W. Y. Sellar

“ The one poem is pervaded by the eager curiosity of the youthful prime of the world, attracting the most daring and energetic spirits to the discovery and peopling of new lands; the other by that more languid curiosity, awakened by the associations of the past,—by the longing for some change to break the routine of a too easy life,—and by the refined enjoyment of beauty, urging men to encounter some danger and more discomfort for the sake of visiting scenes famous in history, rich in natural charms, or in works of art, the inheritance from more creative times. ”

“ To a character of a more combative energy and power of resistance it would have been scarcely possible to have been unmoved by the spectacle of the final overthrow of ancient freedom, though that freedom had for a long time previously contributed little to human happiness. But the nobleness of Virgil’s nature is not the nobleness of those qualities which make men great in resistance to wrong, but the nobleness of a gentle and gracious spirit.
By no poet in any time has he been surpassed in devotion to his art. ”

“ The Iliad and the Odyssey are thus seen to be essentially epics of human life; the Aeneid is essentially the epic of national glory. The Iliad indeed is the noblest monument of the greatness, as it is of the genius, of the Greeks. And the Aeneid is much more than a monument of national glory. It is full of pathetic situations and stirring incidents which move our human compassion or kindle our sympathies with heroic action. ”

“ But the ideal of Virgil’s imagination, on its positive side, is more on the ordinary human level than that of lonely contemplation in accordance with which Lucretius lived and wrote. The Virgilian ideal, like that of Lucretius, recognised a heart at peace and independent of Fortune as a greater source of happiness than any external good. But this peace the one poet sought for in a superiority to the common beliefs of men; the other rather in a more trusting acceptance of them. Some other elements in Virgil’s ideal Lucretius too would have ranked among the supreme sources of human happiness. ”

“ The impulse both of poets and historians was to build up a commemorative monument; not, as among the Greeks, to present the spectacle of human life in its most animated, varied, and noble movements. To a Roman historian and to a Roman poet the character and the fate of individuals derived their chief interest from their bearing on the glory and fortune of the State. In the Greek epic, on the other hand, the interest in Achilles and Hector is much more vivid than that felt in the success of the Greek or Trojan cause. ”

“ Yet there is a kind of material force and greatness in Virgil’s conception, and a consistency not with ideal truth but with visible facts. The ideal truth of Sophocles—the idea of final purification and reconcilement of a noble human nature with the divine nature—is not manifest in the world: it is only in harmony with the best hopes and aspirations of men. Virgil’s idea was the shadow of the great fact apparent in his age,—the vast, inevitable, omnipotent, unsympathetic power of the Roman empire. ”

“ The thought of Rome as their head had become to the other Italian tribes their basis of union with one another and the main ground of their self-esteem in relation to other nations. To that self-esteem and sense of superiority Virgil was fully alive. He is not altogether free from the narrowness of national prejudice. He has not the largeness of soul which enables Homer, while never losing his sense of the superiority of the Greeks over the Trojans, yet to awaken feelings of admiration and of generous pity for Hector and Sarpedon, for Priam and Andromache. ”

“ Greek and modern works of imagination manifest a profounder feeling, a more varied contemplation of the mystery of life, than is compatible with the more realistic tendencies of Latin poetry. And though the representation of the outward world in Virgil is, in its serene beauty, suggestive of a secret unceasing life which appeals to the human spirit in its more tranquil moods, yet it does not move the mind to that profounder sense of an affinity between the soul of man and the soul of Nature which the great modern poets awaken. ”

“ It is remarkable that poets whose spirit is most purely religious,—both in the strength of conviction and the limitation of sympathy produced by the religious spirit—Aeschylus, Virgil, and Milton—seem to be moved to their most energetic creativeness by the idea of antagonism to the supreme will on the part of a human, or superhuman but limited will: and that they cannot help raising in their readers a glow of admiration as well as a sense of awe in their embodiment of this clash between finite and infinite power. ”

“ Yet perhaps it is doing no injustice to the genius of Virgil to say that his power in dealing with human life consists generally in conceiving some state of feeling, some pathetic or passionate situation, rather than in the creation and sustained development of living characters. How the great impersonations of poetry and prose fiction, which are more real to our imaginations than the personages of history or those whom we know in life, come into being, is a question which probably their authors themselves could not answer. ”

“ But there was another side to the temper of Augustus, which those admitted to his favour did well not to forget. If he could be a liberal patron and genial companion, he could also be a hard and pitiless master. Literature, like everything else, had to be at his command, obedient to his will, and in harmony with his policy. The fate of Gallus, that of Iulus Antonius, and that of Ovid, prove that neither brilliant genius nor past favours and familiarity could procure indulgence for whatever thwarted his purpose or offended his dignity. ”

“ The general superiority of Virgil’s art to that of Lucretius is equally apparent in his rhythm. The powerful movement of spirit which Lucretius feels in the presence of the sublimer spectacle of Nature and of the more solemn things of human life does indeed produce isolated effects of majestic speech and sonorously rhythmical cadence, swelling above the deep, strong, monotonous flow of his ordinary verse, which neither Virgil nor any other poet has surpassed. ”

“ The poets with whom our enquiry is concerned, and especially the two most illustrious of their number, thoroughly represent, as they helped to call forth, the spirit in which the Roman world passed through the great change from the Republic to the Empire. They give expression to the weariness and longing for rest, to the revival of Roman and Italian feeling, to the pride of empire, the charm of ancient memories and associations, the aspiration after a better life and a firmer faith. ”

“ It would be no exaggeration to say that the poems of Virgil, and especially the Aeneid, have contributed more than any other works of art in modern times, not only to stamp the impression of ancient Rome on the imagination, but to educate the sensibility to generous emotion as well as to literary beauty. There is probably no author, even at the present day, of whom some knowledge may be with more certainty assumed among cultivated people of every nation. ”

“ The course of time brings with it losses as well as gains in sensibility. Though the thoughts of the Latin poet may not help us to understand the spirit of our own era, they are a bond of union with the genius and culture of Europe in other times. If poetry ever exercises a healing and reconciling influence on life, the deep and tranquil charm of Virgil may prove some antidote to the excitement, the restlessness, the unsettlement of opinion in the present day. ”

“ Probably Virgil himself would not have cared to probe too deeply the state of half-belief in which his heart and mind realised the bright existence and kindly influence of beings consecrated to him by the most cherished associations of living art and the poetry of the past. Even Lucretius, while sternly rejecting all belief in their existence as absolutely incompatible with truth, feels from time to time attracted by their poetical charm. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The task of giving poetic life to the dry prose of Cato, to the dust of antiquarian learning, and to the rigid formalism of the old Roman ceremonial must have taxed the poet’s powers more than that of reawakening the interest in the old Homeric life. Virgil accomplishes this result through his power of living at the same time in the past and in the present; of feeling powerfully the associations of a remote antiquity, and the immediate action of all that was most impressive to thought and imagination in the age in which he lived. ”

“ A mature and mellow truth of sentiment, a conformity to the deeper experiences of life in every age, a fine humanity as well as a generous elevation of feeling, and some magical charm of music in his words, have enabled them to serve many minds in many ages as a symbol of some swelling thought or over-mastering emotion, the force and meaning of which they could scarcely define to themselves. ”

“ It was a true instinct of genius to feel that the only material suitable for a Roman epic was to be sought in the idea of the whole national life. That alone could supply the essential source of epic inspiration, the sympathy between the poet and those to whom his poem is addressed, by which the epic poet receives from, as well as gives back to, his audience. ”

“ In receiving the instruction of contemporary Greeks, based to a great extent on the Alexandrine learning, and in reproducing the materials, manner, and diction of Alexandrine poets, they must have become conscious of the greater freshness and vigour of their own genius, of the more vital force of their own language, of their grander national life, of the privilege of being Romans, and of the blessing of breathing Italian air. ”

“ The language of Homer and the language of Plato are equally fitted for the expression of the greatest thoughts and feelings, and for the common intercourse of men with one another. Neither that of Virgil nor of Cicero adapts itself easily to the lively play of emotion or to the rapid interchange of thought. The characters of Homer, like the characters of Shakspeare, reveal themselves in their complete individuality, as they act and re-act on one another in many changing moods of passion and affection. ”

“ Roman literature is more in harmony with eras of established order, of adherence to custom, of distinct but limited insight into the outward world and into human life, than to eras of expansive energy, of speculative change, of vague striving to attain some new ideal of duty or happiness. The genius of Greece exercised a powerful influence on several of the great English and German poets who lived in the new era. ”

“ The action of the poem, apart from its bearing on the destinies of the world, has a grandeur and dignity of its own. It is enacted on a great theatre, developes itself by incidents giving free play to the highest modes of human energy and passion, and through the agency of personages already renowned in legend and poetry. In that mythical age which the poet recalls to life no spectacle could be imagined more deserving to fix the attention of the world than the fall of Troy, the building of Carthage, and the first rude settlement on the hills of Rome. ”

“ And while his tenderness of feeling has made Virgil the familiar friend of one class of minds, his high magnanimous spirit has equally gained for him the admiration of another class. The words of no other poet, ancient or modern, have been so often heard in the great debates of the English Parliament, which more than any other deliberations among men have reproduced the dignified and masculine eloquence familiar to the Roman Senate. ”

“ The spell which Rome exercises over the imagination is quite distinct from the charm which the thought of Italy has for the hearts of men. The love of Italy was a sentiment as deeply rooted in Virgil’s nature as his pride in Rome. ”

“ Thus it is able to glorify the pomp and state of imperialism, just as it is able to glorify the charm to the senses or the attraction to the social nature afforded by the life of passion and pleasure. But, in the long run, the decay in the higher energies arising either from the loss of liberty or the loss of self-control is more fatal to the nobler forms of art and poetry than to any other products of intelligence. ”

“ It is said that the greatest soldier of modern times, in the enforced leisure of his last years, condescended to express a criticism, not indeed a favourable one, on Virgil’s skill as a tactician; and it is an element of novelty in the representation of the Aeneid that it suggests at least some image of the combined operations of modern warfare. But it is in the play which Virgil gives to the other human emotions of his personages, tempering and counteracting the blind rage of battle, that the poet of a more advanced era most conspicuously appears. ”