Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur[680];
and again—
Qualem, virgineo demessum pollice, florem,
Seu mollis violae, seu languentis hyacinthi,
Cui neque fulgor adhuc, nec dum sua forma recessit;
Non iam mater alit tellus, viresque ministrat[681]—
recall not only the thought and feeling of Homer—
μήκων δ’ ὣς ἑτέρωσε κάρη βάλεν etc.,
but the cadences and most cherished illustrations of Catullus, in whose imagination the grace of trees and the bloom of flowers are ever associated with the grace and bloom of youth and youthful passion.
Had Virgil lived to devote three more years to the revisal of his work, there is no reason to suppose that he would have added anything to its substance. Some inconsistencies of statement, as, for instance, that between iii. 256 and vii. 123, would have disappeared, and some difficulties would have been cleared up. But the chief part of the ‘limae labor’ would have been employed in bringing the rhythm and diction of the poem to a more finished perfection than that which they exhibit at present. The unfinished lines in the poem would certainly have been completed and more closely connected with the passages immediately succeeding them. There is no indication that these lines were left purposely incomplete in order to give emphasis to some pause in the narrative. Virgil was the last poet likely to avail himself of so inartistic an innovation to give variety to his cadences. For the most part they appear to be weak props (‘tibicines’[682]) used provisionally to fill up the gap between two passages, and indicating but not completing the thought that was to connect them.