is as great a fortune as that which has fallen to the lot of any writer. If any one ever succeeded in securing that which [pg 69]Tacitus says ‘should be to a man the one object of an insatiable ambition,’ to leave after him ‘a happy memory of himself[116],’ that may be truly said of Virgil. Though his name may henceforth be less famous, it cannot be deprived of its lustre in the past. Nor does it seem possible that this reputation could have been maintained so long, in different ages and nations, without some catholic excellence, depending on original gifts as well as trained accomplishment, which could unite so many diversely-constituted minds of the highest capacity in a common sentiment of veneration. The secret of his long ascendency is, in the words of Sainte-Beuve, that ‘he gave a new direction to taste, to the passions, to sensibility: he divined at a critical period of the world’s history what the future would love.’
It is only in the present century that the question has been asked whether this great reputation was deserved. But the earliest witness who might be called against his claims to this high distinction is Virgil himself. In the Eclogues and Georgics the delight which he finds in the exercise of his art is qualified by a sense of humility, arising from a feeling of some want of elevation in his subject. In his last hours he desired that the Aeneid should be burned: and that this was not a mere impulse arising from the depression of illness may be inferred from the request which he made to Varius, before leaving Italy, ‘that if anything happened to him he should destroy the Aeneid.’ A letter written to Augustus is quoted by Macrobius, in which Virgil speaks of himself as having undertaken a work of such vast compass ‘almost from a perversion of mind[117].’ No poet could well be animated by a loftier ambition than Virgil; yet few great poets seem to have been so little satisfied with their own success. It was not in his nature to feel or express the confident sense of superiority which sustained Ennius and Lucretius in their self-appointed tasks, nor even that satisfaction with the work he had done and that assurance of an abiding place in the memory of men which relieve the ironical self-disparagement of Horace.
The most obvious explanation of this passionate and pathetic desire that the work to which he had given eleven years of his maturest power should not survive him, is the unfinished state, in respect of style, in which the poem was left. He had set aside three years for the final revision of the work and the removal of those temporary ‘make-shifts,’ which had been originally inserted with full knowledge of their inadequacy, in order not to check the ardour of composition. After having devoted three years of his youth to the execution of a work so slight in purpose and so small in compass as the Eclogues, he might well feel depressed by the thought that a work of such high purpose and so vast a scope as the Aeneid—and a work of which such expectations as those expressed by Propertius were entertained—should be given to the world before receiving the final touch of the master’s hand.
Yet the words in the letter to Augustus,—‘that I fancy myself to have been almost under the influence of some fatuity in engaging on so great a work’—if they are to be taken as a true expression of his feeling, imply a deeper ground of dissatisfaction with his undertaking. Horace, in the estimate which he forms of his own work, seems to maintain the due balance between the self-assertion and the modesty of genius. But his modesty arises from his thorough self-knowledge, and from his understanding the limits within which a complete success was attainable by him. That of Virgil seems to be a weakness incidental to his greatest gifts, his sense of perfection, his appreciation of every kind of excellence. His large appreciation of the genius of others, from the oldest Greek to the latest Latin poet, his regard for the authority of the past, his attitude of a scholar in many schools, his willing acceptance of Homer as his guide through all the unfamiliar region of heroic adventure, were scarcely compatible with the buoyant spirit, as of some discoverer of unknown lands, which was needed to support him in an enterprise so arduous and so long-sustained as the composition of a great literary epic. The task which he set himself required of him to combine into one harmonious work of art, [pg 71]which at the same time should bear the stamp of originality,—of being a new thing in the world,—the characteristics and excellences of various minds belonging to various times. With such aims it was scarcely possible that the actual execution of his work should not fall below his ideal of perfection. Especially must he have recognised his own deficiency in the pure epic impulse, which apparently sustained Homer without conscious effort. He could not feel or make others feel the culminating interest in the combat between Turnus and Aeneas, which Homer feels and makes others feel in the combat between Hector and Achilles. In his earlier national poem he had vindicated the glory of the ploughshare in opposition to the glory of the sword; and, in his later battle-pieces, he must have felt his immeasurable inferiority to the poet of the Iliad. And yet neither the precedents of epic poetry nor his purpose of celebrating the national glory of Rome permitted him to leave this part of his task unattempted. To describe a battle or a single combat in the spirit and with the fellow-feeling of Homer has been granted to no poet since his time. Among modern poets perhaps Scott has approached nearer to him than any other. Among Roman authors, Ennius, who gained distinction as a soldier before he became known as a writer, was more fitted to succeed in such an attempt than the poet whose earliest love was for ‘the fields and woods and running streams among the valleys.’
As the comparison of his own epic poem with the greatest of the Greek epics is the probable explanation of Virgil’s own dissatisfaction with the Aeneid, so it is the cause of the adverse criticism to which the poem has been exposed in recent times. Of these adverse criticisms, that expressed by Niebuhr, both in his History of Rome and in his Historical Lectures, was among the earliest. In the former he expresses his belief that Virgil, at the approach of death, wished ‘to destroy what in those solemn moments he could not but view with sadness, as the groundwork of a false reputation[118].’ In the latter he says, ‘The [pg 72]whole of the Aeneid, from the beginning to the end, is a misconceived idea.’ ‘Virgil is one of the remarkable instances of the way in which a man can miss his true calling. His was lyric poetry.’ ‘It is a pity that posterity so much overrated the very work which was but a failure[119].’
Although the service rendered to the study of antiquity by the historical insight of Niebuhr is probably as great as that rendered by the genius of any scholar of this century, yet the opinions expressed by him on literature are often more arbitrary than authoritative. Still this verdict on the merits of the Aeneid was in accordance with the most advanced criticism of the time when it was written, both in Germany and England. The writer by whom the critical taste of England was most stimulated and enlarged about the same time was Coleridge; and in his ‘Table Talk’ such disparaging dicta as this occur more than once: ‘If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you leave him?’ The whole tone of the criticism which arose out of the admiration of German thought and poetry was thoroughly opposed to the spirit in which Latin literature had been admired. Mr. Carlyle also expressed in one of his earliest works—the Life of Schiller—an estimate of the value of Virgil, which was not uncommon among younger scholars at the Universities some thirty years ago. ‘Virgil and Horace,’ he writes, ‘he (Schiller) learned to construe accurately, but is said to have taken no deep interest in their poetry. The tenderness and meek beauty of the first, the humour and sagacity and capricious pathos of the last, the matchless elegance of both would of course escape his inexperienced perception; while the matter of their writings must have appeared frigid and shallow to a mind so susceptible.’ Even the warmest admirers of Virgil about that time, such as Keble, are content to claim for him high excellence as the poet of outward nature. The late Professor Conington, while showing the finest appreciation of ‘the marvellous grace and delicacy, the evidences of a culture most elaborate and most refined,’ in the poet to the [pg 73]interpretation of whose works he devoted the best years of a scholar’s life, has questioned ‘the appropriateness of the special praise given to Virgil’s agricultural poetry, and conceded though with more hesitation to his pastoral compositions.’ He speaks also of it as an admitted fact that ‘in undertaking the Aeneid at the command of a superior, Virgil was venturing beyond the province of his genius.’ And he describes this disparaging estimate as the opinion ‘which is now generally entertained on Virgil’s claims as an epic poet[120].’ Mr. Keightley is also quoted by him as speaking of Virgil as ‘perhaps the least original poet of antiquity[121].’ It is certainly not in the spirit of an ardent admirer that the author of Virgil’s life in the ‘Dictionary of Classical Biography and Mythology’ approaches the criticism of his poetry. But it is by German critics and scholars that Virgil’s claim to a high rank among the poets of the world is at the present day most seriously impugned. Thus to take two or three conspicuous instances of their disparaging criticism: Mommsen in his History of Rome[122] speaks contemptuously of the ‘successes of the Aeneid, the Henriade, and the Messiad;’ Bernhardy in his Grundriss der Römischen Litteratur (1871) brings together a formidable list of German critics and commentators unfavourable to the merits of the Aeneid, in which the illustrious name of Hegel appears; Gossrau in his edition of the Aeneid quotes from Richter (as a specimen of the unfavourable opinions pronounced by many critics) the expression of a wish that, with the exception of the descriptions and episodes, the rest of the poem had been burned[123]; and W. S. Teuffel, among other criticisms which ‘damn with faint praise,’ has the following: ‘Aber er ist zu weich und zu wenig genial als dass er auf dem seiner Natur zusagendsten Gebiete hätte beharren und darauf Ruhm ernten können.’
The chief, as well as the most obvious, cause of the revolt against Virgil’s poetical pre-eminence, which, though yielding apparently to a revived sentiment of admiration, has not yet spent its force, is the great advance made in Greek scholarship in England and Germany during the present century. Familiarity with Latin literature is probably not less common than it was a century ago, but it is much less common relatively to familiarity with the older literature. The attraction of the latter has been greater from its novelty, its originality, its higher intrinsic excellence, its profounder relation to the heart and mind of man. The art of Homer and that of Theocritus are felt to be an immediate reproduction from human life and outward nature; the art of Virgil seems, at first sight, to be only a reproduction from this older and truer copy. The Roman and Italian character of his workmanship, the new result produced by the recasting of old materials, the individual and inalienable quality of his own genius, were for a time obscured, as the evidences of the large debt which he owed to his Greek masters became more and more apparent.
Again, the greater nearness of the Augustan Age, not in time only but in spirit and manners, to our own age, which in the last century told in Virgil’s favour in the comparison with Homer, tells the other way now. The critics of last century were interested in other ages, in so far as they appeared to be like their own. The rude vigour and stirring incident of the Homeric Age or the Middle Ages had no attraction for men living under the régime of Louis XIV. and XV. or of Queen Anne and the first Georges. What an illustrious living Frenchman says of the great representative of French ideas in the last century might be said generally of its criticism. ‘Voltaire,’ says M. Renan, ‘understood neither the Bible, nor Homer, nor Greek art, nor the ancient religions, nor Christianity, nor the Middle Ages[124].’ And yet he was prepared to pronounce his judgment on them by the light of that admirable common [pg 75]sense which he applied to the questions of his own day. One of the great gains of the nineteenth century over former centuries consists in its more vital knowledge of the past. The imaginative interest now felt in times of nascent and immature civilisation all tells in favour of Homer and against Virgil. The scientific study of human development also tends more and more to awaken interest in a remote antiquity. Even the ages antecedent to all civilisation have a stronger attraction for the adventurous spirit of modern enquiry than the familiar aspect of those epochs in which human culture and intelligence have reached their highest level. This new direction given to imaginative and speculative curiosity, while greatly enhancing the interest felt, not in the Iliad and Odyssey only, but in the primitive epics of various races, has proportionately lowered that felt in the literary epics belonging to times of advanced civilisation. Recognising the radical difference between the two kinds of representation, some recent criticism refuses to the latter altogether the title of epic poetry, and relegates it to some province of imitative and composite art. There is a similar tendency in the present day to be interested in varieties of popular speech,—in language before it has become artistic. Both tendencies are good in so far as they serve to draw attention to neglected fields of knowledge. They are false and mischievous in so far as they lead to the disparagement of the great works of cultivated eras, or to any forgetfulness of the superior grace, richness, and power which are imparted to ordinary speech by the labours of intellect and imagination employed in creating a national literature.
Other causes connected with a great expansion of human interests acting on the imagination, and with the revolt against the prevailing poetical style, which arose about the beginning of the present century, have tended to lower the authority of writers who formed the standard of taste to previous ages. The desire of the new era was to escape from the exhausted atmosphere of literary tradition, and to return again to the simplicity of Nature and human feeling. The genius of [pg 76]Roman literature is more in harmony with eras of established order, of adherence to custom, of distinct but limited insight into the outward world and into human life, than to eras of expansive energy, of speculative change, of vague striving to attain some new ideal of duty or happiness. The genius of Greece exercised a powerful influence on several of the great English and German poets who lived in the new era. But neither Goethe nor Schiller, Byron nor Scott, Shelley nor Keats were at all indebted, in thought, sentiment, or expression, to the poets of the Augustan Age. Among the great poets of this new era the only one known to have greatly admired Virgil, and who in his poems founded on classical subjects was influenced by him, is the one who most decidedly proclaimed his revolt against the artificial diction and representation of the school of classical imitators,—the poet Wordsworth.
The very perfection of Virgil’s art, combined with the calmness and moderation of his spirit, was out of harmony with the genius of such a time. He seemed to have nothing new to teach the eager generation which regarded the world and speculated on its own destiny with feelings altogether unlike to those of the generations that went before it. The truth of his sentiment, its adaptation to the spiritual movement of his own age, in which it gained ascendency like a new revelation, had caused it to pass into the modes of thought and feeling habitual to the world. This too may be said of the ethical feeling and common sense of Cicero’s philosophical treatises. Moral speculation has been so long and so deeply permeated by the thought expressed in these treatises that it now appears trite and common-place. So too the moderation and unfailing propriety of Virgil’s language had no attraction of freshness or novelty to stimulate the imagination. The direct force of language in Homer or Lucretius never can become trite or common-place. It affects the mind now as powerfully and immediately as in the day of its creation. There is also a kind of rhetorical style which produces its effect either of pleasure or distaste immediately. It does not conceal its true character, but tries to [pg 77]force the reader’s admiration by startling imagery, or strained emphasis, or tricks of allusive periphrasis. Whether this style is admired or detested, it does not lose its character with the advance of years. Juvenal and Persius probably affect their readers in much the same way as they did three centuries or seventeen centuries ago. But this is not the style of Virgil and of Horace. They produce their effect neither through that direct force which causes a thought to penetrate or an image to rise up immediately before the mind, nor by strained efforts at rhetorical effect. As their language became assimilated with the thought and feeling of successive generations, it may have lost something of the colouring of sentiment and association, of the delicate shades of meaning, of the vital force which it originally possessed. It has entered into the culture of the world chiefly through impressions produced in early youth, when the mind, though susceptible of graceful variations of words and harmonious effects of rhythm, is too immature to realise fulness of meaning half-concealed by the well-tempered beauty and musical charm of language. The style of Virgil is the fruit of long reflection, and it requires long reflection and familiarity to draw out all its meaning. The word ‘meditari,’ applied by him to his earlier art, expresses the process through which his mind passed in acquiring its mastery over words. In apprehending the charm of his style it is not of the spontaneous fertility of Nature that we think, but of the harvest yielded to assiduous labour by a soil at once naturally rich and obedient to cultivation—‘iustissima tellus.’ These characteristics of his art were not unlikely to be overlooked in an age which demanded from the literature of imagination a rapid succession of varied and powerful impressions.