Didactic poetry is of all kinds the least inviting. As its professed object is instruction, there is no reason why its lessons should be conveyed in poetical language—its purpose, could in fact, be better attained in prose. Pretending, therefore, to poetry, it demands great skill, elaborate finish and such graces and embellishments as will conceal its dry character, and recommend it to the reader’s attention.

The beauty of a didactic poem depends only partially on the just views and correct discrimination which it evinces, and principally on the beauty of the language, the picturesque force, and pleasing character of the descriptions, and the interest that is thrown into the episodes. In fact, the accessaries are the parts most admired, and extracts brought forward as specimens of this kind of poetry are invariably of this kind. Poetry naturally deals with the beauties and terrors of external nature—with the emotions and passions, whether of a tender or violent kind—the sober practical rules of life are scarcely within its sphere. True it is that when all literature was poetical, the precepts of moral and physical philosophy, and even the dry commands of laws and institutions, were embodied in a metrical form; but when literature divides itself into poetry and prose, the subjects appropriated to each other become spontaneously separate likewise. For this reason, the Georgics of Virgil especially display his ability as a poet, his correct taste the “limæ labor,” the pains which he took in polishing and correcting. In none of his poems can we form a better idea of the description which he gives of his patient toil, when he says, that “like the she-bear he brought his poetical offspring into shape by constantly licking them.”^[564] The majesty of the language elevates the subject, and divests it of so much of the homeliness as would be inappropriate to poetry, and yet at the same time it is not too grand or elevated.

The following criticism of Addison^[565] is by no means too favourable:—“I shall conclude this poem to be the most complete, elaborate, and finished piece of all antiquity. The Æneis is of a nobler kind; but the Georgic is more perfect in its kind. The Æneis has a greater variety of beauties in it; but those of the Georgic are more exquisite. In short, the Georgic has all the perfection that can be expected in a poem written by the greatest poet, in the flower of his age, when his invention was ready, his imagination warm, his judgment settled, and all his faculties in their full vigour and maturity.”

Rome offered a favourable field for a poet to undertake a poem on the labours and enjoyments of rural life. Agriculture was always there considered a liberal employment: tradition had adorned rustic manners with the attributes of simplicity and honesty, and divested them of the ideas of coarseness usually connected with them. The traditions of those ages of national freedom and greatness, to which the enthusiasm of the poet delighted to carry back the thoughts of his readers, had connected some of the noblest names of history with rural labours. Curius and Cincinnatus were called from the plough to defend and save their country; and after their task was performed they returned with delight to it again. Cato, the representative of the old and respected generation, and other illustrious men, had written on the pursuits and duties of rural life. Agriculture was never connected with ideas of debasing and illiberal gain, such as attached to trade and commerce.

The poet, moreover, had a model ready at hand, after which to construct his work. It was Greek, and therefore sure to be acceptable upon the recognised principles of taste. It described a species of rural life, hard, frugal, and industrious, very much like that led by the agriculturists of Italy. It painted a standard of morals, which even the licentious inhabitants of a luxurious capital could appreciate, though they had degenerated from it. The discriminating judgment of Virgil saw that the rural life of Italy could really be represented, in the same way in which Hesiod had painted that of Bœtia, and he wisely determined—

There exists, however, precisely that difference between the Georgics of Virgil and their model that might be expected. The Hesiodic poem belongs to a period when poetry was the accidental form—instruction the essential object; and, therefore, the teaching is systematic, precise, detailed, homely, sometimes coarse and unpolished. Virgil looks at his subject from the poetical point of view. His precepts are often put, not in a didactic but a descriptive form; they are unhesitatingly interrupted by digressions and episodes, more or less to the point; and out of a vast mass of materials such only are selected as are suitable to awaken the sensibilities.

The state of Italy also contributed to enlist a poet’s sympathies in favour of the rural classes, and to devote his pen to the patriotic task of reviving the old agricultural tastes. War had devastated the land; the peasant population had been fearfully thinned by military conscriptions and confiscation; wide districts had been depopulated and left destitute of cultivation. Instead of the sword being beat into a ploughshare and the spear into a pruning-hook, the Italian peasant had witnessed the contrary state of things. The poet laments the sad change which now disfigured the fair face of Italy:—

The credit of having proposed this subject to Virgil is given to his patron Mæcenas; and, to him, consequently, the Georgics are addressed; but the poet doubtless gladly adopted the suggestion. When and where it was commenced is uncertain, but the finishing stroke was put to it at Naples^[566] some time after the battle of Actium.^[567] Although the “Works and Days” of Hesiod is professedly his pattern, still he derives his materials from other sources. Aratus supplies him with his signs of the weather, and the writers de Re Rustica with his practical directions. His system is indeed perfectly Italian; so much so, that many of his rules may be traced in modern Italian husbandry, just as the descriptions of implements in Hesiod are frequently found to agree with those in use in modern Greece.

The first book treats of tillage, the second of orchards; the subject of the third, which is the noblest and most spirited of them, is the care of horses and cattle; and the fourth, which is the most pleasing and interesting, describes the natural instincts as well as the management of bees.

But the great merit of the Georgics consists in their varied digressions, interesting episodes, and sublime bursts of descriptive vigour, which are interspersed throughout the poem. To quote any of them would be unnecessary, as Virgil and his translations are in every one’s hands. It will be sufficient to enumerate some of the most striking. These are—

I.

The Origin of Agriculture, G. I. 125.

II.

The Storm in Harvest, I. 316.

III.

The Signs of the Weather, I. 351.

IV.

The Prodigies at the Death of Julius Cæsar, I. 466.

V.

The Battle of Pharsalia, I. 489.

VI.

The Panegyric on Italy, II. 136.

VII.

The Praises of a Country Life, II. 458.

VIII.

The Horse and Chariot Race, III. 103.

IX.

The Description of Winter in Scythia, III. 349.

X.

The Murrain of Cattle, III. 478.

XI.

The Battle of the Bees, IV. 67.

XII.

The Story of Aristæus, IV. 317.

XIII.

The Legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, IV. 453.

Roman poetry was more generally understood and more diligently studied in the most polished days of English literature, than the yet scarcely discovered stores of Greek learning. Want of originality was not considered a blemish in an age the taste of which, notwithstanding all its merits, was very artificial; whilst the exquisite polish and elegance which constitute the charm of Latin poetry, recommended it both for admiration and imitation. Hence English poets have been deeply indebted to the Romans for their most happy thoughts, and our native literature is largely imbued with a Virgilian and Horatian spirit. This circumstance adds an especial interest to a survey of Roman literature as the fountain from which welled forth so many of the streams that have fertilized our poetry.

The Georgics have been frequently taken as a model for imitation, and our descriptive poets have drawn largely from this source. Warton^[568] considered Philips’ “Cyder” the happiest imitation; “The Seasons” of our greatest descriptive poet, Thomson, is a thoroughly Virgilian poem. Many striking instances of Virgilian taste might be adduced, especially the thunder-storm in “Summer,” and the praises of Great Britain, in “Autumn.”

From the letter already quoted as preserved by Macrobius, it is clear that the Æneid was commenced when Augustus was in Spain,^[569] that it occupied the whole of Virgil’s subsequent life, and was not sufficiently corrected to satisfy his own fastidious taste when he died. Augustus intrusted its publication to Varius and Tucca, with strict instructions to abstain from interpolation. They are said to have transposed the second and third books, and to have omitted twenty-two lines^[570] as being contradictory to another passage respecting Helen in the sixth book.^[571] Hence in many early manuscripts these verses are wanting.

The idea and plan of the Æneid are derived from the Homeric poems. As the wrath of Achilles is the mainspring of all the events in the Iliad, so on the anger of the offended Juno the unity of the Æneid depends, and with it all the incidents are connected. Many of the most splendid passages, picturesque images, and forcible epithets are imitations or even translations from the Iliad and Odyssey. The war with Turnus owes its grandeur and its interest to the Iliad—the wanderings of Æneas, their wild and romantic adventures to the Odyssey. Virgil’s battles, though not to be compared in point of vigour with those of Homer, shine with a reflected light. His Necyia is a copy of that in the Odyssey. His similes are most of them suggested by those favourite embellishments of Homer. The shield of Æneas^[572] is an imitation of that of Achilles. The storm and the speech of Æneas^[573] are almost translations from the Odyssey.^[574]

The thoughts thus borrowed from the great heroic poems of Greece, Virgil interwove with that ingenuity which distinguishes the Augustan school by means of the double character in which he represented his hero. The narrative of his perils by sea and land were enriched by the marvellous incidents of the Odyssey; his wars which occupy the latter books had their prototype in the Iliad. Greek tragedy, also, which depicted so frequently the subsequent fortunes of the Greek chieftains,^[575]—the numerous translations which had employed the genius of Ennius, Attius, and Pacuvius—were a rich mine of poetic wealth. The second book, which is almost too crowded with a rapid succession of pathetic incidents, derived its interesting details—the untimely fate of Astyanax, the loss of Creusa, the story of Sinon, the legend of the wooden horse, the death of the aged Priam, the subsequent fortunes of Helen—from two Cyclic poems, the Sack of Troy and the little Iliad of Arctinus. For the legend of Laocoon he was indebted to the Alexandrian poet, Euphorion. The class of Cyclic poems entitled the νοστοι suggested much of the third book, especially the stories of Pyrrhus, Helenus, and Andromache. The fourth drew its fairy enchantments partly from Homer’s Calypso, partly from the love adventures of Jason, Medea, and Hypsypile in the Argonautica of the Alexandrian poet, Apollonius Rhodius, which had been introduced to the Romans by the translation of Varro.

The sixth is suggested by the eleventh book of the Odyssey and the descent of Theseus in search of Pirithous in the Hesiodic poems. But notwithstanding the force and originality—the vivid word-painting which adorns this book—it is far inferior to the conceptions which Greek genius formed of the unseen world. In the Æneid the legends of the world of spirits seem but vulgar marvels and popular illusions. Tartarus and Elysium are too palpable and material to be believed; their distinctness dispels the enchantment which they were intended to produce; it is daylight instead of dim shadow. We miss the outlines, which seem gigantic from their dim and shadowy nature, the appalling grandeur to which no one since Æschylus ever attained, except the great Italian poet who has never since been equalled.

To this rich store of Greek learning Italy contributed her native legends. The adventures of Æneas in Italy—the prophecy, of which the fulfilment was discovered by Iulus—the pregnant white sow—the story of the Sibyl—the sylph-like Camilla—were native lays amalgamated with the Greek legend of Troy. Macrobius,^[576] in three elaborate chapters, has shown that Virgil was deeply indebted to the old Latin poets. In the first he quotes more than seventy parallel turns of expression from Ennius, Pacuvius, Attius, Nævius, Lucilius, Lucretius, Catullus, and Varius, consisting of whole or half lines. In the second he enumerates twenty-six longer passages, which Virgil has imitated from the poems of Ennius, Attius, Lucretius, and Varius, amongst which are portions of “The Praises of Rural Life,” and of “The Pestilence.”^[577] In the third he mentions a few (amongst them, for example, the well-known description of the horse^[578]) which were taken by Virgil from the old Roman poets, having been first adopted by them from the Homeric poems. The following passages are a few of these examples of what would in modern times be considered plagiarisms, but which the ancients admitted without reluctance:—

The variety of incidents, the consummate skill in the arrangement of them, the interest which pervades both the plot and the episodes, fully compensate for the want of originality—a defect of which none but learned readers would be aware. What sweeter specimens can be found of tender pathos than the legend of Camilla, and the episode of Nisus and Euryalus? Where is the turbulence of uncurbed passions united with womanly unselfish fondness, and queen-like generosity, painted with a more masterly hand than in the character of Dido? Where, even in the Iliad, are characters better sustained and more happily contrasted than the weak Latinus, the soldier-like Turnus, the simple-minded Evander, the feminine and retiring Lavinia, the barbarian Mezentius, who to the savageness of a wild beast joined the natural instinct, which warmed with the strongest affection for his son. The only character of which the conception is somewhat unsatisfactory is that of the hero himself: Æneas, notwithstanding his many virtues, fails of commanding the reader’s sympathy or admiration. He is full of faith in the providence of God, submits himself with entire resignation to His divine will—is brave, patient, dutiful—but he is cold and heartless, and, if the expression is allowable, unchivalrous. In his war with Turnus, he is so decidedly in the wrong, and the character of his injured adversary shines with such lustre, and is adorned with such gallantry, that one is inclined to transfer to him the interest and sympathy which ought to be felt for the hero alone. This is undoubtedly a fault, but it is counterbalanced by innumerable excellences.

In personification, nothing is finer than Virgil’s portraiture of Fame, except perhaps Spenser’s Despair. In description, the same genius which shone forth in the Georgics, embellishes the Æneid also; and both the objects and the phenomena of nature are represented in language equally vivid and striking.

Notwithstanding the question has been much discussed, it is most probable that the opinion of Pope was correct respecting the political object of the Æneid. He affirmed that it was as much a party-piece as Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel; that its primary object was to increase the popularity of Augustus; its secondary one to flatter the vanity of his countrymen by the splendour and antiquity of their origin. Augustus is evidently typified under the character of Æneas: both were cautious and wise in council,^[579] both were free from the perturbations of passion; they were cold, unfeeling, and uninteresting. Their wisdom and their policy were calculating and worldly-minded. Augustus was conscious, as his last words show, that he was acting a part; and the contrast between the sentiments and conduct of Æneas, wherever the warm impulses of affection might be supposed to have sway, likewise create an impression of insincerity. The characteristic virtue which adorns the hero of the Æneid, as the epithet “Pius” so constantly applied to him implies, was filial piety; and there was no virtue which Augustus more ostentatiously put forward than dutiful affection to Julius Cæsar who had adopted him.

Other characters which are grouped around the central figure are allegorical likewise—Cleopatra is boldly sketched as Dido, the passionate victim of unrequited love. Both displayed the noble, generous qualities, and at the same time the uncontrolled self-will of a woman, who neither had nor would acknowledge any master except the object of her affections: the fortunes of both were similar, for their brothers had become their bitterest enemies, and the fate of both alike was suicide.

Turnus, whose character, as has been already stated, is far more chivalrous and attractive than that of Æneas, probably represented the popular Antony; and as the latter violated the peace ratified at Brundisium and Tarentum, so the former is represented as treacherous to his engagements with Æneas. It has even been thought, and the view has been supported by many ingenious arguments, that Iapis is a portrait of the physician of Augustus.^[580]

Virgil is especially skilful in that species of imitation which consists in the appropriate choice of words, and the assimilation of the sound to the sense. A series of dactyles expresses the rapid speed of horses, and the still more rapid flight of time:—

Dignity and majesty are represented by an unusual use of spondees:—

Accelerated motion by a corresponding change of metre:—

Effort by a hiatus:—

Abruptness, or the fall of a heavy body, by a monosyllable:—

Many other examples might be adduced^[581] of that which, if it were an artifice, would be a very pleasing one, which rather proceeds from the natural impulses of a lively fancy and a delicately-attuned ear.

Dunlop has well observed, that Virgil’s descriptions are more like landscape-painting than any by his predecessors, whether Greek or Roman, and that it is a remarkable fact that landscape-painting was first introduced in his time. Pliny, in his Natural History,^[582] informs us that Ludius, who flourished in the lifetime of Augustus, invented the most delightful style of painting, compositions introducing porticoes, gardens, groves, hills, fish-ponds, rivers, and other pleasing objects, enlivened by carriages, animals, and figures. Thus, perhaps, art inspired poetry.

No one has ever attempted to disparage the reputation of Virgil as holding the highest rank amongst Roman poets, except the Emperor Caligula, J. Markland, and the great historian Niebuhr. The latter does not hesitate to say that the flourishing period of Roman poetry ceased about the time of the deaths of Cæsar and Cicero.^[583] Doubtless Roman national poetry then ceased, and was succeeded by the new era of Greek taste; but still the poems of the new school were equally majestic and pathetic, and though less natural, owed to their Greek originals incomparably greater polish, grace and sweetness.

It is difficult to understand the low opinion which Niebuhr entertained of Virgil, and the superiority which he attributes to Catullus. He not only declares that he is opposed to the adoration with which the later Romans regarded him, but he denies his fertility of genius and inventive powers. Although he acknowledges that the Æneid contains many exquisite passages, he pronounces it a complete failure, an unhappy idea from beginning to end. It is evident that he looked at the Æneid with the eye of an historian, and that his objections to it were entirely of an historical character.

Wrapped up in Roman nationality and Italian traditions, he did not forgive Virgil for adulterating this pure source of antiquarian information with Greek legends. He assumes, correctly enough, that an epic poem, in order to be successful, must be a living narrative of events known and interesting to the mass of a nation, and at the same time confesses that, whilst the ancient Italian traditions had already fallen into oblivion, Homer was at that time better known than Nævius. Surely, then, if Virgil had drawn from Italian sources exclusively, he would have omitted much that would have added interest to his poem in the opinion of his hearers, and would not have complied with the epic conditions which Niebuhr himself lays down. Besides, if the traditions of Nævius were Italian, were not many of the Greek and Italian traditions which form the framework of the Æneid identical? Nævius must have drawn largely from the Cyclic poems; and Niebuhr allows that Virgil copied these parts of his poem from Nævius.^[584] He asserts his conviction that Virgil’s shield of Æneas had its model in Nævius, in whose poem Æneas or some other hero had a shield representing the wars of the giants; and yet no one could doubt that the shield of Nævius must have been suggested by the Homeric and Hesiodic poems. Servius also believed that Virgil borrowed from the poem of Nævius the plan of the early books of the Æneid.^[585]

Some of Virgil’s minor poems are undoubtedly very beautiful;^[586] but it is absurd to say that even the greatest elegance in fugitive pieces of such a stamp can outshine the noble and sublime passages interwoven throughout the whole structure of the Æneid. The dispraise of Niebuhr is as exaggerated as the fulsome compliment paid by Propertius to the genius of his fellow-countryman:—