THE ECLOGUES.
I.
The name by which the earliest of Virgil’s recognised works is known tells
us nothing of the subject of which it treats. The word ‘Eclogae’ simply
means selections. As applied to the poems of Virgil, it designates a
collection of short unconnected poems. The other name by which these poems
were known in antiquity, ‘bucolica,’ indicates the form of Greek art in
which they were cast and the pastoral nature of their subjects. Neither
word is used by Virgil himself; but the expressions by which he
characterises his art, such as ‘Sicelides Musae,’ ‘versus Syracosius,’
‘Musa agrestis’ and ‘silvestris,’ show that he writes in a pastoral
strain, and that he considered the pastoral poetry of Greece as his model.
He invokes not only the ‘Sicilian Muses,’ but the ‘fountain of Arethusa.’
He speaks too of Pan, and Arcadia, and the ‘Song of Maenalus.’ His
shepherd-poets are described as ‘Arcadians.’ The poets whom he introduces
as his prototypes are the ‘sage of Ascra,’ and the mythical Linus,
Orpheus, and Amphion. He alludes also to Theocritus under the name of the
‘Syracusan shepherd.’ The names of the shepherds who are introduced as
contending in song or uttering their feelings in monologue—Corydon,
Thyrsis, Menalcas, Meliboeus, Tityrus, etc.—are Greek, and for the most
part taken from the pastoral idyls of Theocritus. There is also frequent
mention of the shepherd’s pipe, and of the musical accompaniment to which
some of the songs chanted by the shepherds are set.
The general character of the poems is further indicated by the frequent
use of the word ‘ludere,’ a word applied by Catullus, Horace, Propertius,
Ovid, and others to the poems of youth, of a light and playful character,
and, for the most part, expressive of various moods of the passion of
love. Thus at the end of the Georgics Virgil speaks of himself thus:—
Carmina qui lusi pastorum, audaxque iuventa,
Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi(186).
This reference shows further that the poem which stands first in order was
placed there when the edition of the Eclogues was given to the world. But
other references (at v. 86–87 and vi. 12) seem to imply that the separate
poems were known either by distinct titles, such as Varus, the title of
the sixth, or from their opening lines, as the ‘Formosum Corydon ardebat
Alexim,’ and the ‘Cuium pecus? an Meliboei?’ It has been also suggested,
from lines quoted in the ninth, which profess to be the opening lines of
other pastoral poems, that the ten finally collected together were actual
‘selections’ from a larger number, commenced if not completed (‘necdum
perfecta canebat’) by Virgil. But these passages seem more like the lines
attributed to the contending poets in the third and seventh Eclogues, i.e.
short unconnected specimens of pastoral song.
Nearly all the poems afford indications of the time of their composition
and of the order in which they followed one another; and that order is
different from the order in which they now appear. It is said, on the
authority of Asconius, that three years, from 42 B.C. to 39 B.C., were
given to the composition of the Eclogues. But an allusion in the tenth
(line 47) to the expedition of Agrippa across the Alps in the early part
of 37 B.C. proves that a later date must be assigned to that poem. The
probable explanation is that Virgil had intended to end the series with
the eighth, which celebrated the triumph of Pollio over the Parthini in 39
B.C.,—
A te principium, tibi desinet,—
but that his friendship for Gallus induced him to add the tenth, two years
later, either before the poems were finally collected for publication, or
in preparing a new edition of them. They were written at various places
and at various stages of the poet’s fortunes. They appear to have obtained
great success when first published, and some of them were recited with
applause upon the stage. The earliest in point of time were the second and
third, and these, along with the fifth, may be ascribed to the year 42
B.C. The seventh, which has no allusion to contemporary events and is a
mere imitative reproduction of the Greek idyl, may also belong to this
earlier period, although some editors rank it as one of the latest. The
first, which is founded on the loss of the poet’s farm, belongs to the
next year, and the ninth and sixth probably may be assigned to the same
year, or to the early part of the following year. The date of the fourth
is fixed by the Consulship of Pollio to the year 40 B.C.; that of the
eighth to the year 39 B.C. by the triumph of Pollio over the Parthini. The
opening words of the tenth show that it was the last of the series; and
the reference to the expedition of Agrippa implies that it could not have
been written earlier than the end of 38 B.C. or the beginning of 37 B.C.
The first, second, third, and fifth(187), were in all probability written
by the poet in his native district, the sixth, ninth, and perhaps the
seventh, at the villa which had formerly belonged to Siron (‘villula quae
Sironis _eras_’), the rest at Rome. The principle on which the poems are
arranged seems to be that of alternating dialogue with monologue. The
eighth, though not in dialogue, yet resembles the latter part of the
fifth, in presenting two continuous songs, chanted by different shepherds.
The poem first in order may have occupied its place from its greater
interest in connexion with the poet’s fortunes, or from the honour which
it assigns to Octavianus, whose pre-eminence over the other competitors
for supreme power had sufficiently declared itself before the first
collected edition of the poems was published.
In the earliest poems of the series the art of Virgil, like the lyrical
art of Horace in his earlier Odes, is more imitative and conventional than
in those written later. He seems satisfied with reproducing the form,
rhythm, and diction of Theocritus, and mingling some vague expression of
personal or national feeling with the sentiment of the Greek idyl. That
the fifth was written after the second and third appears from the lines v.
86–87, in which Menalcas, under which name Virgil introduces himself in
the Eclogues, presents his pipe to Mopsus:—
Haec nos ‘Formosum Corydon ardebat Alexin,’
Haec eadem docuit ‘Cuium pecus? an Meliboei(188)?’
From these lines also it may be inferred as probable that the second poem,
‘Formosum pastor Corydon,’ was written before the third, ‘Dic mihi,
Damoeta, cuium pecus? an Meliboei?’
A tradition, quoted by Servius and referred to (though inaccurately) by
Martial(189), attributes the composition of the second Eclogue to the
admiration excited in Virgil by the beauty of a young slave, Alexander,
who was presented to him by Pollio and carefully educated by him. A
similar story is told of his having received from Maecenas another slave,
named Cebes, who also obtained from him a liberal education and acquired
some distinction as a poet. It is not improbable that Virgil may have been
warmly attached to these youths, and that there was nothing blameable in
his attachment. Even Cicero, a man as far removed as possible from any
sentimental weakness, writes to Atticus of the death of a favourite slave,
a young Greek, and evidently, from the position he filled in Cicero’s
household, a boy of liberal accomplishments, in these words: ‘And, I
assure you, I am a good deal distressed. For my reader, Sositheus, a
charming boy, is just dead; and it has affected me more than I should have
thought the death of a slave ought to affect one(190).’ It remains true
however that in one or two of those Eclogues in which he most closely
imitates Theocritus, Virgil uses the language of serious sentiment, and
once of bantering raillery, in a way which justly offends modern feeling.
And this is all that can be said against him.
There are more imitations of the Greek in this and in the next poem than
in any of the other Eclogues(191). The scenery of the piece, in so far as
it is at all definite, combines the mountains and the sea-landscape of
Sicily with Italian woods and vineyards. Corydon seems to combine the
features of an Italian vinedresser with the conventional character of a
Sicilian shepherd. The line
Aspice aratra iugo referunt suspensa iuvenci(192)
applies rather to an Italian scene than to the pastoral district of
Sicily; and this reference to ploughing seems inconsistent with the
description of the fierce midsummer heat, and with the introduction of the
‘fessi messores’ in the opening lines of the poem. These inconsistencies
show how little thought Virgil had for the objective consistency of his
representation. The poem however, in many places, gives powerful
expression to the feelings of a despairing lover. There are here, as in
the Gallus, besides that vein of feeling which the Latin poet shares with
Theocritus, some traces of that ‘wayward modern mood’ of longing to escape
from the world and to return to some vague ideal of Nature, and to
sacrifice all the gains of civilisation in exchange for the homeliest
dwelling shared with the object of affection:—
O tantum libeat mecum tibi sordida rura
Atque humiles habitare casas, et figere cervos(193);
and again,
Habitarunt di quoque silvas
Dardaniusque Paris. Pallas quas condidit arces
Ipsa colat, nobis placeant ante omnia silvae(194).
The third Eclogue, which is in dialogue, and reproduces two features of
the Greek idyl, the natural banter of the shepherds and the more
artificial contest in song, is still more imitative and composite in
character. It shows several close imitations, especially of the fourth,
fifth, and eighth Idyls of Theocritus(195). In this poem only Virgil,
whose muse even in the Eclogues is almost always serious or plaintive,
endeavours to reproduce the playfulness and vivacity of his original. Both
in the bantering dialogue and in the more formal contest of the shepherds,
the subjects introduced are for the most part of a conventional pastoral
character, but with these topics are combined occasional references to the
tastes and circumstances of the poet himself. Thus in lines 40–42,
In medio duo signa ... curvus arator haberet,
allusion is made to the astronomical studies of which Virgil made fuller
use in the Georgics. In the line
Pollio amat nostram quamvis est rustica Musam,
and again,
Pollio et ipse facit nova carmina(196),
he makes acknowledgment of the favour and pays honour to the poetical
tastes of his earliest patron, whom he celebrates also in the fourth and
eighth Eclogues. The line
Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Maevi(197)
has condemned to everlasting notoriety the unfortunate pair, who have
served modern satirists as types of spiteful critics and ineffectual
authors. At lines 10–11 there is, as in Eclogue ii., an apparent blending
of the occupations of the Italian vinedresser with those of the Sicilian
shepherd. In the contest of song there is no sustained connexion of
thought, as indeed there is not in similar contests in Theocritus. These
contests are supposed to reproduce the utterances of improvisatori, of
whom the second speaker is called to say something, either in continuation
of or in contrast to the thought of the first. The shepherds in these
strains seek to glorify their own prowess, boast of their successes in
love, or call attention to some picturesque aspect of their rustic life.
The fifth Eclogue is also in dialogue. It brings before us a friendly
interchange of song between two pastoral poets, Mopsus and Menalcas.
Servius mentions that Menalcas (here, as in the ninth Eclogue) stands for
Virgil himself, while Mopsus stands for his friend Aemilius Macer of
Verona. Mopsus laments the cruel death of Daphnis, the legendary shepherd
of Sicilian song, and Menalcas celebrates his apotheosis. Various accounts
were given in antiquity of the meaning which was to be attached to this
poem. One account was that Virgil here expressed his sorrow for the death
of his brother Flaccus(198). Though the time of his death may have
coincided with that of the composition of this poem, the language of the
lament and of the song celebrating the ascent of Daphnis to heaven is
quite unlike the expression of a private or personal sorrow. There seems
no reason to doubt another explanation which has come down from ancient
times, that under this pastoral allegory Virgil laments the death and
proclaims the apotheosis of Julius Caesar. It is probable(199) that the
poem was composed for his birthday, the 4th of July, which for the first
time was celebrated with religious rites in the year 42 B.C., when the
name of the month Quintilis was changed into that which it has retained
ever since. The lines 25–26,
Nulla neque amnem
Libavit quadrupes nec graminis attigit herbam(200),
are supposed(201) to refer to a belief which had become traditional in the
time of Suetonius, that the horses which had been consecrated after
crossing the Rubicon had refused to feed immediately before the death of
their master(202). In the lines expressing the sorrow for his loss, and in
those which mark out the divine office which he was destined to fulfil
after death,—
Ut Baccho Cererique, tibi sic vota quotannis
Agricolae facient, damnabis tu quoque votis(203),—
as in the lines of the ninth, referring to the Julium Sidus,—
Astrum quo segetes gauderent frugibus, et quo
Duceret apricis in collibus uva colorem(204),—
allusion is made to the encouragement Caesar gave to the husbandman and
vine-planter in his lifetime, and to the honour due to him as their
tutelary god in heaven. And these allusions help us to understand the
‘votis iam nunc adsuesce vocari’ of the invocation in the first Georgic.
Nothing illustrates more clearly the unreal conceptions of the pastoral
allegory than a comparison of the language in the ‘Lament for Daphnis,’
with the strong Roman realism of the lines at the end of the first
Georgic, in which the omens portending the death of Caesar are described.
Nor can anything show more clearly the want of individuality with which
Virgil uses the names of the Theocritean shepherds than the fact that
while the Daphnis of the fifth Eclogue represents the departed and deified
soldier and statesman, the Daphnis of the ninth is a living husbandman
whose fortunes were secured by the protecting star of Caesar,—
Insere, Daphni, piros, carpent tua poma nepotes(205).
The peace and tranquillity restored to the land under this protecting
influence are foreshadowed in the lines 58–61—
Ergo alacris ... amat bonus otia Daphnis;
and the earliest reference to the divine honours assigned in life and
death to the later representatives of the name of Caesar, is heard in the
jubilant shout of wild mountains, rocks, and groves to the poet—
Deus, deus ille, Menalca.
Although the treatment of the subject may be vague and conventional, yet
this poem possesses the interest of being Virgil’s earliest effort,
directed to a subject of living and national interest; and many of the
lines in the poem are unsurpassed for grace and sweetness of musical
cadence by anything in Latin poetry.
There is no allusion to contemporary events by which the date of the
seventh can be determined; but the absence of such allusion and the
‘purely Theocritean(206)’ character of the poem suggest the inference that
it is a specimen of Virgil’s earlier manner. Two shepherds, Corydon and
Thyrsis, are introduced as joining Daphnis, who is seated under a
whispering ilex; they engage in a friendly contest of song, which is
listened to also by the poet himself, who here calls himself Meliboeus.
They assert in alternate strains their claims to poetic honours, offer
prayers and vows to Diana as the goddess of the chase and to Priapus as
the god of gardens, draw rival pictures of cool retreat from the heat of
summer and of cheerfulness by the winter fire, and connect the story of
their loves with the varying aspect of the seasons, and with the beauty of
trees sacred to different deities or native to different localities.
Though the shepherds are Arcadian, the scenery is Mantuan:—
Hic viridis tenera praetexit harundine ripam
Mincius, eque sacra resonant examina quercu(207).
Meliboeus decides the contest in favour of Corydon:—
Haec memini, et victum frustra contendere Thyrsin.
Ex illo Corydon Corydon est tempore nobis(208).
These poems, in which the conventional shepherds of pastoral poetry sing
of their loves, their flocks and herds, of the beauty of the seasons and
of outward nature, in tones caught from Theocritus, or revive and give a
new meaning to the old Sicilian dirge over ‘the woes of Daphnis,’ may be
assigned to the eventful year in which the forces of the Republic finally
shattered themselves against the forces of the new Empire. There is a
strange contrast between these peaceful and somewhat unreal strains of
Virgil and the drama which was at the same time enacted on the real stage
of human affairs. No sound of the ‘storms that raged outside his happy
ground’ disturbs the security with which Virgil cultivates his art. But
the following year brought the trouble and unhappiness of the times home
to the peaceful dwellers around Mantua, and to Virgil among the rest. Of
the misery caused by the confiscations and allotments of land to the
soldiers of Octavianus, the first Eclogue is a lasting record. Yet even in
this poem, based as it is on genuine feeling and a real experience, Virgil
seems to care only for the truth of feeling with which Tityrus and
Meliboeus express themselves, without regard for consistency in the
conception of the situation, the scenery, or the personages of the poem.
Tityrus is at once the slave who goes to Rome to purchase his freedom, and
the owner of the land and of the flocks and herds belonging to it(209). He
is advanced in years(210), and at the same time a poet lying indolently in
the shade, and making the woods ring with the sounds of ‘beautiful
Amaryllis(211),’ like the young shepherds in Theocritus. The scenery
apparently combines some actual features of the farm in the Mantuan
district—
Quamvis lapis omnia nudus
Limosoque palus obducat pascua iunco(212),
with the ideal mountain-land of pastoral song—
Maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae(213).
A further inconsistency has been suggested between the time of year
indicated by the ‘shade of the spreading beech’ in the first line, and
that indicated by the ripe chestnuts at line 81(214). The truth of the
poem consists in the expression of the feelings of love which the old
possessors entertained for their homes, and the sense of dismay caused by
this barbarous irruption on their ancient domains:—
Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit?
Barbarus has segetes? En quo discordia civis
Produxit miseros(215)!
Virgil’s feeling for the movement of his age, which henceforth becomes one
of the main sources of his inspiration, has its origin in the effect which
these events had on his personal fortunes, and in the sympathy awakened
within him by the sorrows of his native district.
The ninth Eclogue, written most probably in the same year, and in form
imitated from the seventh Idyl—the famous Thalysia—of Theocritus, repeats
the tale of dejection and alarm among the old inhabitants of the Mantuan
district,—
Nunc victi, tristes, quoniam fors omnia versat(216),—
and touches allusively on the story of the personal danger which Virgil
encountered from the violence of the centurion who claimed possession of
his land. The speakers in the dialogue are Moeris, a shepherd of
Menalcas,—the pastoral poet, who sings of the nymphs, of the wild flowers
spread over the ground, and of the brooks shaded with trees,—and Lycidas,
who, like the Lycidas of the Thalysia, is also a poet:—
Me quoque dicunt
Vatem pastores, sed non ego credulus illis.
Nam neque adhuc Vario videor nec dicere Cinna
Digna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores(217).
After the account of the fray, given by Moeris, and the comments of
Lycidas, in which he introduces the lines referred to in the previous
chapter, as having all the signs of being a real description of the
situation of Virgil’s farms—
qua se subducere colles incipiunt—
Moeris sings the opening lines of certain other pastoral poems, some his
own, some the songs of Menalcas. Two of these—‘Tityre dum redeo’ and ‘Huc
ades O Galatea’—are purely Theocritean. Two others—
Vare tuum nomen, superet modo Mantua nobis,
and
Daphni quid antiquos signorum suspicis ortus(218)—
indicate the new path which Virgil’s art was striking out for itself.
There is certainly more real substance in this poem than in most of the
earlier Eclogues. Lycidas and Moeris speak about what interests them
personally. The scene of the poem is apparently the road between Virgil’s
farm and Mantua. There seem to be no conventional and inconsistent
features introduced from the scenery of Sicily or Arcadia, unless it be
the ‘aequor’ of line 57—
Et nunc omne tibi stratum silet aequor(219).
But may not that be either the lake, formed by the overflow of the river,
some distance above Mantua, or even the great level plain, with its long
grass and corn-fields and trees, hushed in the stillness of the late
afternoon?
The sixth Eclogue was written probably about the same time and at the same
place, the villa of Siron, in which Virgil had taken refuge with his
family. It is inscribed with the name of Varus, who is said to have been a
fellow-student of Virgil under the tuition of Siron. But, with the
exception of the dedicatory lines, there is no reference to the
circumstances of the time. Though abounding with rich pastoral
illustrations, the poem is rather a mythological and semi-philosophical
idyl than a pure pastoral poem. It consists mainly of a song of Silenus,
in which an account is given of the creation of the world in accordance
with the Lucretian philosophy; and, in connexion with this theme (as is
done also by Ovid in his Metamorphoses), some of the oldest mythological
traditions, such as the tale of Pyrrha and Deucalion, the reign of Saturn
on earth, the theft and punishment of Prometheus, etc., are introduced.
The opening lines—Namque canebat uti—are imitated from the song of Orpheus
in the first book of the Argonautics(220), but they bear unmistakable
traces also of the study of Lucretius. There seems no trace of the
language of Theocritus in the poem.
Three points of interest may be noted in this song: (1) Virgil here, as in
Georgic ii. 475, etc., regards the revelation of physical knowledge as a
fitting theme for poetic treatment. So in the first Aeneid, the ‘Song of
Iopas’ is said to be about ‘the wandering moon and the toils of the sun;
the origin of man and beast, water and fire,’ etc. The revelation of the
secrets of Nature seems to float before the imagination of Virgil as the
highest consummation of his poetic faculty. (2) We note here how, as
afterwards in the Georgics, he accepts the philosophical ideas of
creation, side by side with the supernatural tales of mythology. He seems
to regard such tales as those here introduced as part of the religious
traditions of the human race, and as a link which connects man with the
gods. In the Georgics we find also the same effort to reconcile, or at
least to combine, the conceptions of science with mythological fancies. In
this effort we recognise the influence of other Alexandrine poets rather
than of Theocritus. (3) The introduction of Gallus in the midst of the
mythological figures of the poem, and the account of the honour paid to
him by the Muses and of the office assigned to him by Linus, are
characteristic of the art of the Eclogues, which is not so much
allegorical as composite. It brings together in the same representation
facts, personages, and places from actual life and the figures and scenes
of a kind of fairy-land. In the tenth Eclogue Gallus is thus identified
with the Daphnis of Sicilian song, and is represented as the object of
care to the Naiads and Pan and Apollo. While Pollio is the patron whose
protection and encouragement Virgil most cordially acknowledges in his
earlier poems, Gallus is the man among his contemporaries who has most
powerfully touched his imagination and gained his affections.
The Eclogue composed next in order of time is the ‘Pollio.’ It was written
in the consulship of Pollio, B.C. 40, immediately after the reconciliation
between Antony and Octavianus effected by the treaty of Brundisium, and
gives expression to that vague hope of a new era of peace and prosperity
which recurs so often in the poetry of this age. In consequence of the
interpretation given to it in a later age, this poem has acquired an
importance connected with Virgil’s religious belief second only to the
importance of the sixth Aeneid. Early Christian writers, perceiving a
parallel between expressions and ideas in this poem and those in the
Messianic prophecies, believed that Virgil was here the unconscious
vehicle of Divine inspiration, and that he prophesies of the new era which
was to begin with the birth of Christ. And though, as Conington and others
have pointed out, the picture of the Golden Age given in the poem is drawn
immediately from Classical and not from Hebrew sources, yet there is no
parallel in Classical poetry to that which is the leading idea of the
poem, the coincidence of the commencement of this new era with the birth
of a child whom a marvellous career awaited.
The poem begins with an invocation to the Sicilian Muses and with the
declaration that, though the strain is still pastoral, yet it is to be in
a higher mood, and worthy of the Consul to whom it is addressed. Then
follows the announcement of the birth of a new era. The world after
passing through a cycle of ages, each presided over by a special deity,
had reached the last of the cycle, presided over by Apollo, and was about
to return back to the Golden or Saturnian Age of peace and innocence, into
which the human race was originally born. A new race of men was to spring
from heaven. The first-born of this new stock was destined hereafter to be
a partaker of the life of the gods and to ‘rule over a world in peace with
the virtues of his father.’ Then follow the rural and pastoral images of
the Golden Age, like those given in the first Georgic in the description
of the early world before the reign of Jove. The full glory of the age
should not be reached till this child should attain the maturity of
manhood. In the meantime some traces of ‘man’s original sin’ (‘priscae
vestigia fraudis’) should still urge him to brave the dangers of the sea,
to surround his cities with walls, and to plough the earth into furrows.
There should be a second expedition of the Argonauts, and a new Achilles
should be sent against another Troy. The romantic adventures of the heroic
age were to precede the rest, innocence, and spontaneous abundance of the
age of Saturn. Next the child is called upon to prepare himself for the
‘magni honores’—the great offices of state which awaited him; and the poet
prays that his own life and inspiration may be prolonged so far as to
enable him to celebrate his career.
There seem to be no traces of imitation of Theocritus in this poem. The
rhythm which in the other Eclogues reproduces the Theocritean cadences is
in this more stately and uniform, recalling those of Catullus in his
longest poem. The substance of the poem is quite unlike anything in the
Sicilian idyl. Though this substance does not stand out in the clear light
of reality, but is partially revealed through a haze of pastoral images
and legendary associations, yet it is not altogether unmeaning. The
anticipation of a new era was widely spread and vividly felt over the
world; and this anticipation—the state of men’s minds at and subsequent to
the time when this poem was written—probably contributed to the acceptance
of the great political and spiritual changes which awaited the world(221).
Two questions which have been much discussed in connexion with this poem
remain to be noticed; (1) who is the child born in the consulship of
Pollio of whom this marvellous career is predicted? (2) is it at all
probable that Virgil, directly or indirectly, had any knowledge of the
Messianic prophecies or ideas?
In answer to the first we may put aside at once the supposition that the
prediction is made of the child who was born in that year to Octavianus
and Scribonia. The words ‘nascenti puero’ are altogether inapplicable to
the notorious and unfortunate Julia, who was the child of that marriage.
If Virgil was sanguine enough to predict the sex of the child, we can
hardly imagine him allowing the words to stand after his prediction had
been falsified. We may equally dismiss the supposition that the child
spoken of was the offspring of the marriage of Antony and Octavia. Not to
mention other considerations adverse to this supposition(222), it would
have been impossible for Virgil, the devoted partisan of Caesar, to pay
this special compliment to Antony, even after he became so closely
connected with his rival. There remains a third supposition, that the
child spoken of is the son of Pollio, Asinius Gallus, who plays an
important part in the reign of Tiberius. This last interpretation is
supported by the authority of Asconius, who professed to have heard it
from Asinius Gallus himself. The objection to this interpretation is that
Virgil was not likely to assign to the child of one who, as compared with
Octavianus and Antony, was only a secondary personage in public affairs,
the position of ‘future ruler of the world’ and the function of being ‘the
regenerator of his age.’ Still less could a poem bearing this meaning have
been allowed to retain its place among Virgil’s works after the ascendency
of Augustus became undisputed. Further, the line
Cara deum suboles, magnum Iovis incrementum
(whatever may be its exact meaning(223)) appears an extreme exaggeration
when specially applied to the actual son of a mortal father and mother.
These difficulties have led some interpreters to suppose that the child
spoken of is an ideal or imaginary representative of the future race. But
if we look more closely at the poem, we find that the child is not really
spoken of as the future regenerator of the age; he is merely the
first-born of the new race, which was to be nearer to the gods both in
origin and in actual communion with them. Again, the words
Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem(224)
would not convey the same idea in the year 40 B.C. as they would ten or
twenty years later. At the time when the poem was written the consulship
was still the highest recognised position in the State. The Consuls for
the year, nominally at least, wielded the whole power of the Empire. The
words ‘reget orbem’ remain as a token that the Republic was not yet
entirely extinct. The child is called upon to prepare himself for the
great offices of State in the hope that he should in time hold the high
place which was now held by his father. The words ‘patriis virtutibus’
imply that he is no ideal being, but the actual son of a well-known
father. Virgil takes occasion in this poem to commemorate the attainment
of the highest office by his patron, to celebrate the birth of the son
born in the year of his consulship, and at the same time to express, by
mystical and obscure allusions, the trust that the peace of Brundisium was
the inauguration of that new era for which the hearts of men all over the
world were longing.
In turning to the second question, discussed in connexion with this
Eclogue, the great amount and recondite character of Virgil’s learning,
especially of that derived from Alexandrine sources, must be kept in view.
Macrobius testifies to this in several places. Thus he writes, ‘for this
poet was learned with not only a minute conscientiousness, but even with a
kind of reserve and mystery, so that he introduced into his works much
knowledge the sources of which are difficult to discover(225).’ In another
place he speaks of those things, ‘what he had introduced from the most
recondite learning of the Greeks(226).’ And again he says, ‘this story
Virgil has dug out from the most recondite Greek literature(227).’ It is
indeed most improbable that Virgil had a direct knowledge of the
Septuagint. If he had this knowledge it would have shown itself by other
allusions in other parts of his works. But it is quite possible that,
through other channels of Alexandrine learning, the ideas and the language
of Hebrew prophecy may have become indirectly known to him. One channel by
which this may have reached him would be the new Sibylline prophecies,
manufactured in the East and probably reflecting Jewish as well as other
Oriental ideas, which poured into Rome after the old Sibylline books had
perished in the burning of the Capitol during the first Civil War.
Still, admitting these possibilities, we are not called upon to go beyond
classical sources for the general substance and idea of this poem. It has
more in common with the myth in the Politicus of Plato than with the
Prophecies of Isaiah. The state of the world at the time when the poem was
written produced the longing for an era of restoration and a return to a
lost ideal of innocence and happiness, and the wish became father to the
thought.
There still remain the eighth and tenth Eclogues to be examined. The
first, like the fourth, is associated with the name of Pollio, the second
with that of Gallus. The date of the eighth is fixed to 39 B.C. by the
victory of Pollio in Illyria and by his subsequent triumph over the
Parthini. The words
Accipe iussis
Carmina coepta tuis(228)
testify to the personal influence under which Virgil wrote these poems.
The title of ‘Pharmaceutria,’ by which the poem is known, indicates that
Virgil professes to reproduce, in an Italian form, that passionate tale of
city life which forms the object of the second idyl of Theocritus. But
while the subject and burden of the second of the two songs contained in
this Eclogue are suggested by that idyl, the poem is very far from being a
mere imitative reproduction of it.
Two shepherds, Damon and Alphesiboeus, meet in the early dawn—
Cum ros in tenera pecori gratissimus herba(229),
(one of those touches of truthful description which reappear in the
account of the pastoral occupations in Georgic iii). They each sing of
incidents which may have been taken from actual life, or may have formed
the subject of popular songs traditional among the peasantry of the
district. In the first of these songs Damon gives vent to his despair in
consequence of the marriage of his old love Nysa with his rival Mopsus.
Though the shepherds who sing together bear the Greek names of Damon and
Alphesiboeus, though they speak of Rhodope and Tmaros and Maenalus, of
Orpheus and Arion, though expressions and lines are close translations,
and one a mistranslation, from the Greek (πάντα δ’ ἔναλλα γένοιτο being
rendered ‘omnia vel medium fiant mare’), and though the mode by which the
lover determines to end his sorrows,
Praeceps aerii specula de montis in undas
Deferar(230),
is more appropriate to a shepherd inhabiting the rocks overhanging the
Sicilian seas than to one dwelling in the plain of Mantua, yet both this
song and the accompanying one sung by Alphesiboeus approach more nearly to
the impersonal and dramatic representation of the Greek idyl than any of
those already examined. The lines of most exquisite grace and tenderness
in the poem,—lines which have been pronounced the finest in Virgil and the
finest in Latin literature by Voltaire and Macaulay(231),—
Saepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala,
Dux ego vester eram, vidi cum matre legentem:
Alter ab undecimo tum me iam acceperat annus,
Iam fragiles poteram ab terra contingere ramos:
Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error(232)—
are indeed close imitations of lines of similar beauty from the song of
the Cyclops to Galatea:—
ἠράσθην μὲν ἔγωγα τεοῦς, κόρα, ἁνίκα πρᾶτον
ἦνθες ἐμᾷ σὺν ματρὶ θέλοισ’ ὑακίνθινα φύλλα
ἐξ ὄρεος δρέψασθαι, ἐγὼ δ’ ὁδὸν ἁγεμόνευον·
παύσασθαι δ’ ἐσιδών τυ καὶ ὕστερον οὐδ’ ἔτι πᾳ νῦν
ἐκ τήνω δύναμαι· τίν’ δ’ οὐ μέλει, οὐ μὰ Δί’ οὐδέν(233).
But they are so varied as to suggest a picture of ease and abundance among
the orchards and rich cultivated land of Italy, instead of the free life
and natural beauties of the Sicilian mountains. The descriptive touches
suggesting the picture of the innocent romance of boyhood are also all
Virgil’s own.
The song of Alphesiboeus represents a wife endeavouring to recall her
truant, though still faithful, Daphnis from the city to his home. Though
some of the illustrations in this song also are Greek, yet it contains
several natural references to rustic superstitions which were probably
common to Greek and Italian peasants; and the fine simile at line 85 (of
which the first hint is to be found in Lucretius(234)) suggests purely
Italian associations. The final incident in the poem, ‘Hylax in limine
latrat’ (though the name given to the dog is Greek), is a touch of natural
life, such as does not often occur in the Eclogues. On the whole, Virgil
seems here to have struck on a vein which it may be regretted that he did
not work more thoroughly. If, as has been suggested by Mr. Symonds, in his
account and translations of popular Tuscan poems, any of the Eclogues of
Virgil are founded on primitive love-songs current among the peasantry of
Italy, the songs of Damon and Alphesiboeus are those which we should fix
on as being the artistic development of these native germs.
The tenth Eclogue was the last in order of composition, probably an
after-thought written immediately before the final publication, or perhaps
before the second edition, of the nine other poems. In this poem Virgil
abandons the more realistic path on which he had entered in the eighth,
and returns again to the vague fancies of the old pastoral lament for
Daphnis, as it is sung in the first idyl of Theocritus. Nothing can be
more remote from actual fact than the representation of Gallus—the active
and ambitious soldier and man of affairs, at that time engaged in the
defence of the coasts of Italy—dying among the mountains of Arcadia, in
consequence of his desertion by Lycoris (a dancing-girl, and former
mistress of Antony, whose real name was Cytheris), and wept for by the
rocks and pine-woods of Maenalus and Lycaeus. Yet none of the poems is
more rich in beauty, and grace, and happy turns of phrase. As the
idealised expression of unfortunate love, this poem is of the same class
as the second, and as the song of Damon in the eighth. That vein of modern
romantic sentiment, already noticed in the second, the longing to escape
from the ways of civilised life to the wild and lonely places of Nature,
and to follow in imagination ‘the homely, slighted shepherd’s trade,’
meets us also in the lines,
Atque utinam ex vobis unus vestrique fuissem
Aut custos gregis aut maturae vinitor uvae(235),—
and again in these,
Certum est in silvis, inter spelaea ferarum
Malle pati, tenerisque meos incidere amores
Arboribus(236).
II.
_Relation of the Eclogues to the Greek Pastoral._
The review of the Eclogues in the order of their composition shows that
the early art of Virgil, like the lyrical art of Horace, begins in
imitation, and, after attaining command over the form, rhythm, and diction
of the type of poetry which it reproduces, gradually assumes greater
independence in the choice of subject and the mode of treatment. The
susceptibility of Virgil’s mind to the grace and musical sweetness of
Theocritus gave the first impulse to the composition of the Eclogues; but
this susceptibility was itself the result of a natural sympathy with the
sentiment and motives of the Greek idyl, especially with the love of
Nature and the passion of love. He found this province of art
unappropriated. He revealed a new vein of Greek feeling unwrought by any
of his countrymen. He gave another life to the beings, natural and
supernatural, of ancient pastoral song, and awoke in his native land the
sound of a strain hitherto unheard by Italian ears. The form of the Greek
idyl, whether in dialogue or monologue, suited his genius, as a vehicle
for the lighter fancies of youth, and for half-revealing, half-concealing
the pleasures and pains personal to himself, better than the forms of
lyrical and elegiac poetry adopted by Catullus and his compeers. In the
opening lines of the sixth Eclogue,
Prima Syracosio dignata est ludere versu
Nostra, neque erubuit silvas habitare Thalia(237),
Virgil acknowledges at once the source of his inspiration and the lowly
position which his genius was willing to assume. He may have consoled
himself for this abnegation of a higher ambition by the thought suggested
in the lines addressed to the ideal poet and hero of his imagination—
Nec te paeniteat pecoris, divine poeta,
Et formosus ovis ad flumina pavit Adonis(238).
In order to understand the pastoral poetry of Virgil, both in its relation
to a Greek ideal and in its original truth of feeling, it is necessary to
remember the chief characteristics of its prototype in the age of Ptolemy
Philadelphus of Alexandria and in the early years of the reign of Hiero of
Syracuse. The pastoral poetry of Sicily was the latest creation of Greek
genius, born after the nobler phases of religious and political life, and
the epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry which arose out of them, had passed
away. In ancient, as in modern times, the pastoral idyl, as an artistic
branch of literature, has arisen, not in a simple age, living in
unconscious harmony with Nature, but from the midst of a refined and
luxurious, generally, too, a learned or rather bookish society, and has
tried to give vent to the feelings of men weary of an artificial life and
vaguely longing to breathe a freer air(239). But there was in ancient
times a primitive and popular, as well as a late and artistic pastoral. Of
the primitive pastoral, springing out of rustic gatherings and festivals,
or from lonely communion with Nature,
Per loca pastorum deserta atque otia dia(240),
and transmitted, from generation to generation, in the mouth of the
people, no fragment has been preserved. Yet traces of the existence of
this kind of pastoral song, and of the music accompanying it, at a time
antecedent to the composition of the Homeric poems, may be seen in the
representation, on the Shield of Achilles, of the boy in the vineyard
‘singing the beautiful song Linus,’—a representation which is purely
idyllic,—and of the shepherds, in the Ambuscade, who appear τερπόμενοι
σύριγξι, as they accompany their flocks. The author of the Iliad absorbed
the spirit of this primitive poetry in the greater compass of his epic
creation, as Shakspeare has absorbed the Elizabethan pastoral within the
all-embracing compass of his representation. Much of the imagery of the
Iliad, several incidents casually introduced in connexion with the names
of obscure persons perishing in battle, some of the supernatural events
glanced at, as of the meeting of Aphrodite with Anchises while tending his
herds on the spurs of Ida,—a subject of allusion also in the Sicilian
idyl,—are of a pastoral character and origin. In the lines which spring up
with a tender grace in the midst of the stern grandeur of the final
conflict between Hector and Achilles—
οὐ μέν πως νῦν ἔστιν ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ’ ἀπὸ πέτρης
τῷ ὀαριζέμεναι, ἅ τε παρθένος ἠίθεός τε,
παρθένος ἠίθεός τ’ ὀαρίζετον ἀλλήλουν(241)—
the familiar cadences as well as the sweetest sentiment of pastoral song
may be recognised.
This primitive pastoral poetry may have been spread over all Greece and
the islands of the Aegean, from the earliest settlements of the Hellenic
race, or of that older branch of the family to which the name Pelasgic has
been vaguely given, and may have lingered on the same in spirit, though
with many variations in form and expression, among the peasantry and
herdsmen of the mountain districts till a late period. But the earliest
writer who is said to have adopted this native plant of the mountains and
the woods, and to have trained it to assume some form of art, was
Stesichorus of Himera, who flourished about the beginning of the sixth
century B.C. But nothing more is heard of it till it revived again at
Syracuse in the early part of the third century.
Some of the primitive modes of feeling which gave birth to the earliest
pastoral song still survive, though in altered form, in this later
Sicilian poetry. The song of the βουκόλοι, or herdsmen, like the song of
the masked worshippers of Bacchus (τραγῳδία), may be traced to that stage
in the development of the higher races in which Nature was the chief
object of worship and religious sympathy. Under the symbols of Linus,
Daphnis, or Adonis, the country people of early times lamented the decay
of the fresh beauty of spring, under the burning midsummer heat(242). This
primitive germ of serious feeling has perpetuated itself in that
melancholy mood which runs through the pastoral poetry of all countries.
From that tendency of the Greek imagination to give a human meaning to all
that interested it, this dirge over the fading beauty of the early year
soon assumed the form of a lament over the death of a young shepherd-poet,
dear to gods and men, to the flocks, herds, and wild animals, to the rocks
and mountains, among which he had lived. In the Daphnis of Theocritus, the
human passion of love produces that blighting influence on the life of the
shepherd which in the original myth was produced by the fierce heat of
summer on the tender life of the year. A still later development of the
myth appears in the lament over the extinction of youthful genius by early
death. It is not in any poem of Theocritus, but in the ‘Lament of
Bion,’—the work of a later writer, apparently an Italian-Greek,—
αὐτὰρ ἐγώ τοι
Αὐσονικᾶς ὀδύνας μέλπω μέλος(243),—
that we find the finest ancient specimen of this later development. It is
from this new form of the old dirge of Linus or Daphnis that the fancies
and feelings of the ancient pastoral have been most happily adapted to
modern poetry, as in the Lycidas, the Adonais, and the Thyrsis of English
literature.
Another traditional theme of ‘pastoral melancholy,’ of which Theocritus
makes use, is the unrequited love of the Cyclops for Galatea. This too had
its origin in the personification of natural objects(244). But, unlike the
song of Daphnis, the myth of which it was the expression was purely local,
and confined to the shores of Sicily. It also illustrates the tendency of
all pastoral song to find its chief human motive in the passion of love.
While the original motive of the primitive lament for Daphnis or Linus was
the unconscious sympathy of the human heart with Nature, the most
prominent motive of artistic pastoral or idyllic poetry, from the ‘Song of
Songs’ to the ‘Hermann and Dorothea’ and ‘The Long Vacation Pastoral’ of
these later times, has been the passion of the human heart for the human
object of its affection, blending with either an unconscious absorption in
outward scenes or a refined contemplation of them(245).
But there is another very distinct mode of primitive feeling traceable in
Theocritus, which dictates the good-humoured, often licentious, banter
with which the shepherds encounter one another. As the pastoral monologue
continued to betray the serious character of the Lament out of which it
sprung, so this natural dialogue continued to bear traces of that old
licence of the harvest-home and the vintage-season, which
Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit(246).
The ‘lusit amabiliter’ of Horace’s lines, which soon became inapplicable
to the biting and censorious Italian spirit, expresses happily the tone of
the dialogue in the fourth and fifth Idyls of Theocritus, which Virgil
attempts to reproduce in his third Eclogue. This source of rural poetry
was known to the ‘Ausonian husbandmen’ as well as to the country people of
Greece and Sicily: and its native force passed not only into the Greek
pastoral idyl, but into the Sicilian comedy of Epicharmus and the old
comedy of Athens, and, through a totally different channel, into Roman
satire. There is, however, another form in which the pastoral dialogue
appears both in Theocritus and Virgil, namely, of extemporaneous contests
in song. Probably these more artistic contests and the award of prizes to
the successful competitor had their origin in the bantering dialogue of
the shepherds; as the tragic contests at the Dionysian festivals had their
origin in the rivalry with which the masked votaries of Dionysus poured
forth their extemporaneous verses, in sympathy with the sufferings of
their god.
Such were the first rude utterances of the deeper as well as the gayer
emotions of men, living in the happy security of the country districts or
the ‘otia dia’ of the mountains in Greece, Sicily, and perhaps Southern
Italy, which the art of Theocritus and his successors cast into artistic
forms and measures suited to the taste of educated readers. How far, in
the manner in which he accomplished this, Theocritus had been anticipated
by ‘the grave muse of Stesichorus,’ and whether this wild product of the
mountains was of a native Siculian or an Hellenic stock, it is not
possible to determine. A citizen of Syracuse, in the palmy days of Hiero,
before there was any dream of Roman conquest; deeply susceptible of the
beauty of his native island, but, like a Greek, seeing this beauty in
relation to human associations; familiar with the songs and old traditions
of the land, as well as with the fancies of earlier poets; living his life
in friendly association with his literary compeers, such as the
Alexandrine Aratus(247) and Nicias, the physician and poet(248),—he sought
to people the familiar scenery of mountain, wood, brook, and sea-shore
with an ideal race of shepherds, in whom the natural emotions and
grotesque superstitions of actual herdsmen should be found in union with
the refinement, the mythological lore, the keen sense of the beauty, not
unmixed with the melancholy, of life, characteristic of a circle of poets
and scholars enjoying their youth in untroubled and uneventful times. All
his materials, old and new, assumed the shape of pictures from human life
in combination with the representations of the sounds, sights, and living
movement of Nature. The essential characteristic both of his pastoral
Idyls and of those drawn from city-life, such as the second, fourteenth,
and fifteenth, is what has been well called the ‘disinterested
objectivity(249)’ of Greek art: and this is the chief note of their
difference from Virgil’s pastorals. Even where, as in the seventh, the
poet introduces himself on the scene, he appears as one, and not the most
important, of the personages on it. He does not draw attention to his own
feelings or fortunes, only to his playful converse and rivalry in song
with the young shepherd-poet Lycidas, ‘with the bright laughing eye and
the smile ever playing on his lip(250).’
It may be urged against these Idyls that, as compared with the best modern
Idyls, in prose or verse, they are, for the most part, wanting in incident
or adventure; and this charge is equally applicable to Virgil’s pastorals.
But there is always dramatic vivacity and consistency in the personages of
Theocritus, and this cannot equally be said of those introduced into the
Eclogues. It might be urged also against the representations of
Theocritus, and still more against those of Virgil, that the ‘vestigia
ruris’ have been too carefully obliterated. Yet, though not drawn
immediately from life, this picture of Sicilian shepherds and peasants,
possessed with the vivid belief in Pan and the Nymphs, singing the old
dirge of the herdsman Daphnis among the mountain pastures, or the
love-song of the Cyclops and Galatea on the rocks overhanging the Sicilian
sea, or the song of Lityerses among the ripe corn-fields(251), challenging
each other to compete in song or plying each other with careless tending
their flocks rather as a picturesque pastime than as a toilsome
occupation, and living a life of free social enjoyment in the open air,
was a genuine ideal of the Greek imagination, not perhaps, too far removed
from the actual reality.
Before the time of Virgil there had been no attempt to introduce this form
of art into Italy. Though the germ of a rude rustic poetry existed in the
‘Fescennine verses,’ no connexion can be traced between them and the
highly artificial pastoral of the Augustan Age. The Eclogues of Virgil are
in form and even in substance a closer reproduction of a Greek original
than any other branch of Latin literature, with the exception of the
comedy of Terence. The ‘Lament of Daphnis,’ the song of unrequited love,
the bantering dialogues of the shepherds and their more formal contests in
song, reappear in Latin tones and with some new associations of individual
and national life, but in such a manner as to recall the memory of the
Sicilian idyl rather than to suggest a new experience from life. And yet
Virgil is not satisfied, like the authors of Latin comedy, with presenting
to the imagination types of Greek life, Greek sentiment and manners, and
Greek scenes. He desires not only to reproduce in new words and music the
charm which had fascinated him in Theocritus, but to blend the actual
feeling and experience of an Italian living in the Augustan Age with this
ideal restored from a by-gone time. The result is something composite,
neither purely Greek nor purely Italian; not altogether of the present
time nor yet of a mythical foretime; but a blending of various elements of
poetic association and actual experience, as in those landscapes of the
Renaissance which combine aspects of real scenes with the suggestions of
classical poetry, and introduce figures of the day in modern dress along
with the fantastic shapes of mythological invention. The scenes and
personages of the Eclogues are thus one stage further removed from
actuality than those of the Greek pastoral. They do not reproduce, as
Keats has done, the Greek ideal of rural life, and they do not create a
purely Italian ideal. There was, indeed, latent in the Italian imagination
an ideal of a homely rustic life, finding its happiness in the annual
round of labour and in the blessing of a virtuous home, and that ideal
Virgil loved to draw with ‘magic hand;’ but that was altogether unlike the
ideal of the Greek imagination. The life of industry and happiness which
Virgil glorifies in the Georgics,—that of the ‘primitive, stout-hearted,
and thrifty husbandmen’ of Horace,—whose pride was in their ‘glad
harvests,’ their ‘trim fields,’ their ‘vineyards,’ and in the use which
they derived from their flocks, herds, and beehives, had nothing in common
with that of the ‘well-trimmed sunburnt shepherds’ whom Greek fancy first
created, and whom Keats has made live for us again, enjoying the fulness
of actual existence in union with the dreams of an ‘Elysian
idleness(252).’ Least of all could the pastoral life of Arcadia or Sicily
have been like the habitual ways of men in the rich plains of Mantua. The
district of Italy most like the scenes of the Greek idyl was Calabria,
where, among the desolate forest-glades, the herds and flocks of some rich
senator or eques were now tended by barbarous slaves, with whose daily
existence the ideal glories of pastoral song were not likely to
intermingle.
III.
It is easy for those who wish to depreciate the art of Virgil to point out
very many instances of imitation and artificial treatment in the Eclogues,
and to establish their manifest inferiority to the Greek idyl in direct
truth and vividness of representation. They are not purely objective, like
the Greek idyl, nor purely subjective as the Latin elegy generally is.
They are very much inferior to the Greek originals in dramatic power; and
the idyl is really a branch of dramatic poetry. Like the pure drama, it
depends on the power of living in the thoughts, situations, and feelings
of beings quite distinct from the poet himself. Some of the Eclogues,
those in which the passion of love and the Italian passion for the land
are the motives, are dramatic in spirit, though the conception of the
situation is not consistently maintained. But in most cases, where he is
not merely imitative, the dramatic form is to Virgil as a kind of veil
under which he may partially reveal what moved him most in connexion with
his own personal fortunes, and may express his sympathies with literature,
with outward nature, and with certain moods and sentiments of the human
heart. It is not in virtue of the originality and consistency of their
conception, but of their general truth of feeling and the perfection of
the medium through which that feeling is conveyed, that those who admire
the Eclogues must vindicate their claim to poetic honour.
The reserve with which all his personal relations are indicated, and the
allusive way in which the story of his fortunes is told, are in keeping
with the delicacy and modesty of Virgil’s nature. He tells us nothing
directly of his home-life or occupations, though his attachment to the
scenes familiar to him from childhood is felt in the language with which
Meliboeus felicitates Tityrus on the restitution of his land, and in that
in which Moeris and Lycidas discourse together. We know of no actual
Galatea or Amaryllis associated with the joy or the pain of his youth;
though his subtle perception of the various moods of the passion of love
can hardly be a mere poetic intuition, unenlightened by personal
experience. The eminent men with whom he was brought into contact,
Octavianus, Pollio, Varus, and Gallus, are not individualised; though the
different feelings of reverential or loyal respect, of colder deference,
or admiring enthusiasm, which they severally excited in him, can be
clearly distinguished. In the undesigned revelation of himself, which
every author makes in his writings, there are few indications of the
religious and moral feeling and of the national sentiment which are among
the principal elements in Virgil’s maturer poems: but we find abundantly
the evidence of a mind open to all tender and refined influences, free
from every taint of envy or malice, serious and pensive, and finding its
chief happiness in making the charm, which fascinated him in books, in
Nature, and in life, heard in the deep and rich music of the language, of
which he first drew out the full capabilities:—
Saepe ego longos
Cantando puerum memini me condere soles(253).
The Eclogues also present Virgil to us as not only a poet, but, as what he
continued to be through all his life, a student of the writings of the
past. Like Milton he was eminently a learned poet, and, like Milton, he
knew the subtle alchemy by which the duller ore of learned allusion is
transmuted into gold. The tales of the Greek mythology and the names of
places famous in song or story act on his imagination, not so much through
their own intrinsic interest, as through the associations of literature.
It is under this reflex action that he recalls to memory the tales of
Pasiphae, of Scylla and Nisus, of Tereus and Philomela; introduces
Orpheus, Amphion, and Linus as the ideal poets of pastoral song; and
alludes to Hesiod, Euphorion, and Theocritus in the phrases ‘the sage of
Ascra,’ ‘the verse of Chalcis,’ ‘the Sicilian Shepherd.’ It is in this
spirit that he associates the musical accompaniment of his song with the
names of Maenalus and Eurotas, of Rhodope and Ismarus; and that he speaks
of bees and thyme as ‘the bees and thyme of Hybla,’ of doves as ‘the
Chaonian doves,’ of vultures as ‘the birds of Caucasus.’ He also
characterises objects by local epithets, suggestive rather of the
associations of geographical science than of poetry. Thus he speaks of
‘Ariusian wine,’ of ‘Cydonian arrows,’ ‘Cyrnean yews,’ ‘Assyrian
spikenard,’ and the like. The interest in physical enquiries appears in
the allusion in Ecl. iii. 40,
In medio duo signa Conon, etc.,
and in the rapid summary of the Epicurean theory of creation at vi. 31,
etc.,
Namque canebat uti magnum per inane coacta, etc.
In these last passages it is not so much by the scientific or
philosophical speculations themselves, as by their literary treatment by
former writers, that Virgil appears to be attracted. Perhaps the frequent
recurrence of these localising epithets, where there is nothing in the
context to call up any thought of the locality indicated, may appear to a
modern reader an unfortunate result of his Alexandrine studies; yet the
grace with which old poetic associations are evoked and new associations
created by such lines as these,
Tum canit, errantem Permessi ad flumina Gallum
Aonas in montis ut duxerit una sororum,
or these,
Omnia quae Phoebo quondam meditante beatus
Audiit Eurotas, iussitque ediscere laurus,
Ille canit(254),
attests the cumulative force which ancient names, identified with the
poetic life of the world, gather in their transmission through the
literatures of different ages and nations.
In the Georgics and Aeneid, as well as in the Eclogues, Virgil shows a
great susceptibility to the beauty and power of Nature. But Nature
presents different aspects and awakens a different class of feelings in
these poems. In the Eclogues he shows a great openness and receptivity of
mind, through which all the softer and more delicate influences of the
outward world enter into and become part of his being. The ‘molle atque
facetum’ of Horace denotes the yielding susceptibility(255) to outward
influences, and the vivacity which gives them back in graceful forms. In
the Georgics, the sense of the relation of Nature to human energy imparts
greater nobleness to the conception. She appears there, not only in her
majesty and beauty, but as endowed with a soul and will. She stands to man
at first in the relation of an antagonist: but, by compliance with her
conditions, he subdues her to his will, and finds in her at last a just
and beneficent helpmate(256). In the Eclogues she takes rather the form of
an enchantress, who, by the charm of her outward mien and her
freely-offered gifts, fascinates him into a life of indolent repose. If
the one poem may in a sense be described as the ‘glorification of labour,’
the other might be described as the ‘glorification of the _dolce far
niente_’ of Italian life. The natural objects described by Virgil are
often indeed the same as those out of which the representation of
Theocritus is composed; but in Theocritus the human figures are, after
all, the prominent objects in the picture: the speakers in his dialogue,
though not unconscious of the charm proceeding from the scenes in which
they are placed, yet are not possessed by it; they do not lose their own
being in the larger life of Nature environing them. Theocritus shows
everywhere the social temperament of the Greeks. It is an Italian, not
perhaps without something of the Celtic fibre in his composition, who
utters his natural feelings in the lines,
ibi haec incondita solus
Montibus et silvis studio iactabat inani(257).
In Virgil’s representation neither the scenes nor the human figures are so
distinctly present to the eye; but there is diffused through it a subtle
influence from the outward world, bringing man’s nature into conformity
with itself. The genius in modern times, which shows most of this yielding
susceptibility to the softer aspects and motions of Nature, is that of
Rousseau; but in the manner in which he gives way to this sentiment there
is a want of restraint, a strain of excited feeling, suggestive of the
contrast between this transient intoxication of happiness and the abiding
unrest and misery of all his human relations. In reading Virgil there is
no sense of any such jarring discord; yet it is rather as a pensive
emotion, not unallied to melancholy, than as the joy of a sanguine
temperament, that his susceptibility to outward impressions is made
manifest.
The objects through which Nature exercises this spell are, as was said,
much the same as those out of which the landscape of Theocritus is
composed. Virgil, like Theocritus, enables us to feel the charm of ‘the
sparkling stream of fresh water,’ of ‘mossy fountains and grass softer
than sleep,’ of ‘the cool shade of trees,’ and of caves ‘with the gadding
vine o’ergrown.’ The grace and tender hues of wild flowers—violets,
poppies, narcissus, and hyacinth—and of fruits, such as the ‘cerea pruna’
and the ‘tenera lanugine mala,’—the luxuriant vegetation clothing the
rocks and the ideal mountain glades,—
Ille latus niveum molli fultus hyacintho(258),—
the plants and trees,—osiers and hazels, ilex and beech,—the woods, and
meadow-pastures, and rich orchards of his native district, have
communicated the soul and secret of their being to the mellow tones of his
language and the musical cadences of his verse. He makes us hear again,
with a strange delight, the murmur of bees feeding on the willow hedge,
the moan of turtle-doves from the high elm tree, the sound of the
whispering south wind, of waves breaking on the shore, of rivers flowing
down through rocky valleys, the song of the woodman plying his work, the
voice of the divine poet chanting his strain. By a few simple words he
calls up before our minds the genial luxuriance of spring, the freshness
of early morning, the rest of all living things in the burning heat of
noon, the stillness of evening, the gentle imperceptible motions of
Nature, in the shooting up of the young alder-tree and in the gradual
colouring of the grapes on the sunny hill-sides. If the labour of man is
mentioned at all, it is in the form of some elegant accomplishment or
picturesque task—pruning the vine or grafting the pear-tree, closing the
streams that water the pastures, watching the flocks and herds feeding at
their own will. The new era on which the world was about to enter is seen
by his imagination, like the vision of some pastoral valley, half hidden,
half glorified through a golden haze. The peculiar blessings anticipated
in that era are the rest from labour, the spontaneous bounty of Nature,
the peace that is to reign among the old enemies of the animal kingdom.
The human affections which mingle with these representations of Nature are
the love of home, and the romantic sentiment, rather than the passion, of
love. The common human feeling of the love of home Virgil realises more
intensely from his love of the beauty associated with his own home. Many
of the sayings of Tityrus and Meliboeus bear witness to the strong hold
which their lands and flocks had on men of their class:—
nos dulcia linquimus arva—
ergo tua rura manebunt, Et tibi magna satis—
Ille meas errare boves ut cernis—
Spem gregis a, silice in nuda conixa reliquit—
Ite meae, quondam felix pecus, ite capellae(259).
In the passage of the same Eclogue, from 68–79,
En unquam patrios ... salices carpetis amaras,
Virgil tells, in language of natural pathos and exquisite grace, of the
poor man’s sorrow in yielding his thatched hut, his well-trimmed fields,
his corn crops, his pear-trees and his vines, the familiar sight of his
goats feeding high up among the thickets of the rocks, to some rude
soldier, incapable either of enjoying the charm or profiting by the
richness of the land.
The three poems—the second, eighth, and tenth—of which love is the theme
are all of a serious and plaintive cast. There are few touches in Virgil’s
art descriptive either of the happier or the lighter and more playful
experiences of the passion, which are the common theme of Horace’s Odes.
Still less does he treat the subject in the style of Propertius and Ovid.
The sentiment of Virgil is more like that of Tibullus; only Virgil gives
utterance, though always in a dramatic form, to the real despair of
unrequited affection (indigni amoris), while the tone of Tibullus is
rather that of one yielding to the luxury of melancholy when in possession
of all that his heart desires. They each give expression to that modern
mood of passion, in which the heart longs to exchange the familiar life of
civilisation for the rougher life of the fields, and to share some humble
cottage and the daily occupations of peasant life with the beloved
object(260). In Virgil also there appears some anticipation of that
longing for lonely communing with Nature in her wilder and more desolate
aspects which we associate with romantic rather than with classical
poetry.
Though, unlike all other Latin poets, Virgil avoids all reference to the
sensual side of this passion, there is no ancient poet who has analysed
and expressed, with equal truth and beauty and with such a chivalrous
devotion, the fluctuations between hope and despair, the sense of personal
unworthiness, the sweet memories, the heart-felt longings, the
self-forgetful consideration and anxieties of an idealising affection. In
such lines as these, expressing at once the sense of unworthiness and the
rapid sinking of the heart from hope to despair—
Rusticus es Corydon, nec munera curat Alexis(261),
and again—
Tanquam haec sint nostri medicina furoris(262);
in the lines in which Damon traces back his love to its ideal source in
early boyhood—
Saepibus in nostris, etc.;
in the fine simile at viii. 85—
Talis amor Daphnim, qualis cum fessa iuvencum, etc.;
in the tender thought of the dying Gallus for the mistress who had
forsaken him—
A, tibi ne teneras glacies secet aspera plantas(263),—
there is a delicate and subtle power of touch not unworthy of the
master-hand which, with maturer art, delineated the queenly passion and
despair of Dido.
The supreme excellence of Virgil’s art consists in the perfect harmony
between his feeling and the medium through which it is conveyed. The style
of his longer poems has many varied excellences, in accordance with the
varied character of the thought and sentiment which it is called on to
express. But the strong and full volume of diction and rhythm and the
complex harmonies of the Georgics would have been an inappropriate vehicle
for the luxurious sentiment of the Eclogues. The attitude of the poet’s
mind in the composition of these earlier poems was that of a genial
passiveness rather than that of creative activity. There are few poems of
equal excellence in which so little use is made of that force of words
which imparts new life to things. A few such expressions might be quoted,
like that given by Wordsworth as ‘an instance of a slight exertion of the
faculty of imagination in the use of a single word’—
Dumosa _pendere_ procul de rupe videbo;
and we notice a similar exertion of the faculty in the line—
Hic viridis tenera _praetexit_ harundine ripam
Mincius(264).
But this actively imaginative use of language seldom occurs in these
poems. The general effect of the style is produced by the fulness of
feeling, the sweetness or sonorousness of cadence, with which words, used
in their familiar sense, are selected and combined. Such epithets as
‘mollis,’ ‘lentus,’ ‘tener’ are of frequent recurrence, yet the impression
left by their use is not one of weakness, or of a satiating luxury of
sentiment. The soft outlines and delicate bloom of Virgil’s youthful style
are as true emblems of health as the firmer fibre and richer colouring of
his later diction. What an affluence of feeling, what a deep sense of the
happiness of life, of the beauty of the world, of the glory of genius, is
conveyed by the simple use of the words _fortunatus_, _formosus_,
_divinus_ in the lines—
Fortunate senex, ergo tua rura manebunt—
Nunc frondent silvae, nunc formosissimus annus—
Formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse—
Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta—
Ut Linus haec illi divino carmine pastor.
The effect he produces by the sound and associations of proper names is
like that produced by Milton through the same instrument. Thus, to take
one instance out of many, how suggestive of some golden age of pastoral
song are the following lines, vague and conventional though their actual
application appears to be in the passage where they occur:—
Non me carminibus vincet nec Thracius Orpheus,
Nec Linus, huic mater quamvis atque huic pater adsit,
Orphei Calliopea, Lino formosus Apollo.
Pan etiam Arcadia mecum si iudice certet,
Pan etiam Arcadia dicat se iudice victum(265).
More even in his rhythm than in his diction does Virgil’s superiority
appear, not only over all the poets of his country, but perhaps over all
other poets of past times, except Homer, Milton, and Shakspeare, in those
passages in which his dramatic art admits of a richly musical cadence. Our
ignorance of the exact pronunciation of Greek in the Alexandrian Age makes
a comparison between the effect that would have been produced by the
rhythm of Theocritus and the rhythm of the Eclogues in ancient times
difficult or impossible. Yet it may be allowed to say this much, that if
the rhythm of the Eclogues does not seem to us to attain to the natural
and liquid flow of the Greek idyl, yet its tones are deeper, they seem to
come from a stronger and richer source, than any which we can elicit from
the Doric reed. Rarely has the soothing and reviving charm of the musical
sounds of Nature and of the softer and grander harmonies of poetry been
described and reproduced more effectively than in these lines:—
Hinc tibi, quae semper, vicino ab limite saepes
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(266):
and in these which suggest the thought of that restorative power of genius
which a poet of the present day has happily ascribed to Wordsworth(267):—
Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta,
Quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per aestum
Dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo(268):
and in these again, which give both true symbols and a true example of the
‘deep-chested music’ in which the poet gives utterance to the thought
which has taken shape within his mind:—
Quae tibi, quae tali reddam pro carmine dona?
Nam neque me tantum venientis sibilus austri,
Nec percussa iuvant fluctu tam litora, nec quae
Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles(269).
The objections often urged against the poetical value of the Eclogues may
be admitted. They are imitative in form. They do not reproduce scenes and
characters from actual life, nor are they consistent creations of the
imagination. They do not possess the interest arising from a contemplative
insight into the hidden workings of Nature, nor from reflection on the
problems of life. Their originality, their claim to be a representative
work of genius, consists in their truth and unity of sentiment and tone.
If it be said that the sentiment which they embody is but a languid and
effeminate sentiment, the admiration of two great poets, of the most
masculine type of genius that modern times have produced, is a sufficient
answer to this reproach. The admiration of Milton is proved by the
conception and workmanship of his ‘Lycidas,’ the most richly and
continuously musical even among his creations. Of Wordsworth’s admiration
there is more than one testimony,—this, from the recently published Memoir
of the daughter of his early friend and associate in poetry, perhaps the
most direct: ‘I am much pleased to see (writes S. Coleridge) how highly
Mr. Wordsworth speaks of Virgil’s style, and of his Bucolics which I have
ever thought most graceful and tender. They are quite another thing from
Theocritus, however they may be based on Theocritus(270).’ The criticism
which the same writer applies to ‘Lycidas’ suggests the true answer also
to the objections urged against Virgil’s originality. ‘The best defence of
Lycidas is not to defend the design of it at all, but to allege that the
execution of it is perfect, the diction the _ne plus ultra_ of grace and
loveliness, and that the spirit of the whole is as original as if the poem
contained no traces of the author’s acquaintance with ancient pastoral
poetry from Theocritus downwards.’ To the names of these two poets we can
now add the name of one of the most illustrious, and certainly one of the
least effeminate, among the critics and men of letters whom this century
has produced—Macaulay; who, after speaking of the Aeneid in one of his
letters, adds this sentence, ‘The Georgics pleased me better; the Eclogues
best,—the second and tenth above all(271).’
The appreciation of Wordsworth is a certain touchstone of the genuineness
of Virgil’s feeling for Nature. It is true that the sentiment to which he
gives expression in the Eclogues is only one, and not the most elevated,
of the many modes in which the spirit of man responds to the forms and
movement of the outward world. But the mood of the Eclogues is one most
natural to man’s spirit in the beautiful lands of Southern Europe. The
freshness and softness of Italian scenes are present in the Eclogues, in
the rich music of the Italian language, while it still retained the
strength, fulness, and majesty of its tones. These poems are truly
representative of Italy, not as a land of old civilisation, of historic
renown, of great cities, of corn-crops, and vineyards,—‘the mighty mother
of fruits and men;’—but as a land of a soft and genial air, beautiful with
the tender foliage and fresh flowers and blossoms of spring, and with the
rich colouring of autumn; a land which has most attuned man’s nature to
the influences of music and of pictorial art. As a true and exquisite
symbol of this vein of sentiment associated with Italy, the Eclogues hold
a not unworthy place beside the greater work—the ‘temple of solid
marble’—which the maturer art of Virgil dedicated to the genius of his
country, and beside the more composite but stately and massive monument
which perpetuates the national glory of Rome.