Saepibus in nostris, etc.;
in the fine simile at viii. 85—
Talis amor Daphnim, qualis cum fessa iuvencum, etc.;
in the tender thought of the dying Gallus for the mistress who had forsaken him—
A, tibi ne teneras glacies secet aspera plantas[263],—
there is a delicate and subtle power of touch not unworthy of the master-hand which, with maturer art, delineated the queenly passion and despair of Dido.
The supreme excellence of Virgil’s art consists in the perfect harmony between his feeling and the medium through which it is conveyed. The style of his longer poems has many varied excellences, in accordance with the varied character of the thought and sentiment which it is called on to express. But the strong and full volume of diction and rhythm and the complex harmonies of the Georgics would have been an inappropriate vehicle for the luxurious sentiment of the Eclogues. The attitude of the poet’s mind in the composition of these earlier poems was that of a genial passiveness rather than that of creative activity. There are few poems of equal excellence [pg 169]in which so little use is made of that force of words which imparts new life to things. A few such expressions might be quoted, like that given by Wordsworth as ‘an instance of a slight exertion of the faculty of imagination in the use of a single word’—
Dumosa pendere procul de rupe videbo;
and we notice a similar exertion of the faculty in the line—
Hic viridis tenera praetexit harundine ripam