But it is only a microscopic observation of the structure of the poem that detects such blemishes as these. In the Aeneid [pg 421]Virgil’s style appears as great in its power of reaching the secrets of the human spirit, as in the Georgics it proved itself to be in eliciting the deeper meaning of Nature. He combines nearly all the characteristic excellences of the great Latin writers. His language appears indeed inferior not only to that of Lucretius and Catullus but even to that of Ennius in reproducing the first vivid impressions of things upon the mind. The phrases of Virgil are generally coloured with the associations and steeped in the feeling of older thoughts and memories. Yet if he seems inferior in direct force of presentation, he unites the two most marked and generally dissociated characteristics of the masters of Latin style,—the exuberance and vivacity of those writers in whom impulse and imagination are strong, such as Cicero, Livy, and Lucretius,—the terseness and compactness of expression, arising either from intensity of perception or reflective condensation, of which the shorter poems of Catullus, the Odes and Epistles of Horace, the writings of Sallust, and the memorial inscriptions of the time of the Republic and of the Empire afford striking examples. Virgil’s condensation of expression often resembles that of Tacitus, and seems to arise from the same cause, the restraint imposed by reflexion on the exuberance of a poetical imagination. By its combination of opposite excellences the style of the Aeneid is at once an admirable vehicle of continuous or compressed narrative, of large or concentrated description, of fluent and impassioned, or composed and impressive oratory. It possesses also the power, which distinguishes the older Latin writers, of stamping some grave or magnanimous lesson in imperishable characters on the mind—
Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.
Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem,
Fortunam ex aliis.
Aude, hospes, contemnere opes et te quoque dignum
Finge deo[686].
But Virgil is not only great as a Latin writer. The concurrent testimony of the most refined minds of all times marks him out as one of the greatest masters of the language which touches the heart or moves the manlier sensibilities, who has ever lived. A mature and mellow truth of sentiment, a conformity to the deeper experiences of life in every age, a fine humanity as well as a generous elevation of feeling, and some magical charm of music in his words, have enabled them to serve many minds in many ages as a symbol of some swelling thought or over-mastering emotion, the force and meaning of which they could scarcely define to themselves. A striking instance of this effect appears in the words in which Savonarola describes the impulse which forced him to abandon the career of worldly ambition, which his father pressed on him, in favour of the religious life. It was the voice of warning which he ever heard repeating to him the words—
Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge litus avarum[687].
And while his tenderness of feeling has made Virgil the familiar friend of one class of minds, his high magnanimous spirit has equally gained for him the admiration of another class. The words of no other poet, ancient or modern, have been so often heard in the great debates of the English Parliament, which more than any other deliberations among men have reproduced the dignified and masculine eloquence familiar to the Roman Senate. One of the greatest masters of expression among living English writers has pointed, as characteristic of the magic of Virgil’s style, to ‘his single words and phrases, his pathetic half-lines giving utterance, as the voice of Nature herself, to that pain and weariness yet hope of better things which is the experience of her children in every time[688].’ It is in [pg 423]the expression of this weariness and deep longing for rest, in making others feel his own sense of the painful toil and mystery of life and of the sadness of death, his sense too of vague yearning for some fuller and ampler being, that Virgil produces the most powerful effect by the use of the simplest words in their simplest application.
‘O passi graviora—’