A conversation of this kind gives us no bad reason to expect something like literary criticism proper, something such as Coleridge has given us in the Biographia Literaria in reference to Wordsworth. But Symmachus for the time contents himself with undertaking to defend the Mantuan’s rhetoric, while the others overwhelm the impenitent Euangelus with a string of affirmations as to the poet’s proficiency in politics, law, augury, astrological and other philosophy, fidelity to the traditions of the Latin language, &c. But the justifications of these praises are deferred by the announcement of dinner, and for a time the conversation turns to lighter subjects—the famous string of stories for which Macrobius is most commonly quoted, including scandal about Princess Julia. Only in the third book, and then, it would seem, after a lacuna, is the detailed criticism of Virgil resumed.
There is no occasion to find fault with the quantity of it, for it fills, with a digression or two of the lighter kind, such as that on the dessert when it appears, four whole books, and some two hundred and forty pages in Eyssenhardt’s text. But the quality is, at any rate from our point of view, not quite so satisfactory. Much simply consists in citation of passages illustrating different “Figures.” A very large part, probably the largest, is mere and sheer quotation from Virgil himself, from Homer, and from other poets, Latin and Greek, with whom he is compared. And the comparison is carried on almost, if not quite entirely, on that most unsatisfying parallel-passage system which, in its abuse, has ever since been the delight of the pedantic criticaster—and the abomination of the true critic.
Of course the parallel passage, rightly handled, is invaluable—is practically indispensable to true literary criticism. The “Truth” passages of the Areopagitica and Halifax’s Character of a Trimmer, the “Death” passages of Raleigh, Marston, and Lee, the different harmonies which the motive “Ask me no more” has suggested to Carew and Tennyson, the accounts of the passing of Arthur or the parting of Lancelot and Guinevere in Malory, and in his probable verse original, are the constant, the inexhaustible, texts and exercises of the critical faculty. But I do not think it unfair to Macrobius to say that hardly in a single occasion does he make any such use of his parallels. And in literary criticism, properly so called, such parallels as
οὐδέ τις ἄλλη
φαίνετο γαιάων ἀλλ’ οὐρανὸς ἠδε θάλασσα,
and
“Nec jam amplius ulla
apparet tellus, cælum undique et undique pontus,”
are all but valueless. They merely show what might be demonstrated once for all in a page—what does not need demonstrating to any intelligent person who has read fifty lines of the two poets—that Virgil was an excellent translator, and was, rather more frequently than becomes a great poet, content simply to translate.
The rest of the matter lies, for the most part if not wholly, as much as this or more in the uttermost precincts of literary criticism proper. The illustrations of Virgil’s attention to that religious ritual and liturgical language which was so important at Rome are very curious, very interesting, very valuable but they scarcely touch the fringe of literature: a Roman Blackmore could be as prolific of them as the Roman Dryden.