The four verses which describe the fault of Orpheus, and the perception of it in hell, are unsurpassed:—
"Restitit; Eurydicenque suam jam luce sub ipsâ,
Immemor, heu! victusque animi respexit. Ibi omnis
Effusus labor: atque immitis rupta tyranni
Fœdera: terque fragor stagnis auditus Avernis."
Only note the growing pathos from the beloved name to the naming of the dread act. Eurydicen—suam—jam luce sub ipsâ—immemor—heu!—victusque animi—RESPEXIT. Five links! Look, too, what a long way on in the verse that sin of backward-looking has brought you. There shall hardly be found another verse in Virgil which has a pause of that magnitude at that advance, in the measure. It is a great stretching on of the thought against the law of music, which usually controls you to place the logical in coincidence with the musical—stop; but here you are urged on into the very midst, and beyond the midst, of the last dactyl—a musical sleight which must needs heighten that feeling, impressed by the grammatical structure, of a voluntary delay,—of unwillingness to utter the word fraught with inevitable death—that mortal RESPEXIT! After this, there is here no poured out toil—no clashing and rending—No! here is the deep note of victory—the proclamation sounding out from the abyss that the prize which was carried off is regained. Thrice down—down—as low as the pools of Avernus breaks out a peal—
"Terque fragor stagnis auditus Avernis."
This is the master with whom—and this the language, and this the measure with which—our translator competes—"imparibus armis."
"For, near the confines of ethereal light,
And longing for the glimmering of a sight,
The unwary lover cast his eyes behind,
Forgetful of the law, nor master of his mind.
Straight all his hopes exhaled in empty smoke,
And his long toils were forfeit for a look.
Three flashes of blue lightning gave the sign
Of covenants broke, three peals of thunder join."
The falling off—the failure at the end is deplorable indeed; yet Dryden recovers himself, and much of what follows is very fine.
The outline of the Iliad interests man's everyday heart. A wife carried off—the retaliation—an invasion or siege—a fair captive withheld from ransom—a displeased God sending a plague—a high prince wronged, offended, sullenly withdrawn to his tent—war prosperous and adverse—a dear friend lost and wailed—a general by his death reconciled—that death avenged—a dead son redeemed by his father, and mourned by his people,—To receive all this sufferance into the heart's depths, wants no specific association—no grounding historical knowledge. By virtue of those anthropical elements—which are, by a change of accidents, one to him and you, Homer, who happens to be a Greek, makes you one, and a Trojan too, or rather you are with him in the human regions, and that fact sufficeth for all your soul's desires. But, though no critic, and unversed in the laws of Epos, which by the way are only discoverable in the poem which he created in obedience to them, and that were first revealed to him from heaven by its inspiring genius—nevertheless, you are affected throughout all your being by those laws, and but by them could not have been made "greater than you know," by the Iliad. For the main action, or Achilleid, though you may not know it, has four great steps. From Achilles' wrong by Agamemnon to the death of Patroclus, is a movement of one tenor. From the death of Patroclus to the death of Hector, is an entirely new movement, though causally bound in the closest manner to that antecedent. The Games and Funeral of Patroclus is an independent action. The Restoration of Hector's body is a dependent, and necessarily springing action, having a certain subsistency within itself. To the whole the seat of moving power is the bosom of Achilles. All the parts have perfect inter-obligation. Cut away any one, and there would be not a perilous gash, but a detruncation fatal to the living frame. There is vital integrity from the beginning to the end. Nowhere can you stop till the great poet stops. Then you obtain rest—not glad rest; for say not that the Iliad ends happily. The spirit of war sits on the sepulchral mound of Hector expecting its prey, and the topmost towers of Ilion, in the gloom of doom, lower with the ruining that shall soon hide Mount Ida in a night of dust.
Forbid it, ye muses all! that we should whisper a word in dispraise of Maro. But for what it is, not for what it is not, we love the Æneid. The wafting over sea from an Asiatic to an Italian soil, and the setting there of the acorn, which by the decree of the Destinies shall, in distant ages, grow up into Rome, and the overshadowing Roman Empire—this majestic theme appeals to the reason, and to the reason taught in the history of the world. It is a deliberate, not an impassioning interest. And how dominionless over our sympathy has the glowing and tender-hearted Virgil, perhaps unavoidably, made the Hero, who impersonates his rational interest! How unlike is this Æneas to that Achilles, round whose young head, sacred to glory, Homer has gathered, as about one magnetic centre, his tearful, fiery, turbulent, majestic, and magnanimous humanities!
Confess we must, reluctantly, that Æneas chills the Æneid. It was not that Virgil had embraced a design greater than his poetical strength. But it was in more than one respect unfortunately, unpoetically, conditioned. That political foundation itself is to be made good by aggressive arms; and by tearing a betrothed and enamoured beautiful bride from the youthful and stately chivalrous prince, her lover, slain in fight against the invaders; whilst the poor girl is to be made over to a widower, of whose gallantry the most that we know is his ill-care of his wife, and his running away from his mistress.