The poems which first established his reputation were his Bucolics or Eclogues. This latter title was given them in later times, implying either that they were selections from a greater number of poems or imitations of passages selected from the works of Greek poets.[[551]]
The characters in Virgil’s Bucolics are Italians, in all their sentiments and feelings, acting the unreal and assumed part of Sicilian shepherds. In fact, the Italians never possessed the elements of pastoral life, and therefore could not naturally furnish the poet with originals and models from which to draw his portraits and characters. They were a simple people, but their simplicity was rather Ascræan than Arcadian: the domestic habits and virtues of rural life in Italy were not unlike those of Bœtia, as described by Hesiod. Virgil, therefore, wisely took him as his model, and produced a more natural picture of Italian manners in his Georgics than in his Eclogues. The denizens of the little towns had the manners and habits of municipal life: their cultivation was the artificial refinement of town life, and not the natural sentiments of the contemplative shepherd. Those who lived in the country were hard-working, simple-minded peasants, who gained their livelihood by the sweat of their brow—honest, plain-spoken, rough-mannered, and without a grain of sentimentality. Pastoral poetry owes its origin to, and is fostered by, solitude; its most beautiful passages are of a meditative cast. The shepherd beguiles his loneliness by communing with his own thoughts. His sorrows are not the hard struggles of life, but often self-created and imaginary, or at least exaggerated. When represented as Virgil represents them in his Bucolics, they are in masquerade, and the drama in which they form the characters is of an allegorical kind. The connexion with Italy is rather of an historical than a moral nature: we meet with numerous allusions to contemporary events, but not with exact descriptions of Italian characters and manners. As, therefore, we cannot realize the descriptions, we can neither sympathize nor admire. Menalcas and Corydon and Alexis, and the rest, are as much out of place as the gentlemen and ladies in the garb of shepherds and shepherdesses in English family pictures. Even the scenery is Sicilian, and does not truthfully describe the tame neighbourhood of Mantua. So long as it is remembered that they are imitations of the Syracusan poet, we miss their nationality, and see at once that they are untruthful and out of keeping; and Virgil suffers in our estimation because we naturally compare him with the original whom he professes to imitate, and we cannot but be aware of his inferiority: but if we can once divest ourselves of the idea of the outward form which he has chosen to adopt, and forget the personality of the characters, we can feel for the wretched outcast, exiled from a happy though humble home, and be touched by the simple narrative of their disappointed loves and child-like woes; can appreciate the delicately-veiled compliments paid by the poet to his patron; can enjoy the inventive genius and poetical power which they display; and can be elevated by the exalted sentiments which they sometimes breathe. We feel that it is all an illusion; but we willingly permit ourselves to be transported from the matter-of-fact realities of a hard and prosaic world.
Virgil in his Eclogues was too much cramped by following his Greek original to present us with true pictures of Italian country life; although the criticism of his friend Horace with justice attributes to his rural pieces delicacy of touch and graceful wit:—
molle atque facetum
Virgilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Camœnæ.[[552]]
The Idylls of Theocritus are transfusions into appropriate Greek of old popular Sicilian legends which had taken root in the country, and had become part and parcel of the national character. His subjects are not always strictly pastoral, for his characters are sometimes reapers and fishermen.[[553]] His language, characters, sentiments, scenery, habits, incidents, are all Sicilian, and therefore all are in perfect harmony. The characters of Theocritus have a specific individuality, and are therefore different from each other; those of Virgil are generic, the representatives of a class, and therefore there is little or no variety. But still Virgil’s defects do not detract much from the enjoyment experienced in reading his Bucolic poetry. The Aminta of Tasso, the Pastor Fido of Guarini, the Calendar of Spenser, the Lycidas of Milton, the Perdita of Shakspeare, the pastorals of Drayton, Drummond, and Florian, are equally open to objection, and yet who does not admire their beauties?
The Bucolics may be arranged in two classes. Those in the first are composed entirely after the Greek model, and contain the following poems:—
I. The first, in which the poet, representing himself under the character of Tityrus, expresses his gratitude for the restoration of his property, whilst Melibœus, as an exiled Mantuan, bewails his harder fortune.
II. The second, which is generally supposed to have been the first pastoral written by him, and is principally copied from the Cyclops of Theocritus.
III. The third is an imitation of the fourth and fifth Idylls of Theocritus, and as well as the seventh, represent improvisatorial trials of musical skill between shepherds.