is probably more ancient than any of the pastorals now extant; his
brother being at first intended; but he afterwards makes his court to
Augustus, by turning it into an apotheosis of Julius Cæsar.
The Sixth is the Silenus.
The Seventh, another poetical dispute, first composed at Mantua.
The Eighth is the description of a despairing lover, and a magical
charm.
He sets the Ninth after all these, very modestly, because it was
particular to himself; and here he would have ended that work, if
Gallus had not prevailed upon him to add one more in his favour.
Thus curious was Virgil in diversifying his subjects. But M. Fontenelle
is a great deal too uniform: begin where you please, the subject is
still the same. We find it true what he says of himself,
_Toûjours, toûjours de l'amour._
He seems to take pastorals and love-verses for the same thing. Has
human nature no other passion? Does not fear, ambition, avarice,
pride, a capriccio of honour, and laziness itself, often triumph over
love? But this passion does all, not only in pastorals, but in modern
tragedies too. A hero can no more fight, or be sick, or die, than he
can be born, without a woman. But dramatics have been composed in
compliance to the humour of the age, and the prevailing inclination of
the great, whose example has a more powerful influence, not only in the
little court behind the scenes, but on the great theatre of the world.
However, this inundation of love-verses is not so much an effect of
their amorousness, as of immoderate self-love; this being the only
sort of poetry, in which the writer can, not only without censure,
but even with commendation, talk of himself. There is generally more
of the passion of Narcissus, than concern for Chloris and Corinna, in
this whole affair. Be pleased to look into almost any of those writers,
and you shall meet everywhere that eternal _Moi_, which the admirable
Pascal so judiciously condemns. Homer can never be enough admired
for this one so particular quality, that he never speaks of himself,
either in the Iliad or the Odysseys: and, if Horace had never told us
his genealogy, but left it to the writer of his life, perhaps he had
not been a loser by it. This consideration might induce those great
critics, Varius and Tucca, to raze out the four first verses of the
"Æneïs," in great measure, for the sake of that unlucky _Ille ego_. But
extraordinary geniuses have a sort of prerogative, which may dispense
them from laws, binding to subject wits. However, the ladies have the
less reason to be pleased with those addresses, of which the poet
takes the greater share to himself. Thus the beau presses into their
dressing-room; but it is not so much to adore their fair eyes, as to
adjust his own steenkirk and peruke, and set his countenance in their
glass.
A fifth rule (which one may hope will not be contested) is, that the
writer should show in his compositions some competent skill of the
subject matter, that which makes the character of persons introduced.
In this, as in all other points of learning, decency, and oeconomy
of a poem, Virgil much excels his master Theocritus. The poet is
better skilled in husbandry than those that get their bread by it. He
describes the nature, the diseases, the remedies, the proper places,
and seasons, of feeding, of watering their flocks; the furniture, diet,
the lodging and pastimes, of his shepherds. But the persons brought
in by M. Fontenelle are shepherds in masquerade, and handle their
sheep-hook as aukwardly as they do their oaten reed. They saunter about
with their _chers moutons_; but they relate as little to the business
in hand, as the painter's dog, or a Dutch ship, does to the history
designed. One would suspect some of them, that, instead of leading out
their sheep into the plains of Mont-Brison and Marcilli, to the flowery
banks of Lignon, or the Charante, they are driving directly _à la
boucherie_, to make money of them. I hope hereafter M. Fontenelle will
chuse his servants better.
A sixth rule is, that, as the style ought to be natural, clear, and
elegant, it should have some peculiar relish of the ancient fashion
of writing. Parables in those times were frequently used, as they
are still by the eastern nations; philosophical questions, ænigmas,
&c.; and of this we find instances in the sacred writings, in Homer,
contemporary with king David, in Herodotus, in the Greek tragedians.
This piece of antiquity is imitated by Virgil with great judgment and
discretion. He has proposed one riddle, which has never yet been solved
by any of his commentators. Though he knew the rules of rhetoric as
well as Cicero himself, he conceals that skill in his Pastorals, and
keeps close to the character of antiquity. Nor ought the connections
and transitions to be very strict and regular; this would give the
Pastorals an air of novelty; and of this neglect of exact connections,
we have instances in the writings of the ancient Chineses, of the
Jews and Greeks, in Pindar, and other writers of dithyrambics, in the
choruses of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. If M. Fontenelle and
Ruæus had considered this, the one would have spared his critique of
the sixth, and the other, his reflections upon the ninth Pastoral.
The over-scrupulous care of connections makes the modern compositions
oftentimes tedious and flat: and by the omission of them it comes to
pass, that the _Pensées_ of the incomparable M. Pascal, and perhaps of
M. Bruyère, are two of the most entertaining books which the modern
French can boast of. Virgil, in this point, was not only faithful to
the character of antiquity, but copies after Nature herself. Thus
a meadow, where the beauties of the spring are profusely blended
together, makes a more delightful prospect, than a curious _parterre_
of sorted flowers in our gardens: and we are much more transported with
the beauty of the heavens, and admiration of their Creator, in a clear
night, when we behold stars of all magnitudes promiscuously moving
together, than if those glorious lights were ranked in their several
orders, or reduced into the finest geometrical figures.
Another rule omitted by P. Rapin, as some of his are by me, (for I do
not design an entire treatise in this preface,) is, that not only the
sentences should be short and smart, (upon which account he justly
blames the Italian and French, as too talkative,) but that the whole
piece should be so too. Virgil transgressed this rule in his first
Pastorals, (I mean those which he composed at Mantua,) but rectified
the fault in his riper years. This appears by the _Culex_, which is
as long as five of his Pastorals put together. The greater part of
those he finished have less than a hundred verses; and but two of them
exceed that number. But the "Silenus," which he seems to have designed
for his master-piece, in which he introduces a god singing, and he,
too, full of inspiration, (which is intended by that ebriety, which
M. Fontenelle so unreasonably ridicules,) though it go through so vast
a field of matter, and comprises the mythology of near two thousand
years, consists but of fifty lines; so that its brevity is no less
admirable, than the subject matter, the noble fashion of handling it,
and the deity speaking. Virgil keeps up his characters in this respect
too, with the strictest decency: for poetry and pastime was not the
business of men's lives in those days, but only their seasonable
recreation after necessary labours. And therefore the length of some
of the modern Italian and English compositions is against the rules of
this kind of poesy.
I shall add something very briefly, touching the versification of
Pastorals, though it be a mortifying consideration to the moderns.
Heroic verse, as it is commonly called, was used by the Greeks in this
sort of poem, as very ancient and natural; lyrics, iambics, &c. being
invented afterwards: but there is so great a difference in the numbers
of which it may be compounded, that it may pass rather for a genus,
than species, of verse. Whosoever shall compare the numbers of the
three following verses, will quickly be sensible of the truth of this
observation:
_Tityre, tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi_--
the first of the Georgics,
_Quid faciat lætas segetes, quo sidere terram_--
and of the Æneïs,
_Arma, virumque cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris._
The sound of the verses is almost as different as the subjects. But
the Greek writers of Pastoral usually limited themselves to the
example of the first; which Virgil found so exceedingly difficult,
that he quitted it, and left the honour of that part to Theocritus. It
is indeed probable, that what we improperly call rhyme, is the most
ancient sort of poetry; and learned men have given good arguments for
it; and therefore a French historian commits a gross mistake, when he
attributes that invention to a king of Gaul, as an English gentleman
does, when he makes a Roman emperor the inventor of it. But the Greeks,
who understood fully the force and power of numbers, soon grew weary
of this childish sort of verse, as the younger Vossius justly calls
it, and therefore those rhyming hexameters, which Plutarch observes in
Homer himself, seem to be the remains of a barbarous age. Virgil had
them in such abhorrence, that he would rather make a false syntax, than
what we call a rhyme. Such a verse as this,
_Vir, precor_, uxori, _frater succurre_ sorori,
was passable in Ovid; but the nicer ears in Augustus's court could not
pardon Virgil for
_At regina pyrâ...._
so that the principal ornament of modern poetry was accounted
deformity by the Latins and Greeks. It was they who invented the
different terminations of words, those happy compositions, those
short monosyllables, those transpositions for the elegance of the
sound and sense, which are wanting so much in modern languages. The
French sometimes crowd together ten or twelve monosyllables into
one disjointed verse. They may understand the nature of, but cannot
imitate, those wonderful spondees of Pythagoras, by which he could
suddenly pacify a man that was in a violent transport of anger; nor
those swift numbers of the priests of Cybele, which had the force to
enrage the most sedate and phlegmatic tempers. Nor can any modern put
into his own language the energy of that single poem of Catullus,
_Super alta vectus Atys_, &c.
Latin is but a corrupt dialect of Greek; and the French, Spanish, and
Italian, a corruption of Latin; and therefore a man might as well go
about to persuade me that vinegar is a nobler liquor than wine, as
that the modern compositions can be as graceful and harmonious as the
Latin itself. The Greek tongue very naturally falls into iambics, and
therefore the diligent reader may find six or seven-and-twenty of them
in those accurate orations of Isocrates. The Latin as naturally falls
into heroic; and therefore the beginning of Livy's History is half a
hexameter, and that of Tacitus an entire one. The Roman historian[293],
describing the glorious effort of a colonel to break through a brigade
of the enemy's, just after the defeat at Cannæ, falls, unknowingly,
into a verse not unworthy Virgil himself--
_Hæc ubi dicta dedit, stringit gladium, cuneoque
Facto, per medios...._ &c.
Ours and the French can at best but fall into blank verse, which is
a fault in prose. The misfortune indeed is common to us both; but we
deserve more compassion, because we are not vain of our barbarities.
As age brings men back into the state and infirmities of childhood,
upon the fall of their empire, the Romans doted into rhyme, as appears
sufficiently by the hymns of the Latin church; and yet a great deal of
the French poetry does hardly deserve that poor title. I shall give an
instance out of a poem which had the good luck to gain the prize in
1685; for the subject deserved a nobler pen:
_Tous les jours ce grand roy, des autres roys l' exemple,
S'ouvre un nouveau chemin au faîte de ton temple_, &c.
The judicious Malherbe exploded this sort of verse near eighty
years ago. Nor can I forbear wondering at that passage of a famous
academician, in which he, most compassionately, excuses the ancients
for their not being so exact in their compositions as the modern
French, because they wanted a dictionary, of which the French are at
last happily provided. If Demosthenes and Cicero had been so lucky as
to have had a dictionary, and such a patron as cardinal Richelieu,
perhaps they might have aspired to the honour of Balzac's legacy of ten
pounds, _Le prix de l'éloquence_.
On the contrary, I dare assert, that there are hardly ten lines in
either of those great orators, or even in the catalogue of Homer's
ships, which are not more harmonious, more truly rhythmical, than most
of the French or English sonnets; and therefore they lose, at least,
one half of their native beauty by translation.
I cannot but add one remark on this occasion,--that the French verse is
oftentimes not so much as rhyme, in the lowest sense; for the childish
repetition of the same note cannot be called music. Such instances are
infinite, as in the forecited poem:
épris trophée caché
mépris Orphée cherché.
M. Boileau himself has a great deal of this #monotonia#, not by his own
neglect, but purely by the faultiness and poverty of the French tongue.
M. Fontenelle at last goes into the excessive paradoxes of M. Perrault,
and boasts of the vast number of their excellent songs, preferring
them to the Greek and Latin. But an ancient writer, of as good credit,
has assured us, that seven lives would hardly suffice to read over the
Greek odes; but a few weeks would be sufficient, if a man were so very
idle as to read over all the French. In the mean time, I should be very
glad to see a catalogue of but fifty of theirs with
Exact propriety of word and thought.[294]
Notwithstanding all the high encomiums and mutual gratulations which
they give one another, (for I am far from censuring the whole of that
illustrious society, to which the learned world is much obliged,)
after all those golden dreams at the Louvre, that their pieces will
be as much valued, ten or twelve ages hence, as the ancient Greek or
Roman, I can no more get it into my head that they will last so long,
than I could believe the learned Dr H----k [of the Royal Society,] if
he should pretend to show me a butterfly, that had lived a thousand
winters.
When M. Fontenelle wrote his Eclogues, he was so far from equalling
Virgil, or Theocritus, that he had some pains to take before he could
understand in what the principal beauty and graces of their writings do
consist.
_Cum mortuis non nisi larvæ luctantur._
FOOTNOTES:
[288] There is a great deal of cant in this; there was just the same
distinction in manners and knowledge between the clowns of Mantua and
the courtiers of Augustus, as there is between persons of the same rank
in modern times.
[289] Hunting was as much an exercise of the Roman youths as of our
own; and this might be easily proved from Virgil, were it not a well
known fact. It was the sport with which Dido entertained the Trojans;
and the wish of Ascanius upon the occasion, was worthy of a Frank, or
any other German.
[290] This is indistinctly expressed; but if the critic means to say,
that the terms of hunting were put into French as the most fashionable
language, he is mistaken. The hunting phrases still in use, are handed
down to us from the Anglo-Norman barons, in whose time French was the
only language spoken among those who were entitled to participate in an
amusement to which the nobility claimed an exclusive privilege.
[291] The Duke of Shrewsbury.
[292] Most readers will be of opinion, that Walsh has rendered this
celebrated passage not only flatly, but erroneously. His translation
seems to infer, that the gods were in danger of dying, had they not
_meanly_ complied with the conqueror. At any rate, the real compliment
to Cato, which consists in weighing his sense of justice against that
of the gods themselves, totally evaporates. Perhaps the following lines
may express Lucan's meaning, though without the concise force of the
original:
The victor was the care of partial Heaven,
But to the conquered cause was Cato's suffrage given.
[293] Livy.
[294] Essay of Poetry.
PASTORAL I.
OR,
_TITYRUS AND MELIBOEUS_.
ARGUMENT.
_The occasion of the First Pastoral was this: When Augustus
had settled himself in the Roman empire, that he might
reward his veteran troops for their past service, he
distributed among them all the lands that lay about Cremona
and Mantua; turning out the right owners for having sided
with his enemies. Virgil was a sufferer among the rest, who
afterwards recovered his estate by Mæcenas's intercession;
and, as an instance of his gratitude, composed the
following Pastoral, where he sets out his own good fortune
in the person of Tityrus, and the calamities of his Mantuan
neighbours in the character of Meliboeus._
MELIBOEUS.
Beneath the shade which beechen boughs diffuse,
You, Tityrus, entertain your sylvan muse.
Round the wide world in banishment we roam,
Forced from our pleasing fields and native home;
While, stretched at ease, you sing your happy loves,
And Amaryllis fills the shady groves.
TITYRUS.
These blessings, friend, a deity bestowed;
For never can I deem him less than God.
The tender firstlings of my woolly breed
Shall on his holy altar often bleed.
He gave my kine to graze the flowery plain,
And to my pipe renewed the rural strain.
MELIBOEUS.
I envy not your fortune, but admire,
That, while the raging sword and wasteful fire
Destroy the wretched neighbourhood around,
No hostile arms approach your happy ground.
Far different is my fate; my feeble goats
With pains I drive from their forsaken cotes:
And this, you see, I scarcely drag along,
Who, yeaning, on the rocks has left her young,
The hope and promise of my failing fold.
My loss, by dire portents, the gods foretold;
For, had I not been blind, I might have seen:--
Yon riven oak, the fairest of the green,
And the hoarse raven, on the blasted bough,
By croaking from the left, presaged the coming blow.
But tell me, Tityrus, what heavenly power
Preserved your fortunes in that fatal hour?
TITYRUS.
Fool that I was, I thought imperial Rome }
Like Mantua, where on market-days we come, }
And thither drive our tender lambs from home. }
So kids and whelps their sires and dams express,
And so the great I measured by the less.
But country towns, compared with her, appear
Like shrubs, when lofty cypresses are near.
MELIBOEUS.
What great occasion called you hence to Rome?
TITYRUS.
Freedom, which came at length, though slow to come.
Nor did my search of liberty begin,
Till my black hairs were changed upon my chin;
Nor Amaryllis would vouchsafe a look,
Till Galatea's meaner bonds I broke.
Till then a helpless, hopeless, homely swain,
I sought not freedom, nor aspired to gain:
Though many a victim from my folds was bought,
And many a cheese to country markets brought,
Yet all the little that I got, I spent,
And still returned as empty as I went.
MELIBOEUS.
We stood amazed to see your mistress mourn,
Unknowing that she pined for your return;
We wondered why she kept her fruit so long,
For whom so late the ungathered apples hung.
But now the wonder ceases, since I see
She kept them only, Tityrus, for thee;
For thee the bubbling springs appeared to mourn,
And whispering pines made vows for thy return.
TITYRUS.
What should I do?--While here I was enchained,
No glimpse of godlike liberty remained;
Nor could I hope, in any place but there,
To find a god so present to my prayer.
There first the youth of heavenly birth I viewed,[295]
For whom our monthly victims are renewed.
He heard my vows, and graciously decreed
My grounds to be restored, my former flocks to feed.
MELIBOEUS.
O fortunate old man! whose farm remains-- }
For you sufficient--and requites your pains; }
Though rushes overspread the neighbouring plains, }
Though here the marshy grounds approach your fields,
And there the soil a stony harvest yields.
Your teeming ewes shall no strange meadows try,
Nor fear a rot from tainted company.
Behold! yon bordering fence of sallow trees
Is fraught with flowers, the flowers are fraught with bees;
The busy bees, with a soft murmuring strain,
Invite to gentle sleep the labouring swain.
While, from the neighbouring rock, with rural songs,
The pruner's voice the pleasing dream prolongs,
Stock-doves and turtles tell their amorous pain,
And, from the lofty elms, of love complain.
TITYRUS.
The inhabitants of seas and skies shall change,
And fish on shore, and stags in air, shall range,
The banished Parthian dwell on Arar's brink,
And the blue German shall the Tigris drink,
Ere I, forsaking gratitude and truth,
Forget the figure of that godlike youth.
MELIBOEUS.
But we must beg our bread in climes unknown,
Beneath the scorching or the freezing zone;
And some to far Oaxis shall be sold,
Or try the Libyan heat, or Scythian cold;
The rest among the Britons be confined,
A race of men from all the world disjoined.
O! must the wretched exiles ever mourn,
Nor, after length of rolling years, return?
Are we condemned by fate's unjust decree,
No more our houses and our homes to see?
Or shall we mount again the rural throne,
And rule the country kingdoms, once our own?
Did we for these barbarians plant and sow? }
On these, on these, our happy fields bestow? }
Good heaven! what dire effects from civil discord flow! }
Now let me graff my pears, and prune the vine;
The fruit is theirs, the labour only mine.
Farewell, my pastures, my paternal stock,
My fruitful fields, and my more fruitful flock!
No more, my goats, shall I behold you climb
The steepy cliffs, or crop the flowery thyme!
No more, extended in the grot below,
Shall see you browzing on the mountain's brow
The prickly shrubs; and after on the bare,
Lean down the deep abyss, and hang in air.
No more my sheep shall sip the morning dew; }
No more my song shall please the rural crew: }
Adieu, my tuneful pipe! and all the world, adieu! }
TITYRUS.
This night, at least, with me forget your care;
Chesnuts, and curds and cream, shall be your fare:
The carpet-ground shall be with leaves o'erspread,
And boughs shall weave a covering for your head.
For see yon sunny hill the shade extends,
And curling smoke from cottages ascends.
FOOTNOTES:
[295] Virgil means Octavius Cæsar, heir to Julius, who perhaps had not
arrived to his twentieth year, when Virgil saw him first. _Vide_ his
Life. _Of heavenly birth_, or heavenly blood, because the Julian family
was derived from Iülus, son to Æneas, and grandson to Venus.
PASTORAL II.
OR,
_ALEXIS_.
ARGUMENT.
_The commentators can by no means agree on the person of
Alexis, but are all of opinion that some beautiful youth is
meant by him, to whom Virgil here makes love, in Corydon's
language and simplicity. His way of courtship is wholly
pastoral: he complains of the boy's coyness; recommends
himself for his beauty and skill in piping; invites the
youth into the country, where he promises him the diversions
of the place, with a suitable present of nuts and apples.
But when he finds nothing will prevail, he resolves to quit
his troublesome amour, and betake himself again to his
former business._