What more of elegance, of compact structure, or of varied harmony Virgil might have imparted to his rhythm, it is impossible to determine. We might conjecture that his aim [pg 419]would have been, as regards both expression and metrical effect, to act on the maxim ‘ramos compesce fluentes,’ than to give them ampler scope. In a long narrative poem like the Aeneid that perfect smoothness and solidity of rhythmical execution which characterise the Georgics—in which poem the position and weight of each single word in each single line is an element contributing to the whole effect—is hardly to be expected. A narrative poem demands a more easy, varied, and even careless movement than one of which the interest is contemplative, and which requires to be studied minutely line by line and paragraph by paragraph, before its full meaning is realised. If the movement in the Aeneid appears in some place rougher, or less compact, or more languid than in others, this may be explained not only by the imperfect state in which the poem was left, but by the difficulty or impossibility of maintaining the same uniform level of elevation in so long a flight. Yet it cannot be said that there is any loss of power, any trace of contentment with a lower ideal of perfection in the general structure of the verse of the Aeneid. The full capacities of the Latin hexameter for purposes of animated or impressive narrative, of solemn or pathetic representation, of grave or impassioned oratory, of tender, dignified, or earnest appeal to the higher emotions of man, are realised in many passages of the poem. Virgil’s instrument fails, or, at least, is much inferior to Homer’s, in aptitude for natural dialogue or for bringing familiar things in the freshness of immediate impression before the imagination. The stateliness of movement appropriate to such utterances as
Ast ego quae Divom incedo regina[683]
does not readily adapt itself to the description of the process of kindling a fire or preparing a meal—
Ac primum silici scintillam excudit Achates,
Suscepitque ignem foliis atque arida circum
Nutrimenta dedit rapuitque in fomite flammam[684].
To English readers the verse of the Aeneid may appear inferior in majesty and fulness of volume to that of Milton in his passages of most sustained power; but it is easier and less encumbered and thus more adapted to express various conditions of human life than the ordinary movement of the modern epic. It flows in a more varied, weighty, and self-restrained stream than the more homogeneous and overflowing current of Spenser’s verse. The Latin hexameter became for Virgil an exquisite and powerful medium for communicating to others a knowledge of his elevated moods and pensive meditativeness, and for calling up before their minds that spectacle of a statelier life and a more august order in the contemplation of which his spirit habitually lived.
The last revision would also have removed from the poem some redundancies, obscurities, and weakness of expression. There is a greater tendency to use ‘otiose’ epithets than in the Georgics, and a minute criticism has taken note of the number of times in which such words as ‘ingens’ and ‘immanis’ occur in the poem. Though the interpretation of the meaning of the Aeneid as a whole is probably as certain as that of any other great work of antiquity, yet there are passages in it which still baffle commentators in deciding which of two or three possible meanings was in the mind of the poet, or whether he had himself finally resolved what turn he should give his thought. As there are lines left incomplete, so there are lame conclusions to lofty and impassioned utterances of feeling. Such for instance is the prosaic and tautological conclusion of the passage in which Lausus is brought on the scene—
dignus, patriis qui laetior esset
Imperiis et cui pater haud Mezentius esset[685].