were deficient in a natural and unlaboured vein of poetry." Lucretius in his occasional bursts of splendour and sublimity; Catullus with his marvellous grace and delicacy and his deep pathos; Propertius in those rare places where he can shake himself free from the trammels of his pedantry; and Statius in detached passages, seem to me to come nearest to it. In the main, great as are the claims of the Roman poets on our admiration, they are far other than those I have been insisting upon above. We know what is the effect of attempting to curb the workings of nature in the external world; and the same in kind must be the result of Augustan refinement and Augustan despotism upon the workings of the world within us.

Are we then, with Coleridge, to leave Virgil nothing but "his diction and metre?" Are we to say with him that "there is nothing real in the Georgics but the verse?" No, surely. Virgil was not such a poet as this would make him. The great and profound Dante would never have chosen such an one for his guide and master, nor "have

6

5 We know that even Ennius, as the introducer of the hexameter, was looked upon as an innovator upon the national poetry; and the works of poets, like Nævius, who wrote in the Saturnian measure, and still more the very early genuine legends are so completely lost, that we have no means of judging what sort of things they were. Whatever they were like, we may be quite sure that they were not like Mr. Macaulay's very clever, but eminently modern "Lays of Rome."

In the Divina Commedia, Virgil stands as the symbol of the perfection of the human intellect, as Beatrice is the symbol of religion. He was exalted by Dante into this position, because in his fourth Eclogue he was one of the forerunners of religious truth in the pagan world, and because he was looked upon as the depository of all the sciences of antiquity. So says M. Oranam. We know that he was looked upon as a magician, the Sortes Virgilianæ are a sort of proof of this. This arose probably from the wonderful applicability of so many passages in Virgil to every conceivable turn of human fortune.

done honour to his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any." I venture to think that if Coleridge had studied Virgil as he studied Shakspere, his verdict would have been somewhat different. Nowhere surely are such natural descriptions to be found as in the Georgics, and his descriptions differ from the collections of incidents which stand for them in other poets, as a creation of Raffaelle or Michael Angelo from the compilations of Battoni or Mengs. They are outlines of the whole, not enumerations of the parts. Bishop Copleston has very well remarked, "quam diversæ penitus sint res lolum dicere, et omnia ;" and he shews how thoroughly Virgil understood this by a series of passages, which I have not space to quote, but which my readers may see for themselves in his fourth and fifth Prelections, in the midst of much striking criticism conveyed in the most elegant Latin. Virgil too constantly leads us in his descriptions from the world without, to the world within us, appealing through facts to feelings, and touching our heart while he is gratifying our intellect. Neither was he ignorant of the great art of knowing when and where to stop-of leaving always something for the imagination to supply; giving the characteristic features whether broad or delicate, but never overlaying his image with unnecessary details, which, as they add nothing to its force, so assuredly impair its beauty. He does not often attempt the pure sublime, but when he does he never fails. As instances, I would quote the conclusion of the first Georgic, portions of the fourth towards the end, of the sixth book of the Eneid, and that magnificent passage in the second (one of the grandest in any language) where Venus removes the veil from the mortal sight of her son, and he sees the mighty powers of heaven arrayed in arms against his city, Neptune, Juno,

and Minerva stalking on amid the rolling clouds of dust and smoke, and marking their passage by the headlong crash of sinking walls and falling towers.

There are other passages, but on the whole they occur but rarely. It is in tenderness, in dignity, in sweetness, in pathos, that he shines unrivalled. I need hardly remind my readers of the excellent beauty of the passages concerning Orpheus and Eurydice, Dido, the death of Anchises, the fate of Marcellus, Nisus and Euryalus, Lausus, Mezentius, Pallas, and Camilla ; nor shall I detain them with any remarks upon the wondrous melody of his verse, an union of sweetness and majesty, which, as an instrument of language, few have come up to, and no one but Homer has ever gone beyond. It may be that he loved to study inanimate and irrational nature better than mankind, but he has drawn men like a true genius. I do not defend Æneas, but surely Turnus, and Pallas, and Lausus, and Nisus, and Ascanius, and even Latinus, and Mezentius are touched with a master's hand. It may be that he disliked and despised women, yet no Latin poet has drawn the female character with anything like his purity and grace. His Andromache, Creusa, Hecuba, Camilla, little as we hear of them, are exquisite; his faithful Anna is full of beauty; but his Dido is a marvellous creation. Walsh has called her "lustful and revengeful;" Dryden has ascribed her whole conduct to animal desire, and the criticism has been echoed by others. I am bold to say that Dryden's coarse though powerful mind rendered him an unfit judge

7 There is something a little like this in Callimachus's hymn to Delos, where Ares is represented as on the point of attacking the Peneus. Virgil is far finer, and perhaps, he did not know of this passage, though his obligations to Apollonius Rhodius, a poet of the school of Callimachus, might form the subject of a separate paper.

of such a question. She is warm, true-hearted, nobleminded, heart-broken; as a queen, she feels indignation at the contempt, she breaks her heart as a woman at the perfidy of Eneas. Next to the Medea of Euripides, she is perhaps the most striking picture of human feeling and passion to be met with in the classics. Some of her speeches have almost a Shaksperean power. Next to those of Shakspere, the Ulysses of the Odyssey has been called the most perfect character ever drawn; and is not Dido, though not so elaborate, yet to the full as consistent as Ulysses?

Let us

But I must close these rambling remarks. never forget in our estimate of Virgil that the Eneid is but a rough draft, and that he is the author of the Georgics. Obvious as they seem, both these facts are too commonly lost sight of. The first Eclogue is the key to all his writings. His sorrow over the wretched state of his country therein displayed, may be traced in all his subsequent productions; and perhaps impelled him to the composition of the Georgics, in order to direct the minds of his countrymen to those pursuits by which alone the horrors of war can be mitigated, and its effects assuaged. We see by a beautiful passage at the beginning of the Culex,& how very early he had regarded these things with a loving sympathy. Even if we gave up the Æneid altogether, enough would remain to place him in the first rank of poets; but the Eneid will maintain itself if

8 There seems no reason to doubt of the genuineness of this very pretty little piece, considering Martial's testimony concerning it. May I add, in taking leave of him, as an instance of Virgil's simple majesty, the celebrated line, "Aude, hospes, contemnere opes, et te quoque dignum Finge deo;" a line, of which Dryden says, "I am lost in admiration of it, I contemn the world when I think on it, and myself when I translate it." Dedication to the Eneid.

learning, height of thought, pathetic vehemence, natural description, tenderness, and dignity can give a poem life and power. In fine, let us be content to swear "per Maronem." Critics may decry, and philosophers may contemn him. But his fame remains unshaken. His own and all succeeding ages cannot have been wholly wrong. The granite rock remains fixed for ever, utterly regardless of the boiling sea of clouds which from time to time beat upon its head, for at the first blast of wind they are blown away and scattered into nothingness. Let us gladly give to Virgil a reverent admiration, and a worship not blind but reasoning: let us leave those to depreciate and despise who have not studied and who do not understand him.

LYCOPHRON OF CORINTH.

Concluded from page 96.

CANTO III.

Days and months have floated on,
And a year is come and gone,
While the restless world hath sped

With the living and the dead,

Driven by time's and nature's stress

Towards the goal of nothingness.

Why should we pause, why should we stay,

Questioning about decay,

Wringing hands, and shedding tears

O'er faded nurslings, which the shears

Of our relentless enemy

Have cut away to rot and die?