is apologetic in tone; and, moreover, Hesiod can hardly be regarded as a typical Greek. There seems to be no word in the Greek language equivalent to the grave Roman word ‘industria.’ Perhaps it is owing to the disesteem in which labour was held by Greek writers that industry is scarcely ranked among virtues, nor idleness among vices, even by modern moralists. When long after the time of Homer a new poet arose in Greece, appealing to a great popular sentiment, it was in their passion for the great public games that he found the point of contact with the hearts of his countrymen. The Romans, on the other hand, show a great capacity for labour in every field of exertion,—in war and the government of men, in law and literature, in business transactions, in the construction of vast works of utility, and in cultivating the land. And of these, next to war and government, the last was most congenial [pg 268]to the national mind. The land was to the Romans the chief field of their industry and the original source of their wealth, as the sea was the scene of occupation and adventure to the Greeks, and, through the outlet which it gave to the results of their artistic ingenuity, the great source of their prosperity. The Odyssey is a poem inspired, in a great degree, by the impulse which first sent the Greek nation forth on its career of maritime and colonising enterprise. The Georgics are inspired by that impulse which first started the Latin race on its career of conquest, and which continued to animate the struggle with the reluctant forces of Nature, as it had animated the struggle with the other races of Italy for the possession of the soil.
4. Again, we find that the poem is pervaded by the poetical feeling of Nature. And Virgil, more than any other poet, presents that aspect of Nature in which the outward world appeared to the educated Italian mind. The personality and individual life attributed to natural objects, such as trees, rivers, winds, etc., belongs to a stage of conception between the Greek anthropomorphism and the recognition by the imagination of universal law and interdependence of phenomena. Modern poets consciously personify natural objects with more boldness and varied sympathy than Virgil. His conception of the life and personal attributes of natural objects appears to be less a conscious creative effort of the imagination, than an unconscious impression from outward things; an impression produced in a state of passive contemplation, rather than of active adventure; and an impression produced by qualities of a serene and tender beauty, rather than by those of a bolder or sublimer aspect. In all these respects Virgil represents a stage in the culture of the imagination between that of the early Greek poets and artists, and that of the most imaginative poets and painters of modern times. The familiar beauty of the outward world, as it was felt by a Roman or Italian, was expressed in the Latin word ‘amoenum.’ Thus Horace describes his retreat among the Sabine hills, as not only dear to him personally, but as beautiful in itself:—
Hae latebrae dulces, etiam, si credis, amoenae[411].
And it is to the attributes summed up in that word that Virgil imparts the ideal life of the imagination.
But not only is the feeling of Nature in the Georgics characteristic of the highest culture of the Italian mind, but the spectacle of Nature,—
‘The outward shows of sky and earth’
brought before us,—is that which still delights the eye and moves the imagination in the various districts of Italy. The description of Spring at Georg. ii. 323–345,
Ver adeo frondi nemorum, ...
... exciperet caeli indulgentia terras,
is one of which (though we can always feel its beauty) we cannot often verify the accuracy in our more northern latitudes. It is to an Italian spring, more than to any season in any other European country, that the words of the third Eclogue ‘nunc formosissimus annus,’ are applicable. The varied pastoral beauty of the long summer day described at Georg. iii. 323–338,—from the early dawn when the fields are fresh beneath the morning-star; through the gathering warmth of the later hours, when the groves are loud with the chirping of the grasshoppers and the herds collect around the deep water-pools; through the burning heat of midday, from which the shade of some huge oak or some grove of dark ilexes affords a shelter; till the coolness of evening tempers the air, and the moon renews with dew the dry forest-glades,—is a beauty quite distinct from the charm of freedom and solitude,—yet not too remote from human neighbourhood,—of the changing aspects of the sky, and of the picturesque environment of hill, river, and moorland, which abides in the pastoral regions of our own and other northern lands. The ‘sweet interchange of hill and valley[412],’ mountain range and rich [pg 270]cultivated land, which northern and central Italy exhibits, must have made such scenes as that described at ii. 186–188,