“Domus alta sub Ida,
Lyrnessi domus alta, solo Laurente sepulcrum,”
than in the
“Vivite felices, quibus est fortuna peracta
Jam sua,”
of the farewell to Helenus, or the manly fortitude of the hero’s admonition to his son:
“Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem,
Fortunam ex aliis”
—the pathos of the Æneid Prof. Conington has not been unsuccessful in preserving, as we might show in more quotations than we have room for. But for the expression of sublimity or intense emotion the octosyllabic verse is scarcely so apt; and in striving to do justice to the tragic grandeur of the second book, the passionate despair of the fourth, and the elevated majesty of the sixth, or even the splendid rhetoric of Juno and Turnus in the tenth and eleventh, Prof. Conington must often “have been made sensible,” as he says in his preface, “of the profound difference between the poetry of Scott and the poetry of Virgil.” In the battle-scenes, however, he takes his full revenge, and in his nimble-footed verse Turnus falls on with a fire and fury, or swift Camilla scours the plain with a grace and lightness, which most of his competitors toil after in vain. And in rendering those epigrammatic turns of phrase of which the Æneid is full, and which are so characteristic a feature of Virgil’s style, we know of no version which surpasses his. Take such examples as these:
“Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem”: