aut ipse, coruscis
Cum fremit ilicibus, quantus, gaudetque nivali
Vertice se attollens, pater Appenninus ad auras[675];
and that at ix. 680, etc., in which the two sons of Alcanor are likened to two tall oaks growing—
Sive Padi ripis Athesim seu propter amoenum[676].
But there are other comparisons in Virgil indicative of more original invention, observation, and reflexion, which serve the true purpose of imaginative analogies, viz. that of exalting the peculiar sentiment with which the poet desires the situation he is describing to be regarded. In the perception of these analogies it is not merely intellectual curiosity that is gratified by the apprehension of the τοῦτο ἐκεῖνο in the phenomena; but the imagination is enlarged by the recognition of analogous forces operating in different spheres, which separately are capable of producing a vivid and noble emotion. As an instance of this perception of the analogy between great forces in different spheres, the one of human, the other of natural activity, we may take the comparison of the Italian host advancing in orderly march after its tumultuous gathering from many quarters, to the movement of mighty rivers when their component waters have found their appointed bed—
Ceu septem surgens sedatis amnibus altus
Per tacitum Ganges, aut pingui flumine Nilus
Cum refluit campis et iam se condidit alveo[677].
Others again show the vivid interest mixed with poetical wonder which animated Virgil’s power of observation in his Georgics—as for instance that at i. 430 of the busy workers in Carthage to bees in early summer toiling among the flowery fields—an image ennobled also by Milton, who characteristically describes the bees as ‘conferring their state-affairs,’ while it is not to their political, but to their industrial, martial, and social or domestic aptitudes,