The fact was, that a more effectual and more delicate expedient for calling the attention of Augustus to this important subject could not be imagined; and in his power lay a great portion of the remedy. Of the character of the Georgics it is unnecessary to speak, because no reader of this memoir can be ignorant that this poem is the most elaborate and extraordinary instance of the power of genius in embellishing a most barren subject, which human wit has ever afforded. The commonest precepts of farming are delivered with an elegance which could scarcely be attained by a poet who should endeavour to clothe in verse the sublimest maxims of philosophy. Indeed, one consideration alone is sufficient to show us the excellence of Virgil in this particular—the uniform failure of his imitators. It is, however, much to be regretted that he was not free to choose his own subject, as, in all probability, he would have selected a theme better suited to his Muse. It is said that the poet, while employed on this immortal work, composed many verses every morning; but, by the evening, reduced them to a very few; so that he used to compare himself to a bear, which licks her shapeless offspring into form.1 According to the computation of Donatus, or the writer of the Life of Virgil ascribed to him, the poet must have been at Naples, after six years' attention to the Georgics, when Augustus undertook the expedition against Antony, which ended in the decisive victory of Actium. To the year following that engagement the completion of the Georgics is commonly assigned. At what time the Æneid was first projected, is uncertain; but Virgil, like our Milton, appears from a very early period to have had a strong desire of composing an epic poem, and, like him also, to have been long undecided on his subject. That he had attempted something of the kind, before the Eclogues were finished, is evident from these verses in his Silenus: Quùm canerem reges et prælia, Cynthius aurem Vellit, et admonuit,— and his ambition to produce some work of distinguished excellence is attested by the ardent exclamation in the opening of the IIId Georgic: Tentanda via est, quâ me quoque possim Tollere humo, victorque virûm volitare per ora. Even in his Culex, which he is said to have written at fifteen years of age, he gives promise of higher things: Posteriùs graviore sono tibi Musa loquetur Nostra, dabunt quùm securos mihi tempora fructûs 1 Donat. in Vit. Virg. ix.; Quinct. Lib. x. 3; Aul. Gell. xvii. 10. He is said to have begun a metrical chronicle of the Alban kings, but afterwards to have desisted in consequence of the harshness of the names. After the completion of the Georgics, or, perhaps, some short time before, he laid down the plan of a regular epic on the wanderings of Æneas, and the Roman destinies ; to form a sort of continuation of the Iliad to the Roman times, and to combine the features of that poem and the Odyssey. The idea was sufficiently noble, and the poem, long before its publication, or even conclusion, had obtained the very highest reputation. While Virgil was employed on the Eneid, "quo nullum Latio clarius exstat opus, Propertius wrote with generous admiration : Cedite, Romani scriptores! cedite, Graii! Nescio quid majus nascitur Iliade! 3 Augustus, while absent on his Cantabrian campaign, wrote repeatedly to Virgil for extracts from his poem in progress; but the poet declined, on the ground that his work was unworthy the perusal of the prince. The correspondence is recorded by Macrobius, in the Ist Book of the Saturnalia; but its genuineness is very questionable. The poet, on a subsequent occasion, recited to Augustus the IInd, IVth, and VIth Books of the Eneid: the noblest portions, perhaps, of the whole poem. At the verse ending "Tu Marcellus eris," Octavia, who was present, is said to have fainted, overcome by this laudatory mention of her deceased son, and to have presented Virgil with 10 sesterces for every verse of the passage. It would be palpably superfluous, in a sketch of this nature, to attempt an elaborate criticism on this great poem, familiar from their childhood to all 1 Donat. Vit. Virg. viii.; Serv. in Ecl. vi. 3 II. Eleg. xxxiv. 66. 2 Ovid, De Art. Am. iii. 337. persons of education. Most scholars are agreed that it wants the natural freshness and freedom of Homer, while it exhibits a degree of art, elegance, and majesty never attempted in any poem, save the Georgics of its author. It may, however, be pertinent to remark, that, smooth and uniform as its surface seems, it is really, in great measure, mosaic. That Virgil should have translated whole passages out of Homer, or even the Alexandrine writers, is no matter of censure: he and his contemporaries would have thought the absence of such “purpurei panni ” a defect; and the high authorities of Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, Camoens, and Milton ratify their opinion. But the same cannot be said of plagiarisms from Latin authors. How unscrupulously he appropriated whole verses of Ennius, of Lucretius, of Lucilius, of even his friend Varius, and of others, the curious reader may find in the VIth Book of Macrobius's Saturnalia, which will abundantly repay his perusal. His merit, therefore, in not interfering when others plagiarized his verses, and gained credit by them, is not so great as Donatus would have us believe. It may be right to add that the Eneid is a most conspicuous evidence of the learning, diligence, and antiquarian research of its illustrious author. ['Availing himself of the pride and superstition of the Roman people, which never abounded more than during the Augustan age, the poet traces the origin and establishment of the "eternal city" to those heroes and actions which had enough in them of what was human and ordinary to excite the sympathy of his countrymen; intermingled with persons and circumstances of an extraordinary and superhuman character, to awaken their admiration and their awe. No subject could have been more happily chosen. It has been admired too for its perfect unity of action; for while the episodes command the richest variety of description, they are always subordinated to the main object of the poem, which is to impress the divine authority under which Æneas first settled in Italy. The wrath of Juno, upon which the whole fate of Æneas seems at first suspended, is at once that of a woman and a goddess: the passion of Dido, and her general character, bring us nearer the present world; but the poet is continually introducing higher and more effectual influences, until, by the intervention of the father of gods and men, the Trojan name is to be continued in the Roman, and thus heaven and earth are appeased. Hinc genus, Ausonio mixtum quod sanguine surget, Eneid, xii. 841. 1 The portion bracketed is taken, with slight alterations, from the article Eneid, formerly printed in the lexicographical part of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana. The author is unknown to the present writer. The style, for sweetness and for beauty, occasionally, and in the author's finished passages, surpasses almost every other production of antiquity. "I see no foundation," says Dr. Blair, "for the opinion entertained by some critics that the Æneid is to be considered as an allegorical poem, which carries a constant reference to the character and reign of Augustus Cæsar; or that Virgil's main design in composing the Æneid was to reconcile the Romans to the government of that prince, who is supposed to be shadowed out under the character of Æneas. . . . . He had sufficient motives, as a poet, to determine him to the choice of his subject, from its being in itself both great and pleasing ; from its being suited to his genius, and its being attended with peculiar advantages for the full display of poetical talents." 1 The first six books of the Eneid are the most elaborate part of the poem. The imperfections of the Æneid are alleged to be want of originality in some of the principal scenes, and defectiveness in the exhibition of character. That of Dido is by far the most decided and complete. But Voltaire has justly observed upon the strange confusion of interest excited by the story of the wars in Italy, in which one is continually tempted to espouse the cause of Turnus rather than that of Æneas; and to which the exquisite scenes for displaying the tenderness of the poet in narrating the story of Lavinia, seem to have been his only temptation.] Virgil, having just revised and altered the Bucolics and Georgics, projected, with a view to giving the ultimate polish to the Eneid, which he had now completed, a tour in Greece and Asia. With a dread almost prophetic, and an ardour not disproportionate, Horace addressed the ship which bore his departing friend: Sic te Diva potens Cypri, Sic fratres Helenæ, lucida sidera, Obstrictis aliis, præter Iapyga, Navis, quæ tibi creditum Debes Virgilium, finibus Atticis Et serves animæ dimidium meæ ! 2 At Athens the poet met with Augustus, who was returning from Samos, where he had wintered after his Syrian expedition, to Rome. Changing his former intention, Virgil determined to accompany his patron. On a visit to Megara he was seized with a sudden indisposition, which his voyage increased, and he died a few days after his arrival at Brundusium, in his fifty-second year. 1 Lectures on Rhetoric, vol. iii. 2 Lib. i. Od. iii. 3 In a life of Virgil, prefixed to the Venetian edition of 1472, attributed to Servius, it is said that he died at Tarentum, on his way to Metapontum. According to Donatus he composed his epitaph, to be inscribed on his tomb at Naples, whither he desired his body to be conveyed for burial : Mantua me genuit; Calabri rapuere; tenct nunc The internal evidence militates forcibly against the ascription of these verses. Virgil was, however, buried (by order of Augustus, Donatus says,) in the road from Naples to Pulteoli, within two miles of the former place. On his death-bed he earnestly desired that his Æneid, as an imperfect work, might be burned, and even left in his will an injunction to that effect. Being, however, informed by the celebrated Varius and Plotius Tucca, (the same who is mentioned by Horace, in his journey to Brundusium,) that Augustus would not permit the destruction of his poem, he left it to them to publish, on condition that they would make no additions to the text, even for the purpose of supplying an unfinished verse. How far his executors were faithful to their trust must now be uncertain; several unfinished verses are extant in the Eneid; but the terminations of some complete lines render it not improbable that they have been supplied by another pen. The biography and the writings of Virgil have, unfortunately, fallen into the hands of ignorant grammarians and monastics, who have most miserably corrupted both. A sample of the absurd legends with which some of his biographers have disfigured his history shall be presently offered to the curious reader. The corruptions of his writings are chiefly to be found in his minor poems. Donatus, presenting us with some occasional verses, which internal and external evidences alike repudiate,1 mentions, as his acknowledged works, the Catalecta, the Moretum, the Priapeïa, the Epigrams, the Dirœ, and the Culex; and notices a poem called Etna, the genuineness of which he considers doubtful. This poem is to be found, illustrated with copious dissertations, and notices of the authors to whom it has been ascribed, in the fourth volume of Wernsdorf's Poëtæ Minores, where it is attributed to Lucilius Junior, a writer of the time of Nero. To these, Servius adds the Cirina, which is the same with the Ciris (a poem with some plausibility ascribed to Catullus,) and the Copa. The Catalecta are miscellaneous little poems, mostly in the style of 1 We may possibly except the epitaph on Balista, Virgil's schoolmaster, who was stoned for his robberies: Monte sub hoc lapidum tegitur Balista sepultus; The verses are not first-rate; but the author is represented as "puer adhuc ;" and the occasion was provocative of the feelings of a schoolboy. In Donatus's description of Balista, "Ludi gladiatorii magistrum," the word "gladiatorii" is not in the earliest editions. Phocas is the authority for making Balista schoolmaster to Virgil. De Vit. Virg. 41 seqq. |