and the following lines—
Haud equidem credo quia sit divinitus illis, etc.,—
which elevate the whole description into the higher air of imaginative contemplation, are entirely Virgil’s own. So too in nearly all the indications of stormy or bright weather, whether taken from natural phenomena or the habits of animals, we find in the Latin poet some suggestion of poetical analogy giving new life to the thing described, or some touch of tender feeling, of which his original supplied him with no hint whatever.
For the true poetry of the Georgics—the colour of human and sympathetic feeling, the atmosphere of contemplative ideas, the ethical and national associations with which the subject is surrounded—Virgil owes very little to Greek inspiration. Much of this poetry is the mode in which his own spirit interprets Nature and human life. But much also is due to the genius of his great predecessor in Latin poetry, who, though ‘unnamed,’ is ‘not unowned,’ but felt to be a pervading presence in the thought and feeling, the creative diction and the grander cadences, of the Georgics. Yet this influence is perhaps as potent in the antagonism as in the sympathy which it evokes. Virgil is no mere disciple of Lucretius, either as regards his philosophy or his art. Though [pg 198]his imagination pays homage to that of the older poet; though he acknowledges his contemplative elevation; though he has a strong affinity with the deep humanity of his nature; yet in his profoundest convictions and aspirations he proclaims his revolt from him. The key to the secret of much in the composition of the Georgics,—of the condition of mind out of which this work of genius assumed the shape it has as a great literary possession,—is to be sought in the collision between the force of thought, imagination, and feeling which the active spirit of Lucretius stored up and left behind him as his legacy to the world, and the nature, strongly susceptible indeed, but, at the same time, firm in its own convictions, which first felt the shock of that force, in its attractive, stimulating, and repellent power.