Virginius

“ So ‘we came, saw, and were satisfied.’—Virginius is a good play:—we repeat it. It is a real tragedy; a sound historical painting. Mr. Knowles has taken the facts as he found them, and expressed the feelings that would naturally arise out of the occasion. Strange to say, in this age of poetical egotism, the author, in writing his play, has been thinking of Virginius and his daughter, more than of himself! This is the true imagination, to put yourself in the place of others, and to feel and speak for them. Our unpretending poet travels along the high road of nature and the human heart ”

“ After the death of Otho, the soldiers again offered the throne to Virginius, but he again refused it. Considering themselves slighted, they drew their swords upon him, and he only saved himself from their hands by making his escape through the back of the tent. But the soldiers never forgave the fancied insult. Under Vitellius, during a military disturbance at Ticinum, one of Virginius’s slaves was arrested and charged with the design of murdering the emperor. Virginius was accused of being implicated in the conspiracy, and his death was loudly demanded by the soldiers. ”

“ That others should take care of themselves and of their children. To Virginius, uttering these words in a loud voice, the multitude responded with a shout, "that they would not be backward, with respect either to his wrongs or their own liberty. ”

“ When it was decided to elect decemvirs for another year, he who had formerly been looked upon as the champion of the aristocracy, suddenly came forward as the friend of the people, and was himself re-elected together with several plebeians. But no sooner was the new body in office, than it treated both patricians and plebeians with equal violence, and refused to resign at the end of the year. Matters were brought to a crisis by the affair of Virginia. Enamoured of the beautiful daughter of the plebeian centurion Virginius, Claudius attempted to seize her by an abuse of justice. ”

“ In no writers is this quality more conspicuous than in Cicero and in Lucretius. In Lucretius this feeling inspires his passionate revolt against the ancient religions. The humane feeling of Virgil, on the other hand, is in complete harmony with his religious belief. His word pietas, as is observed by M. Sainte-Beuve, is the equivalent both of our ‘piety’ and of our ‘pity.’ The Power above man is regarded by him not as an unreal phantom created by our fears, but as the source and sanction of justice and mercy, of good will and good faith among men. ”

“ Virgil—Publius Vergilius Maro—was born at Andes near Mantua, in the year 70 B.C. His life was uneventful, though he lived in stirring times, and he passed by far the greater part of it in reading his books and writing his poems, undisturbed by the fierce civil strife which continued to rage throughout the Roman Empire, until Octavian, who afterwards became the Emperor Augustus, defeated Antony at the battle of Actium. Though his father was a man of humble origin, Virgil received an excellent education, first at Cremona and Milan, and afterwards at Rome. ”

“ He was also by universal acknowledgment the greatest literary artist whom Rome produced. Virgil had a more catholic sympathy with the whole range of Greek poetry, from Homer and Hesiod to Theocritus and the Alexandrians, than any one else at any period of Roman literature. The effort of the preceding generation to attain to beauty of form and finish of artistic execution found in him, at the most susceptible period of his life, a ready recipient of its influence. ”

“ Juvenal, when contrasting the comfort which enabled Virgil to do justice to his genius with the poverty of the poets of his own time, selects as an instance of his imaginative power the passage in the Seventh Book of the Aeneid which describes the terror inspired by Allecto. And certainly the whole description of the appearance of the Fury on earth, from the time when she enters the palace of Latinus till she disappears among the woods which add to the gloom of the black torrent of Amsanctus, is full of energy. ”

“ It is that miserable sect of Christians. I cannot bear them. Here is thy son, Martius, acting the fool, stubborn, wilful, and now Virgilia must show the same traits. It is past endurance. Something must be done to break this charm whatever it is, that controls them so. I wish that every Christian in the land would be destroyed by Jupiter. He can do it if he wishes. ”

“ Since Virgil was afterwards a Bishop and a Saint, we may fairly conclude that he died in the full flower of his orthodox reputation. It has been supposed—and it seems probable—that Virgil maintained that the earth is peopled all the way round, so that under some spots there are antipodes; that his contemporaries, with very dim ideas about the roundness of the earth, and most of them with none at all, interpreted him as putting another earth under ours—turned the other way, probably, like the second piece of bread-and-butter in a sandwich, with a sun and moon of its own. ”

“ The processes of his mind are characterised by continuity, consistency, and a kind of gathering [383] intensity of movement. The periods of Virgil delight us by their intricate harmony; those of Lucretius impress us by their continuous and hurrying impetus. The long drawn out charm of the one is indicative of the deep love which induced him to linger over every detail of his subject: the force and grandeur of the other are the outward signs of the inward wonder and enthusiasm by which his spirit was borne rapidly along. Virgil's movement displays the majesty of grace and serenity ”

“ His forthcoming history of Rome should be of unusual interest. My only objection to his portrait of Virgil would be that he has concerned himself almost entirely with the events of Virgil's public life and the development of his ideas; he makes no psychological portrait; you hear nothing of Virgil's emotional life—about which his poetry suggests some curious speculations. I suppose someone will presently psycho-analyse him and poor pius Aeneas and his dreams will stand naked in the lecture-room.
But in the meantime, what is of prime importance is to maintain Virgil's reputation as a poet. ”

“ Those whose works have been preserved are only a few out of a larger circle who worked each in his own province of art, and listened to and criticised the works of their [pg 50] friends. Of the poets belonging to this circle whose works have not reached us, Varius, the older contemporary and life-long friend of Virgil, first acquired distinction as a writer of that kind of epic peculiar to Rome which treated of contemporary subjects and was dedicated to the personal glory of some great man. ”

“ And upon account of this Piece, the most Learn'd of the Latin Fathers calls Virgil a Christian, even before Christianity. Cicero takes notice of it in his Books of Divination, and Virgil probably had put it in Verse a considerable time before the Edition of his Pastorals. Nor does he appropriate it to Pollio, or his Son, but Complementally dates it from his Consulship. And therefore some one who had not so kind thoughts of Mr. F. as I, would be inclin'd to think him as bad a Catholick as Critick in this place. ”

“ None of the Latin poets your fellows, or none but Virgil, seem to me to have known so well as you, Horace, how happy and fortunate a thing it was to be born in Italy. You do not say so, like your Virgil, in one splendid passage, numbering the glories of the land as a lover might count the perfections of his mistress. But the sentiment is ever in your heart and often on your lips. ”

“ Rome stands behind all that Virgil wrote as a passion profoundly felt. He conceived that the ideals of his civilization were a proper subject for poetry and that a life-time devoted to setting them to verse, though it involved the most interminable patience and the most exacting labour, was a life-time well spent.—Ah, Virgil, I am afraid that all Professor Mackail's eloquence will never sell you to "the world of to-day": for one thing you took life too slowly and for another you took poetry too seriously. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the correct elegance of Virgil’s manner, and his singular talent in working up an image, by just degrees, to the precise point of perfection, may satisfy us, that he had his reason for going on, where we might expect him to stop; which reason can be no other, than that the seven hills were necessary to complete his description of the imperial city195. To an ancient Roman, the circumstance of its situation was, of all others, the most august and characteristic; and Rome itself was not Rome, till it was contemplated under this idea. ”

“ To the people of the Dark Ages Virgil was much more a man of magic than a poet.
HOW VIRGILIUS WAS SET TO SCHOOL.
As Virgilius was born, then the town of Rome quaked and trembled: and in his youth he was wise and subtle, and was put to school at Tolentin, where he studied diligently, for he was of great understanding. Upon a time the scholars had licence to go to play and sport them in the fields after the usance of the old time ”

“ And methinks, I see the Reader already uneasie at this Part of Virgil, counting the Pages, and posting to the Æneis; so delightful an entertainment is the very Relation of publick Mischief, and slaughter, now become to Mankind: and yet Virgil pass'd a much different judgment on his own Works: He valu'd most this part, and his Georgics, and depended upon them for his Reputation with Posterity: But Censures himself in one of his Letters to Augustus, for medling with Heroics, the Invention of a degenerating Age. ”

“ But fierce Æneas on his foeman pressed.
His tree-like spear he poises for the fray,
And pours the pent-up fury of his breast.
"Why stay'st thou, Turnus? Wherefore this delay?
Fierce arms, not swiftness, must decide the day.
Shift as thou wilt, and every shape assume;
Exhaust thy courage and thy craft, and pray
For wings to soar with, or in earth's dark womb 1027 Sink low thy recreant head, and hide thee from thy doom."
CXVI . Thus he; but Turnus shook his head, and said,
"Ruffian! thy threats are but as empty sound;
They daunt not Turnus; 'tis the gods I dread,
And Jove my enemy." ”

“ Knoweth the sound, the promised help, his Goddess-mother's meed.
He saith: "Yea, verily, O host, to ask is little need
What hap this portent draweth on: the Gods will have me wend;
The God that made me promised erst such heavenly signs to send
If war were toward; and through the sky she promised to bear down
Arms Vulcan-fashioned for my need.
Woe's me for poor Laurentium's folk! what death, what bloody graves!
—Ah, Turnus, thou shalt pay it me!—how many 'neath thy waves,
O Father Tiber, shalt thou roll the shields and helms of men,
And bodies of the mighty ones! ”

“ But it is indeed taken from neither, but from that Learn'd, unfortunate Poet Apollonius Rhodius, to whom Virgil is more indebted, than to any other Greek Writer, excepting Homer. The Reader will be satisfied of this, if he consult that Author in his own Language, for the Translation is a great deal more obscure than the Original.
Whilst Virgil thus enjoy'd the sweets of a Learn'd Privacy, the Troubles of Italy cut off his little Subsistance; but by a strange turn of Human Affairs, which ought to keep good Men from ever despairing ”

“ He was drawn by the power of genius from the obscure shade of a peasant’s life, to be the favoured poet and friend of an emperor. In his verse the native majesty of the language appears more perfectly tempered, than in any other, with grace and sweetness. Virgil is the most pathetic of the Roman poets: the heart speaks in his verse. He has the soul of the beautiful, like an earlier Raffaelle in song. His poem on Husbandry—the most finished work of his muse—is written with a cleaving of soul to the native theme. ”

“ The spirit which inspires the Aeneid is wholly Roman, and the deep faith in the National Destiny, and stern sense of duty to which it gives expression, its profoundly religious character and stately and melodious verse, have always caused it to be recognized as the loftiest expression of the dignity and greatness of Rome at her best. But the sympathetic reader will be conscious of a deeper and more abiding charm in the poetry of Virgil. ”

“ The year of his birth is the first year of that decade in which many of the men most eminent in the Augustan era were born. Virgil was a little younger than Pollio and Varius; a little older than Gallus, Agrippa, Horace, and Augustus, and perhaps Maecenas. All of these men obtained high distinction, and took their place as leaders of their age in action or literature in early youth. The distinction of Virgil was acquired at a somewhat later period of life than that of any of his illustrious contemporaries. ”

“ This edict being promulgated, he called Virgil (57) to him and said, "Good friend, I have established a certain law; but as offences may frequently be committed without being discovered by the ministers of justice, we desire you to frame some curious piece of art, which may reveal to us every transgressor of the law." Virgil acquiesced, and immediately commenced his operations. He constructed a magic statue, and caused it to be erected in the midst of the city. ”