In these last passages it is not so much by the scientific or philosophical speculations themselves, as by their literary treatment by former writers, that Virgil appears to be attracted. Perhaps the frequent recurrence of these localising epithets, where there is nothing in the context to call up any thought of the locality indicated, may appear to a modern reader an unfortunate result of his Alexandrine studies; yet the grace with which old poetic associations are evoked and new associations created by such lines as these,
Tum canit, errantem Permessi ad flumina Gallum
Aonas in montis ut duxerit una sororum,
or these,
Omnia quae Phoebo quondam meditante beatus
Audiit Eurotas, iussitque ediscere laurus,
Ille canit[254],
attests the cumulative force which ancient names, identified with the poetic life of the world, gather in their transmission through the literatures of different ages and nations.
In the Georgics and Aeneid, as well as in the Eclogues, [pg 164]Virgil shows a great susceptibility to the beauty and power of Nature. But Nature presents different aspects and awakens a different class of feelings in these poems. In the Eclogues he shows a great openness and receptivity of mind, through which all the softer and more delicate influences of the outward world enter into and become part of his being. The ‘molle atque facetum’ of Horace denotes the yielding susceptibility[255] to outward influences, and the vivacity which gives them back in graceful forms. In the Georgics, the sense of the relation of Nature to human energy imparts greater nobleness to the conception. She appears there, not only in her majesty and beauty, but as endowed with a soul and will. She stands to man at first in the relation of an antagonist: but, by compliance with her conditions, he subdues her to his will, and finds in her at last a just and beneficent helpmate[256]. In the Eclogues she takes rather the form of an enchantress, who, by the charm of her outward mien and her freely-offered gifts, fascinates him into a life of indolent repose. If the one poem may in a sense be described as the ‘glorification of labour,’ the other might be described as the ‘glorification of the dolce far niente’ of Italian life. The natural objects described by Virgil are often indeed the same as those out of which the representation of Theocritus is composed; but in Theocritus the human figures are, after all, the prominent objects in the picture: the speakers in his dialogue, though not unconscious of the charm proceeding from the scenes in which they are placed, yet are not possessed by it; they do not lose their own being in the larger life of Nature environing them. Theocritus shows everywhere the social temperament of the Greeks. It is an Italian, not perhaps without something of the Celtic fibre in his composition, who utters his natural feelings in the lines,
ibi haec incondita solus