat of any action, but commonly
in its declining; when he has warmed us in his description as much as
possibly he can, then (lest that warmth should languish) he renews it by
some apt similitude which illustrates his subject and yet palls not his
audience. I need give your lordship but one example of this kind, and
leave the rest to your observation when next you review the whole “Æneis”
in the original, unblemished by my rude translation; it is in the first
hook, where the poet describes Neptune composing the ocean, on which
Æolus had raised a tempest without his permission. He had already
chidden the rebellious winds for obeying the commands of their usurping
master; he had warned them from the seas; he had beaten down the billows
with his mace; dispelled the clouds, restored the sunshine, while Triton
and Cymothoe were heaving the ships from off the quicksands, before the
poet would offer at a similitude for illustration:—
“_Ac_, _veluti magno in populo cum sæpe coorta est_
_Seditio_, _sævitque animis ignobile vulgus_;
_Jamque faces_, _et saxa volant_; _furor arma ministrat_;
_Tum_, _pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem_
_Conspexere_, _silent_, _arrectisque auribus adstant_:
_Ille regit dictis animos_, _et pectora mulcet_:
_Sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor_, _æquora postquam_
_Prospiciens genitor_, _coeloque invectus aperto_
_Flectit equos_, _curruque volans dat lora secundo_.”
This is the first similitude which Virgil makes in this poem, and one of
the longest in the whole, for which reason I the rather cite it. While
the storm was in its fury, any allusion had been improper; for the poet
could have compared it to nothing more impetuous than itself;
consequently he could have made no illustration. If he could have
illustrated, it had been an ambitious ornament out of season, and would
have diverted our concernment (_nunc non erat his locus_), and therefore
he deferred it to its proper place.
These are the criticisms of most moment which have been made against the
“Æneis” by the ancients or moderns. As for the particular exceptions
against this or that passage, Macrobius and Pontanus have answered them
already. If I desired to appear more learned than I am, it had been as
easy for me to have taken their objections and solutions as it is for a
country parson to take the expositions of the Fathers out of Junius and
Tremellius, or not to have named the authors from whence I had them; for
so Ruæus (otherwise a most judicious commentator on Virgil’s works) has
used Pontanus, his greatest benefactor, of whom he is very silent, and I
do not remember that he once cites him.
What follows next is no objection; for that implies a fault, and it had
been none in Virgil if he had extended the time of his action beyond a
year—at least, Aristotle has set no precise limits to it. Homer’s, we
know, was within two months; Tasso; I am sure, exceeds not a summer, and
if I examined him perhaps he might be reduced into a much less compass.
Bossu leaves it doubtful whether Virgil’s action were within the year, or
took up some months beyond it. Indeed, the whole dispute is of no more
concernment to the common reader than it is to a ploughman whether
February this year had twenty-eight or twenty-nine days in it; but for
the satisfaction of the more curious (of which number I am sure your
lordship is one) I will translate what I think convenient out of Segrais,
whom perhaps you have not read, for he has made it highly probable that
the action of the “Æneis” began in the spring, and was not extended
beyond the autumn; and we have known campaigns that have begun sooner and
have ended later.
Ronsard and the rest whom Segrais names, who are of opinion that the
action of this poem takes up almost a year and half, ground their
calculation thus:—Anchises died in Sicily at the end of winter or
beginning of the spring. Æneas, immediately after the interment of his
father, puts to sea for Italy; he is surprised by the tempest described
in the beginning of the first book; and there it is that the scene of the
poem opens, and where the action must commence. He is driven by this
storm on the coasts of Africa; he stays at Carthage all that summer, and
almost all the winter following; sets sail again for Italy just before
the beginning of the spring; meets with contrary winds, and makes Sicily
the second time. This part of the action completes the year. Then he
celebrates the anniversary of his father’s funerals, and shortly after
arrives at Cumes. And from thence his time is taken up in his first
treaty with Latinus; the overture of the war; the siege of his camp by
Turnus; his going for succours to relieve it; his return; the raising of
the siege by the first battle; the twelve days’ truce; the second battle;
the assault of Laurentum, and the single fight with Turnus—all which,
they say, cannot take up less than four or five months more, by which
account we cannot suppose the entire action to be contained in a much
less compass than a year and half.
Segrais reckons another way, and his computation is not condemned by the
learned Ruæus, who compiled and published the commentaries on our poet
which we call the “Dauphin’s Virgil.” He allows the time of year when
Anchises died to be in the latter end of winter or the beginning of the
spring; he acknowledges that when Æneas is first seen at sea afterwards,
and is driven by the tempest on the coast of Africa, is the time when the
action is naturally to begin; he confesses farther, that Æneas left
Carthage in the latter end of winter, for Dido tells him in express
terms, as an argument for his longer stay—
“_Quin etiam hiberno moliris sidere classem_.”
But whereas Ronsard’s followers suppose that when Æneas had buried his
father he set sail immediately for Italy (though the tempest drove him on
the coast of Carthage), Segrais will by no means allow that supposition,
but thinks it much more probable that he remained in Sicily till the
midst of July or the beginning of August, at which time he places the
first appearance of his hero on the sea, and there opens the action of
the poem. From which beginning, to the death of Turnus, which concludes
the action, there need not be supposed above ten months of intermediate
time; for arriving at Carthage in the latter end of summer, staying there
the winter following, departing thence in the very beginning of the
spring, making a short abode in Sicily the second time, landing in Italy,
and making the war, may be reasonably judged the business but of ten
months. To this the Ronsardians reply that, having been for seven years
before in quest of Italy, and having no more to do in Sicily than to
inter his father—after that office was performed, what remained for him
but without delay to pursue his first adventure? To which Segrais
answers that the obsequies of his father, according to the rites of the
Greeks and Romans, would detain him for many days; that a longer time
must be taken up in the re-fitting of his ships after so tedious a
voyage, and in refreshing his weather-beaten soldiers on a friendly
coast. These indeed are but suppositions on both sides, yet those of
Segrais seem better grounded; for the feast of Dido, when she entertained
Æneas first, has the appearance of a summer’s night, which seems already
almost ended, when he begins his story. Therefore the love was made in
autumn; the hunting followed properly, when the heats of that scorching
country were declining. The winter was passed in jollity, as the season
and their love required; and he left her in the latter end of winter, as
is already proved. This opinion is fortified by the arrival of Æneas at
the mouth of Tiber, which marks the season of the spring, that season
being perfectly described by the singing of the birds saluting the dawn,
and by the beauty of the place, which the poet seems to have painted
expressly in the seventh Æneid:—
“_Aurora in roseis fulgebat lutea bigis_,
_Cùm venti posuere_ . . .
. . . _variæ circumque supraque_
_Assuetæ ripis volucres_, _et fluminis alveo_,
_Æthera mulcebant cantu_.”
The remainder of the action required but three months more; for when
Æneas went for succour to the Tuscans, he found their army in a readiness
to march and wanting only a commander: so that, according to this
calculation, the “Æneas” takes not up above a year complete, and may be
comprehended in less compass.
This, amongst other circumstances treated more at large by Segrais,
agrees with the rising of Orion, which caused the tempest described in
the beginning of the first book. By some passages in the “Pastorals,”
but more particularly in the “Georgics,” our poet is found to be an exact
astronomer, according to the knowledge of that age. Now Ilioneus, whom
Virgil twice employs in embassies as the best speaker of the Trojans,
attributes that tempest to Orion in his speech to Dido:—
“Cum subito assurgens fluctu nimbosus Orion.”
He must mean either the heliacal or achronical rising of that sign. The
heliacal rising of a constellation is when it comes from under the rays
of the sun, and begins to appear before daylight. The achronical rising,
on the contrary, is when it appears at the close of day, and in
opposition of the sun’s diurnal course. The heliacal rising of Orion is
at present computed to be about the 6th of July; and about that time it
is that he either causes or presages tempests on the seas.
Segrais has observed farther, that when Anna counsels Dido to stay Æneas
during the winter, she speaks also of Orion:—
“_Dum pelago desævit hiems_, _et aquosus Orion_.”
If therefore Ilioneus, according to our supposition, understand the
heliacal rising of Orion, Anna must mean the achronical, which the
different epithets given to that constellation seem to manifest.
Ilioneus calls him _nimbosus_, Anna, _aquosus_. He is tempestuous in the
summer, when he rises heliacally; and rainy in the winter, when he rises
achronically. Your lordship will pardon me for the frequent repetition
of these cant words, which I could not avoid in this abbreviation of
Segrais, who, I think, deserves no little commendation in this new
criticism.
I have yet a word or two to say of Virgil’s machines, from my own
observation of them. He has imitated those of Homer, but not copied
them. It was established long before this time, in the Roman religion as
well as in the Greek, that there were gods, and both nations for the most
part worshipped the same deities, as did also the Trojans (from whom the
Romans, I suppose, would rather be thought to derive the rites of their
religion than from the Grecians, because they thought themselves
descended from them). Each of those gods had his proper office, and the
chief of them their particular attendants. Thus Jupiter had in propriety
Ganymede and Mercury, and Juno had Iris. It was not for Virgil, then, to
Create new ministers; he must take what he found in his religion. It
cannot therefore be said that he borrowed them from Homer, any more than
from Apollo, Diana, and the rest, whom he uses as he finds occasion for
them, as the Grecian poet did; but he invents the occasions for which he
uses them. Venus, after the destruction of Troy, had gained Neptune
entirely to her party; therefore we find him busy in the beginning of the
“Æneis” to calm the tempest raised by Æolus, and afterwards conducting
the Trojan fleet to Cumes in safety, with the loss only of their pilot,
for whom he bargains. I name those two examples—amongst a hundred which
I omit—to prove that Virgil, generally speaking, employed his machines in
performing those things which might possibly have been done without them.
What more frequent than a storm at sea upon the rising of Orion? What
wonder if amongst so many ships there should one be overset, which was
commanded by Orontes, though half the winds had not been there which
Æolus employed? Might not Palinurus, without a miracle, fall asleep and
drop into the sea, having been over-wearied with watching, and secure of
a quiet passage by his observation of the skies? At least Æneas, who
knew nothing of the machine of Somnus, takes it plainly in this sense:—
“_O nimium coelo et pelago confise sereno_,
_Nudus in ignotâ_, _Palinure_, _jacebis arenâ_.”
But machines sometimes are specious things to amuse the reader, and give
a colour of probability to things otherwise incredible; and, besides, it
soothed the vanity of the Romans to find the gods so visibly concerned in
all the actions of their predecessors. We who are better taught by our
religion, yet own every wonderful accident which befalls us for the best,
to be brought to pass by some special providence of Almighty God, and by
the care of guardian angels; and from hence I might infer that no heroic
poem can be writ on the Epicurean principles, which I could easily
demonstrate if there were need to prove it or I had leisure.
When Venus opens the eyes of her son Æneas to behold the gods who
combated against Troy in that fatal night when it was surprised, we share
the pleasure of that glorious vision (which Tasso has not ill copied in
the sacking of Jerusalem). But the Greeks had done their business though
neither Neptune, Juno, or Pallas had given them their divine assistance.
The most crude machine which Virgil uses is in the episode of Camilla,
where Opis by the command of her mistress kills Aruns. The next is in
the twelfth Æneid, where Venus cures her son Æneas. But in the last of
these the poet was driven to a necessity, for Turnus was to be slain that
very day; and Æneas, wounded as he was, could not have engaged him in
single combat unless his hurt had been miraculously healed and the poet
had considered that the dittany which she brought from Crete could not
have wrought so speedy an effect without the juice of ambrosia which she
mingled with it. After all, that his machine might not seem too violent,
we see the hero limping after Turnus; the wound was skinned, but the
strength of his thigh was not restored. But what reason had our author
to wound Æneas at so critical a time? And how came the cuishes to be
worse tempered than the rest of his armour, which was all wrought by
Vulcan and his journeymen? These difficulties are not easily to be
solved without confessing that Virgil had not life enough to correct his
work, though he had reviewed it and found those errors, which he resolved
to mend; but being prevented by death, and not willing to leave an
imperfect work behind him, he ordained by his last testament that his
“Æneis” should be burned. As for the death of Aruns, who was shot by a
goddess, the machine was not altogether so outrageous as the wounding
Mars and Venus by the sword of Diomede. Two divinities, one would have
thought, might have pleaded their prerogative of impassibility, or at
least not have been wounded by any mortal hand. Beside that, the ἴχωρ
which they shed was so very like our common blood that it was not to be
distinguished from it but only by the name and colour. As for what
Horace says in his “Art of Poetry,” that no machines are to be used
unless on some extraordinary occasion—
“_Nec deus intersit_, _nisi dignus vindice nodus_”—
that rule is to be applied to the theatre, of which he is then speaking,
and means no more than this—that when the knot of the play is to be
untied, and no other way is left for making the discovery, then, and not
otherwise, let a god descend upon a rope, and clear the business to the
audience. But this has no relation to the machines which are used in an
epic poem.
In the last place, for the dira, or flying pest which, flapping on the
shield of Turnus and fluttering about his head, disheartened him in the
duel, and presaged to him his approaching death—I might have placed it
more properly amongst the objections, for the critics who lay want of
courage to the charge of Virgil’s hero quote this passage as a main proof
of their assertion. They say our author had not only secured him before
the duel, but also in the beginning of it had given him the advantage in
impenetrable arms and in his sword; for that of Turnus was not his own
(which was forged by Vulcan for his father), but a weapon which he had
snatched in haste, and by mistake, belonging to his charioteer Metiscus.
That after all this Jupiter, who was partial to the Trojan, and
distrustful of the event, though he had hung the balance and given it a
jog of his hand to weigh down Turnus, thought convenient to give the
Fates a collateral security by sending the screech-owl to discourage him;
for which they quote these words of Virgil:—
“_Non me tua turbida virtus_
_Terret_, _ait_; _dii me terrent_, _et Jupiter hostis_.”
In answer to which, I say that this machine is one of those which the
poet uses only for ornament, and not out of necessity. Nothing can be
more beautiful or more poetical than his description of the three Diræ,
or the setting of the balance, which our Milton has borrowed from him,
but employed to a different end; for, first, he makes God Almighty set
the scales for St. Gabriel and Satan, when he knew no combat was to
follow; then he makes the good angel’s scale descend, and the devil’s
mount—quite contrary to Virgil, if I have translated the three verses
according to my author’s sense:—