Nitchie Vergil and English Poets

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Columbia Wini\itt0itv

STUDIES IN ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE


LITERATURE

VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
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VERGIL
AND
THE ENGLISH POETS
BY
ELIZABETH NITCHIE, Ph. D.
Instructor in English in Goucher Collegb

^^^'^^^

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS


1919
All rights reserved
<
Copyright, 1919
By Columbia University Press

Printed from type, April, 1919

^ k7 i9!9

©CI.A515690

-v- .', (
This Monograph has been approved by the Department of
English and Comparative Literature in Columbia University
as a contribution to knowledge worthy of publication.

A. H. THORNDIKE,
Executive Officer
PREFACE
This book has grown out of a long-standing interest in
the classics and a feeling that the connection between the
Uterature of Greece and Rome and that of England is too
seldom realized and too seldom stressed by the lovers and
teachers of both. As Sir Gilbert Murray has said in his
recent presidential address to the Classical Association of
England, The Religion of a Man of Letters, ^^ Paradise Lost
and Prometheus Unbound are the children of Vergil
. . .

and Homer, of Aeschylus and Plato. Let us admit . . .

that there must of necessity be in all English literature a


strain of what one may call vernacular English thought.
... It remains true that from the Renaissance onward, nay,
from Chaucer and even from Alfred, the higher and more
massive workings of our literature owe more to the Greeks
and Romans than to our own un -Romanized ancestors."
Vergil has probably exerted more influence upon the
literature of England throughout its whole course and in
all its branches than any other Roman poet. At certain
periods Horace has taken precedence over him, and at
other periods, Ovid; but it is doubtful whether the influ-
ence of either has been as far-reaching or as varied as that
of Vergil. A discussion of his influence upon the English
poets, therefore, will serve as an illustration of that continuity
of literature, that tradiiio, of which Sir Gilbert Murray speaks.
I wish to thank those members of the English Depart-
ment of Columbia University who, by their advice and aid,
have made this book possible. I wish to express my appre-
ciation especially of the unfailing kindness of Professor A. H.
vii
Viu PREFACE
Thorndike, who has read the book manuscript and proof,
in
and has given me much valuable help. Professor William
Peterfield Trent also has read it in manuscript and has
given me constant assistance. Many helpful suggestions
and criticisms, especially on the earher portions, have come
from Professor H. M. Ayres. To Professor Nelson Glenn
McCrea of the Department of Classical Philology is due
the initial suggestion of the subject. He has never failed,
while I have been working on the book, to give me encour-
agement and advice, and his interpretation of the work of
Vergil has been a constant source of inspiration.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. I^rTRODUCTION 1

II. The Mediaeval Tradition 13


III. Chaucer, His Contemporaries and his Imitators . 39
IV. Vergil and Humanism 66
V. Spenser and the English Renaissance 92
VI. Milton and the Classical Epic 124
VII. Dryden and Pope 148
VIII. Thomson and the Didactic Poets 179
IX. Landor and the Romanticists 197
X. Tennyson and the Victorians 212

Bibliography 235
I. Books of Reference 235
II. List of Translations, Burlesques, Parodies, and
Imitations 236

Index 245
VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH
POETS
CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION
From the days when Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus
wrote epics in imitation of the Aeneid, and Columella com-
posed a verse treatise on horticulture after the manner of
the Georgics, and Calpurnius Siculus copied the VergiUan
style and subject-matter in his Eclogues, the influence of
Vergil upon the literature of the world has been a constant
force. Even in this practical, scientific twentieth century,
a newspaper editor refers to his Eclogues in the heat of a
political campaign, the echo of a half-forgotten passage
learned in school-days comes back to a soldier in the trenches,
an epic poem on the Volsung story is modeled on the struc-
ture of the Aeneid, and the poet-laureate of England pubUshes
a cento of translations of a brief passage in the sixth book,
with a version of his own.
It was to the sheer force of his genius that Vergil owed his
long popularity. Neither his personaUty nor his life would

have had sufficient appeal or interest to push forward


works that were not of the highest merit. Shy and modest
to such a degree that he earned the punning nickname of
the Maiden (Virgo), this retiring idealist gave on his death-
bed the command that the Aeneid should be burnt. Nor
did his career have the historical importance of a Caesar
or the romantic interest of an Ovid. His was a singularly
1
2 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
uneventful life, we know it.
as far as He was born in the
little village of Andes near Mantua in the year 70 B.C.
His father was a small freeholder, tilling his own fields and
raising timber and bees. Here Vergil gained the knowl-
edge which he afterwards turned so wonderfully to account
in the Georgics. He had, however, the best education pos-
sible, first at Cremona, then at Milan, and finally at Rome

itself, where he studied rhetoric and philosophy. In the


confiscation of land after the battle of Phihppi, Vergil, whose
father had meanwhile died, lost his little estate, but through
the friendship of Polho, Gallus, and Varus, he was given in
compensation land in Campania, and was introduced to,
Octavianus. About this time, Vergil published his Eclogues,
which immediately made a stir in the literary world, as the
beginning of a new type of poetry in Rome, and the promise
of future greatness in the author himself. Outwardly they
are imitations of the Idylls of Theocritus, and they are
cast in the conventional forms of the dialogue between
two shepherds, the song-contest in alternate verse with a
lamb or a graven bowl as the stake, the complaint of the
lover over the hardheartedness or the faithlessness of his
mistress, and the lament for a comrade who has died. Into
this pastoral form Vergil has woven some personal allegory,
in reference to the loss of his estate, the death of Julius
Caesar, and the misfortunes of his friend Gallus. The ten
poems are marked by a certain artificiality which is a fre-

quent characteristic of imitative and allegorical poetry,


and the execution shows the hand of a beginner, but of a
beginner of great things. For the promise of the charm of
Vergil's later poems is here, especially in the golden light
of the fourth Eclogue and the romantic atmosphere of the
story of the deserted Gallus.
With the publication of the Georgics in 29 B.C., Vergil took
his place at the head of Latin literature. Their beauty has
INTRODUCTION 3

perhaps been obscured by the greater glory of the Aeneid.


But Vergil never proved himself so surely a "lord of lan-
guage" as he did in dealing with the unpromising subjects
of " tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd," and to
demonstrate it one has only to turn to him from the awk-
ward dullness of The Fleece or The Chase. Lucretius put his
philosophical teaching into poetry, for he said he must
smear the lip of the cup with honey, that the bitter but
beneficial dose within it might be made acceptable. So
Vergil, commissioned by Augustus to revive in the hearts
of the Romans a love for agriculture, put the precepts of
husbandry into verse which he had time to bring as near
perfection as possible. With a background of the beauty
of Italy and the charm of the country, he laid the emphasis
on the necessity of unending labor and on its sure ^reward
in actual production and in the strengthening of character
as wel as of body —
a real Gospel of Work.
The splendid digression in the second book of the Georgics
on the glory of Italy, with its closing apostrophe to the
"mighty mother of heroes," strikes the note of Vergil's
last and greatest work. The Aeneid, begun shortly after the
publication of the Georgics, occupied the poet's time until
his death in 19 B.C.,and yet he did not consider it finished.
It embodied the best that was in him, his passionate love
for his country, his veneration for his emperor, his broodings
over the significance and purposes of human life. It inevi-
tably challenged comparison with the great epics of Greece,
and incurred the criticism of being a mere imitation.
Imitative it indubitablymere externals; but the
is in
marvel is that from materials and framework originally
Greek, Vergil has wrought a poem shot through and
through with Roman feehng. Each suggestion from the
Iliad or the Odyssey reworked with the central pur-
is

pose of impressing upon the Roman reader the grandeur


4 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
of the Rome that had been and the opportunity to make
the Rome of the future, built on the soKd foundation of her
history, even more glorious. So the catalogue of the Itahan
forces in the seventh book is bound to the story by the
element of national pride in these ancestors of the later
Roman famihes; the pictures on the shield of Aeneas
are not of a general character like those on the shield of
Achilles, but tell the story of the growth of the Roman
people; the episode of Didonot a mere copy of the ad-
is

ventures of Ulysses in the land of the Phaeacians, but is


connected vitally with the Punic Wars of later years; the
visit to the Underworld gives an opportunity for the proph-
ecy by Anchises to his son of the future glories of the
Roman race. Many an episode, such as the landing at
Actium and the celebration of the funeral games at Acesta,
was designed to set the chords of patriotism vibrating, by
reminding its readers of some event in Roman history.
And to the men of the Augustan age, Roman history had
culminated in the reign of Octavianus, and everything in
the poem tends to a glorification of the Julian gens. The
name of the boy lulus is a perpetual reminder that Aeneas,
the representative of Rome, was the real founder of the
family to which the great names of Caesar and Augustus,
so highly lauded in the sixth book, had brought honor and
renown.
This national appeal is the real message of the Aeneid,
and yet we who are not Romans can find in it something
which still speaks to us after nineteen centuries. It is not
only the plea for a higher patriotism. It is the expression
of the tenderness of a great spirit, brooding over the cost
of human and the horrors of struggle and warfare, longing
life

for the time of a perpetual pax Romana; the expression of


his sense of the pathos of existence epitomized in the oft-
quoted lacrimae rerum, and also of his assurance of the
INTRODUCTION 5

continual presence of a Deity who is a pervading and guiding


force. This is the true VergiUan charm, which both attracts
and puzzles one who is seeking a definition of it.
But throughout the centuries it has been the story of the
Aeneid that has appealed to readers and writers, rather than
any philosophical aspect of the poem. The construction
of the Aeneid is a thing to be reckoned with. Not only have
the adventures of Aeneas and the tragic fortunes of Dido
won the interest and sympathy of many a man and woman,
but the structure of the poem has served as a model for
epic poetry from that time to this. While Vergil cannot
approach Ovid as a mere story-teller, the dramatic force of
single episodes and the unity of the entire narrative are
remarkable. While the story cannot begin and end in the
same place as does that of the Odysseij, the thought of Italy
is always before the Trojans, and Troy and Italy are in

reahty no farther separated than are their names in the


first two Hues of the poem:

Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris


Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit
litora.

The story is a fairly simple one. Aeneas and his com-


rades, fleeing from Troy, are still pursued by the hatred of
Juno. They are shipwrecked in a storm which she has
caused, and land on the shores of Africa. They are kindly
received by Dido, queen of the new city of Carthage. At
a feast given in their honor, Aeneas tells the queen the whole
story of the last night of Troy, in a most dramatic narrative,
which perhaps owes something to Euripides. He also
relates his wanderings up to the time of his arrival at Car-
thage. Meanwhile Venus has inspired Dido with a violent
love for Aeneas, which he returns, but at the command of
the gods and the summons of his higher destiny, he leaves
6 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
her and proceeds upon his way to Italy, whereupon she
dies by her own hand. No summary can give even a hint
of the dramatic power and fourth books,
of the second
which tell of the fall of Troy and the death of Dido, and
which have been the most read and best loved of all the
twelve. Aeneas stops at Sicily and holds games in memory
of his father, who had died there the year before. He then
proceeds to Italy, and at the command of the gods, visits
the Underworld, where he sees his father and learns from
him the future glory of his people. Advancing to the
vicinity of the future city of Rome, he makes a treaty with
Latinus, king of the country, for the hand of his daughter,
Lavinia. A feud breaks out, however, between the two
nations, stirred up by the Fury Allecto at the command of
Juno, and Turnus, Lavinia's former betrothed, joins the op-
ponents of the Trojans. There follows a more or less
uninteresting series of battles, with varying fortunes, en-
livened by the episode of Nisus and Euryalus, two friends
who make a night raid upon the enemy, and by the story of
Camilla, the maiden warrior. The war is finally settled
by a single combat between Turnus and Aeneas, in which
the former is killed and the Trojan wins both bride and
kingdom.
Vergil'smastery of the hexameter has never been ques-
tioned. It was a great achievement to bring the stubborn
Latin language, with its essentially iambic rhythm, into
subjection to a meter made up of dactyls and spondees.
The work had been begun by Ennius and Lucretius, and
was brought to its full perfection by Vergil, a perfection
which has never since been equaled. And to many an
English reader, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, this perfection of the hexameter, added to Vergil's
positive genius for finding the right words, has appealed as
his greatest beauty. The liquid smoothness of the Eclogues,
INTRODUCTION 7

the finished charm of the Georgics, and the stately harmonies


and rhythms Aeneid have kept for Vergil his place
of the
as the greatest of Latin poets, even when his story has
temporarily lost its interest or his deeper thoughtfulness
has not been understood. And when these other qualities
have been uppermost in the minds of his critics, there has
rarely, if ever, except in the uncritical periods of literature,
been a failure to appreciate the fact that his marvelous
power of expression is the chief factor in his preeminence
as a story-teller and as a philosopher. _
The great variety of Vergil's poetic powers has given him
an appeal to men engaged in all branches of literature. The
dramatic qualities of the scenes in the second and fourth
books of the Aeneid have made the fall of Troy and the
death of Dido favorite subjects for dramatic representation;
the oratorical power of his great speeches gave him a prestige
in the schools of the Empire and of the Middle Ages, endeared
him to men like Bossuet and Burke, and have made him an
"orator's poet." The descriptive powers by which he is
enabled to convey not only the appearance of a scene, but
also the idea of horror, of weariness, of pathos, of awe and
mystery which underlies the mere outward semblance of
the death of Priam, of the despair of the Trojan women in
death of Pallas, or of the vision of awful faces
Sicily, of the
on the night of Troy's downfall, have been the admiration
and despair of many an imitator and translator. The
music of the verse of the Eclogues, the perfect smoothness
of the Georgics, made him the model for English poetry in
its Augustan period; and the compactness of phrase and a
the varied harmonies of the Aeneid have influenced masters ')

of rhythm like Milton and Tennyson.

But the subject of this book is not Vergil as he was, or


even as modern critics and scholars think he was, but Vergil
8 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
as he appeared to and influenced the makers of Enghsh
hterature throughout its history. Its aim is to trace the
changes in the reaction to his poetry in the different periods
of EngUsh and to study his influence especially
hterature,
on the representative poets of England under the varying
conditions of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Pseudo-
classicism, and Romanticism, The prose, which naturally
shows less influence than the poetry, has been treated only
incidentally, all the body of pseudo-classic criticism, for
instance, being considered very briefly, simply in order to
form a background for pseudo-classic poetry.
The Middle Ages, with innate respect for "authority,"
regarded Vergil with all reverence not only as a great poet,
but also as a writer of a volume that might be used as a
text-book for grammar and rhetoric. While the ecclesiastics
attacked him on the ground of pernicious doctrines, others
regarded him as one of the greatest of moral teachers, and
even as a prophet of Christ and a propounder of Christian
principles. Again, the spirit of romance laid hands upon
him, and made of him a worker of magic and of his Aeneas
the hero of a tale of chivalry. So this many-sided Vergil,
most of whose characteristics were wholly the creation of
the Middle Ages, served the turn of every man, cleric or
layman, the scholar who wished illustrative examples for
his treatise on grammar or metrics, the poet who was looking
for a model for his Latin hexameters, or the courtier who
was searching for marvelous stories with which to entertain
his emperor.
Chaucer inherited much of mediaeval tradition, es-
this
pecially the desire to make of the Aeneid a chivalric romance.
The sympathies of the Middle Ages had been chiefly with
the deserted Dido, and Chaucer too treated her as one
of the "saints of Cupid," a true sister of Ariadne. But
Chaucer was ahead of many of his contemporaries in his
INTRODUCTION 9

actual first-hand knowledge of the Aeneid. While he did


not display the perspicuity of a Gavin Douglas in seeing
Vergil's purpose in writing the story of Aeneas and Dido,
neither did he accept the charge of Dares Phrygius that
Aeneas was a traitor to his country, nor did he admit such
distortions in his story as did Caxton, a century later. He
had included Vergil in his reading, unusually wide for his
times, and his error was due to misplaced emphasis and
biased judgment and not to ignorance.
In the full Renaissai^cC; such errors as those of Caxton
were no longer possible. \ The spread of humanistic learning
had brought Vergil into the curriculum of school and uni-
versity, and it would have been impossible for any of the
sixteenth-century translators to have believed that he was
rendering the Aeneid into English when he was working on
the Eneydes. The new appreciation shown by
of Vergil
the writers of the Renaissance on the continent, by Petrarch
and his followers in Italy and France, was reflected later
in the poetry and criticism of England. The sixteenth cen-
tury was a period of the development of the pastoral and
of the growth of the Renaissance principles of criticism, which
have been formulated into a creed by a modern critic, the
main tenet of which is, "Taking things on the whole, 'the
ancients' have anticipated almost everything, and in every-
thing that they have anticipated have done so well that
the best chance of success is simply to imitate them." To
this creed subscribed Spenser and his contemporaries, often
limiting "the ancients" to little more than Vergil, both
in connection with the pastoral, and, more especially, in
relation to the epic, although each is tinged with the influ-
ence of Renaissance models as well.
The seventeenth century is a period of transition, in
which the chief tendency showing the influence of Vergil
is the development of the classical epic, under the influence
10 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
of the rules of Aristotle and Boileau in respect to form, and
the interest in history and the study of the Bible in subject-
matter. Towering over all the httle men who tried to
compose epics was the giant Milton, to whose scholarly ap-
preciation of classic models was united a supreme poetic
genius.
With the development of the pseudo-classic theory and
practice during the seventeenth and early eighteenth cen-
turies, the emphasis came to be placed more and more on
the form and st3de of hterary production. was an age
It
of translation and imitation, and the two greatest names in
the poetr}'^ of this period were those of Dryden and Pope.
It was natural that Pope should admire the sweetness of
versification of the Eclogues of Vergil, and that he and his
followers should try to emulate it by imitating the frame-
work of the poems and copying their phraseology, and giving
to their work the same careful polish that Vergil was reported
to have bestowed upon his lines. The easiest way to analyze
the influence of Vergil, is to consider its effect upon the
various poetic genres. The other characteristic literary forms
and didactic
of the centurj' besides the pastoral were satire
poetry, and as the former usually took the form of the
mock-epic, it afforded further opportunity for VergiUan
imitation. When the didactic poetry concerned itself with
the country and the occupations of the farmer, it naturally
turned to the Georgics of Vergil for a model. The greatest
of the didactic poets was James Thomson, who appreciated
not only Vergil's practical wisdom, but his love of nature
and hispowers of description, and combined them in the
Seasons, a poem which had an astonishing and long-con-
tinued influence both at home and abroad.
There was little real understanding of the actual spirit
and purpose of Vergil until the nineteenth century, when
the historical method came to be used in criticism, and
INTRODUCTION 11

students of the Latin poet endeavored to place him in his


environment and determine its effect on him and his influence
on it. But in the Romantic period, criticism was too much
a matter of personal likes and dislikes to apply the historical
method with impartiality. The searcher after truth was
too prone to approach a writer with a preconceived idea of
what he ought to find there, and then find it. And in this
time of zeal for the spontaneous, the unstudied, and the
subjective, Vergil fared badly and exerted little influence
on English poetry, for he was generally condemned by the
one word "artificial." Landor, although he imitated Vergil
and greatly admired certain portions of his work, was
moved by this romantic spirit of individual criticism, and
denounced other parts of his poetry, such as Aeneas' parting
words to Dido, as frigid, stiff, in short, artificial.
But as the century went on, the growth of scholarly in-
terest in Vergil and real knowledge of his place in history
and the purpose of his work, brought about a change in the
attitude of literary men. They still applied the test of per-
sonal preference, but although they might prefer some other
poet to Vergil, they did not banish him altogether, and he
had a recognizable influence on many of the poets of the
period to a greater or less degree. None of them seems to
have understood or loved Vergil as did Tennyson, and cer-
tainly on none of them did he have a greater influence.
Tennyson is the last of our poets to have absorbed his Vergil
so thoroughly that the Latin poet has become a part of his
life and thought. As the horizon of men of letters has
steadily broadened, and new interests and problems have
taken their attention, inevitably the influence of Vergil
as of all the classics upon EngHsh poetry has decreased.
In the nineteenth century it is necessary to confine the
treatment largely to certain men who represent the sym-
pathy or reaction of an individual spirit toward the genius
12 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
of the Roman poet. Incidental echoes in the work of other
men are of httle significance, and consequently call for but
brief discussion.
It is difficult to prevent a book from falling
of this kind
into a mere list of parallel passages from Vergil and the
Enghsh poets. A amount of quotation is necessary,
certain
however, to show the extent of any poet's use of Vergilian
material, and the manner in which he adapted or assimilated
it. But in recording the similarities, I trust I have avoided
the pitfall yawning before all commentators, that of carry-
ing the analysis of indebtedness to Vergil too far, so that
it verges on absurdity. hope I have avoided offending
I
the manes of Tennyson and moving the shade of Landor
to sarcastic laughter. It was Landor who thus ridiculed
the attempts of critics to find echoes of the classics in the
most unlikely places. In his Citation of William Shakespeare
he writes, "Master Silas did interrupt this discourse by
saying, 'May it please your worship, the constable is wait-
ing.' Whereat Sir Thomas said tartly, 'And let him wait,'"
to which the "Editor" has appended the following footnote:
"It has been suggested that this answer was borrowed from
Vergil, and goes strongly against the genuineness of the
manuscript. The editor's memory was upon the stretch to
recollect the words: the learned critic supplied them:
'"Solum Aeneas vocat." et vocet oro.' The editor could
only reply, indeed weakly, that calling and waiting are not
exactly the same, imless when tradesmen rap and gentle-
men are leaving town."
CHAPTER II

THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION


The Vergilian was unbroken by temporary
tradition
loss of his works or diminution in his popularity. Through-
out the Middle Ages, his poems and his personality were
powerful factors in the intellectual life of the times. As
poet, and grammarian, as moralist, prophet,
rhetorician
writer of romance and magician, he played a prominent
part in the thought of all ranks of men, from the scholar
to the peasant.^ It was Chaucer, inheriting all the gath-
ered reverence of fourteen centuries, who wrote.

Glory and honour, Virgil Mantuan,


Be to thy name! and I shal, as I can,

Folow thy lantern, as thou gost biforn.'^

Some, Dante and Chaucer himself, did follow, with


like
only a few deviations from the straight path, but it must be
admitted that other eager spirits seized the lantern from
the hand of their guide, and ran into all sorts of curious
byways and blind alleys, drawing Vergil after them.

The which Vergil plays today as the greatest of Latin


role
poets was not his most important part in the Middle Ages.
With the decline of literature which came in the third and
fourth centuries, the influence of his works as poems became
a matter of externals only. The form and style and subject-
1 In this first portion of the chapter I am following the well-known
discussion in Vergil in the Middle Ages, by Domenico Comparetti.
* Legend of Good Women : Dido. 1-3.
13
14 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
matter continued to serve as models for much of the mediae-
val Latin poetry, both pagan and Christian,^ but the
spirit of the master had vanished, or was too much obscured
by the mists of grammar and rhetoric which surrounded him
to be caught by any of his imitators, even those nearest him
in time. A gleam of true poetic appreciation was visible
here and there, but mostly in the churchmen who confessed
to a worldly love for the Aeneid which enticed them from
their spiritual duties. The popularity Dido
of the stoiy of
never waned, and it furnished the subject for numerous
stage representations, even in the days of the Roman em-
perors and also later in the Renaissance, and for tapes-
tries and pictures. Yet one of the chief occupations of the
men who studied and knew the poems, was the making of
centos, whereby Vergil became the mouthpiece of senti-
ments by no means his own, and the author of a tragedy of
Medea or an epitome of the Old Testament.
Dante, of course, is the great exception to all this, for
while his conception of Vergil is in some respects based on
the mediaeval ideas, it is lifted far above them by his poetic
sympathy and admiration for the Aeneid. He is like the
mediaeval monk in his tendency to allegorize, and in his
belief in the omniscience of Vergil, but the poet nowhere
appears in the Divina Commedia as a magician, and though
he is a Christian in the poem, it is because he has gained
since death the knowledge that the gods he worshipped in
life were false gods, and the truth is to be found only in
Christianity. Dante says that Vergil is his favorite poet,
and his constant use of echoes from the Latin proves the
fact. Yet he is no servile imitator of Vergil. He brings

* The most prominent example is the Waltharius, a Latin poem of


the tenth century, by Ekkehard, a monk See Zappert,
of St. Gall.
Virgils Fortleben im Mittelalter, for a collection of Vergilian echoes in
mediaeval poetry, in Latin and in the vernaculars.
THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 15

to him the sympathy of one great poet for another, and


becomes his interpreter rather than his imitator. Dante,
whose patriotism was the ruHng passion of his hfe, recognized
no break between the history of Rome and that of Italy,
and looked upon the Aeneid as the great national poem of
his country,- His conception of Vergil as essentially a na-
tional poet was an important factor sympathy for the
in his
author of the epic of Italy. It was, then, no mere accident,
and no mere compliance with the mediaeval veneration for
Vergil which made Dante choose him for a guide. The
choice was based upon a love of Vergil which was a funda-
mental part of his nature. It has been said that to Dante
Vergil symbolized the imperial ideal, but even though he was
so allegorized, he is at the same time a living figure in the
poem, a real personality, if not the true Augustan Vergil, yet
something nearer to it than the Vergil of the mediaeval
clergy. In this poetic appreciation of the work and per-
sonality of Vergil, Dante showed himself a precursor of the
Renaissance.
Vergil's popularity among the grammarians began early.
Suetonius says that Q. Caecilius Epirota, a freedman of At-
ticus, was the first to use his poems as textbooks of gram-
mar in his school, and by the time of Nero, Seneca could say,
"Grammaticus futurus Vergilium scrutatur." His aptness
of phrase delighted the grammarians, and they adopted more
illustrations from his poetry than from the works of any
other Latin writer. So copious are the quotations in the
textbooks of Nonius, Priscian, and Donatus, that, accord-
ing to Comparetti, it would be possible to reconstruct from
them practically the whole of the Eclogues, Georgics, and
Aeneid, if the manuscripts of Vergil had all been lost. It
is not strange, therefore, that a grammarian of the seventh

century should adopt as his most natural title, the name,


Publius Vergilius Maro.
16 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
As a rhetorician, too, Vergil's reputation began soon after
his own time. Arellius Fuscus, an orator and friend of the
elder Seneca, freely adapted Vergil in his speeches. At
the beginning of the second century, Annius Florus dis-
cussed what had become a popular question in his treatise
entitled Vergilius orator an poeta. The rhetoricians formed
their rules according to his practice, and later Macrobius
praised Vergil for having observed the rules of rhetoric.
The pupils of the schools throughout the Middle Ages made
such extensive use of the poems of Vergil as textbooks, that
it is natural that he should have become for them the high-

f^' est type of grammarian and rhetorician, the ideal dericus.


As such he appeared in the thirteenth century romance of
Dolopathos, endowed with the attributes and the official
robes of a mediaeval teacher.
In these two aspects, however, the mediaeval Vergil had
little effect upon later literature. But as a moral teacher
and as a prophet of Christ, his influence was felt even down
into the eighteenth century in England, and his fame as
A a magician, while not so long-lived among the cultured,
lingered on through the time of Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate,
and Hawes, and on the continent called forth a formal
attack from Gabriel Naude as late as the seventeenth cen-
tury. It still survives among the people of Italy.
Aelius Donatus, in the fourth century, the first to attribute
allegorical significance to the poems of Vergil, found in the
three poems, the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Aeneid,
the three stages in man's development, the pastoral, the
agricultural,and the martial. Some of the interpretations
in the commentary of Servius were of an allegorical nature,
such as the famous explanation of the golden branch. The
tendency was a persistent one, and natural enough in view
of the mediaeval fondness for writing allegory. It afforded
opportunity for every sort of extravagance, and the height
THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 17

of absurdity was reached in theDe Continentia Vergiliana


of Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, who lived not later than the
sixth century. He gave an elaborate interpretation of the
Aeneid as a representation of the progress of the human
soul, abandoning the Eclogues and Georgics as too deep
for him to understand. He spoke on the authority of the
poet himself, for the shade of Vergil, a gloomy, superior
apparition, appeared to him in person and instructed him
as to the correct meaning of the epic. Bernard of Chartres
carried on the tradition, and Dante in the Convito discussed
the "allegory of the ages of man contained in the Aeneid."
John of Salisbury devoted a whole chapter of the Policraticus
to a detailed analysis of the Aeneid as an allegory of the
human soul. The notion of a hidden meaning was still
strong in the prologues of the several books of Gavin Douglas'
translation of the Aeneid, and in Spenser's Letter to Sir
Walter Raleigh.
Rather closely allied to this notion of Vergil as a moral
teacher, was the firmly grounded behef that he had proph-
esied the coming of Christ. The remarkably pure and
noble character of his life made people all the more ready
to accept the author of the famous fourth Eclogue as a
pagan Isaiah, especially as the imagery in the two pictures
of the reign of peace on earth was so similar. This idea,
which persisted far into modem times, in the Middle Ages
was one of the most prevalent of the traditions. In the
Mystery Plays, Vergil appeared as one of the prophets of
the Messiah, and was called upon for his testimony. Some-
times he was regarded as an unconscious witness of the
Incarnation, and one well-known legend represents St.
Paul at the tomb of Vergil, mourning over his lost oppor-
tunity for converting one who was so nearly a Christian,
and would have been so, save for the accident of having
died too soon.
/

18 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS


In spite of these curious perversions of the meaning and
purpose of the poems of Vergil, there survived a thorough
knowledge of their contents. Even the romances which
treat of the Aeneas story and of the life of VergU were based
on a knowledge of the original, although its proportions
were rather obscured. These romances are one of the most
interesting developments of the mediaeval treatment of
Vergil. The story of Aeneas supplied one more subject to
the romancers who were busy transforming the adventures
of Alexander and the legends of Thebes and Troy into forms
more fitted to the ideas of the period. " Classical narratives,"
says Comparetti, "were compelled adopt romantic
to
dress to suit the taste of the time." * As he very justly
points out, this is part of the same tendency which led
painters of the Middle Ages to put into their pictures the
costumes and surroundings of their own time and country,
regardless of the subject. The interest in the Troy material
was very great,and was increased by the belief prevalent
among the people of western Europe that they could trace
their descent from the Trojans. Hence the preference for
the narrative of Dares the Phrygian over that of Dictys the
Cretan, as the former was written from the Trojan point
of view, the latter from the Greek. These two mediaeval
Latin prose narratives were the authorities on the subject.
Both purported to be translations from contemporary ac-
counts in Greek, and where Homer differed from them, he
was considered to be in the wrong.* Upon them were based
the main versions of the Troy story, the Roman de Troie
of Benoit de Saint-Maure, which was translated into Latin
prose by Guido delle Colonne, the De Bello Trojano of

* Comparetti, Vergil in the M.A., p. 242.


* Homer was known only in the Latin epitome, the Iliaa Latina
of Baebius Italicus, or "Pindar the Theban."^
THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 19

Joseph of Exeter, and either directly or indirectly, many


of the later treatments of this material.
The Aeneid of Vergil, being well known and much ad-
mired in the Middle Ages, furnished the basis for romances
on the story of Aeneas. The Romans d^ Eneas, a French
poem of the twelfth century, the oldest extant version of
poem in
Vergil's a vulgar tongue, was evidently written by
a man who had the Aeneid before him. It is far from a
literal translation, however, for it expands some incidents,
suppresses others, changes at times the order of events,
adds long descriptions and accounts of marvels of various
kinds, discredits the intervention of the gods, but transforms
Dido's priestess into a sorceress, and transports the whole
narrative into the atmosphere of mediaeval romance. It
does not plunge at once in medias but begins with an
res,

account of the early history and fall of Troy. The most


interesting expansion is that of the Lavinia episode. The
daughter of Latinus is a mere shadow in the Aeneid, but
in the Eneas she becomes a truly sentimental maiden, who
falls in love with Eneas when she sees him from her tower,

as he passes along attended by his chevaliers, faints when


she fears that he untrue to her, and shows all the char-
is

acteristics of a mediaeval love-sick heroine. Eneas too is a


model lover. He sighs and groans and takes to his bed in a
thoroughly conventional fashion, and manages though pale
and wan to appear before Lavinia's tower in time to save
her from utter despair at his absence. It seems like a
all

ridiculous caricature of the Aeneid, but the poet had no such


intention. He was merely conforming to the romantic
ideals of his age.
The Eneas was imitated in the German romance, Eneit,
by Heinrich von Veldeke. In the latter part of the fif-
teenth century there was another French handling of the
story, the Livre des Eneydes, translated into English by
20 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

Caxton in 1490. All of these show a strong tendency to


place undue emphasis on the sentimental, erotic portions
of the narrative, and all incur the criticism which Gavin
Douglas makes of Caxton's treatment of the Dido episode:

So that the feird buik of Eneados,


Tuiching the luif and deith of Dido quene,
The twa part of his volume doith contene,
That in the text of Virgill, traistis me,
The twelft part scars conteins, as ye ma se.^

Not only the career of Aeneas, but the life of his creator
was recognized as a legitimate subject for romanticizing,
i

; In the Dolopathos, a Latin prose romance of the thirteenth


V century, later put into French verse by Herbers, Vergil
appears as the mediaeval clerk, philosopher and astrologer,
the tutor and guardian of Lucimien, the son of Dolopathos,
king of Sicily. The approaching the
figure of Vergil here is

popular conception of him as a magician; but although he


has the power of prophecy through his knowledge of astrol-
ogy, he uses it, not because of his own magic powers or
through any alliance with the Devil, but through the grace
of God. It can be easily seen, however, that it is no long
step from this conception to that contained in Walter Burley's
Lives of the Philosophers or the sixteenth century Lyfe of
Virgilius, which had a French original. The Dolopathos
belongs to the literary tradition rather than the popular,
even containing quotations from the works of Vergil, but it
is, as Comparetti says, the "final parody of the literary
^
tradition."
A religious and almost superstitious veneration for Vergil
began in the days of Silius Italicus, Statins, and Martial,

^ Douglas, Virgil, Proloug of the First Buik of Eneados.


^ Comparetti, Vergil in the M. A., p. 238.
THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 21

who observed his birthday with sacrifices, and honored his


tomb hke that of a deified emperor. By the time of Macro-
bius he had attained the dignified position of an infalUble
authority upon all subjects, including the occult science of
astrology. Many apocryphal were related in
anecdotes
the successive biographies of the poet. Here perhaps was
a prophecy of the growth of that extraordinary mediaeval
conception of Vergil as a magician.
It is one of the most fascinating phases of Vergilian
study, this survival in the minds and affections of the people
of the personality of a great poet whose works have always
appealed to the educated and cultured. His name, it is
said, still finds a place in the folk-stories of Italy and even
in the peasant games of Poland. There are various theories
as to the origin of the Vergil legend. Compare tti says that
it originated in Naples, among the lower classes, and was
founded on local records connected with Vergil's long stay
in that city and the celebrity of his tomb there. Tunison,
on the other hand, holds that it grew out of the linking of
Vergil's name with certain legends afloat in Germany,
whence they were transferred to he says,
Italy. "In effect,"
"these stories were like blank forms of legal documents
which only required a word here and there to fit them for a
great variety of uses. Virgil's name was simply one of these
accidental strokes, out of many failures that were forgotten,
which hit the popular fancy." ^ Graf,^ taking the middle
course, says that the legends were popular in origin, but
were connected with the hterary legend. This seems the
most reasonable view to take of the matter. The legends
were certainly firmly estabhshed in the popular mind when
Conrad of Querfurt and Gervase of Tilbury visited Naples,
and brought home accounts of the marvels they found there.
8 Tunison, Master Virgil, p. 96.
' Graf, Roma nella Memoria e nelle Immaginazioni de Medio Aevo.
22 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
It seems natural to suppose that the powers of prophecy and
the knowledge of astrology which the Middle Ages assigned
to Vergil, as well as the familiarity with magic rites displayed
in the eighth Eclogue and the intimate acquaintance with the
Underworld shown in the sixth book of the Aeneid, may
all have had an effect in fostering the belief that the poet

himself possessed magical powers and held intercourse with


the Devil.
Whatever their origin may have been, there were many
curious legends connected with the name of Vergil, both
at Naples and at Rome. He added to the comfort of the
former city in many ways, and at Rome he built the wonder-
ful Salvatio Romae, the palace or mirror, according to the
two forms of the legend, which protected Rome from her
enemies. Several of the legends ^^ are spoken of in the
account of Vergil given by Walter Burley in his De Vita et
Moribus Philosophorum, adopted with a qualifying creditur
from the De Naturis Rerum of Alexander Neckam. This
is a curious mixture of fact and fancy, but it has not reached

the pure legend of the sixteenth century Lyje of Virgilius,


an English translation of a French story-book, Les Fails
Merveilleux de Virgille, made by John Doesborcke, and
printedby him in Gothic letter with woodcuts at Antwerp.
The book is without date, but it probably was printed about
1525 or 1530. The title-page gives an idea of the character
of the narrative:"This boke treateth of the lyfe of Virgilius
and of his death, and many marvayles, that he dyd in his
lyfe tyme by witchcraft and nigromansy, thorough the
help of the devylls of hell."
Although Englishmen, such as Gervase of Tilbury and Alex-
ander Neckam, were among the first to give literary expres-
'° For a
full account of Vergil the magician, see Comparetti, op. cit.,

Part Tuniaon, op. cit., Graf, op. cit., and for the legends current in
II,

Italy today, C. G. Leland, Unpvhlished Legends oj Virgil.


THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 23

sion to the legends about Vergil, these stories had com-


paratively little on later English literature. Some
effect
of the Middle English versions of the Seven Sages connect
the name of Vergil with the story of the Salvatio Romae,
which Chaucer merely alludes to and which Gower relates
in full. Gower makes an allusion to one of the magician's
love-adventures, which is described by Stephen Hawes.
Marlowe, in his Doctor Faustus, speaks of his magic power.
But there is no trace, as far as I know, of any popular belief
in Vergil the magician, as there was in other countries on
the continent with which Vergil had had no connection.
Merlin, Roger Bacon and Doctor Faustus furnished the neces-
sary support for the English love of the marvelous, and Vergil
for the most part, took his true place as a great poet rather
than as a great magician.

Inasmuch as scholarship in mediaeval England was


almost wholly in the hands of the churchmen, it is to their
writings that we must look to find indications of the attitude
of the period toward Vergil. The struggle which went on
in the minds of the clergy on the continent between their
love for the beauties of pagan literature and their abhor-
rence of its doctrines, was paralleled in England. They
recognized the importance of the classics in education as a
and could not forget what they had learned
basis of culture,
in their youth. Like Jerome, they quoted Vergil on one
page and inveighed against him on another. Alcuin, who
had loved the Mantuan in his youth, later instructed his
pupils not to read him. Yet his own letters were full of
Vergilian echoes. Herbert, Bishop of Norwich, told of a
dream in which Christ appeared to him and reproved him
for his affection for the classical writers. St. Odo had a vision
in which he saw a vessel, very beautiful to look upon, but
full of poisonous serpents. When he awoke, he realized
24 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

that the vessel represented Vergil, and the serpents were the
pernicious doctrines contained in his poems.
But no matter how strongly they might protest against
the morals of Vergil, nothing could eradicate from their
minds the poetry they had learned in childhood. Perhaps
this poet enjoyed some degree of immunity from their at-
tacks because of the traditional connection of his name
with Christianity. However that may be, he was a general
favorite for quotation. The earliest evidence of knowl-
edge of Vergil in Britain is in the book of Bishop Gildas,
in which he quotes from the Aeneid ^^ in the midst of his
lamentations over the downfall of his country. The His-
tory of the Britons, also, which goes under the name of Nennius,
citesa line from the third book of the Georgics,^^ and in
the curious genealogies of Brutus, gives evidence of some
knowledge of the adventures of Aeneas.
There no room to doubt that Aldhelm was familiar
is

with all the works of Vergil. While some of his classical


quotations may be due to the careful study of the illustra-
tions in a mediaeval grammar, this is probably not the
case with Vergil. In his Liber de Septenario, et de Metris,
Aenigmatibus, ac Pedum Regulis, the illustrative quotations
from the Aeneid, Georgics and Eclogues are nearly as numer-
ous as those from all other Latin poetry put together. He
shows familiarity, not only with single lines, but with long
passages, such as the description of Fama, which he quotes
in one of his Riddles and imitates to some extent in his
picture of Superbia, and the account of Allecto, which he
also follows, even more closely, in a passage in the poetical
version of the De Laudibus Virginitatis}^ Beside these
longer passages, this poem is full of Vergilian reminiscences.
The opening words, omnipotens genitor, strike the note at
" Aen. 9. 24.
i^
Georg. 3. 25.
'^ De Laudibus Virginitatis, 11. 1635 ff.
THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 25

once, and a mere glance down the pages at the ends of the
lines will reveal a large number of verse-tags which show
that the writer's chief acquaintance with the hexameter
has been in the poems of Vergil. Such, for example, are the
following : caelestibus armis, jama super aethera notus (applied
to Gregorius), quo non praestantior alter, stipante caterva,
limina portae, cornua cantu, and many
Phrases too
others.
within the lines sometimes give a brief passage almost the
appearance of a Vergilian cento. That he knows also some
of the literary legends which had gathered about the biog-
raphy of Vergil, is evident from his reference in his treatise
on meters to the story about Vergil's writing his own epitaph.
The Venerable Bede was not so devoted to Vergil as his
predecessor. The quotations are not so numerous, the
echoes in his poetry are fewer, and in the illustrative quo-
tations in his technical works there is not such a preponder-
ance of lines from Vergil. He rather prides himself on his
unlikeness to the Mantuan in his choice of subject-matter,
saying in the hymn celebrating Queen Ethelrida, a holy
virgin,
BellaMaro resonet, nos pacis dona canamus;
Munera nos Christi, bella Maro resonet."

Yet midst of his narrative in the Ecclesiastical History^


in the
he can write, "Conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant,
quern res exitum haberet solliciti expectantes." And
echoes in his poetry, though comparatively few, are to be
found. The lines describing a gust of wind striking a ship
in the De Miraculis Sancti Cuthberti, go back to the Aeneid
for a model as so many storm pictures have done since
the days of Vergil. Phrases too like inque dies, haec ubi
dicta, instaurat honorem, nee me sententia fallit, some of
which had become commonplaces in narrative poetry, mark
" Eccl. Hist. Bk. IV. Chap. 20.
26 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

the Vergilian influence. The Cuculus sive Veris et Hiemis


Conflictus, variously assigned to Bede and Alcuin, is an
eclogue in amoebean form, with several reminiscences of
the master's phraseology, such as Palaemon's desine plura,
which closes the contest. The most significant thing, how-
ever, is that without exception, all of the quotations in the
De Temporum Ratione are from Vergil, and that all of them
are given without his name, several of them beginning with
such words as et Poeta descrihens, de qua Poeta, meminit
horum et Poeta. For the Middle Ages Vergil was truly the
Poeta par excellence}^
To Bede the fall of Troy and the wanderings of Aeneas
were historical facts. They found a place, together with
actual events, in his chronicle of the Third Age of the World
in the De Temporihus and the De Temporum Ratione. But
to Alcuin, Vergil was the falsus Maro, and he did not wish
his pupils to have anything to do with the Vergilii mendacia.
Alcuin was an excellent example of the mediaeval ecclesi-
astical attitude toward Vergil, for he who said,

Auribus ille tuis male frivola falsa sonabit,'*

had in youth been Virgilii amplius quam psalmorum


his
amator," and what he had learned in those days of early
devotion remained an integral part of his intellectual equip-
ment. He made frequent use of this despised and beloved
falsator to point a moral in his prose works, and neither
Bede nor Aldhelm can equal him in the number of Vergilian
imitations and echoes in his poetry.^* In his technical
treatises too the quotations from Vergil outnumber those
" Cf. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, VII. 6.
*^ Carmen, prefixed to Compendium in Canticum Canticorum.
" Anonymous Vita Alcuini, Chap. 1.
" For a copious Ust of VergiUan quotations, allusions, and echoes
in the works of Alcuin, see Omera Floyd Long, The Attitude of Alcuin
toward Vergil, in Studies in Honor of B. L. Gildersleeve.
THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 27

from other authors put together by a ratio of more than


all

four to one. And his excuse is the familiar appeal to the


authority of the apostle Paul, who "aurum sapientiae, in
stercore poetarum inventum, in divitias ecclesiasticae trans-
tulit prudentiae; sicut omnes sancti doctores, eius exemplo
^^
eruditi, fecerunt."
The search for Vergilian influence in the vernacular litera-
ture of the Anglo-Saxons is attended with little success.
Alfred shows the characteristic mediaeval ignorance or
neglect of chronology when he says, "
Peah Omerus se goda
sceop, l)e mid Crecu selest was: se was Firgilies lareow; se
Firgilius waes mid Laedenwarum selest," ^^ and again in
verse speaks of Homer as "Firgilies freond and lareow."
The poems assigned to Caedmon and Cynewulf naturally
depend on the Biblical narrative for their story and structure.
The briefer secular poetry, such as Widsith, Deor, Maldon
and Brunanhurgh, show no traces of Vergilian style, subject-
matter or treatment, except in so far as the last two give
evidence of the truth of the following statement by W. P.
Ker: "There are certain commonplaces of actual life which
reappear in the heroic literature of different countries and
make a kind of prosaic stuff for the poetic imagination to
work upon. Epic requires a particular kind of warfare,
not too highly organized, and the manner of the Homeric
^^
battle is found again in Germany, Ireland, and old France."
The theory of Vergilian influence on Beowulf, however,
has been seriously advanced by excellent scholars, and calls
for some discussion. The most complete statement of the
case is that by Prof. Fr. Klaeber, of the University of Min-
nesota.^^ After a general discussion of the matter, he pro-

» Ejristle 147. " Boethius, Cap. XLI.


" W. P. Ker, The Dark Ages, p. 81.
** Archiv das Studium der Neiieren Sprachen und Literaturen,
fiir

Band 126, pp. 40-48, 339-359.


28 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

ceeds to set forth the parallels in such things as the existence


of accounts of battles, of voyages over the sea, and of life
at court, and in the ideas of Fate and of Heaven and Hell.
He finds definite similarities in the first part of Beowulf,
in the account of the hero's arrival and entertainment at
the court of Hrothgar, and the landing of Aeneas on the
shore of Africa and his treatment at Carthage. Others have
also pointed out here a similarity to the reception of Ulysses
by the Phaeacians. In his second article, Prof. Klaeber
lists in great detail similarities in character-drawing, in situa-
tion, in the expression of certain thoughts and feelings, and
in certain incidents in the narrative, and finally resemblances
in phraseology and Latinisms in construction.
Such always interesting, but as proof of direct
parallels are
influence they are not always convincing. Prof. Klaeber
himself is rather cautious, saying that many of the dis-

coveries may upon accident, but that some seem to


rest
furnish incontestable proof and to lead to the conclusion
that the influence of the Aeneid upon Old English litera-
ture is greater than anyone has dared heretofore to sup-
pose. If there were positive proof otherwise that the
Beowulf poet knew Vergil and was copying him, these
parallels would furnish excellent corroborative and illus-
trative evidence. But there is no such positive proof, and
the mere fact that two poets, both writmg epics, chose
to represent a remarkable hero, who, after a sea voyage,
was welcomed with hospitality by those on whose shores
he landed, and entertained with a feast, does not demonstrate
conclusively that the later poet was using the earher as a
model. Nor is the point settled by observing that Beowulf
and Aeneas both stand in awe of their God, that Hrothgar
and Evander bewailed the loss of their youth or indulged in
reminiscences of former days (are they not merely furnishing
two examples of the universal truth of Horace's descriptive
THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 29

phrase, laudator temporis actif), that the halls of Hrothgar


and Dido were adorned for the feast ("ein merkwtirdiger
Parallele " !) , that the warriors in both poems thought that
they might never see their homes again, that the heroes
resolved to conquer or die, that Grendel and Polyphemus
were both horrid monsters, that an old man lamented over
his loneliness after the death of his son, and Dido bewailed
her loneliness for Aeneas, or that the many other parallels
adduced, of which those mentioned are a fair sample, can
be drawn. Of the similarities in phraseology. Prof. Klaeber
himself admits that it is difficult to speak with certainty.
It is of course perfectly possible that the Beowulf poet
knew Vergil, for we have already seen that writers from
the time of Gildas to that of Alcuin gave positive evidence
of an acquaintance with his works. But there seems to me
to be nothing in all these illustrations to make it certain
that he was following Vergil, either consciously or uncon-
sciously. The closest parallels are, as Prof. Klaeber says,
those in the first part of Beowulf, from the arrival of the
hero to the slaying of Grendel. Closest of all, perhaps, is

that between the song of the bard at Hrothgar's court, of

how the Almighty made the earth,


fairest fields enfolded by water,
set, triumphant, sun and moon
for a light to lighten the land-dwellers,^

with the song of lopas,

hie canit errantem lunam solisque labores,


unde hominum genus et pecudes, unde imber et ignes,
Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas geminosque Triones.
{Aen. 1. 742-4)

^ Beowulf, 11. 92-95. Gummere's translation in The Oldest English


Epic.
30 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

But from from the other parallels, no more definite


this as
conclusion can be drawn than that expressed by Prof. Brandl,
that these parallels cannot be used as proof of a direct
dependence of Beowulf on Vergil, as they may all be ex-
plained on some different ground. They do, however, he
thinks, point out the relationship between the composition
of Beowulf and that of the Roman artificial epic, indicating
that the methods are the same in each case.^^
The barren centuries which followed the death of Alfred
gave little evidence of the influence of Vergil, except in the
case of such Latin poetry as continued to be written. The
writers of Saints' Lives, which was the chief form of hterature
of that time, set themselves definitely in opposition to all
classical learning. Aelfric tells us, for example, that when
they were converted St. Eugenia and St. Basil utterly
abandoned the learning and literature of the Greeks and
^Romans. Some writers even gloried in their ignorance of
the ancient authors. But with the revival of learning of the
twelfth century came a renewed interest in Latin, and the
writers of the period became the chief exemplars and de-
fenders of a classical education.
The most learned man of the twelfth century was un-
doubtedly John of Salisbury, whose Policraticus and Meta-
logicus give ample evidence of his wide reading and his
advocacy of the study of classical literature. In this read-
ing, Vergil was of course included. As the recent editor of
his Policraticus says in his Prolegomena, "Vergilii Bucolica,
Georgica, Aeneida passim citat. Servii et Bernardi Silves-
triscommentariis usus est et Vita Vergilii quae sub Donati
nomine circumfertur." ^^ There are about a hundred refer-
" Paul's Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie, Vol. II, p. 1008.
For a refutation of this theory, see H. Munro Chad wick, The Heroic
Age, pp. 74-76.
*' Clemens C. I. Webb, Policraticus, Prol.
THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 31

ences to and quotations from the works of Vergil, cited in


illustration of all kinds of topics, hunting, incantations,
omens, dreams, the use of flattery, the qualities proper to
princes and magistrates, the glory to be obtained from
the praise of great writers. Vergil is by no means his
favorite author, however. Ovid, Horace, Cicero, and St.
Augustine are quoted far more frequently, and Valerius
Maximus, Macrobius, Lucan, and Juvenal are quite as
popular as the Mantuan.
The chief interest in John of Salisbury's treatment of
Vergil lies, not in these quotations and references, for these
are not marked by any individuality, but in his allegorical
interpretation of the Aeneid. ''Procedat tibi poeta Mantua-
nus," he says, "qui sub imagine fabularum totius philoso-
phiae exprimit veritatem." ^^ And two chapters "
in his last
he gives a definite illustration of what he means in this
sentence. Following in general the example of Fulgentius,
he interprets the books of the Aeneid as represent-
first six

ing the six ages of man. The name Eneas, he says, means
merely the inhabitant of the body, "ennos enim, ut Grecis
placet, habitator est, denias corpus et ab his componitur
Eneas ut significet animam quasi carnis tugurio habitantem."
This symboUc figure, then, passes through six stages in his
career, each described in the story of one of the books of the
Aeneid. The book represents infancy attacked by
first

storms, the second, youth, the third, young manhood, the


fourth, the experience of ilHcit love restrained by reason
in the person of Mercury, the fifth, maturity, the sixth, old
age. "Constat enim," he concludes, "apud eos qui mentem
diligentius perscrutantur auctorum Maronem geminae
doctrinae vires declarasse, dum vanitate figmenti poetici
philosophicae virtutis involvit archana." In the next
chapter he appHes Vergil's description of the golden bough
2« Bk. VI. chap. 22. « Bk. VIII. chaps. 24, 25.
32 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

to the attempt of man to wrest from the tree of wisdom the


branch of virtue. "Neque enim ad genitorem vitae, Deum
scihcet, alter redit, nisi qui virtutis ramum excisum de
hgno scientiae praetendit." But no one can tear off this
branch without knowing the whole tree. "Hoc ipsum
sensit et Maro, qui, hcet veritatis esset ignarus et in tenebris
gentium ambularet, ad Ehseos campos felicium et cari geni-
toris conspectus Eneam admittendum esse non credidit,
nisi docente Sibilla, ramum hunc
. . . consecraret." . . .

Here is the interesting contrast with Alcuin. The later


Christian feels that some use may be made of the stories
which charmed and shocked the earlier ecclesiastic. He
believes "nee verba nee sensus gentilium fugiendos,
. . .

dummodo This reconcilement of pleasure


vitentur errores."
and duty had an abiding charm which lasted long after the
which gave it birth was a thing of the past.
religious prejudice
The same allegorizing tendency determines much of the
treatment of the material in Alexander Neckam's De Natu-
ris Rerum, with its frequent alternation of "Narratio" and

"Adaptatio." He explains that when Vergil says that


Aeneas had as a friend the fidus Achates, he means merely
that he carried with him an agate (achates), a stone which
had the power of rendering the bearer amabilem et facun-
dum et potentem^^ In his chapter on bees, which is largely
compiled from the fourth Georgic,^^ and contains a long
quotation from it, he applies everything to human life and
draws a moral from the activities and characteristics of
the bees.
Neckam has also come under the spell of the mediaeval
legends in regard to Vergil, both literary and popular. He
tells the story of the saving of Vergil's life by a gnat, which,
according to the current was the occasion of the writing
tale,
of the Culex. But when he compared the poem with the
" Bk. II. chap. 85. " Bk. II. chap. 163.
THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 33

story, he found that the circumstances were different.'*^ He


also gives an account of some of the marvels attributed to
Vergil, whose name was so closely associated with Naples,
one of the places "in quibus artes floruerunt liberales."'^
This is the first literary expression of these popular stories
about Vergil's miraculous power. They seem to have been
recorded first by men like Gervase of Tilbury ^^ and Conrad
of Querfurt, who brought them back from Italy, and it is
possible that Neckam had heard them himself in Naples.
He relates five of the wonders which had been ascribed to
Vergil, one of which, the Salvatio Romae, had a wide vogue,
and recurs several times in the literature of England.
As Neckam tells it, the story runs as follows: Vergil
built at Rome a noble which were images represent-
palace, in
ing all the nations of the world. There was also a bronze
horseman, who, when any nation threatened to attack
Rome, turned in the direction of the image of that country,
and so warned the city of its danger. When Vergil was
asked how long the palace would stand, he replied, "Until
a virgin shall bear a child," and at the birth of Christ, the
building suddenly fell to the ground. The same tale is
told in Neckam's poem, De Laudibus Divinae Sapientiae,
but with no mention of Vergil. The story is found in many
forms, and connected with other names, such as that of
Romulus. There are oriental analogues in stories of cities
protected from the approach of strangers by a bronze duck,

30 Bk. II. chap. 109. 'i


Bk. II. chap. 174.
32 See his OHa Imperialia, III. 10, 12, 13, 15, 16. He here tells the
stories of the bronze fly, of the shambles, of the imprisonment of all
the snakes in Naples under the Dominican gate, of the two marble
heads on the gate, a smiling one on the right and a frowning one on
the left, which determined the fortunes of all who entered, of Vergil's
marvelous garden, of the statue with the trumpet, which warded off
the winds from Vesuvius, of the heahng baths at Puteoli, and of the
cave where no plots could be made.
34 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

which has suggested that the classical story of the Capitoline


geese may be the basis of the whole legend. According to
another popular version of the story, the Salvatio Romae
was a mirror, set up near the city, in which all events happen-
ing in the world could be seen, and so any threatened danger
could be averted. This forms one of the stories in the
Middle English versions of the Seven Sages of Rome, usually
associated with the name of Vergil, once with that of
Merlin. It is this version that is told at length by Gower,
and referred to by Chaucer in the Squieres Tale. According
to Gower,^^ whose tale really belongs in spirit with that of
Neckam, rather than two hundred years later, Vergil made
a mirror "of his clergie," which should reflect any enemies
who were about to make an attack on Rome. He
sette it in the tounes ye
Of marbre on a piler withoute. . . .

So that whil thilke Mirour laste,


Ther was no lond which mihte achieve
With werre Rome for to grieve;
Whereof was gret envie tho.

At a certain time, Rome, whose emperor was named Crassus,


was at war with Carthage under Hannibal and with "Puile."
Her enemies were prevented from doing any harm to the
city by the virtues of the mirror, so when three philosophers
offered to destroy they accepted the proposition with
it,

alacrity. These three men went to Rome with a large


amount of treasure which they secretly buried in two differ-
ent places. Then they appeared before Crassus, and told
him that they were able by the help of spirits which visited
them in their dreams, to discover where gold was hidden.
They offered to enrich the emperor, and he, being very
covetous, accepted their offer. On successive days, they
dug up the two hoards that they had buried, pretending that
« Conf. Amantis, V. 2.
THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 35

the location had been revealed to them in the night. On


the day they announced that there was treasure
third
"under the glas," and asked permission to dig there. Crassus
demurred at this, fearing that harm might come to the
mirror, but when the philosophers promised that they would
so prop up the tower that there would be no possible danger,
he consented. The three philosophers, therefore, under-
mined the tower, first putting props under it as they had
promised. But at night they set fire to the props and
fled; the tower and the mirror was destroyed. The
fell

result was a general attack against Rome, and Hannibal


slew so many noble Romans in one day that he got three
bushels of gold rings from their fingers, and bridged the Tiber
with their dead bodies. The Romans, in punishment of
the "coveitise" of the emperor, which had caused all the
mischief, poured molten gold down his throat. While
Gower seems to be responsible for the addition of Carthage
and Hannibal, the main outlines of the story are those which
occur in the other accounts. Spenser assigns the manu-
facture of a similar mirror to Merlin, and says he made it

for King Ryence of Deheubarth. Just how the mirror


survived the fall of the tower, I do not know, but John
Evelyn tells us that in 1643 he visited the cathedral of St.
Denis near Paris, and that in the treasury, which was "es-
teemed one of the richest in Europe, lay in a window
. . .

a mirror of a kind of stone said to have belonged to the


poet Virgil." It is interesting that this is the version of
the legend which has survived in the witch-lore of Italy to
the present day.^^
Neckam also tells the story of the golden leech, which
Vergil made and put into a well in order to check the spread

** See Leland, Unpublished Legends of Virgil, pp. 6, 7. For a com-


plete account of the variants of this popular story, see Clouston, The
Magical Elements in Chaucer's Squire's Tale.
36 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

of a plague of leeches in Naples. Many years afterwards,


when the wellwas cleaned and the golden leech removed,
the plague returned, and could not be stayed until the
talisman was found and restored to the well. It is to the
similar story of the bronze fly which kept all other flies from
the city, that Walter Map refers in the Apocalypsis Goliae,

Lucanum video ducem bellantium;


Formantem aereas muscas Virgilium,

which, by a rather natural confusion with the subject of


the fourth Georgic, was translated about 1600,

And Virgil then did shape the small bees of the aire.

This great magician also laid a on a shambles in Naples,


spell
so that meat placed in it would keep fresh indefinitely,
much to the joy of the butchers, who had been troubled
by the unnaturally rapid spoiling of their meat. Around
his own garden Vergil had instead of a wall an impenetrable
atmosphere, and for his own use he had a bridge of air on
which he could travel to any quarter of the globe.
The Latin chroniclers of the twelfth century also show a
familiarity with the works of Vergil, for they quote him
frequently. And William of Malmesbury tells of the
finding of the body of Pallas, whom Turnus killed, uncor-
rupted after so many years, with an epitaph over it. The
same marvelous story appears in the English Gesta Romano-
rum, as a symbol of the immortality of the soul.^^
The chief interest of the chroniclers in Aeneas was in his
relationship to Brutus, the eponymous founder of the
race of the Britons. The whole of western Europe felt a
sympathy for the Trojans on account of their supposed de-
'^ William of Malmesbury, Hist, of the Kings of England, Bk. II,
par. 206. Gest. Rom., translated from the Latin by Charles Swan,
Tale CLVIII. For other stories in the Gest. Rom. connected with the
name of Vergil, see Tales LVII, CVII, CLXXVI.
THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 37

scent from some individual of the race, and England was no


exception. It was a common thing for histories of England
to begin with the story of Aeneas and the coming of Brute
to Albion, and for Layamon it was natural to call his poem
the Brut, perhaps in imitation of the Aendd, for Brute
stood in the same relation to the British as Aeneas did to the
Romans. Geoffrey of Monmouth was the first to tell the
stoiy after the confused account of Nennius, and he did it
most fully. "After the Trojan War, Aeneas, fleeing from
the desolation of the city, came with Ascanius by ship unto
Italy. There, for that Aeneas was worshipfuUy received
by King Latinus, Turnus, King of the Rutulians, did wax
envious and made war against him. When they met in battle,
Aeneas had the upper hand, and after that Turnus was slain,
obtained the kingdom of Italy and Lavinia the daughter of
Latinus." There follows the story of Brute, the great-
grandson of Aeneas. It was prophesied before his birth
that he should slay both his father and his mother. His
mother died at his birth, and later, when hunting, he ac-
cidentally shot and killed his father. In consequence he
was banished, and fled to Greece. There he found the
descendants of Helenus in bondage to the Greek king.
He finally freed them and sailed away with them from
Greece. His voyage was attended with many adventures,
more or less reminiscent of the Aeneid, and he finally arrived
at the island of Albion, of which he took possession and
which he renamed Britain and at his death handed on to his
son, Locrine.^^ It was this tradition of the founder of the
race which Milton had in mind when he wrote.

Virgin, daughter of Locrine,


Sprung of old Anchises' line.''^

^ Geoffrey of Monmouth, Histories of the Kings of Britain, Bk. I.

chaps. 3 ff. (Everyman's Library.)


" Comus, 11. 922, 923.
38 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

The chroniclers bring to a close the mediaeval period in


Vergilian influence. For while the traditions of the Middle
Ages were perpetuated in the succeeding centuries, with
Chaucer comes the dawn of a new day in the knowledge .

and understanding of the classics, a slight preUminary


gleam of the later Renaissance.
CHAPTER III

CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS

In his knowledge of Vergil and his treatment of Vergilian


material, as in other things, Chaucer stood out from among
the men of his century and even of the next. While his
friend and contemporary Gower was telling at length the
whole story of Vergil's magic mirror, Chaucer was merely
referring to it in the Squieres Tale in a manner which might
indicate that he discredited the legend. Wliile the Gawain
poet was still associating Aeneas with the plot that caused
the downfall of Troy, Chaucer was writing of the voyages
of the Trojan and his adventures in Carthage, with a little
prejudice and lack of proportion, it is true, but still with
"Virgil Mantuan" and "Naso" as his "auctours." Not
that Chaucer was untouched by the mediaeval tradition,
for we shall see presently that the romanticizing tendency
was a powerful factor in determining his treatment of the
character and story of Aeneas. But he was writing with
the Aeneid before him.
Chaucer probably was familiar with the Georgics and
Eclogues, although there is no conclusive evidence that he
knew anything that Vergil wrote except the Aeneid. The
motto on the Prioress' ''broche of gold," Amor vincit omnia,
was probably a commonplace in Chaucer's time. The ap-
parent quotations of the famous latet anguis in herba in the
Somnours Tale and the Squieres Tale, might easily have
come at second hand from the Roman de la Rose. Other
possible allusions to any other work of Vergil except the
Aeneid, may be similarly explained without the necessity of
39
40 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

assuming on Chaucer's part any knowledge of the Eclogues


or the Georgics} Such an assumption, however, would be
the simplest way to explain these references. To Gower
was sent a poem by a certain philosopher, perhaps Strode,
beginning, ''Eneidos Bucolicisque Georgica metra perhen-
nis," and if Strode and Gower knew the Eclogues and Geor-
gics, why not Chaucer?
Prof. Kittredge says that was probably in the period
it

from 1373 to 1380 that Chaucer extended his Latin reading


to include Vergil, "certainly in the decade following the
writing of the Book of the Duchess in 1369." ^ This is true
in spite of the fact that there are two allusions to the story
of the Aeneid in the last mentioned poem. Lavinia, whose
story was one of those pictured on the windows of the
chamber in Chaucer's dream, might easily have become
one of the stock figures in the love-vision type of poetry,
in view of the prominent part she played in such a romance
as the Eneas. She is mentioned again in the Balade in the
Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. The reference to

Dydo, quene eek of Cartage,


That slow hir-self for Eneas,

Was fals,

undoubtedly may
be explained as due to a knowledge of the
Heroides, occurring as it does with allusions to other heroines
celebrated by Ovid. The mention of Antenor,
The traytour that betraysed Troye,

whereas in the later poems it is always Sinon who is linked


with Ganelon as a type of the arch-traitor, shows that at
this time Chaucer was indebted to Dares or his imitators

1 Of. T. & C. IV. 790 and Georg. 1. 38 and 4. 453-527. But we know
that he was familiar with the story of Orpheus in Ovid, Met. 10. 1-85.
* Chaucer and his Poetry, p. 28.
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 41

for the Troy story rather than to Vergil. We may assume


then, that Chaucer's acquaintance with Vergil did not
necessarily begin until after 1369, that he knew him well
before writing the Hous of Fame, and that, as will be shown
later, his knowledge grew more complete and accurate be-
fore he incorporated the story of Dido in his Legend of Good
Women.
There are a number of references to the Aeneid scattered
through the Canterbury Tales. It is interesting to note that
in spite of the hold that the Dido episode had evidently
taken on Chaucer's imagination, the only mention of her
name outside of the two poems where her story is told at
length, except for the passages where it occurs in the lists
of stock heroines of romance, is in the Introduction to the
Tale of the Man of Lawe, in the enumeration of the stories
in Chaucer's own "Seintes Legende of Cupyde." The
onslaught of Pyrrhus, the fall of Ilion, and the pathetic
death of Priam are mentioned twice; the treachery of Sinon
is cited as the parallel of the "sly iniquitee" of the col-fox,

newe newe Genilon!


Scariot,
O Greek Sinon,
False dissimilour,
That broghtest Troye al outrely to sorwe!

and the horse of brass in the Squieres Tale is twice compared


with the "Grekes hors Synon." Turnus is twice alluded
to, and the sixth book of the Aeneid is evidently in Chaucer's
mind when he causes the Fiend to promise the Somnour
full knowledge of the happenings in the other world,

For thou shalt by thyn owene experience


Conne in a chayer rede of this sentence
Bet than Virgyle, whyl he was on lyve,
Or Dant also.^
3 See C. T., B 289, 4548, 4418, F 209, 305-8, A 1945, B 197 fif.,

D 1519.
42 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

While allusions to Vergil are plentiful, mere reminiscences,


such as we find in abundance in later poets, are rare indeed.
Prof. Skeat ingeniously explains the line in the Legend of
Phyllis, with its introduction of a new water deity,

And Thetis, Chorus, Triton, and they alle,

as a confused recollection of the Vergilian passage,

et senior Glauci chorus Inousque Palaemon


Tritonesque citi Phorcique exercitus omnis;
laeva tenent Thetis et Melite Panopeaque virgc*

And and Criseyde we find such Vergilian expres-


in Troilus
sions as "a thousand shippes," and the lover's cry, "Goddess
or woman."
The first book of the Hous of Fame is almost entirely
devoted to a summary of the Aeneid. As has been shown
conclusively by Prof. Sypherd, the poem belongs to the
love-vision type.^ It begins in the usual fashion with a
discussion of dreams. This is followed by an invocation
to the "god of slepe," after which comes the description of
the dream itself. Chaucer fell asleep on the night of the
tenth of December, and dreamed that he was in a temple
of glass, which, by means of the representations of Venus,
Cupid and Vulcan, he soon discovered to be dedicated to
the Goddess of Love. On the walls of this temple were pic-
tures illustrating the story of the Aeneid, with the emphasis
strongly on the episode of Dido and Aeneas. "The sugges-
tion of the temple of Love came from the love-visions,"
says Prof. Sypherd; "the story of Dido and Aeneas came
probably from his favorite author, Vergil, but was enlarged
by Chaucer himself in a manner consonant with the nature
of a love-poem." ® But the source of the story, both here
* Leg. of Good Women, VIII. 2422, Aen. 5. 823-5.
^ Studies in Chaucer's Hous of Fame. * Op. cit. p. 19.
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 43

and in the Legend, is undoubtedly the Aeneid, although a


few suggestions may be traced to Ovid, and some of the
atmosphere and emphasis is due to the romances, perhaps
to the Eneas itself. Had we any doubts about the source,
the inscription on the wall of this temple must set them at
rest. In these lines, few lines
a close translation of the first

of the Aeneid, may be felt at once the difference in tone be-


tween the stately Roman poet and his fourteenth century
admirer.
Iwol now singe, if that I can,
The armes, and al-so the man,
That first cam, through his destinee,
Fugitif of Troye contree.
In Itaile, with ful moche pyne,
Unto the strondes of Lavyne.

The idea of the paintings on the walls has been traced to


many sources, more or less probable. If Chaucer had any
mediaeval account in was probably a passage in
mind, it

Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione, where the walls were painted


with legendary love-episodes, among them that of Dido
and Aeneas. But the suggestion may have come directly
from the Aeneid itself.'^ And the idea of wall-paintings was
probably not foreign to Chaucer's personal experience, for
there were many such to be seen, and the picturing of mytho-
logical subjects on tapestries was common enough.
For the sake of facilitating the discussion of the two
treatments of the Vergilian material in the Hous of Fame
and the Legend of Dido, the following table has been pre-
pared, indicating the proportions of the two Chaucerian
versions, and their relation to each other and to the Aeneid.
^ Aen. 1. 446-493, 6. 20-33.
;

44 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

AENEID HOUS OP FAME BK. I LEGEND OF DIDO


Bk. II, U. 13-558. 151-161, Destruction 930-939.
of Troy.

Bk. II, II. 58S-804. 162-197, Flight of Ae- 940-952.


neas and loss of
Creusa.

Bk. III. 198-221, Adventures 953-962, "But of hia


Bk. U. 34^123, 124-
I, on the sea the storm
; aventures in the
156, Stilling of storm the stilling of the see
by Neptune. tempest by Jupiter. Nis nat to pur-
pos for to speke
of here."

Bk. I, 11. 157-222, 305- 222-238, Landing in 963-1003.


410. Africa; meeting of
Aeneas and Venus.

Bk. I, II. 411-756. 239-268, Meeting and 1004-1253, Dido and


betrothal of Aeneas Aeneas meet in
and Dido. Juno's temple; de-
scription of her;
the pictures in the
temple; arrival of
Ihoneus; appear-
ance of Aeneas;
Dido's reception of
him; the feast; the
gifts; arrival of

Bks. II-III. Aeneas tells his story. Ascanius; Aeneas


Bk. IV, II. 1-218. tells his story;
Dido's love; her
conversation with
Anna; the hunt;
Cf. U. 349-351, and Bk. the storm; the be-
Ill, U. 1368-1392. trothal; Fame car-
ries the news to
larbas.
(269-292, Lamentation (1254-1284.)
on the unfaithful-
ness of man.)
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 45
AENEID HOUS OF FAME BK. I LEGEND OP DIDO
Bk. IV, 11. 279-295, 293-363, Aeneas plans 1285-1324, Aeneas
296-392, Dido re- to depart ; lament plans to depart;
monstrates with of Dido to herself. Dido remonstrates
Aeneas passionately: with him gently
"Dissimulate etiam and lovingly: "My
sperasti, perfide," dere herte, which
etc. 504-521. that I love most."
She sacrifices.

Bk. IV, 11. 553-583, 364-378, Departure of 1325-1351, Depar-


584-705. Aeneas; death of ture Aeneas;
of
Dido. lament and death
of Dido.
(Appeal to author-
ity of "Virgile in
Eneidos.")
(Ovid, Heroides VII.) (379-382, Dido's letter (1352-1367, Dido's
to Aeneas.) letter to Aeneas.)
(383-426, Exempla to
illustrate the un-
faithfulness of man.)

Bk. IV, 11. 265-278, 427-432, Mercury's


553-570. message; the excuse
of Aeneas.

Bk.V,ll. 1-11, 833-871. 433-438, Aeneas' voy-


age to Italy, and loss
of his steersman.
Bk. V. Funeral games
for Anchises in Sicily.

Bk. VI. 439-450, Aeneas' visit


to the Underworld.

Bks. VII-XII. 451-467, Arrival in


Italy; treaty with
Latinus; battles;
death of Turnus;
marriage with La- Cf. 1. 1331.
vinia; final triumph
of Aeneas, "maugre
Juno."
46 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
A study of this table reveals at once one of the most
interesting things in the handling of the story in the Hous
of Fame, the proportion of the narrative. In this con-
nection the Legend must be left out of consideration, for
that is frankly concerned only with the Dido episode, and
therefore Chaucer says truly.

But of his aventures in the see


Nis nat to purpos for to speke of here,
For hit accordeth nat to my mater e.
But, as I seide, of him and of Dido
Shal be my tale, til that I have do.

The pictures on the walls of the temple of Venus, however,


are supposed to represent the whole story of the Aeneid.
Book II of the Latin poem
summarized in forty-seven
is

lines; Book III and about a hundred and fifty lines of


Book I, in twenty-four. The remainder of Book I, which
narrated the arrival of Aeneas in Africa and his reception
at the court of Dido, occupies, in Chaucer's account, forty-
seven lines. The events of Book IV occupy ninety-two lines
of the Hous of Fame, but of these, sixty are devoted to the
lament of Dido when she learns that Aeneas is about to
depart. The fifth book of the Aeneid is allotted only six
lines in all; the sixth fares somewhat better with twelve;
and the last six books are disposed of in seventeen!, Thus
the emphasis rests heavily on the Carthaginian episode, a
mere episode poem, but the main portion of the
in the Latin
story in the Enghsh version. But it must be remembered
that this is a love-vision, and that the Aeneid, therefore,
has become, as Prof. Kittredge says, the epic, not of Rome,
but of Venus. ^ The elaboration of the sentimental part
of the story, especially the long account of Dido's "com-
pleynt," is in full harmony with the mediaeval romantic
^ Chaucer and his Poetry, p. 78.
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 47

tendency shown previously in the Eneas, and subsequently


in the Eneydos of Caxton. The poem was intended to be
read by those interested in stories of courtly love, and there-
fore must conform as much as possible to the romantic
convention. The whole attitude of Chaucer toward the
subject is indicated in the lines with which he closes the
narrative of the adventures of the son of the Goddess of
Love:
How, maugre Juno, Eneas
For al hir sleighte and hir compas,
Acheved al his aventure;
For Jupiter took of him cure
At the preyere of Venus,
The whiche I preye alway save us,
And us ay of our sorwes lighte!

The omissions in and additions to the narrative are also


characteristically romantic. Who in a courtly audience
would have been interested in the funeral games of Anchises?
Chaucer omits them entirely, without even a word of men-
tion. Had he been wilhng to turn them into a tourna-
ment, with knights in action and fair ladies looking on,
doubtless he would have won applause. But boxing and
wrestling might well be thought to have no place in a love-
poem. This is the only important portion of the Aeneid
which is omitted entirely, although necessarily in the abridged
form in which the story here appears, many of the individual
incidents are passed over in silence, both in the Hous of
Fame and in the Legend. It is interesting to see that the
omission in the earlier poem of the details in the meeting of
Aeneas and Dido and the events which followed his recital
of his adventures, is not paralleled in the later one, where
they are given elaborately and accurately.
Although Chaucer does omit these details in the Hous of
Fame, in the same poem he cannot refrain from reporting
48 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
in true mediaeval fashion the "compleynt" of Dido on
finding herself forsaken. This is given largely on his own
authority, as he himseK says, —
Non other auctor alegge I —
although he does take some hints from Vergil, especially
in the lines,

"0, that your love, ne your bonde,


That ye han sworn with your right honde,
Ne my cruel deeth," quod she,
"May holde yow still heer with me!"

which are an almost literal translation of the verses,

nee te noster amor nee te data dextera quondam


nee moritura tenet crudeli funere Dido?
(Aen. 4. 307-8)

A still more characteristically mediaeval addition, which


has its counterpart also in the Legend, is the long dissertation,
with two proverbs as text and commentary, on the un-
trust worthiness and falseness of man, reinforced as it is
later in the poem by a series of exempla, the stories of such
deceived and deserted women as Oenone, Medea, Deianira,
and ''Adriane."
Changes in the spelling of proper names, such as that
of the last heroine mentioned above, are common. In
the Hous of Fame, the Italian bride of Aeneas is called Lavyna,
and in the Legend, Dido's first husband is named Sitheo.
An actual mistake is found in the Hous of Fame, in the
separation of Ascanius and lulus into two different persons:

And hir yonge sone lulo


And eek Ascanius also.

The explanation is not difficult.^ Such a misinterpretation


is not remarkable in the Middle Ages. "Ilioun" is not
• See Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, Vol. II. p. 386.
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 49

thought of as the same as Troy, but is regarded as the citadel,


the " castel " of the town. An example of the reverse process,
whereby two persons are welded into one, is to be found
in the "Brutus Cassius," who, according to Chaucer's
Monk, "maad conspiracy e" against Julius Caesar. Another
slight error, or perhaps we might call it a picturesque ad-
dition on Chaucer's part, occurs in the same passage. He
says that Creusa was lost "in a forest," but there is nothing
in the avia of the Latin to necessitate such an interpretation.
Three other mistakes in this same poem indicate that
Chaucer was not yet thoroughly at home with his original.
In relating the events connected with the stilling of the
storm off the coast of Carthage, he confuses the order of
the incidents. He says that there was a picture repre-
senting Venus imploring Jupiter to save Aeneas' fleet,

and that he saw


Joves Venus kisse
And graunted of the tempest lisse.

But in Vergil, the quieting of the storm


due to Neptune,
is

and after her son has landed on the African shore, Venus,
motivated by her fear for his safety in Carthage, appeals to
Jupiter for his aid. Again, when Aeneas and Achates met
Venus in the forest in disguise, Chaucer tells us that
Eneas gan him pleyne,
Whan that he knew her, of his peyne,

but as Vergil tells the story, Aeneas did not recognize his
mother until after his conversation with her, when vera
incessu patuit dea. By
omitting entirely the funeral games
of Anchises, Chaucer naturally brings together the storm
at the beginning of the fifth Aeneid and the loss of Palinurus
at the end.
The Legend of Dido shows a marked improvement in
the matter of accuracy in following the original. None of
50 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
the mistakes in the Hous of Fame is Indeed
repeated here.
the only error which may be regarded as a real misunder-
standing of the Latin, is the misreading of leti as laeiitiae in
this was the firste morwe
Of her gladnesse, and ginning of her sorwe.

There is in these two poems a radical change from the


Vergilian conception of the characters of Aeneas and Dido.
The former no longer the Fate-driven hero, the destined
is

founder of the mighty Roman race, obeying the commands


of the gods rather than his own inclinations {Italiam non
sponte sequor), but the "fals lover," the "traitour;" nor is

Dido the passionate woman, swept by the force of her


emotions into disregard of her solemn oaths of loyalty to
her first husband, but one of the faithful, much-abused
"saints of Cupid." The vision of his father and the visit
of Mercury to Aeneas with the commands of Jove, are mere
excuses on the lips of the faithless lover, and

Ther-with his false teres out they sterte;

for although this is what "the book seyth" in order "to


excusen Eneas," the real reason for his departure is that
This Eneas, that hath so depe y-swore,
Is wery of his craft within a throwe;
The hote ernest is al over-blowe.

The new conception most marked in the Legend, where


is

the narrative, however, follows more faithfully and accurately


the Latin original, and is far more detailed. This new
Dido is a typical heroine of romance, a "fresshe lady,"
So yong, so lusty, with her eyen glade,
That that god that heven and erthe made,
if

Wolde han a love, for beaute and goodnesse.


And womanhod, and trouthe, and seemlinesse.
Whom should he loven but this lady swete?
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 51

She is also
holde of alle quenes flour,

Of gentilesse, of freedom, of beaute.

How different is this woman from her whom Vergil compares


to Dianaupon the banks of the Eurotas and on the heights of
Cynthus, followed by her thousand Oreads. The new
Dido looked upon a new Aeneas,
And saw the man, that he was lyk a knight.
And suffisaunt of persone and of might.
And lyk to been a veray gentil man.

With the evident purpose of blackening the crime of the


traitor, Chaucer loses no opportunity of emphasizing the
beauty and goodness of Dido. The "meynee" of Aeneas
that he thought was lost, came, not because they were brought
as prisoners, but

for to seke
The quene, and of her socour her beseke;
Swich renoun was ther spronge of her goodnesse.

The description of the gifts which Dido gave Aeneas serves


the same purpose of heightening the iniquity of one who
could presume to desert so noble and generous a woman.
The conversation Dido and her sister Anne brings out
of
in strong relief the main points of the mediaeval, romantic
aspects of Chaucer's treatment of the story. The inter-
view takes place on a moonht night, not when

postera Phoebea lustrabat lampade terras


umentemque Aurora polo dimoverat umbram.
{Aen. 4. 6-7)

The role of changed from that of the sister who asked


Anna is

pladtone etiam pugnatis amorif to that of one who "som-del


52 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

withstood" the queen's passion.^" Dido's simple statement


of her love and heart's desire,

I wolde fain to him y-wedded be,

offers a striking contrast to the violent struggles of the Ver-


gilian Elissa:

simihi non animo fixum imraotumque sederet


ne cui me vinclo vellem sociare iugali, . . .

huic uni forsan potui succumbere culpae. . . .

sed mihi vel tellus optem prius ima dehiscat


vel pater omnipotens abigat me fulmine ad umbras,
pallentis umbras Erebo noctemque profundam,
ante pudor, quam te violo aut tua iura resolvo.
{Aen. 4. 15 £f)

In marked contrast to this omission of all reference to Dido's


violation of her oath is the emphasis which Chaucer lays
on the vows of loyalty which Aeneas swore. Nor are the
gentle words of the queen when she has discovered that
Aeneas intends to leave her, and

She asketh him anoon, what him mislyketh


"My dere herte, which that I love most?"
much like the passionate cry of the angry woman,

dissimulare etiam sperasti, perfide, tantum


posse nefas tacitusque mea decedere terra?
{Aen. 4. 305-6)

It is a descent from the heights of passionate tragedy to the


levels of sentimental romance.
As the author of the Eneas is inclined to discount the inter-
im
But cf. Hoiis of Fame, where Chaucer has preserved a natural
touch in making Dido say to Anna, "that she the cause was / That she
first louede Eneas," which is the Vergihan "tu lacrimis evicta meis,"

etc. (Aen. 4. 548-9.)


CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 53

vention of the gods, and explain everything as due to human


means, so Chaucer too shows the rationalizing spirit. This
is less evident in the Hous of Fame than in the Legend, al-

though in the former poem in the account of the death of


Palinurus no mention is made of the God of Sleep, who,
in the Vergilian narrative, is responsible for his faU. Chaucer
merely says that he saw a picture which showed
how he loste his steresman,
Which that the stere, or he took keep,
Smot over-bord, lo! as he sleep.

In the later poem, on the other hand, the tendency is strongly


marked. Chaucer cannot understand exactly how it was
that when Eneas came to the temple of Juno,
Full prively his wey than hath he nome,

and yet he cannot quite bring himself to believe the ex-


planation that Vergil offers:

I cannot seyn if that hit be possible,


But Venus hadde him maked invisible —
Thus seith the book, with-outen any lees.

The part which the gods, Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury as


their messenger, play in securing awelcome for the Trojans
in Carthage, is entirely omitted, and Chaucer is even dis-
posed to doubt that Cupid had anything to do in person —
— with Dido's passion. He lays the grounds of her love
in the pity that she felt for this "disherited" stranger.

But natheles, our autor telleth us


That Cupido, that is the god of love,
At preyere of his moder, hye above,
Hadde the lyknes of the child y-take,
This noble quene enamoured to make
On Eneas; but, as of that scripture,
Be as be may, I make of hit no cure.
54 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

Perhaps this due to Chaucer's desire to lay all the blame


is

for Dido's despair and death on his mortal hero, or perhaps


to the rationalizing tendency of the time and the unwilling-
ness to beheve in any pagan deity but the goddess Fortune.
While Vergil was the main source of Chaucer's version of
the story, a few touches in the narrative, such as Dido's
plea, "Let me with yow ryde," are due to Ovid." Perhaps
something of the romantic attitude is a reflection of the
sentimentality of Ovid as well as of the spirit of the times.
Gower's treatment of the episode is based on Ovid's Heroides.
In the Hous of Fame, Chaucer refers to the
Epistle of Ovyde,
What that she wrot or that she dyde,
and adds,
And nere hit to long to endyte,
By god, I wolde hit here wryte.
In the Legend he states at the outset that he intends to
"take the tenour" both from the "Eneid" and from "Naso."
And at the close of the poem, Ovid is referred to as "myn
autour," and the first eight lines of the epistle Dido Aeneae
are translated.
The influence of Vergil on the Hous of Fame is not bounded
by the walls of the temple of Venus. Possibly the compari-
son of the desert in which Chaucer found himself when he
came "out at the dores," with that of "Libye," was sug-
gested by the previous story whose scene was laid on the
African coast. There is an allusion too to Turnus and his
vision of Iris, to the trumpeter Misenus

Of whom that speketh Virgilius,


'^^
and to "Eolus, the god of winde," and his "cave of stoon."

" Her. 7. 79.


" Chaucer locates the cave in Thrace. The adjective Thracian
has been appUed to Boreas in particular and the winds in general by
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 55

Some have suggested that the name "Ballenus" is an error


for "Helenus," for he too was a seer, and the most obvious
explanation of the name of the piper Atiteris is that it is

merely a corruption of Vergil's Tityrus, a name which had


by this time become stereotyped for a shepherd.
The most important suggestion that Chaucer derived
from Vergil for his Hous of Fame aside from the story of the
Aeneid in Book I, is the description of the appearance of
Lady Fame herself. The details in regard to her house
came from Ovid; ^^ the conception of the nature and func-
tions of Fame is neither classical nor mediaeval. To Vergil
as to other classical writers, shewas a mere bearer of tidings,
usually ill-tidings, a dea foeda, a conception which was cur-
rent in the Middle Ages as well. The Latin word fama
means "rumor" rather than "fame" which has the power
to determine men's reputations, as Chaucer represents the
goddess." The conditions in the house of twigs have more
resemblance to the idea of Fame as Rumor, and the descrip-
tion of the struggle between

A lesing and a sad soth-sawe

was probably suggested by Vergil's characterization of Fame


as
tarn ficti pravique tenax quam nuntia veri.
''
(Aen. 4. 188)

But the account of the appearance of the goddess herself

the classical writers. See Ovid, Ars Am. 2. 382; Verg. Aen. 12.365;
App. Rhod., Arg. 1. 953-954; 2. 427; Val. Flac, Arg. 1. 596-610;
Callim., Hym. in Del. 26.
" Met. 12. 39-63.
^* Perhaps he got some of the characteristics, such as her capri-
ciousness, the suppliants for her favor, etc., from Boethius' descrip-
tion of Fortune whom he associates with Fame.
" But cf. Ovid, Met. 12. 54-55.
:

56 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS


was undoubtedly due to the lines in the Aeneid, £ts a com-
parison of the two passages will show. When Chaucer en-
tered the hall of Fame, he saw

A feminyne creature;
That never formed by nature
Nas swich another thing y-seye,
For alther first, soth for to saye.
Me thoughte that she was so lyte.
That the lengthe of a cubyte
Was lenger than she semed be;
But thus sone, in a whyle, she
Hir tho so wonderliche streighte.
That with hir feet she th'erthe reighte,
And with liir heed she touched hevene,
Ther as shynen sterres sevene.
And there-to eek, as to my wit,
Isaugh a gretter wonder yit.
Upon hir eyen to beholde;
But certeyn I hem never tolde;
For as fele eyen hadde she
As fetheres upon foules be,
Or weren on the bestes foure.
That goddes trone gunne honoure,
As John writ in th'apocahps.
Hir heer, that oundy was and crips.
As burned gold hit shoon to see.
And soth to tellen, also she
Had also fele up-stonding eres
And tonges, as on bestes heres;
And on hir feet wexen saugh I
Partriches winges redely.

With the addition of a few Biblical details, this corresponds


closely to the Vergilian account:

extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes,


Fama, malum qua non aUud velocius ullum
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 57
mobilitate viget virisque adquirit eundo,
parva metu primo, mox sese attoUit in auras
ingrediturque solo et caput inter nubila condit.
illam Terra parens ira inritata deorum
extremam, ut perliibent, Coeo Enceladoque sororem
progenuit pedibus celerem et pernicibus aids,

monstrum horrendum, ingens, cui quot sunt corpore plumae,


tot vigiles oculi subter (inirabile dictu)
tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit auris.

Chaucer evidently misread perdicibus for pernicibus, and


so transformed the "swift wings" of Fama into "partriches
winges." The expression is rendered correctly in Troilus
and Criseyde, where he uses this same description
The swifte Fame, whiche that false thinges
Egal reporteth lyk the thinges trewe.
Was through-out Troye y-fled with preste winges.

On one of the pillars in the House of Fame stood Vergil.


He was not, however, with that group of writers, Omeer,
Dares, Guido, Gaufride, and "eek he, Lollius,"
Tytus,
who were "besy for to here up Troye." His fame rests,
upon another basis.

Ther saugh I stonde on a pileer


That was of tinned yren cleer,
That Latin poete, dan Virgyle,
That bore hath up a longe whyle
The fame of Pius Eneas.

"Homer's iron admirably represented," says a note in


is

Bell's Chaucer, "as having been by Virgil covered over with


tin." Succeeding editors have repeated this, and inter- ^^
preted it to mean that the Aeneid is simply the Iliad with a
thin veneer of polish and brilliance. But it seems scarcely
credible that one who admired Vergil as Chaucer evidently
58 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

did, would make a criticism so mifavorable to the poet


who heads the list of those worthy of all reverence by his
"litel book" and Criseyde. Such subtle criticism
of Troilus
would be a little too modern for Chaucer, too, and besides,
"Omeer" was not in as high repute in the Middle Ages as
"Virgyle." The explanation must be sought elsewhere, I
think, and most naturally in some such significance for tin
as that which iron has in its association in alchemy with the
planet Mars. The other metals spoken of in this passage
have some such meaning, and it is much more reasonable
to assign to the use of tin a ''scientific" rather than a literary
significance. Josephus stands on a pillar of iron and lead,
the metals of Mars and Saturn, because he tells of wars
and of dire events such as the influence of Saturn was sup-
posed to cause. Statins, Lucan, and Homer and the other
writers on the story of Troy stand on iron pillars, for their
poems tell of the deeds of Mars. Ovid's column is of copper,
the metal of Venus, for he was to the Middle Ages pre-
eminently the poet of love, and Claudian, who wrote of the
Underworld, appropriately stands on a pillar of sulphur.
In alchemy, tin has the same sign as the planet Jupiter,^^
and in the Booke of Quinte Essence, there is a direction in-
volving the use of a "plate of venus or lubiter," that is, of
copper or tin. While the Aeneid is truly a record of strife,
so that it is fitting that its author should stand on a pillar
of Mars' metal, its hero, the "Pius Eneas," is lovis de gente
suprema, and any one familiar with the story must have
observed not only that Jupiter's name is mentioned more
frequently than that of any of the other gods, but that
his control is constant, and that the deeds of Mars are in
almost every instance directed by the will and power of
the pater omnipoiens. Throughout the poem the imperia
•1*
See New English Dictionary, article on tin, and Skeat, Works of
Chaucer, Note on C. T., G 820.
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 59

lovis are supreme; the divum pater aique hominum rex


bows only to the Fates." I, therefore, should emend Bell's
note to read, "Mars'nron is admirably represented as having
been by Vergil covered over with the tin of Jupiter."

Gower's story of the magic mirror has already been com-


mented on. He also showed his acquaintance with that
class of legends which associated Vergil with women, most
of them not very complimentary to the poet. In the eighth
book of the Confessio Amantis, Elde comes into the presence
of Venus accompanied by David, Solomon, Samson, Vergil,
and Ovid, all old men who had been servants to love.
And ek Virgile of aquaintance
I sih, wher he the maiden preide,
Which was the doghter, as men seide.
Of themperour whilom of Rome.

He was probably thinking here of the story, told in detail


by Stephen Hawes,^' of how Vergil was once placed in an
awkward position by the emperor's daughter with whom
he was carrying on a flirtation. She had promised to draw
him up window in a basket, but when she got him
to her
halfway up, left him swinging in the air, to be the laughing-
stock of the whole city. In revenge he, by his magic powers,
put out all the fires in Rome. One version, however, tells
how Vergil outwitted the princess, for, having learned be-
forehand of her intentions, he caused one of his familiar spirits

to take his place in the basket, and the fiend was perfectly
capable of extricating himself from the predicament.
These two stories show how far Gower was from Chaucer
in any real sympathy with the author of the Aeneid. For
the Vergilian element in his poetry is practically included

" Secilen. 2. 326, 689; 1. 257-296; 4. 198-278, 331, 614; 5. 687-699,

726, 747; 9. 77-122, 128-9, 630-1, 801-5; 10. 606-27; 12. 565, 791-842,
895. ^^ Pastime of Pleasure, chap. XXIX.
60 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
within their limits. He does tell the story of Aeneas and
Dido,^' but he owes it almost entirely to Ovid, for the passage
is chiefly concerned with the letter written by the deserted
queen. No
one could deny that he knew the Aeneid, but it
is clear that Ovid was his favorite author. He refers to the
war with Turnus, but this is also probably from Ovid rather
than from Vergil, the marginal summary being a virtual
translation of a few lines in the Metamorphoses.^'^ In his
Latin poetry, too, there are innumerable Ovidian echoes,
whereas definite Vergilian influence is practically lacking.
Chaucer's contemporaries, however, were not so ignorant
of Vergil as to be unable to use him as a standard, for Hoc-
cleve, in his Regiment of Princes, in the famous address to
Chaucer, after comparing him to Cicero in "rhethorik,"
and to Aristotle in "philosophic," says,

the steps of Virgile in poesie


Thow filwedest eeke.

Another phase of the mediaeval tradition still surviving


in the fourteenth century, is to be found in the opening sen-
tences of Gawain and the Greene Knight. "After the siege
and the assault of Troy, when that burg was destroyed and
burnt to ashes, and the traitor tried for his treason, the
noble Aeneas and his kin sailed forth to become princes
and patrons of well-nigh all the Western Isles." ^^ Here is
evident that inconsistency in the character of Aeneas that
is found in the Middle Ages. According to the accounts of
" Conf. Am. 4. 5. =" Met. 14. 449-451.
^ Sil)en \>e sege and \)e assaut wat3 sesed at Troye,
Pe bor3 brittened and brent to bronde3 and aske3,
Pe tulk l)at \)e trammes of tresoun l>er wro3t,
Wat3 \>e trewest on erthe;
tried for his tricherie,
Hit wat3 Ennias Jje athel, and his highe kinde,
Pat 8il)en depreced prouinces, and patrounes become
Welne3e of al l)e wele in \>e west iles.
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 61

Dares and Dictys, of Benoit and Guido, and of Joseph of


Exeter, who constituted the mediaeval authorities for the
story of the fall of Troy, Antenor and Aeneas were respon-
sible for the plot that caused the destruction of the city.
On the other hand, Aeneas was the founder of the Roman
nation, and so indirectly of nearly all the other nations of
Europe, and such a blot on his fame as complicity in the
plot for the overthrow of Troy, was a difficult stain to
eradicate. Hence many authors glossed over or disregarded
entirely his part in the transaction, Antenor became the
arch-traitor,

The tulk that the trammes of tresoun ther wroht,

and the subsequent adventures of Aeneas were stressed, as


they are in these lines of Gawain and the Greene Knight.
The conflict was carried on into the fifteenth century.''
Lydgate's Troy Book, one of a long series of versions of the
mediaeval Troy story, is professedly based on the Latin
prose narrative of Guido delle Colonne, and accordingly tells

at length of the plot of Antenor and Aeneas. There follows


a passage of nearly thirty lines, in which Lydgate summa-
rizes the story of the Aeneid, with the conclusion,
Ye may al seen, by ful sovereyn style
From point to point compiled in Virgile,
Written and made sithen go ful yore;
For Troie boke speketh of hym no more.*'

This is obviously an attempt to reconcile the two narratives


by the expedient of calling Vergil's account a mere continua-
tion of Guido's. The difficulty here, however, is not insur-
" And even into the sixteenth. See WilHam Warner, Albion's
England, chap. XIII, and Addition in Proese to the Second Booke.
Dante too had been distressed by the fact that Julius Caesar, founder
of the Empire,had driven Cato into exile. See, e.g., Conv. iii. 5.
« Troy Book, 4. 1434 ff.
62 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

mountable, for Lydgate bestows no word of praise upon


Aeneas, not even the one word "noble," like the Gawain
poet, but with inherited romantic sympathy with Dido,
calls him the man that "falsede Dido, of womman-
. . .

hede flour."
Lydgate's Fall of Princes was a translation of Boccaccio's
popular book, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, so that the
Monk of Bury cannot be held responsible for anything that
occurs there. It is interesting to note, however, that the
story of the Salvatio Romae, told in connection with the
Pantheon at Rome, and without mention of Vergil, finds
a place in "Bochas," and that here too is that curious alter-
native version of the death of Dido, which is told in Caxton's
Eneydos.
Caxton's book one of his numerous translations from
is

the French, and was printed at Westminster in 1490. His


original was probably the Livre des Eneydes, printed at Lyons
by Guillaume le Roy in 1483. It has no title-page, but the
colophon runs as follows: "Here fynyssheth the boke of
Eneydos, compyled by Vyrgyle, whiche hathe be translated
oute of latyne in to frenshe. And oute of frenshe reduced in to
Englysshe by me Wyllm Caxton." The French, however,
was far from a translation of the Aeneid, though most of the
incidents and much of the language are based directly on
the Latin. But as was the case in the Romans d^Eneas,
the writer treated his original with the utmost freedom, and
expanded, abridged, added, omitted, and changed the
order of events at will. The story begins, in the true mediae-
val fashion, at the beginning. After telling of the building
of Troy by Priam, who in all other versions was the last king
of that city, but here is represented as the original founder,
it proceeds to the story of Polydorus' death and burial.
Omitting all mention of Sinon, the wooden horse, Laocoon,
and the loss of Creusa, it tells of the departure of Aeneas,
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 63

and of his adventures up to the time of the storm. Then


the author relates Boccaccio's story of Dido, marveling that
he did not follow the version of Vergil. "I was abasshed,"
he says, ''and had grete merveylle how bochace, whiche
is an auctour so gretly renommed, hath transposed, or atte

and caas otherwyse than vyrgyle


leste dyversifyed, the falle
hath in his fourth booke of Eneydos, ... I have enter-
prysed fyrste and to-fore, for better, and to understande
the mater, I have purposed to recyte here the caas and falle
after the oppynyon of lohn bocace." Up to the founding
of the city of Carthage, the two accounts are very similar.
But Dido's death, according to Boccaccio, had nothing to
do with Aeneas. She was wooed by a powerful neighboring
king, but, still husband, she did not wish
true to her first

to marry him. He uttered such dire threats against the


state, however, that her subjects were made desperate.
By misrepresenting the situation to her, so that she thought
that a neighboring king wished one of her men to come to
his court, they drew from her the statement that everyone
should be willing to sacrifice himself for his country. Then
they told her the true state of affairs, and she, in distress,
asked for three months to consider the proposal. At the
end of this time, still unwilling to marry, but dreading to
bring upon her people the consequences of a refusal, she
built a huge pyre in the midst of the city on pretense of
making a sacrifice, and slew herself thereon, in the presence
of her subjects.^^ After this version of the story, the French
^ See Justin, Historiae, Bk. xviii, chaps. 4, 5, 6. Cf. Jerome,
Adv. Jov. I. 43 and Ausonius, Ep. 118. 7. Turbervile translated this
Epigram under the title Of Dido and the Truth of her Death. See also
Warner, Addition in Proese to the Second Booke of Albion's England.
According to all historians, Dido and Aeneas could not have been
contemporaries, and the critics have at various times expended much
labor in defending Vergil's anachronism. Boccaccio's account there-
fore is more likely to be historically correct than Vergil's.
64 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
translator puts the account given by Vergil, following his
original fairly closely in the general outlines, but diverging
in some and expanding enormously, thus naturally
details
detracting from the forcefulness and dignity of the Latin.
The story up through the death of Dido occupies over two
thirds of the entire narrative.
The funeral games in the fifth book of the Aeneid are
assigned only a few lines in the Eneydos. The incident of
the burning of the ships is and the mention
told at length,
of the temple of Apollo in the beginning of the sixth book of
Vergil is the starting-point for a long digression on the
stories of Daedalus and Minos of Crete. The descent to
Avernus, however, is disposed of in a few words of disbelief
and disapproval. "There dwelled the goddesse Cryspyne,^^
whiche shulde have brought eneas in-to helle, but this . . .

mater I leve, for it is fayned, and not to be bylevyd. who


that will knowe how eneas wente to helle, late hym rede
virgyle, claudyan, or the pistelles of Ovyde, & there he shall
fynde more than trouthe. For whiche cause I leve it and
wryte not of it." With this it is interesting to compare
Chaucer's omission of the bulk of the fifth and sixth books,
and his unwillingness to admit the truth of any of the super-
natural events. The writer of the Eneydos consistently
omits all such elements in the last six books, which he
otherwise follows as closely as may
be expected. There is
no mention of the activities of Juno or AUecto, of the chang-
ing of the ships into sea-nymphs, or of the marvelous armor
which was the gift of Venus to her son. The spectral
image of Aeneas, which lured Turnus on board one of the
ships, is attributed, not to Juno, but to the Fiend 1^^ After
*"•
The French has here "crespie," which might mean "wrinkled,"
referring to Vergil's longaeva sacerdos. Caxton evidently thought it

was the name of the Sibyl.


'' Cf. the treatment of the supernatural events in the Pharsalia in
the mediaeval hves of Caesar.
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 65

the death of Turnus, which closes the Aeneid, the author


of the Eneydes, inspired by the same desire for complete-
ness which animated Maphaeus Vegius, gives in three addi-
tional chapters, the subsequent history of Aeneas and Lavinia,
and a list of the Alban kings.
This analysis of the Eneydos has been given, partly for
comparison with Chaucer, a century earlier, and partly to
show the enormous strides forward which were taken by
Gavin Douglas, Caxton's arch-critic, twenty-five years
later. This book, the first version of the Aeneid in Eng-
land in the vernacular, seems separated by far more than a
quarter of a century from Douglas' Virgil, the first real
translation of the Roman epic in the English tongue. It
was the revival of classical learning under the humanists
which wrought this great change in the attitude toward
Vergil.
CHAPTER IV

VERGIL AND HUMANISM

In general, the humanistic revival of the sixteenth cen-


tury brought into English literature a closer adherence to
fact in its treatment of the classics. The distortions and
mistaken emphasis of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
are much less marked in the sixteenth. Although Sidney be-
lieved that the Aeneas of Dares Phrygius was the "right
Aeneas," and that of Vergil the "feigned," he felt that the
Aeneid should be read, and that it could be read with profit.
He himself gave evidence of a ready familiarity with the
classics, including Vergil, by allusions and quotations, the
very inaccuracy of some of which indicates that he is quot-
ing from a well-stored memory. The constant presence of
quotations and echoes in Ehzabethan prose and poetry is
an answer to his query, "Who is it that ever was a scholar
that doth not carry away some verses of Virgil, Horace, or
Cato, which in his youth he learned, and even to his old
age serve him for hourly lessons?"
For this familiar use of Latin and Greek was based upon
the new classical education of the humanists. Radical
changes had been made in material and method from the
schools of the Middle Ages, and in order to understand thor-
oughly the entrance of this new material into the literature
of the Renaissance, it is necessary to consider first the
new background made possible by the schools and
cultural
colleges of sixteenth century England, in contrast with that
created by the work in the mediaeval Universities, and then
to examine the literature itself.
The controversy over the relative merits of the Ancients
66

r
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 67

and the Moderns is not a thing of modern growth. It is


far older than the time of Swift. A thirteenth century battle
of the books was waged on the pages of Henri d'Andeli's
Battle of the Seven Arts, in which the forces of Grammar from
Orleans, among whom Vergil bore a lance in company with
other classics, were routed by the army of Logic, aided by
Civil and Canon Law, the ''New Aristotle" being a promi-
nent warrior on their side. And this battle and its outcome
are typical of the educational situation in the Middle Ages.
Chartres was the main stronghold of classical culture on
the continent in the twelfth century, Orleans in the early
part of the thirteenth, but they could not hold their own
against Paris and Bologna. John of Salisbury, that power-
ful advocate and preeminent example of the value of a
classical training, tells in the Metalogicus of his education
at Chartres under the instruction of Bernard, but the time
soon came when, as Rashdall says, ''Aristotle was accepted
as a well-nigh final authority. The awakened intellect
. . .

of Europe busied itself with expounding, analyzing and


debating the new treasures unfolded before its eyes, and
the Classics dropped again, for the mass of students whose
reading was bounded by the prescribed curriculum of the
Universities, into the obscurity from which they had for
a brief period emerged. For the attainment of the
. . .

Mastership in the Liberal Arts, Logic and Philosophy were


the essential requisites: and at that early period in the
history of the examination system it was soon found that the
establishment of a prescribed curriculum of studies and
the offer of a premium to those who pursue it is fatal to all
subjects excluded therefrom." ^ And Vergil, along with
Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages,
1

Oxford, 1895. Vol. I, pp. 68, 69. The exclusion of Aristotle here and
elsewhere from the company of the " Classics," means simply that his
works were studied, not as literature, but as textbooks in Logic and
Philosophy.

^
68 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISfl POETS
other Roman writers, was so excluded. John Garland,
master of Grammar at Paris in the first half of the thir-
teenth century, voiced the last plea for the restoration of
classical studies at his University. His, however, was a
solitary voice. "The comparison," says Rashdall, "of
John of Salisbury's account of his education in the first half
of the twelfth century with the earliest University Statute
at the beginning of the next century, enables us to trace
the startling rapidity of this decline in hterary culture.
Grammar is prescribed as one of the Examina-
subjects of the
tion, but Grammar is represented solely by the works of
and Donatus.
Priscian Rhetoric receives hardly more than
a comphmentary recognition: the Classics are not taken
up at all. The student's whole attention is concentrated
upon Logic and Aristotle. Boys in Grammar Schools might
still learn their Grammar by construing Ovid or 'Cato,'

but henceforth the poets, the historians, the orators of


ancient Rome were considered unworthy of the attention
of ripe students of fourteen or sixteen in the University
2
Schools."
These statements are based upon an examination of the
curricula indicated in University statutes and in certain
time-tables of the arrangement of lectures which filled a
student's day. We know, for instance, from the list of
books prescribed for the degrees of A.B. and A.M. in Paris
in 1254, that Aristotle was the chief author whom they were
required to study, and that Vergil appears to have found
no place in the curriculum. The same thing is true of Paris
in 1366, ofOxford in 1267 and 1408, and of Leipzig in 1410.
The course of study at Oxford was much like that at Paris,
although in theory the trivium and quadrinum were still
regarded as a part of the requirement for the A.M. degree.
Yet they did not appear in the formal list of studies. In
2 Rashdall, Op. alt., Vol. I, pp. 71, 72.
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 69

1431 at Oxford, however, the curriculum of the candidate


for a Master's degree must include "rhetoricam per tres
terminos, videlicet rhetoricam Aristotelis, seu quartam
Topicorujn Boethii, aut Tullium in nova rhetorica, vel Ovi-
dium Metamorphoseos sive poetriam Virgilii," an interesting
indication of the slow return of the Latin classics. But
Aristotle was still the favorite. Not only
he placed at the
is

head of such a list as that given above, but there is a record


that in 1448 a Bachelor at Oxford begged that a lecture
upon the Georgics of Vergil which had been imposed upon
him be changed upon the De Anima. The method
to one
of classroom procedure in the Middle Ages, too, was not
conducive to any intimate knowledge of the authors read.
On account of the difficulty of procuring manuscripts, the
students were usually unsupplied with copies of the text.
The lecturer, therefore, read the book aloud, pausing fre-
quently and at great length to read the comments of learned
men upon the passage, which usually appeared in the form
of a marginal gloss, and to add some remarks of his own.
In this way, the original words of the writer were frequently
nearly lost and forgotten in the midst of such a wilderness of
comment. One of the things insisted upon by the humanists
was a careful study of the texts themselves, with resultant
formation of independent judgment based upon personal
knowledge.
At the close of his poem, The Battle of the Seven Arts,
Henri d'Andeli prophesies thus:
Sirs, the times are given to emptiness;
Soon they will go entirely to naught,
For thirty years this will continue.
Until a new generation will arise,

Who will go back to Grammar.^


' Henri d'Andeli, Battle of the Seven Arts. Edited and translated
by Louis John Paetow. Univ. of Cal. 1914. II. 450-54.
70 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

But in spite of the protests of men like John of Salisbury,


Alexander Neekam, John Garland, Gerald de Barri, and
Henri d'Andeli, it was much more than thirty years before
the New Learning may be said to have begun. D'Andeli's
poem was probably written in the second quarter of the
thirteenth century, and it is from the classical studies of
Petrarch, nearly a century later, that we date the revival
of the interest in the ancient authors. And although the
poet looked to the North for the coming of the "new genera-
tion," and believed that no good could come out of Lom-
bardy, yet it was in Italy that the "first modern man"
was born.
Although Petrarch was not primarily an educator, his
influence was nevertheless very great. His revolt against
scholasticism, his successful search for Ciceronian texts,
his love and understanding of the classical writers which
made them his friends ratherthan merely the authors of
texts to be studied, all pointed the way which later peda-
gogues followed in their writings and in their classroom
practice. Schoolmasters like Vittorino da Feltre, who
taught in the "Pleasant House" at Mantua, a city full of
the memories of Vergil, Guarini, who lectured on Greek and
Latin literature at Ferrara, and Politian at Florence, all in-

cluded Vergil in their courses. Treatises like the De Liber-


orum Educatione of Aeneas Sylvius advocated the study of
the classics, and Maffeo Vegio, the author of the thirteenth
book of the Aeneid, laid special emphasis on the importance
of studying Vergil in his De Educatione Liberorum. He still

clung to the old allegorical interpretation of his poems, as


did Petrarch also, but he put himself on record as Vergil's
defender against all attacks.
The cause of the ancient classics was helped along by the
introduction of the study of Greek into Italy. Pilatus, the
instructor of Petrarch and Boccaccio, and Chrysoloras were
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 71

among the first to bring the language across the Adriatic,


and the latter gathered about him many pupils who even-
tually spread the new study all over Europe. But un-
fortunately for the literary supremacy of Italy, her scholars
,

eventually ran their classicism into a formalism which


checked spontaneity, and justified to a certain extent Nor-
den's seemingly paradoxical remark that the humanists
killed the Latin language.
Meanwhile humanism was moving north. Already in
the fourteenth century, classicism was revived at Paris
under Nicolas of Clemangis, with a strong protest against
the scholastic method. In the fifteenth century, German
educators like Hegius, Wessel, Agricola and von Lange,
were revolting against scholasticism, and there were two
opposing parties in the Universities, with the humanist faction
steadily growing in power. Here the aim of most of the
humanists, like Wimpfeling, was to use the new-found knowl-
edge as the basis of social and religious reform. But here too
the study of the classics degenerated in the later Renais-
sance into a formal Ciceronianism, the chief object of which
was to impart a perfect Latin style after the manner of the
great prose master of Rome. The emphasis in the cur-
ricula of the Gymnasien was definitely placed on the careful
study of Cicero, almost to the exclusion of other writers.
And the study of all the classics became narrow, confining
itself to drill in Latin Grammar, and a detailed examination,

both grammatical and rhetorical, of Cicero, Ovid, Terence,


Vergil, and the historians, with the redeeming trait of requir-
ing close application to the texts themselves.
The story of the coming of humanism to England is well
known, and the names of Erasmus, Colet, Sir Thomas More,
and the scarcely less familiar ones of Selling, Linacre, Grocyn,
and Lyly, mark a period of intense enthusiasm for the new
learning, and of a belief, especially on the part of Colet,
72 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

the founder of the famous school for boys at the eastern


end of St. Paul's churchyard, that the knowledge of Latin
and Greek could best be used to further the familiarity of
the common people with the Scriptures. It was, however,
largely an academic revival of the interest in Greek and
Latin, and the classics were not yet assimilated in vernac-
ular literature. It was Lyly's Grammar, used for many
years in the schools, which was representative of this aca-
demic nature of the classical enthusiasm of these years,
while the allusions in the dramas of his grandson, John,
show that in the days of Queen Elizabeth the appeal of the
classics was no longer merely to scholars. The path of those
who, like Cheke and Ascham, were endeavoring to carry
on the torch lighted by Erasmus and his contemporaries
was by no means free from obstructions. The opponents
of the study of Greek called themselves the Trojans, and
assumed the names of Priam, Hector, and Paris. Tyndale
tells how they showed in their pulpits their opposition to

the study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, ''some beating


the pulpit with their fists for madness, and roaring out with
open and foaming mouth, that if there were but one Terence
or Virgil in the world, and that same in their sleeves, and a
fire before them, they would burn them therein, though

it should cost them their lives."


But all their violence could not stop entirely the progress
of humanistic education. And the reading of Vergil, which,
as we have was rare in the preceding centuries, so that
seen,
Chaucer's knowledge of him stands out as remarkable,
was now one of the most important parts of the curriculum
of both school and college. His works were read, not only
for their poetic beauty, but for their practical value as well.
Cardinal Wolsey, who endowed a school at Ipswich and a
college at Oxford, planned the course of study for the boys
in the school himself. The classes at Ipswich were to
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 73

study in succession Cato, Aesop and Terence, and in the


fourth year, " Virgil himself of
, all poets the chief , . . . whose
verses should be read with a beautiful sonorous voice, so
that their majesty may be better felt," and after Vergil,
Cicero, Sallust, Caesar, Horace, and Ovid.
>^/^ Copies have come down to us of the time-tables of classes
at Eton and at Winchester about 1530. At the former school,
the fourth form on Friday and Saturday read "Vergilii
(
buccolica," and the fifth, sixth, and seventh forms, on the
same days, "Vergilii Eneis." For the fifth form at Win-
chester, "There constructyons is throwgh owte ye weke
unto fryday Vergills Eglogs & an other." The page de-
tailing the work of the higher forms is lost, but undoubtedly
they too read "Vergilii Eneis." The time-table of West-
minster School thirty years later includes Vergil and Homer
for the sixth and seventh forms. The school statutes of the
j
Free Grammar School of St. Bees in Cumberland, drawn
up in 1583, include Vergil in the curriculum. And finally,
Charles Hoole's New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching

I
J -. Schoole, published in 1659, but written in 1636, while it

'N suggests new methods of teaching, gives a list of the books


which were then and had been for many years in use in the
'

grammar schools throughout the country, a list which


includes Vergil, Ovid, Cicero, Horace, Seneca, and Terence,
as well as some of the Latin writers of the Renaissance.
Meanwhile, writers like Sir Thomas Elyot and Roger
Ascham were advocating the study of Vergil. He must be
studied, says Elyot in his Boke Called the Gouernour, and it
will prove an enchantment. "What thinge can be more
familiar than his bucolikes? nor no wark so nigh approcheth
to the commune daliaunce and maners of children, and the
praty controversies of the simple shepherds, therin con-
tained, wonderfully rejoyceth the childe that hereth hit
well declared as I knowe by myne owne experience. In
74 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
his Georgikes, what plesaunt varietie there is:
Lorde!
the divers graynes, herbes, and flowers that be there de-
scribed, that reding therin, hit semeth to a man to be in a
delectable gardeine or paradise; what ploughe man knoweth
so moche of husbandry as there is expressed?"
The study of the classics did not stop with the grammar
schools as had done in the Middle Ages. While Aristotle
it

and scholasticism were not driven immediately from the


Universities, yet new colleges were founded in both great
institutions of higher education whose special purpose
was the fostering of the new learning. In the late fifteenth
century Petrarch was being read at Cambridge, an indica-
tion that an interest in the classics was beginning, and
permission was given for a vacation lecture on Terence. In
1506 Christ's College was founded, where the bo7iae artes
were to be studied, and a college lecturer to give lectures
on the "works of poets and orators." In 1540 the Regius
Professorships were founded, and Ascham, writing to a
friend a few years later, says, "Cambridge is quite another
place, so substantially and splendidly has it been endowed
by the royal munificence." Going on to speak of the
study of Greek, he says, "Sophocles and Euripides are more ]

'

familiar authors than Plautus was in your time." But he


continues, "Nor do we disregard the Latin authors, but
study with the greatest zeal the choicest writers of the best
period." And in 1546, Trinity College was founded to be
a college of literature, the sciences, philosophy, the "good
and sacred theology.^
arts," !

Nor was Oxford much behind. The addition to the


curriculum in 1431 of the alternatives of Cicero, Ovid, and
Vergil, has already been mentioned. In 1517 was char-
tered Corpus Christi College. "The statutes of Corpus
* See J. B. MuUinger, A History of the University of Cambridge.
Vol. I, pp. 433 ff.
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 75

Christi College," says Lyte in his History of Oxford, "show-


very plainly the influence of the Renaissance. In the very
first section, there is an apology for the use of barbarous

words not known to Cicero. Some acquaintance with the


works of Roman poets, orators, and historians, no less than
with logic and philosophy is required of all candidates for
scholarships. . . . Maximus, Sue-
Cicero, Sallust, Valerius
tonius, Pliny, Livy, and Quintilian are enumerated as the
prose writers, and Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence,
and Plautus, as the poets to be expounded by the lecturer
on humanity." There was also to be a lecturer on Greek
grammar and literature, "an officer unknown in any earlier
*
college."
And this training in the schools and colleges evidently
made the reading of Vergil popular. For the day-book
of John Dome, an Oxford book-seller, indicates that the
text of Vergil was in great demand. In the year 1520, for
which the record was kept, he sold twenty-nine copies of
Vergil, this number being greater than that of the works of
any other classic writer except Cicero, Terence, whose
popularity was due partly to the vogue of plays on the
model of Roman comedy, and Aristotle.
Throughout the earlier years of the century, Greek was
taught at the Universities, and bade fair to rival Latin in
popularity and influence. But it was perhaps more "the
learned ardor" of a comparatively small circle of scholars,
and did not spread widely enough to survive the disturbing
events of the fourth decade of the century, when the attend-
ajice at the Universities rapidly dechned. By Mary's
reign, the teaching of Greek had practically ceased at both
Oxford and Cambridge, although it was soon revived.
Latin, however, with its firm basis of centuries of use, held
I

* See H. C. M. Lyte, A History of the University of Oxford from the


Earliest Times to the Year 1536. Lond. 1886. p. 412.
76 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

its own. So Vergil, opposed to the Greek writers,


as
had in his favor not only the accident of having written
in the more familiar language, but also the long popu-
larity of his work and the unbroken tradition of reverence
which had been associated with his name for many centuries.
It is not strange, therefore, that in his particular depart-
ments of the eclogue and the epic, Vergil held the field;
his authority in the pastoral was threatened more by his
Renaissance imitators than by his Greek master.
The general result of this new element in the education
of the Renaissance was a broadening in the scope of subject-
matter and allusion in This enrichment of the
literature.
literary material naturally appeared first in Italy, where,
as we have seen, the educational change began. Both
Petrarch and Boccaccio wrote Eclogues after the Vergilian
model, and set the example for the later Renaissance writers,
such as Mantuan and Sannazaro. It was a visit to the
tomb of Vergil that jfirst instilled into Boccaccio the desire
to write poetry. To Petrarch Vergil was one of the "two
eyes" of his discourse. His love of Vergil dated back to his
boyhood days, when his father discovered him at Mont-
pellier reading the classics instead of studying law, and
threw the books into the fire. One of the volumes that the
father repentantly snatched back from destruction on seeing
his son's tears, was the Rhetoric of Cicero, and the other was
a copy of Vergil, probably the same which has come down to
us enriched by marginal comments and the record of do-
mestic happenings on its pages. The memory of a Vergilian
phrase, labor omnia vicit, cheered Petrarch in his famous
ascent of Mont Ventoux, and more than a hundred quo-
tations from his favorite poet are scattered through the
pages of his familiar letters. In his second Letter to Cicero,
he says that he had two guides, Cicero himself in prose, and
Vergil in verse. He alludes to the story that Cicero heard
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 77

the sixth Eclogue recited in the theater, and exclaimed,


"Spes altera Romae!" a phrase which Vergil later incor-
porated into his "divine poem," and says that he is sure
that had Cicero lived to see the Aeneid, he would have
agreed with Propertius in calling it greater than the Iliad.
The verse Letter to Vergil himself begins, "O illustrious Maro,
bright luminary of eloquence and second hope of the Latin
tongue," and in that to Homer, Petrarch enters into an
elaborate defense of the Latin poet against the charge of
stealing from the Greek. But most interesting of all is that
portion of the Letter to Vergil in which he asks the poet where
he is and who are then proceeds to tell
his companions. He
of the present condition of Vergil's favorite cities, Naples,
Mantua, and Rome, in the second of which he is now writ-
ing. As he wanders about the surrounding country, he
says, he constantly wonders what paths, woods, and streams
Vergil used to frequent, and adds, "Such thoughts as these,
O Vergil, bring thee vividly before my eyes." ^ And yet
Petrarch cannot break away from the allegorical interpre-
tation of Vergil's poems, and in his old age writes, "Vergil's
subject ... is the Perfect Man . . . the winds . . . blasts of
anger and mad desire. . . . Aeolus is our reason. . . . Venus
... is pleasure."
But in spite of his admiration of Vergil and his use of
him model in verse, Petrarch was exceedingly careful
as a
to avoid any verbal echoes of his lines. He was incredulous
when a pupil, whom he had been cautioning against this
very thing, accused him of having committed such a fault,
and horrified when a Vergilian ending of one of his verses
was pointed out to him in proof.
His followers, however, were not so careful. Maffeo
Vegio, or, to use the Latin form of his name, Maphaeus
See Petrarch's Letters to Classical Authors, translated ... by Mario
*

Emilio Cosenza, Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1910.


78 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
Vegius, presumed to complete the Aeneid by adding a thir-
teenth book, Pohtian imitated Vergil in his Sylvae, and San-
nazaro not only wrote Piscatory Eclogues which owed much
to the Eclogues, and drew some inspiration for his Arcadia
from the Gallus, but spent twenty years on a Vergilian poem
on the birth of Christ, De Partu Virginis. Mantuan's
Eclogues, not very Vergilian, it is true, but written in the
pastoral tradition derived from Vergil, were more popular
than those of the master himself, and were used extensively
grammar schools
in the as textbooks. In the next century
came some imitations of the Georgics, Alamanni's Colti-
vazione, and Rucellai's Api. All these were justified by the
doctrine preached in Vida's Art of Poetry, itself full of Ver-
gilianand Homeric echoes, namely to imitate the ancients,
and especially Vergil, who was to him the "father of verse,"
and to steal boldly and constantly from the classic authors.
Come then, ye youths,and urge your generous toils;

Come, strip the ancients, and divide the spoils


Your hands have won.^

In the epic, since the days of Petrarch, the Aeneid had


been the model for the poets of the Renaissance. He him-
self had written a Latin epic, Africa, with Scipio Africanus
as its hero, and by his precepts as well as by his example
had set the fashion of imitating Vergil. The epics of Pulci,
Boiardo, and their followers
Ariosto, show the
classical
influence obscured by the romantic atmosphere, but in the
Jerusalem Delivered, Tasso's borrowings from the Latin epic
are numerous and obvious. The first line.
Canto I'armi pietose, e '1 Capitano,

is only the beginning of a paragraph which closely follows


the opening of the Aeneid. Allecto appears, with familiar
''
Pitt's translation.
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 79

characteristics, in the eighth and ninth books, the latter


of which contains the exploits of the maiden warrior, Clorinda.
There are numerous Vergilian names, such as Latinus and
Picus. In the eleventh book is an account of the miraculous
cure of Godfrey's arrow-wound, which is almost a literal
translation of the description of the healing of Aeneas'
wound by Venus. The final words of the enchantress
Armida to Rinaldo follow faithfully the speeches of Dido
in the fourth book of the Aeneid, and the shield of Rinaldo is

clearly a reminiscence of that of Aeneas.


At about the same time in France,Ronsard was working
at his Franciade. Inspired with the desire to become the
Vergil of his country, he wrote a classical epic celebrating
Francus, the mythical founder of his race, who, like the Eng-
lish Brutus, was of Trojan blood. In the sixteenth century,
too, the Dido story was proving its popularity in Italy,
France, and Germany, by becoming the subject of at least
five plays, by Cinthio, Dolce, Jodelle, Knaustius, and
Frischlin, which paralleled and probably had some influence
on the production of similar plays in England, both by the
University dramatists and by Marlowe and Nash. The
influence of the Eclogues was perpetuated in Marot's French
Eclogues, and that of the Georgics in Baif's Meteores and
Kirchmayer's Agricultura Sacra. Vergilian criticism, or
rather eulogy, is represented by Vida in Italy, and in France
by Julius Caesar Scaliger.
As will be evident in the next chapter, the literature of
England in the sixteenth century showed the same changes
in the use of Vergilian and other classical material as that
of the continental nations. Both prose and poetry of the
Renaissance are characterized by a closer adherence to
fact, an increase in the number of Vergilian allusions and
references, the growing popularity of the Dido story and
the gradual change from Dares to Vergil as an authority,
80 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
the widespread adoption of the eclogue form, and especially
the greater amount of imitation and the change in the
manner of using Vergilian material. In these changes, the
translations of Vergil played a great part. Annibale Caro
and Molza rendered his lines into Italian, and the work of
Douglas, Surrey and Phaer undoubtedly helped to familiarize
the general reader in England with his poems, and in turn,
the greater knowledge of the Latin made popular the process
of rendering them in the vulgar tongue.
The first to translate the Aeneid * into an English vernac-
ular was a Scotchman, Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld.
He began his work in 1512, and, according to his own state-
ment, completed it in eighteen months, on the day of the
Feast of Mary Magdalene, 1513. It comprises not only
the twelve books of the Aeneid but the Supplementum
Aeneidos by Maphaeus Vegius.^ The translation itself is
in rhymed five-accented couplets, though the Prologues to
the separate books vary in meter. It remained in manu-
script until 1553, when it was printed by William Copland,
in London. This first printed edition shows several altera-
tions from the manuscripts, for not only are the portions of
the Prologues which refer to the Virgiri and Purgatory omitted
but the
in deference to the anti-Catholic feeling of the time,
whole adventure of Dido and Aeneas is passed over. This
would undoubtedly have grieved the Bishop, had he
known it, quite as much
had the expansion of that episode
as
in the Eneydos of Caxton. For Douglas' oft-repeated claim
was that he was faithful in rendering the meaning of his
original. In the Prologue to Book
he says, contrasting
I

his own treatment of the story with that of Caxton, between

There had been a prose version of the Aeneid in Gaelic before 1400,
*

the Intheachta Aeniasa, ed. by Rev. George Calder, London, 1907.


The MS is found in the Book of Ballymote, pp. 449-485.
» Pubhshed at Venice in 1485.
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 81

which and the Aeneid there is no more resemblance than


between the "devill and Sanct Austyne,"

Quhilk did my best, as my wit mycht attene,


Virgillis versis to follow, and nathing fene.

Fidelity to his original was necessary viewfor him in


of his purpose in writing. In the Dyrectioun of his Buik and
the Excusation of Hym Self, appended to the translation, he
expresses his idea of the purpose and value of his work, say-
ing that it is intended to be both pleasant and profitable,
to pass the time for some people, and also to be of assistance

To thaim wald VirgiU to childryng expone.

It was his great desire that his favorite poet should become
known to all his countrymen. "Go, wlgar Virgill," he says,

Now salt thou with euery gentill Scot be kend.


And to onletterit folk be red on hycht,
That erst was bot with clerkis comprehend.

The greatness of his task and the exalted position of his


author made him very humble, and he begged any- that if

thing went wrong, the blame might fall on him and not on
Vergil, who alone deserved the praise if things went well.
The Prologue of the first book is full of "commendations
of Virgill," as the marginal note expresses it. The poem
opens with a passage of eulogy, characteristic of the times
in its extravagance and its reiterated praise of the genius of
Vergil, which is contrasted with his own humble powers.
He will, however, with his master's permission, into his
"rural wlgar gros, write sum savoring" of the Aeneid.
He goes on to say that it was at the instance of "Henry
Lord Sanct Clair" that he undertook the translation. A de-
tailed discussion of Caxton's faults of omission and com-
82 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
mission, an explanation of the character of Aeneas, a criti-
cism of Chaucer's attitude toward the hero of the poem,
and a prayer to God for assistance in his work, make up the
bulk of the rest of the Prologue. With a final appeal to
Vergil to forgive him ifhe offends, he closes with a transla-
tion of the four lines which Varius and Tucca excluded from
the opening of the Aeneid.
The Prologues to the other books are of varying impor-
tance. Some, like those to the seventh and tenth, which
contain the pictures of Winter and of May, are interesting
because they indicate a true love of Nature and a power of
description in the Scottish bishop; some, like the marvel
of alliteration prefixed to the eighth book, are of linguistic
value; others are of interest because they throw light on
Douglas' knowledge of or attitude toward Vergil. Further
information on the last matter is furnished by the com-
ments which he added to a part of the first book, to which
he refers in his address to Lord Sinclair:

Ihave alsso a schort comment compild


To expon strange histories and termes wild.

His thorough knowledge and close dependence on the


^^ of
original is distinctly different from the romanticizing tendency
of Chaucer and Caxton. Not that the good bishop always
approves of his author's theology. He knows that the
stories of the pagan gods and goddesses are "fenyeit," but
contents himself with explaining in his notes or prologues
the hidden meaning in these fables, and does not drop them
out of the story itself or substitute the Fiend for Juno.

" Douglas also knew the Eclogues and Georgics, as is proved by-
references to them in the fourth and
Prologues and in the Palice
fifth

of Honour. There are also references in the latter poem to Sinon and
to Vergil's magic mirror. The story of the Aeneid is summarized in
three stanzas.
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 83

Let Virgyll hald his mawmentis to hym self;

I wirschip noder idoU, stok, nor elf,


Thocht furth I wryte so as myne autour dois.

Yet some explanation is necessary to show


has why he
chosen to interpret this pagan poet for his countrymen.
Not only is this poet of the "sugurat tone" the
and sum, quhat nedis moir.
al
Of Latyne poetis that sens wes or befoir,

but he a moral instructor, almost a Christian in his ethical


is

teaching. In this Douglas is carrying over the mediaeval


tradition about Vergil and linking it with a more profound
sympathy and reverence for what Vergil actually wrote than
can be found in any of the writers of the preceding cen-
turies. He was deeply impressed by the profundity of
Vergil's philosophy,and almost despaired of understanding
it himself or of making it clear to others. He believed
that Aeneas represented the ideal prince and ruler, and as
such was offered as a model, "an exampill and myrour to
euery prince and nobyl man." In the sixth book especially
Vergil showed himself as "a hie philosophour," and there

wndir the cluddes of dirk poetry


Hid lyis thair mony notable history.

The belief that Vergil was a prophet Messiah finds


of the
expression in the Prologue to Book VI, where Douglas says,

Thus faithfully in his Buikolikis he saith,


The maid cumith bryngis new lynage fra hevin.

And like many of the mediaeval writers, he finds evidences


of an approach to Christian ideas in other places in the
works of the pagan poet beside the fourth Eclogue. So his
work is of value even to Christian folk. And if he does
depart from the Christian faith at times,
Na wondir; he was na cristin man, per de.
84 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

In the translation itself, Douglas justifies his claim to


fidelity to the Latin. His chief fault is a certain diffuseness

and elaboration of the original, the bulk of the translation


being much greater than that of the Aeneid itself. But that
was characteristic of the period in which he was writing.
He keeps faithfully to the ''sentence" even if he is forced
to change the expression at times because of "sobtell wourd
or the ryme." Francis Junius accused him of making many
errors, but in reality there are very few. Among them may
be mentioned the translation of viscum as "gum or glew,"
and of Italiam contra as "enemy to Italic," and the arith-
metical sum which transforms terque quaterque heati into

sevin tymes full happy and blist war thai.

Sometimes he inserts a phrase in explanation of an unusual


word, as in the line.

For nymphes, goddes of fluidis and woddis grene,

or in personal comment on the situation, as in the place where


he expresses his opinion of Juno,

Quhen that Juno, till hir euerlestand schame,


The eterne wound hid in hir brest ay grene.
Onto hirselfe thus spak in propir tene.

On the whole, however, this first version of the great


Roman epic is a good translation. It has failed to catch
quite the elevation of tone that marks the Latin, but it is

frankly a rendering in a vernacular which is "imperfite"


beside the Roman tongue, couched in "haymly plane termes
famyliar." While it sometimes lacks dignity, however,
it is spirited and full of vigor. This may be seen in the
account of the death of Priam or the description of the last
words of Dido, both of them excellent touchstones to deter-
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 85

mine the value of a translation. The former is especially-

vivid:

But lo! Polites, ane of Priamus sonnis,


Quhilk fra the slauchter of Pirrus away run is,

Throw wapnis fleing and his enemyis all,


By lang throwgangis and mony woyd hall;

Woundit he was, and come to seek reskew;


Ardentlie Pirrus can him fast persew,
With grundin lance at hand so neir furth strykit,
Almaist he haid him tuichit and arrekit.
Quhill at the last, quhen he is cumin, I wane,
Befoir his faderis and his moderis ene,
Smate him doun deid, in thair sycht quhar he stude,
The gaist he yald with habundance of blude.

Then, after the aged Priam has hurled defiance at the


youthful Pyrrhus, comes the Greek's insolent answer and
the murder of the king:

To Pilleus sone, my thou most ga;


fadir,
Ber him this message, ramember well thou tell

Him all my werkis and deidis sa cruell.


Now sail thou dee. And with that word, in tene,
The auld trumbhng towart the he drew, altair

That in the halt blude of his sone, sched new,


Funderit and Pirrus grippis him by the hair
;

With his left hand, and with the vdir all bair
Drew furth his schjoiand swerd, quhilk in his syde
Festynnit, and vnto the hiltis did it hyde."

For passages like this, we can forgive the Scottish church-


man for making the Sibyl a "nwn" who tells Aeneas not to
forget his beads. It was a task which made the Scottish
nation proud to claim him, and one of the greatest writers
of his race in after years described him as

" Aen. 2. 526-532, 547-553.


86 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
More pleased that, in a barbarous age,
He gave rude Scotland Virgil's page,
Than that beneath his rule he held
The bishopric of fair Dunkeld.^^

Four years Gavin Douglas was


after the translation of
published, appeared a version of the second and fourth
books of the Aeneid by the Earl of Surrey. This is famous
chiefly for the fact that it is written in blank verse, this
being the first instance of its use in English. There has
been much discussion of the source of his meter, some trac-
ing it to Italian origin, others attributing it to native inspira-
tion. George Frederick Nott, in his edition of the works
of Wyatt and Surrey, ^^ endeavored to show that the trans-
lation was originally written in unrhymed Alexandrines,
and then cut down to decasyllabic lines. But it seems in-
credible that the poet should have attempted such a task.
He had very probably seen the translation of Gavin Douglas,
and indeed follows him quite closely at times; ^^ and it is
very possible that his acquaintance with the Scotchman's
five-accented couplets, combined with some knowledge
of the Italian version of the Aeneid in blank verse by Molza,
who allowed his patron. Cardinal Hippolito di Medici, the
credit, and influenced by some prophetic sympathy with
the dislike of the EHzabethans for rhyme, supplied the
impetus for the use of this new meter. Thus there may
easily have been several influences which brought about
the result, and it seems most probable that they were all
operative to a greater or less degree.
But our chief interest is in the translation as a transla-
tion, although this is its least important side in the history

'2 Scott, Marmion, Canto VI. 11.


1' Dissertation, pp. cc ff. Also see Otto Fast, Uher Surrey's Virgil-
Weimar, 1903.
tibersetzung,
" See examples in Nott's edition.
: :

VERGIL AND HUMANISM 87

of English literature. Although Surrey undoubtedly owes


something to Douglas' version, yet he has aimed to repro-
duce the stateliness of the Latin rather than merely to
render it intelligible to "onletterit folk." He abandons,
therefore, the "haymly termes" of the Scotchman, and
expresses himself in a style and language more fitted to the
dignity of the original. Compare, for example, the two
accounts of the speech of Laocoon. Douglas translates
the passage thus

Following ane great rowt, the priest Laocone,


From the chief temple rynnand in full grete hye.
On far, O wretchit peple, can he crye.
How greit wodnes is this that 3e now mene,
3 our enemy is away salit, gif 3e wene,
Or gif 36 traist ony Grekis giftis be
Without dissait, falsait and subtilite!
Knaw 3e nocht bettir the quent Ulexes slycht?

Surrey, with less vigor, perhaps, but with a certain accession


of dignity, renders the passage as follows

Lo! foremost of a rout that foUow'd him,


Kindled Laocoon hasted from the tower,
Crying far off: "O wretched citizens!
What so great kind of frensy fretteth you?
Deem ye the Greeks our enemies to be gone?
Or any Greekish gifts can you suppose
Devoid of guile? Is so Ulysses known? "^^

But while the translation is a degree more sophisticated,


it is not lacking in spirit and liveliness. Being in blank
verse, it has a freer movement than
the later versions that
were restricted by rhyme, whether that of the " fourteeners "
of Phaer and Twyne, the heroic couplet of Dry den, or the
15 Aen. 2. 40-44.
: :

88 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS


various other verse forms adopted by subsequent transla-
tors. To apply once more one of the touchstones for a good
translation, take Surrey's version of Dido's last curse upon
Aeneas
This I require; these words with blood I shed,
And Tyrians, ye his stock and all his race
Pursue with hate! reward our cinders so.
No love nor league betwixt our peoples be.
And of our bones some wreaker may there spring,
With sword and flame that Trojans may pursue
Now, from henceforth, when that our power may stretch.
Our coasts to them contrary be for aye
I crave of God and our streams to their floods
;

Arms unto arms, and offspring of each race


With mortal war each other may for-do.^®

Surrey kept fairly close to his original, and yet, with a


sweetness of flow and a freedom in the movement of his
lines, remarkable in the infancy of blank verse, he has

succeeded in making of his translation a poem which com-


pares favorably with the original productions of the same
period, and never outrages the spirit of his author.
In his Discourse of English Poetrie, William Webbe,^^
speaking of the translators of the sixteenth century, says,
"I can no longer forget those learned gentlemen which
tooke such profitable paynes in translating the Latine poets
into our English tongue, whose deserts in that behalf are
more than I can utter. Among these I euer esteemed . . .

Master D. Phaer: without doubt the best: who as indeede


hee had the best peece of poetry whereon to sette a most
gallant verse, so performed he it accordingly." This ''gal-
lant verse" was the English "fourteener," a meter revived

Aen. 4. 621-9.
" Webbe himself translated the first two Eclogues into English hex-
ameters.
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 89

three centuries later by William Morris, capable of some


vigor and swing, but also tending to become monotonous,
and differing widely from the roll of the hexameter in Latin.
Thomas Phaer's version of the first seven books of the
Aeneid was published in 1558, just one year after Surrey's
translation appeared. Four years later appeared an edi-
tion of nine books and part of the tenth, representing Phaer's
work as far as he carried it before his death. Thomas
Twyne, however, completed the translation, and in 1573
issued the entire poem. Ten years later the thirteenth
book by Maphaeus Vegius was added. The translation was
popular and went through at least five more editions by
1620.
The 1573 edition, the first containing the complete poem,
is a little volume in black letter, including a translation of
"Virgil's life out of Donatus and the Argument before every
booke." It also has a marginal gloss, which is fully as
interesting as the translation itself, for it consists, not only
of a summary of the story, but of quaint explanatory re-
marks and naive comment and criticism. In several places
it indicates the survival of that old theory, so strong in Gavin
Douglas, that the some hidden meaning.
poem contains
Such for instance is the note which says, "She appoints
him first to the golden tree wherby is signified wisdome
that ouercometh al things." Also in "Master Phaers
Conclusion to his interpretation of the Aeneidos of Virgil,"
the translator begs for leniency from his "right worshipful
maisters, and students of Universities, and such as be
teachers of children and readers of this auctour in Latin,"
in reference to any deviations he may have made from the
original,and continues, "For, (besides the diuersitie be-
tweene a construction and a translation) you know there
be many misticall secretes in this writer, which uttered in
English would shew little pleasour, and in myne opinion
90 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

are better to be untouched, than to diminishe the grace of


the rest with tediousnes and darknes."
In view of his meter and his quaint, simple way of trans-
lating, probably at his best in such a book as the fifth,
he is

where he seems to take a real delight in telling of the funeral


games. His description of the foot-race is particularly
good. It also illustrates the fact that he keeps the half-lines.

First and before all other bodies, nimble Nisus springs,


More swifter yet than wind, and than the dint of lightnings wings,
Next unto him, but long aloof, in distance next of place,
Doth SaUus pursue, and after him a certain space,
Eurialus the thirde.
And next Eurialus sir Helimus ensues, and ioyntly than
Behold he flies, and heele to heele with him Diores ran.
With elbow next and next, and if the race do long remaine,
Is like to scape them all, or one to leave in doubtful gaine.
And towards now the latter end they drew, and wery all,
They ran with panting breathes, whan sodenly did Nisus fall,
(Unhappy man) where hefers had ben slaine by chaunce on grasse,
And ground was slypper made by certein blood that shed there
was.
There now the gentle lad, (whan conquest proud he had in hande)
His legges he could not hold, nor stombling so, could longer stand,
But groueling flat he fel, and in the slime embrewd him vUe.
Yet not Eurialus his freend, did he forget that while:
For quickly sterting he, sir Salius way with fote did stop,
That headlong downe in dust he ouerturnid taile and top.
Eurialus than springing skuddid forth, and through his frend,
With ioyful shoutes of men, he gets the chief at races end.^*

Richard Stanyhurst's translation of the first four books


of the Aeneid deserves Kttle notice except as a metrical curi-
osity. It is written in quantitative hexameters, constructed
according to a prosody of his own, "squaring somewhat from
" Am. 5. 31&-338.
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 91

the Latin." As a translation it is of no value, for the reader


is so concerned with the structure of the hnes that he cannot
find much Vergil in it. But as an example of the absurd
lengths to which were carried the theories of the Areopagus,
that circle of Elizabethans who were rebelling against rhyme
and advocating the use of meters in English, it iss
classical
of great interest. Stanyhurst had a high opinion of his
author both as a poet and as a moral teacher, and he ex
presses his admiration of him in the preface to his transla-
tion. "But oure he says, ".
Virgil," dooth laboure,
. .

in telling as yt were a Cantorburye tale, too ferret owt the


secretes of Nature, with woordes so fitlye coucht, wyth
verses so smoothlye slychte, with sentences so featlye
orderd, with orations so neathe burnisht, with similitudes
so aptly applyed, with eeche decorum so duely obserued,
as in truth hee hath in right purchased too hymself thee
name of a surpassing poet, thee fame of an od oratoure,
and thee admiration of a profound philosopher." So high
an estimate of Vergil's powers would lead us to expect some-
thing remarkable in the way of a translation, at least some-
thing approaching a sympathetic appreciation of the Latin.
But one example will suffice to show that this expectation
must be disappointed. What must we think of the me-
trical ear or the poetic sense of a translator who renders
Dido's last imprecation in these strange hexameters?

Let ther one od captayne from my boans rustye be springing.


With fire eke and weepons thee caytiefs Troian auenging;
Now; then; at eeche season; what so eare streingthe mighty e shal
happen,
Let shoare bee to shoare, let seas contrarye toe seas stand,
And to armours, armours I do pray, let progenye bicker.^'
19 Aen. 4. 625-9.
:

CHAPTER V
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

In view of the increased acquaintance with the Aeneid


itself, itnot strange that in the sixteenth century the
is

mediaeval ideas of the poem and of its author should gradu-


ally lose their hold on the imagination. There was, however,
no decided break between the mediaeval and the Renaissance
traditions of Vergil, and in the midst of the "new learning,"
some beliefs survived from the Middle Ages. Although the
figure of Vergil the magician, never very popular in England,
scarcely appears after the first quarter of the century,
Hawes' Pastime of Pleasure contains the "basket story,"
and the publication of Doesborcke's Lyfe of Virgilius in-
dicates that there was still in England about 1530 some
interest in the stories which had been in such high favor on
the continent. Practically the only reference after this,
however, is the allusion in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus to

learned Maro's golden tomb


The way he cut an English mile in length,
Through a rock of stone in one night's space.

But the desire of the Christian humanists to bring all


their knowledge to serve the interests of the moral and
religious advancement of the human race, helped to per-
petuate the love for allegorical interpretation and the
belief in the moral purpose of the Aeneid, inherited from
the days of Fulgentius and of John of Salisbury. Nor was
this belief incompatible with a knowledge of the original.
In fact, it depended on it, and so survived in the work of
92
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 93

writers from Douglas to Spenser. Sir Philip Sidney, for


example, reiterates in varying forms his belief that "no philos-
opher's precepts can sooner make you an honest man than
the reading of Virgil." Douglas justified his translation
of a pagan poet, and Spenser his use of allegory by refer-
ence to the hidden meaning of the work of Vergil. ^.
-^ '

The change from the mediaeval is most strongly marked


in two ways, in the increase in the number of references to
the poems of Vergil and of quotations from them, and in
the nature of these references. The increase in the number
of the references is seen most easily in the prose of the
period. Nearly every other page of Sir Philip Sidney's i
Defence of Poesy, for instance, will yield at least one quota-
tion from Vergil, or one reference to the characters in the
story which he tells. The Ehzabethan critics use him
constantly for illustration or confirmation. The very fact
.

that many of them were interested in either supporting


or attacking the theories of the Areopagus in regard to the
use of classical meters in English, and were frequently ex-
perimenting themselves with hexameters from Vergil, also
shows the increasing knowledge of and interest in his poetry.
It is in the poetry of the century that the change in the
nature of the references and of the use of Vergilian material
is most apparent. Gower and Lydgate, as we have seen,
made many Dido and Aeneas, but they were
references to
in the main conventional, and the result of a knowledge
of the romantic conception of their story rather than a
scholarly acquaintance with the original. There is a cer-
tain amount of survival of this conventional attitude in the
poems of the Renaissance, especially in the lyrics of the
Elizabethan collections of songs and sonnets. Dido is
still in many cases the forsaken woman, and Aeneas the

false traitor, the type of unfaithfulness in man as Cressid


is of unfaithfulness in woman, and Penelope of faithfulness
94 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
and Helen of beauty. The poets had not yet grown entirely
away from this simple and obvious interpretation of the
story.
On a sufficient number of refer-
the other hand, there is

ences which show an acquaintance with the text of the


Aeneid at first hand. Such, for instance, is the beginning
of Wyatt's unfinished Song of lopas,

When Dido feasted the wand 'ring Trojan knight,


Whom Juno's wrath with storms did force in Libic sands to Ught;
That mighty Atlas taught, the supper lasting long.
With crisped locks on golden harp lopas sang in song,

or the same author's lines in one of his Odes,

For though hard rocks among


She seems to have been bred;
And of the tiger long
Been nomished and fed.

The numerous references to Nisus and Euryalus, the use


of Scylla and Charybdis in imagery, the allusion in

house without thy head!


ship without a steare!
Thy Palynurus now is dead.
As shortly will appear,

allgathered from TotteVs Miscellany and its followers, are


evidences of a knowledge of the entire Aeneid. And although
Turbervile's Pretie Epigram of a Scholer, that having read
Virgils Aeneidos, maried a curst wife, quotes only the first
two words of the Aeneid, it may
be conjectured that
fairly
both the author and the subject of the epigram had read
further, Grimoald's sonnet Concerning Virgils Eneids shows
by its high praise that the author was a reader and admirer
of Vergil.
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 95

The second passage quoted from Sir Thomas Wyatt above,


together with a similar one from the Gallery of Gallant
Inventions,

Yet lo, thy proofe I know, the trusty waight,


Of Tygars milke, thou fostred v/ert from molde,^

illustrates the new method of imitation from the classics.

During the Middle Ages, and up through the fifteenth cen-


tury, a poet very seldom used Vergilian phraseology unless
he was referring directly to the story of the Aeneid. He
rarely adopted a line or phrase or figure and applied it to
some other situation. Chaucer and his contemporaries,
with mediaeval dependence on their "auctours," constantly
used the name of Vergil to support their story, and frankly
borrowed descriptions, such as that of Lady Fame. But
after Vida had given his advice to steal boldly and con-
tinually from the classics, and especially from Vergil, and
after the new education had brought to all men of letters a
. thorough familiarity with his work, poets began to imitate
lines, paragraphs, whole passages of the Eclogues, the Georgics,
or the Aeneid, with no more acknowledgment to Vergil than
Vergil had made to his Greek models. Imitation became
one of the cardinal principles of writing, and the poetry of the
EUzabethans is filled with echoes of their reading in the
^classics.

/^ The most elaborate piece of Vergilian imitation before


Spenser, is Sackville's Induction to the 1563 edition of the
Mirror for Magistrates. The Middle Ages and humanism
meet in this poem in a remarkable way. The early stanzas
are full of Chaucerian echoes, with the characteristic
mediaeval fondness for elaborate astronomical information
and for detailed description shown in the exaggerations
in the picture of Sorrow. But with the poet's recognition
1 Cf . Am. 4. 365-7.
96 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
of Sorrow as a goddess, and her proposal to conduct him
to the Underworld, begins the imitation of the Aeneid.
Like Aeneas and the Sibyl, Sackville and his guide come to
"Lake Averne,"

Which up in the ayer such stinking vapors throwes


That over there, may flye no fowle but dyes,
Choakt with the pestilent savours that aryse.

The cave too, "wyth ougly mouth and grisly jawes," is


like that in Vergil, "vastoque immanis hiatu." At the en-
trance to Hell they find a number of allegorical figures,
like those in Vergil, Remorse, Dread, Revenge, Miserie,
Care, Sleep, Old Age, Maladie, Famine, Death, and War.*
The mere name or the suggestive adjective of Vergil's ac-
count is elaborated by Sackville into a passage of several
lines, never less than seven, and in the description of Old
Age, forty-two. ** Heavy slepe the cosin of death," "sad
Olde age," and "pale Maladie," the Vergilian expressions,
do not satisfy him he must add to them many lines in which
;

the repugnant characteristics of these figures are dwelt on


with loving minuteness. There are other Vergilian reminis-
cences included in these lines, such as the echo of Evander's
wish that his youth might return. The shield of War is
an obvious copy of the shield of Aeneas. It is adorned with
pictures of historical or legendary events, not with alle-
gorical figures like that of Achilles. The picture of the fall

of Troy was evidently written with Vergil in mind, especially


the narrative of the capture of Cassandra and the death of
Priam. The descriptions of Charon and of Cerberus are
taken straight from the Aeneid, and also the account of
the launching of the skiff with its corporeal burden. The
lines,
* Cf. Spenser, Faerie Queene, II. 7. 21 ff.
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 97

And furth we launch ful fraughted to the brinke,


Whan with the unwonted weyght, the rustye keele
Began to creake as if the same should sinke,

are the Vergilian


gemuit sub pondere cumba
sutilis et multam accepit rimosa paludem.

And finally, the shades in the Underworld are divided into


the Vergilian classes, "babes . . . maydes unwed . . . gyltles
slayne . . . lovers dead."
The increased popularity of the story of the Aeneid
was also a powerful factor in determining the nature of
Vergilian influence in the century. The weight of authority
on the story of Troy was gradually being transferred from
Dares Phrygius to Vergil. William Warner in the last
decade of the century tells the old traitor story in the body
of his Albion's England, but appends a prose abstract of
the Aeneid in which he casts a slur at those authorities who
"noted" the hero of that poem "of disloyalty toward
Priam." The two versions stood side by side for much
power was changing.
of the time, but the balance of " Sinon's

shifts" were spoken of rather than Aeneas' disloyalty.


The story of Aeneas' wanderings, his love-affair with Dido,
and was becoming an old and familiar
his battles in Italy,
tale. And Dido's tragic love-affair was the most familiar por-
tion of the narrative, and the most appealing, then as now.
The new knowledge of her story, as it was told by the master
himself, and the centuries of romantic tradition, combined
to make her a favorite, as is proved by the constant refer-
ences to her in poetry and the repeated use of this incident
in thedrama.
But perhaps the thing which is most significant of the
change during the Renaissance, is the contrast between
the picture drawn of the personality of Vergil himself by
98 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
John Doesborcke, somewhere around 1530, or by Stephen
Hawes, and that drawn by Ben Jonson in his Poetaster, in
1601. There stands the soHtary figure of the magician,
utterly divorced, to all intents and purposes, from the time
LQ which he lived and the literature which he produced, a
figure belonging essentially to the M
ddle Ages. Here is
the author of the Aeneid, represented as moving in the
midst of the court society of Augustan Rome. It is true
that he may represent Chapman or Shakespeare or some
other of Jonson 's contemporaries, but nevertheless he is
brought upon the stage in company with Horace and Ovid
and Maecenas, and some attempt is made to show him as he
must have appeared to his contemporaries. To read first
a passage from the Virgilius, and then one from the Poetaster,
is to step over the gap between the Middle Ages and the

Renaissance. To Doesborcke Vergil is merely "a fayre


and a wyse yonge man, and conynge in the scyence of
negromancy aboue all men than lyuynge," having no other
connection with literature save that he is a schoolmaster,

and often coming into direct conflict with the Emperor.


But Ben Jonson 's Augustus, on hearing of the approach of
Vergil, says,

Rome's honour is at hand, then.


Fetch a chair,
And on our right hand; where 'tis fit
set it
Rome's honour and ovu- own should ever sit,

and Horace, Gallus, and Tibullus pass judgment on him:


Hot. I judge him of a rectified spirit,
By many revolutions of discourse
(In his bright reason's influence) refined
From all the tartarous moods of common men;
Bearing the nature, and simiHtude
Of a right heavenly body; most severe
In fashion and collection of himself,
And then, as clear and confident as Jove.
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 99

Gal. And yet so chaste and tender is his ear,


In suffering any syllable to pass,
That he thinks may become the honour'd name
Of issue to his so examined self,
That all the lasting fruits of his full merit,
In his own poems, he doth still distaste.
As if mind's piece, which he strove to paint,
his
Could not with fleshly pencils have her right.
Tib. That which he hath writ
. . .

Is with such judgment labour'd, and distill'd


Through all the needful uses of our hves.
That could a man remember but his Unes,
He should not touch at any serious point,
But he might breathe his spirit out of him.

Hor. And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life,

That it shall gather strength of hfe, with being,


And live hereafter, more admired, than now.

Although the last two speeches may be intended as a criti-

cism of Chapman or Shakespeare, it is nevertheless signifi-


cant that Vergil should be the author chosen to represent
a man so honored, the one to sit at Caesar's right hand, and
to give judgment in a literary court. And there is little

here given in the description of the Roman poet and his


work that has not been or might not be considered applicable
to the historic Vergil.
To the Renaissance, Vergil was the author not only of the
Aeneid, but also of the Eclogues. All three of his poems
were well known, but the Georgics did not come into their
own until the eighteenth century. Nicholas Grimoald,
it is true, made a paraphrase of them, which was printed

in 1591, and a translation of the Bucolics and Georgics was


published in 1589 by '*A. F." But there was nothing in
England to correspond to the French and Italian imitations
by Baif, Alamanni and Rucellai. Thomas Tusser's Five
100 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry, the only work in the


century which might seem hke an imitation of the Georgics,
evidently owes its maxims to no classical poet, but to the
experience and common sense of the writer himself. The
didacticism of the sixteenth century turned to other things
beside agriculture.
Spenser was the greatest figure of Elizabethan poetry,
outside of the drama. His range of genius, greater than that
of any other poet of the century except Shakespeare, covered
practically all the phases of VergiHan influence then
operative, that of the Eclogues in particular, and also that
of the Aeneid and of the allegorical interpretation of the
Aeneid. And his epic is an excellent illustration of the pecu-
liar manner in which the writers of that romance-loving

period adapted to their own uses an epic as formal as


Vergil's poem. So, as he sums up the pastoral tradition
and furnishes the models for many writers of the formal
eclogue in succeeding generations, and as he is the greatest
representative of the romantic treatment of the Aeneid, it

will be well to focus our attention upon his use of Vergil, and
let the practice of his contemporaries and followers illustrate
and ampUfy the attitude which he represents.
Of the various forms of the pastoral which developed in
England in the sixteenth century, the pastoral drama, the
prose romance, the lyric, and the formal eclogue, it is only
the last which is to be considered here. For although they
were obviously all derived ultimately from the classical
models, in the case of the first three, the Greek and Latin
influence lost most of its individuality in being filtered
through the work of the Italian, French, and Spanish writers,
to whom the pastoral poets of England owed such a large
debt in form and substance. Even in the formal eclogue
the writers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Dante,
Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sannazaro, Marot, and especially
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 101

Mantuan, introduced so many new elements that the


" smooth-sHding Mincius" flows by no means clear and un-
contaminated from its som-ce. Spenser's predecessors in
England, Barclay and Googe, owe more to these Renaissance
models than to Vergil, although an occasional echo of a
Vergilian line shows that the originator of the form is not
wholly forgotten.
The Shepheardes Calender appeared anonymously in 1579,
with a "glosse" written by a certain "E. K.," whose identity
has caused much discussion. The elaborate commentaries
which had gathered about the Eclogues of Vergil, explaining
not only difficulties in the text but also allusions to con-
temporary events and persons, both actual and supposed,
had set the fashion for the addition of notes to the Renais-
sance Some, like Petrarch, wrote the com-
pastorals.
mentaries themselves, and it has been said that "E. K."
is no other than Spenser. But probably he was a friend
of the poet, a certain Edward Kirke, who acted as inter-
preter for "Immerito." At any rate, he knew his Vergil,
and pointed out many passages which showed that Spenser
was definitely following his classic master. Theocritus,
however, he counts as of more authority than Vergil, "this
especially from that deriving, as from the first head and
wel-spring, whole invencion of his Aeglogues." He
the
misunderstands the Latin title which was always used, and
says it was from the Greek, —
" Aeglogai, as it were aiycov,
or aiyovofjLwv Xoyot, Goteheards tales."
that is,

Spenser was familiar with the whole pastoral tradition


from its Greek founders through the Latin, Italian, Spanish,
and French writers, and he borrowed freely from all sources.
He seems to have been original in his use of homely English
names instead of the Greek or Latin conventional titles of
the earlier and much of the later pastoral, and of a rustic
dialect, which displeased Sidney. "That same framing
"

102 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS


of his stile, to an old rustick language, I dare not alowe,
sith neyther Theocritus in Greeke, Virgill in Latine, nor
Sanazar Thus he wrote, forgetting
in Italian, did affect it."
that Vergil himself had been criticized for his "cuium pecus."
These homely and familiar touches lend an atmosphere of
reality to the themes and forms borrowed from abroad,
and make the song-contest of Theocritus and Vergil, the
religious and moral satire of Mantuan, and the elegy of
Marot seem almost native to English soil.
Of the twelve eclogues, three are definitely modeled upon
Mantuan, the July, the September and October, and one, the
November, ''is made in imitation of Marot his song, which
he made upon the death of Loys the Frenche Queene."
In however, the Vergilian tradition shows itself per-
this,
petuated through the French, in the change from sorrow
to joy at the thought that the loved one is not really dead,
but, as Vergil expresses it,

Candidas insuetum miratur limen Olympi


sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera.

Although Spenser was definitely imitating Marot, he could


not have failed to remember the Daphnis of Vergil when
he wrote.
Why wayle we then? why weary we the gods with playnts.
As if some evill were to her betight?
She raignes a goddesse now emong the saintes,
That whilome was the saynt of shepheards light:
And is enstalled nowe in heavens hight.

The eclogues that deal with the love of Colin are more
classical in form. The shepherd lad who "thus him playnd
is a familiar figure in both Theocritus and Vergil. Like
Vergil's Corydon, Colin will

seeke for queene apples unripe,


To give my Rosalind,
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 103

and like Damon


he expresses his jealousy of his successful
rival. It is the August eclogue which is the most classical
in form. Like the shepherds of Sicily and of the Mantuan
plains, Willye and Perigot engage in a contest in song.
The "Argument" says that this is an imitation of Theoc-
ritus, but the mention of the third and seventh Eclogues
of Vergil shows that "E. K." was not ignorant of the fact
that the Roman tradition was influential here also. Willye
pledges
A mazer y wrought of the maple warre
Wherein is enchased many a fa5Te sight
Of beres and tygres, that maken fiers warre;
And over them spred a goodly wild vine,
Entrailed with a wanton yvie-twine.

Perigot in his turn offers a spotted lamb, the best of his flock.
They call upon Cuddie to judge the contest, but at the close
he unable to decide between them, and like Palaemon in
is

Vergil's third Eclogue, he awards a prize to each. The songs


themselves are not classical in form, for instead of being in
answering couplets or quatrains, of equal importance,
Perigot's verses take the lead, and Willye's follow as a mere
refrain or "undersong." Nor does the eclogue end with the
judge's decision, for Cuddie himself sings a song which Colin
has composed upon the subject of his hopeless love for Rosa-
linde, for which Spenser had some justification in the ninth
Idyll of Theocritus.
Spenser introduces into his pastorals not only religious
satire after the pattern of his Italian models, but also per-
sonal allegory after the manner of Vergil and his followers.
The name was only a thin disguise for Spenser him-
of Colin
self, whose love-affair with Rosalinde was well known. As
Cuddie says, "Who knows not Rosalend?" "Menalcas,"
says "E. K.," "the name of a shephearde in Virgile; but
is

here is meant a person unknowne and secrete, agaynst


104 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
whome he often bitterly invayeth," Hobbinol, Colin's friend
and confidant, is Gabriel Harvey.
This personal allusion
is at its height in Colin ClouVs Come Home Againe, where

Hobbinol again appears, and the Shepherd of the Ocean,


ThestyUs, Harpalus, Corydon, Alcyon, old Palemon, and
Astrofell; and sweet Amaryllis,"
Stella, "Phyllis, Charillis
and the various other shepherds and nymphs, can be identi-
fied with more or less certainty with the gentlemen and
ladies who, with Spenser himself, owed allegiance to that

great shepheardesse, that Cynthia hight,


His liege, his ladie, and his lifes regent.

Perhaps the most popular of all the forms of the pastoral


was the dirge, and this Spenser used, not only in the Shep-
heardes Calender, but in his Daphnaida and his Astrophel,
although neither of these is in the strictly conventional
classical form. The Pastor all Aeglogue by Lodowick Bryskett
included in the collection entitled Astrophel, is a good ex-
ample of this, with its conventional

Phillisides is dead. happie sprite,


That now in heav'n with blessed soules doest bide.

Echoes of Vergil in Spenser's pastoral poems are fairly


frequent. Most of those in the Shepheardes Calender are
noted by ''E. K." in his gloss. '^His clownish gyfis," says
the commentator, "imitateth Virgil's verse,

'Rusticus es Corydon, nee munera curat Alexis.'"

Thenot's emblem in the April eclogue, " O quam te memorem,


virgo?" and Hobbinol's, "O dea certe," are said to have been
taken from the passage in the Aeneid describing Aeneas'
meeting with his mother, which is "most divinely set forth."
He is also careful to explain the passage in the October
eclogue which tells how the "Romish Titynis"
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 105

left his oaten reede,


Whereon he earst had taught his flocks to feede,
And laboured lands to yield the timely eare,
And eft did sing of warres and deadly drede,
So as the heavens did quake his verse to here,

as referring to the Aeglogues, the Bucoliques, and the "divine


Aeneis." He also mentions the lines,

For als at home I have a syre,


A stepdame eke, as whott as fyre,
That dewly adayes counts mine,

which isMenalcas' excuse for refusing to stake one of his


flock in his song-contest with Damoetas:

est mihi namque domi pater, est iniusta noverca;


bisque die numerant ambo pecus, alter et haedos.

In Colin Clout's Come Home Againe, there are two reminis-


cences of the familiar verses of Vergil's first Eclogue,

tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra


formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas,

especially marked in the lines,

The speaking woods and murmuring waters fall,


Her name He teach in knowen termes to frame.

But who can say whether the ever-recurring ending of the


pastoral, both in Spenser's work and in that of other writers
of the eclogue, is due to Vergil's

ite domum saturae, venit Hesperus, ite capellae,

or to Mantuan's

sed iam Vesper adest et sol se in nube recondens,


dum cadit, agricolis vicinos nuntiat imbres;
cogere et ad caulas pecudes convertere tempus?
106 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
In the work of the majority of those who followed Spenser
in the writing of the pastoral, there is little trace of pure
Vergilian influence. Their model is usually Colin and not
Tityrus, and the eclogue as exemplified in Peele's Welcome
to the Earl of Essex, in Drayton's Shepherd's Garland, in
Basse's Three Pastoral Eclogues and his Clio, in Browne's
Shepherd's Pipe, in Brathwaite's- Shepheards Tales, or in
Wither's Shepherd's Hunting, is removed by many degrees
of relationshipfrom the eclogue of Vergil. In general they
keep the form of a dialogue between shepherds or a mournful
soliloquy of a love-sick swain; they develope to its fullest
possibilities the personal allegory or the religious satire. In
this last is shown the persistence of the influence of Mantuan,
especially strong in Sable's Pan's Pipe and the Eclogues
included in Lodge's Fig for Momus. The crowning extrava-
gance in the use of the pastoral form for the purpose of
exposing the corruption of the Church is found in Francis
Quarles' Shepheards Oracles of 1646.
In some cases there are indications, however, that the
writer was going back to the fountain-head for his inspira-
tion. Richard Barnfield wrote his Affectionate Shepherd in
obvious elaboration of Vergil's Alexis, and he joined with his
love for his Roman model a genuine love for the country,
further exhibited in the Shepherd's Content, which sets
forth the advantages of a rural life. Phineas Fletcher's
allegiance was divided. In his Purple Island, which itself

has a pastoral setting, the account of the island being put


into the mouth of the shepherd Thirsil, he says,

Two shepherds most I love, with just adoring.


That Mantuan swain, who chang'd his slender reed,
To trumpet's martial voice, and war's loud roaring,
From Corydon to Turnus' daring deed;
And next our home-bred Colin sweetest firing;

Their steps not following close, but far admiring;


To lackey one of these, is all my pride's aspiring.
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 107

In this curious poem, the influence of Spenser is very strong,


especially in the detailed descriptions of the allegorical
figures of the Virtues and of their battles for the
and Vices,
possession of the Isle of Man. But incidental echoes of
Vergil and references to him are frequent. The Roman
poet is superior to his Greek models both in epic and in
pastoral

Who has not often read Troy's twice sung fires,

And at the second time twice better sung?


Who has not heard the Arcadian shepherd's quires,
Which now have gladly chang'd their native tongue;
And by slow Mincius, sport their fill,
sitting
With sweeter voice and never-equalled skill,
Chanting their amorous lays unto a Roman quill?

There is an echo of the close of the last Eclogue,

Home then, my full fed lambs; the night comes, home apace,

or of the invocation of the Aeneid,

Tell me, oh tell me then, thou holy Muse!


Sacred Thespio ! what the cause may be
Of such despite,

or an imitation of a Vergilian simile,

But like a mighty rock, whose unmov'd sides


The hostile sea assaults with furious wave. . . .

Such was this knight's undaunted constancy.'

Or it may be a reminiscence of the glorification of country


life in the second Georgic, in the passage beginning,

Thrice, oh, thrice happy shepherd's life and state.

Fletcher's Piscatory Eclogues show the influence of several


of his predecessors. They include the love-lament and
2 Cf. Aen. 10. 693-6. Also cf. Tennyson's Will
108 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
song-contest of the classic poets and Spenser, and the dis-
cussion of the corruption of the clergy of Mantuan and
Spenser, transferred to the atmosphere which surrounds the
fisher-folk of Sannazaro. But the music of that "sweeter
voice" and the "Roman sounding in his ears,
quill" is still

and Thelgon and Thomalin and Myrtilus, although they


live by the sea and do not tend flocks upon the plains, often
speak through the lips of Tityrus. Especially is this true
in the seventh Eclogue, The Prize, which records a contest
in song between Daphnis, the representative of the shep-
herds, and Thomalin, the champion of the fishermen. Their
songs, alternis versibus, are concerned with the time-honored
topics of the beauty of their sweethearts, the gifts they have
brought them, the patronage of the gods, and the rival
claims of certain trees favored by their mistresses or their
patron deities.
A multiplicity of influences is evident also in Milton's
Lycidas,* the most perfect example in English of the
pastoral elegy raised to a lyrical height hitherto unat-
tained. Here appears St. Peter, who had figured in one
of Petrarch's eclogues under the name of Pamphilus, and
the whole terrible indictment of the

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold


A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least
That to the faithful Herdman's art belongs,

is a direct inheritance from the ecclesiastical pastorals of


the humanists and of Spenser and their other English imi-
tators. The writers of religious eclogues naturally seized
upon the pastoral imagery of the Messianic prophecies and
the Gospels as a justfication of their use of the word pastor
in its double sense. But Milton's inheritance was from
* This earlier portion of Milton's work may be discussed more prof-
itably here than in the next chapter.
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 109

the classics as well as from the Renaissance. Theocritus


and Vergil were models in the general scheme of the elegy,
his
in the representation of King and his friends as shepherds
singing for "old Damoetas," and in the change from the
minor key of mourning to the shout of triumph at the end;
and it is hard to distinguish the waters of the "fountain
Arethuse" from those of the "smooth-shding Mincius.'
Also who can tell whether he is thinking of his Greek or Latin
model when he asks
Who would not sing for Lycidas?

or reproaches the Nymphs for their absence at the time of his


death? Yet in the line,

Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears,

or in the lines of Comus,

Two such I saw what time the laboured ox


In his loose traces from the furrow came,

and in the Elder Brother's greeting to the Attendant Spirit


Thyrsis! whose artful strains have oft delayed
The huddUng brook to hear his madrigal,

there are obvious reminiscences of Vergil. And Milton


has adopted the closing verse of the first Eclogue,

maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae,

and expressed the thought with equal beauty and simplic-


ity in his last lines,

And now the sun had stretched out all the hills.
And now was dropped into the western bay.
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.

The influence of the Aeneid is not so definite and clear-cut


;

110 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

in the Renaissance as that of the Eclogues. It was in the


seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that the Aeneid
was regarded as the typical classical epic, and used as a
model for native productions. In the sixteenth century
its popularity is to be traced not so much in the perpetua-
tion of the type, as in the incidental imitations of episode
and language, as in Sackville's Induction, the drama, and
Spenser's Faerie Queene.
It was romance that Spenser saw the story of
really as a
Aeneas, not as a model in form and style, although, as we
he endeavored to attain the requisite epic
shall see later,
unity by plunging in medias res. But he practically threw
the classical structure and the classical manner to the
winds, and adopted those portions of the narrative which
appealed to his romantic sense — the story of Polydorus,
the allegorical figures at the gate of the Underworld, and
the description of La vinia's blush, with its vivid touch of color.
In the first stanzas of the Faerie Queene, Spenser gives
promise of Vergilian imitation which he did not fulfill.
He was evidently conscious and wished his readers to be
conscious that he, like Vergil, was passing from pastoral to
epic, and that, like Vergil in Augustan Rome, he was the
founder of a new type of poetry for Elizabethan England.
For he begins the poem with a stanza which frankly copies
the opening of the Aeneid, with its four disputed introductory
lines.
Lo I the man, whose Muse whylome did maske,
!

As time her taught, in lowly shephards weeds,


Am now enforst, a farre unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine oaten reeds.
And sing of knights and ladies gentle deeds
Whose praises having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broade emongst her learned throng;
Fierce warres and faithful! loves shall moralize my song.
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 111

Also in his dedicatory sonnet to Sir Francis Walsingham,


he calls that knight the "Mecenas of this age," and com-
pares himself to the "Mantuane poete."

This lowly Muse, that learns like steps to trace.


Flies for like aide unto your patronage.

It not to the example of Vergil alone, however, that he


is

appeals in the famous letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, to justify


his allegorical plan. "In which," he"I have followed
says,
all the antique poets historicall: first Homere, who in

the persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled


a good governour and a vertuous man, the one in his Ilias,
the other in his Odysseis; then Virgil, whose like intention
was to doe in the person of Aeneas after him Ariosto com-
;

prised them both in his Orlando and lately Tasso dissevered


;

them againe, and formed both parts in two persons, namely


that part which they in philosophy call Ethice, or vertues of
a private man, coloured in his Rinaldo; the other named
PoHtice in his Godfredo." Thus not only the epics of
antiquity but the romances of the Renaissance were before
his mind as he planned his work. It was with an obvious
effort to combine the two that he laid out the scheme of
his poem. Undoubtedly the romance attracted him more
strongly, with its chivalric tone, and its outward beauty of
color and perhaps its greater opportunity for allegorical treat-
ment. Indeed, he himself had said that it was his purpose
to follow Ariosto, as a letter from Gabriel Harvey proves.
He wrote in 1580 in reply to a letter from Spenser asking
his opinion of his plan, "I am voyde of al judgement, if
your Nine Comoedies come not neerer Ariostoes
. . .

comoedies .than that Elvish Queene doth to his Orlando


. .

Furioso, which, notwithstanding, you wil needes seeme to


emulate, and hope to overgo, as you flatly professed your
self in one of your last letters." And so the poem is, in
112 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

reality, a romance, with the great British hero of romance


as its central figure, with all the romantic characteristics
of detailed descriptions and chivalric adventuresand knightly-
combats. The battles of the Red Crosse Knight or of Sir
Guyon are not those of Achilles or Aeneas, nor are the
descriptions of Una or Duessa or Britomart like the pictures
which the poets of antiquity drew of Helen or Dido or Camilla
or Fame. He might have had in mind the mediaeval ro-
mances of Troy and Aeneas, but not the original Greek and
Latin. Neither is the movement that of a classical epic.
There is a certain unity secured by linking together all
the books by the appearance of the figure of Arthur, but it is
not the essential unity of the story of the adventures of
Odysseus or of Aeneas. The real interest of the reader is
centered, not on Arthur, but on the hero of the particular
book, and the point to which he looks forward is the outcome
of the adventure of Sir Guyon or of Britomart, and not the
end of the Prince's search for his Faerie Queene. It is pos-
sible that this would have been somewhat changed if Spenser
had finished his colossal task, and had brought us at last
back to the court of Gloriana; but with the materials at
hand and the plan which we know he had, of representing
twelve separate virtues, he never could have achieved true
epic unity. His action could not have been either "one"
or "entire" although it was "great."
It was clearly his desire, however, to emulate the classic
epic poets in the structure of his poem, and he evidently
felt that this could be done by following Horace's rule

for plunging in medias res. This he explains in his letter


to Raleigh: "For an historiographer discourseth of affayres
orderly as they were donne, accounting as well the times as
the actions; but a poet thrusteth into the middest, even
where it most concerneth him, and there recoursing to the
thinges forepaste, and divining of thinges to come, maketh
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 113

a pleasing analysis of all." He has, however, left his ac-


count of the "thinges forepa^te" too long, planning to
close his poem with the explanation which the reader needs
at the beginning, or at least as near the beginning as it is
put by Homer or Vergil. Hence he feels the necessity of
writing an introductory letter, which rather hinders than
helps in "gathering the whole intention of the conceit,"
and does nothing toward improving the epic unity of the
poem.
It is impossible therefore to say that the Faerie Queene is
Homeric or Vergilian in structure. We have seen, however,
that Spenser had the classic poets in mind, and it is natural to
assume that imitations and echoes of Vergil are numerous.
Any detailed discussion of this, however, would degenerate
into a mere compilation of parallel passages. Their impor-
tance lies in the nature of the passages chosen for imitation.
It is not burning Troy that attracts the poet, nor the funeral
games of Anchises, nor the epic combat of Turnus and Aeneas,
but such incidents and pictures as are suitable to his romantic
story. Spenser shows his familiarity with the story of the
Aeneid in Paridell's abstract of the narrative, though it
serves only as an introduction to Britomart's reminder of
the founding of Troynovant by Brute. The first elaborate
reminiscence of the Aeneid in the Faerie Queene is in the
adventure of the Red Crosse Knight and Fidessa with the
bleeding tree. They sat down under the shadow of two
trees, and the Knight, to make a garland for the lady, tried
to break off a branch.

He pluckt a bough; out of whose rift there came


Smal drops of gory bloud, that trickled down the same.

Therewith a piteous yelling voice was heard,


Crying, "0 spare with guilty hands to teare
My tender sides in this rough rynd embard;
114 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
But fly, ah! fly far hence away, for feare
Least to you hap that happened to me heare,
And to this wretched lady, my deare love;
O too deare love, love bought with death too deare!"
Astond he stood, and up his heare did hove,
And with that suddein horror could no member move.^

Although the story of Fradubio was not like that of Poly-


dorus, these are almost the very words that Aeneas heard
on the shores of Thrace from the tomb of Priam's murdered
son. Another equally close resemblance is that between
the meeting of Belphoebe and Trompart in the forest and
the encounter of Aeneas with his mother after landing in
Africa. Belphoebe thus accosts Trompart,

Hayle groome! didst not thou see a bleeding hind?

and he replies,

O goddesse, (for such I thee take to bee;


For nether doth thy face terrestriall shew,
Nor voj^ce sound mortall) I avow to thee.
Such wounded beast as that I did not see,
Sith earst into this forrest wild I came.®

With the figures Revenge, Despight, Treason,


of Payne,
Hate, Feare, and the other allegorical personages which Sir
Guyon saw at the entrance to "Plutoes griesly rayne,"
we may compare those which Aeneas saw at the mouth of
Hades. Although the list is not the same, and the existence
of similar figures in allegories of the type of the Roman de
la Rose may have had some influence on Spenser here, the

5 Faerie Queene, I. 2. 30 fif. Cf. Aen. 3. 24-48. Cf. also Ariosto,


Orl. Fur. 6. 26 ff. and Dante, Inf. 13. But Spenser's model, in thought
and language, is evidently Vergil.
« F. Q. II. 3. 32, 33. Cf. Aen. 1. 314-334.
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 115

Vergilian account must surely have been in the poet's mind,


especially in view of the lines,

Whiles sad Celeno sitting in a clifte,


A song of bale and bitter sorrow sings,
which call up an essentially Vergilian picture.'
The image Jove carrying off Ganymede,
of the eagle of
while the shepherds stand staring after him, is undoubtedly
copied from Vergil, and the description of the Gulfe of
Greedinesse and the Rock of Vile Reproche opposite it is
reminiscent of Vergil's Scylla and Charybdis. Besides these
more elaborate resemblances, there are many similarities
in briefer passages, in single lines or phrases, such as the
description of the gates of sleep, which are of ivory and silver,
of the "snake in hidden weedes," of Belphoebe,

Such as Diana by the sandy shore


Of swift Eurotas, or on Cynthus greene,

the picture of Aetna, the comparison of the blushing cheek


of a maiden to roses mixed with lilies or to ivory overlaid
with vermilion, and the use of the figure of the weary team
to conclude a canto of the Faerie Queene or a book of the
Georgics,

But here my wearie teeme, nigh overspent,


Shall breathe itself awhile, after so long a went.*

The put to good use by Spenser, and many of


epic simile is

the comparisons have a true Vergilian ring. Such, for


' F. Q. II. 7. 21 ff. Cf. Aen. 6. 273-81 and 3. 245-6.
« Cf. F. Q. III. 11. 34 and Aen. 5. 252-7; F. Q. II. 12. 3, 4, Aen. 3.
420-432; F. Q. I. 1. 40, Aen. 6. 893-6; F. Q. I. 9. 28, II. 5. 34, Ed. 3.

92; F. Q. II. 3. 31, Aen. 498-9; F. Q. I. 11. 44, Aen. 3. 570 ff; F. Q.
1.

II. 3. 22, V. 3. 23, Aen. 12. 68-9; F. Q. IV. 5. 46, Georg. 2. 541 f.
It is interesting to notice that the majority of the Vergilian imitations
are found in the earUer books of the Faerie Queene.
^

116 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS


example, is the image of the fall of an aged tree or the rush
of a loosened rock down the mountainside, the comparison
of Una and the morning star, the description of the flood
that descends

And the sad husbandmans long hope doth throw


A downe the streame,
the comparison of the knight to a snake that has cast its skin,

and the picture of the battle of the bulls, which is a favorite


with both poets.
These are the choices of a romance-lover. But the roman-
tic figure of Dido is conspicuously absent, perhaps merely
by chance, perhaps because the concentrated passion of
the deserted queen would be incongruous in this leisurely
narrative, and we may give Spenser the credit of having
been unwilling to bring her down from the heights of tragedy
as Chaucer had done. But his contemporaries were not
so careful.
The Dido had been dramatized as early
tragic story of
as the days of the Roman emperors, and had furnished the
theme of Renaissance plays on the continent both in Latin
and in the vernaculars, as in the work of Dolce and Jodelle.
The sixteenth century in England saw the production of
four versions of her passion and death. Three of these
were school or university plays, two of which are not now
extant. Some time between 1522 and 1531, John Ritwise,
the master of St. Paul's School, "made the Tragedy of Dido
out of Virgil," and with his pupils acted it on the occasion
of a visit from Cardinal Wolsey. In 1564, EUzabeth stopped
at Oxford, and on August 7, a play of Dido, in Latin hexam-
eters, written by Edward Halliwell, a fellow of King's College,
was performed in her honor. We have the word of a con-
9 Cf. F. Q. I. 8. 22, Aen. 5. 448 f; F. Q. I. 11. 54, Aen. 12. 684 ff.
F. Q. I. 12. 21, Aen. 8.589 ff; F. Q. II. 11. 18, Aen. 2. 304 ff; F. Q. IV;
3. 23, Aen. 2. 471 ff ; F. Q. IV. 4. 18, Aen. 12. 715 ff, Gearg. 3. 219 ff.
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 117

temporary, Nicholas Robinson, that it was a "novum opus


sed venustum et elegans." Neither of these plays has sur-
vived the lapse of time, but there is at Christ's Church a
unique manuscript of a play of Dido by Wilham Gager.
This was produced in 1583, when Albertus Alasco, Prince
Palatine of Siradia in Poland, was visiting the English
Elisa, and the subject was doubtless thought very appro-
priate. It was a curious mixture of a pageant and a Senecan
tragedy. It combined an elaborate stage setting of storm
and banquet and death scene, with the characteristic Senecan
rhetoric and sententiousness, the stichomythia, and the ap-
pearance of the ghost of Sichaeus. Much of the wording
is taken from the Aeneid, but the hexameters are tortured

into neo-classical iambics, and hence lose their dignity and


sonorousness. Associated with Gager in the production of
the play, was George Peele, who later followed Vergil
rather closely in the last part of his poem. The Tale of
Troy, from the building of the wooden horse through the
adventures of Aeneas.
In 1594 was pubHshed The Tragedie of Dido Queene of
Carthage: Played hy the Children of her Maiesties Chappell.
Written by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nash. Gent.
This was a true romantic drama, with its touches of humor
in the parts of Cupid and the Nurse, and its complication
of the tragedy by introducing the love of Anna for larbas.
The Elizabethan love of a multiplicity of deaths at the end
of a play is thus satisfied, for larbas stabs himself at the
funeral pyre of Dido and Anna then takes her own life.
Also the gruesome additions to the story which Aeneas tells

of the last night of Troy are evidently made to comply


with the demand of the audience for horrors. Elizabethan
too are the extravagantly luscious descriptions, the senti-
mental additions to the discussion by Aeneas, Achates,
and Ascanius of the pictures of Troy on the walls of the
118 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
Temple of Juno, and such romantic touches as those in
the un-Vergihan speeches of Dido and Aeneas teUing of their
love for each other. These lines, for instance, put into the
mouth of Dido, have and could have no counterpart in
Vergil '.

I'll make me bracelets of his golden hair;


His glist'ring eyes shall be my looking-glass,

I
/ His lips an altar, where I'll offer up
As many kisses as the sea hath sands.

But if we leave these things out of account, the two


dramatists have followed the narrative of the Aeneid very
closely, and in many places have introduced into the dialogue
what is virtually a translation of the Latin. Jupiter's
prophecy to Venus, the conversation between Venus and
Aeneas in the forest, Ilioneu^' appeal for hospitality at
Carthage, the plot of Juno to bring about the marriage,
the prayer of larbas, the message of Mercury to Aeneas,
Dido's remonstrances and her final curse, are the chief
instances, but there are many brief passages which are
taken straight from the Aeneid. In the last act, where
the Vergilian influence is especially marked. Dido and
Aeneas several times break into Latin hexameters. Dido's
curse is a good illustration:

And now, ye gods, that guide the starry frame,


And order all things at your high dispose.
Grant, though the traitors land in Italy,
They may be still tormented with unrest;
And from mine ashes, let a conqueror rise,
That may revenge tliis treason to a queen,
By ploughing up his countries with the sword.
Betwixt this land and that be never league,
Littora littorihus contraria, fluctibus undas
Imprecor; arma armis: pugnent ipsique nepotes:
Live false Aeneas! truest Dido dies!
Sic, sic juvat ire svb umbras.
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 119

Thomas Heywood's Iron Age similarly makes use of


Vergilian hexameters. The second act of the second part
of the play represents the scene on the seashore, when
Sinon's wily words induce the Trojans, in spite of Laocoon's
advice, to bring the wooden horse inside the city, and also
depicts the terror and confusion within the walls after the
Greeks have begun their work of destruction. The ghost
of Hector appears in pursuit of Aeneas, and when he is
finally recognized, exhorts the future founder of the Roman
race to escape from Troy. After paraphrasing the lines,

sat patriae Priamoque datum: si Pergama dextra


defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent,

he closes with the following Latin verses, which are copied


from the Aeneid, with the alteration of only one word:

Heu fuge nate Dea; teque his pater eripe flammis;


Hostis habet muros, ruit alto a culmine Troia
Sacra, suosque tibi commendat Troia penates.
Hos cape fatorum comites, his moenia quaere,
Magna pererrato statues quae denique ponto.^"

The next act carries the storyon through the scenes on


the last night of Troy, introducing the Cassandra-Coroebus
episode and the death of Priam, all with a certain measure
of imitation and paraphrase of the Vergilian account.
Aeneas plays a very small part in the Iron Age, however,
and the only references to his adventures after the fall of
Troy are in Cassandra's early prophecy of the rearing of
another Ihum and Ulysses' report after the Greeks have
taken possession of the city,

Aeneas, with twenty two ships well furnish'd, . . .

Is fled to sea.

" Cf. Aen. 2. 289-95.


120 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
These plays are the only examples of any extensive use
of the story of the Aeneid in Elizabethan drama. There
are, however, many indications of a knowledge of Vergil.
The Pedant in the University plays frequently quotes him
together with other classical writers, and there are quota-
tions and allusions in many of the stage plays.
The atmosphere of mediaeval romance rather than of the
Aeneid clings round such a passage as that in the Merchant
of Venice,
In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea banks, and waft her love
To come again to Carthage,

and it is obvious that of the two great narrative poets of


Rome, Ovid is far the more congenial to Shakespeare, and
far more frequently imitated by him. The whole question
as to whether Shakespeare knew any classic poet in the
original, or whether he was depending upon translations,
is a very vexed one. Without going to one extreme with
Upton and Whalley, and marshalling a large number of
parallel passages to prove Shakespeare's intimate knowledge
of the classics, or to the other extreme with Farmer, who
denied the least particle of classical information to the poet,
we may steer a middle course and take Ben Jonson's "little
Latin and less Greek" at its face value. As Spencer Baynes
argues, if Shakespeare attended the Stratford Grammar
School, where in all probability a fair training in Latin was
given and the chief Roman writers of prose and poetry
were read, he must have carried away with him at least a
working knowledge of the Roman tongue, "little" though
it might seem to Jonson's scholarly mind, and a familiarity

with Vergil's great masterpiece. It may be assumed that


the references to the story of the Aeneid, few though they
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 121

be, even the reference quoted above with its essentially


romantic flavor, and the instances where Shakespeare seems
to be echoing Vergilian language, are due to a first-hand
knowledge of the poem, and not to a familiarity merely
with Douglas' or Surrey's translation. These echoes also
are few in number. Among them may be mentioned the
line from the Tempest,
Great Juno comes: I know her by her gait,

and the speech by Aegon in the Comedy of Errors, beginning,

A heavier task could not have been imposed.

The details in the picture of the fall of Troy in the Rape of


Lucrece are also probably taken partly from the second
book of the Aeneid itself, especially those in the following
hues:
Till she despairingHecuba beheld,
Staring on Priam's wounds with her old eyes.
Which bleeding under Pyrrhus' proud foot lies.

At last she sees a wretched image bound,


That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent:
His face, though full of cares, yet show'd content;
Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,
So mild that Patience seem'd to scorn his woes.

Look, look, how listening Priam wets his eyes,


To see those borrow'd tears that Sinon sheds.

With the first compared the


of these quotations should be
speech quoted in the second act of Hamlet, from "Aeneas'
tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he
speaks of Priam's slaughter." These lines, Coleridge said,
" as epic narrative, are superb," but it is easier to believe
that the whole speech is a burlesque of the somewhat lurid
122 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

description of Priam's death in the second act of Marlowe's


Dido.
To the work of Shakespeare's predecessors and con-
temporaries in the drama Vergil contributes his share of
references and allusions, from the time of that in Jacke
Jugeler,
I thinkhe be Dares, of whom Virgil doth write,
That would not let Entellus alone.
But ever provoked and ever called on,
But yet at the last he took a fall,

And so within a while I trow I make thee shall,

to that of such echoes as those in the following lines from


Antonio and Mellida:

Ant. Both cried, "Revenge!" At which my trembling joints.


Iced quite over with a frozed cold sweat,
Leap'd forth the sheets. Three times I grasp'd at shades.
And thrice, deluded by erroneous sense,
I forc'd my thoughts make stand.
Ben Jonson's comprehensive borrowings from the classics
do not fail to include VergiHan echoes. The influence of
Vergil is evident, not only in the Poetaster, with its intro-
duction of the poet in person upon the stage, and its rather
rough translation of a portion of the fourth book of the Aeneid,
but in his other plays and masques. Lady Haughty, the
head of the college in The Silent Woman, echoes a passage
of the Georgics when she says, "The best of our days pass
first," and in Every Man in His Humour, Wellbred exclaims,
" Oh, Master Matthew, that's a grace peculiar but to a few,

Quos aequus amavit Jupiter." In the Masque of Queens


appears Fame "as Virgil describes her, at the full, her feet
on the ground, and her head in the clouds," and also

Swift-foot Camilla, Queen of Volscia.


SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 123

The Hue and Cry after Cupid contains many references to


Aeneas, with whom, in point of "piety, justice, prudence
and all other princely virtues," says Jonson, *'I confer my
sovereign." In the Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers is

the following line, with its Vergilian echo:

As if whole islands had broke loose and swam;

and in the Staple of News, Pennyboy Junior describes the


effects of his love in imagery borrowed from the eighth
book of the Aeneid:

My passion was clear contrary, and doubtful,


I shook forfear, and yet I danced for joy,
I had such motions as the sunbeams make
Against a wall, or playing on a water,
Or trembling vapom* of a boiling pot.^^

In his Palladis Tamia, Francis Meres wrote, "As Homer


and Virgil among the Greeks and Latines are the chief Hero-
icke Poets: and Warner be our chiefe heroicall
so Spencer
Makers." But Warner and Drayton and Daniel, who are
more nearly classical in the form of their epics, although as
far as chronology goes they belong with Spenser, may be
more profitably considered in the next chapter, in connection
with the classical epic of Milton.
" Cf. Aen. 8. 22-25.
CHAPTER VI

MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC


It is as difficult to define the influence of Vergil on the
seventeenth century as a whole, as it is to classify the literary
activity of the century in general. was a period of
It
political unrest and upheaval and readjustment, and of
literary decadence and development, a period of transition
from the freedom of the "spacious days" of Queen Elizabeth
to the restrictions of the pseudo-classical school. The
early part of the century saw not only the continuation of
Elizabethan traditions, in which the romantic license and
extravagance were carried to excess, but also the classical
reaction of Ben Jonson, with his formulation of the "rules"
for dramatic and epic poetry, and the beginning of the
classic school inmeter and diction under Waller.
But amid these shifting sands, there was one bit of solid
ground in which every man of letters had fastened an anchor,
small or great, —
the knowledge of the classics. No matter
what his views might be on the subject of form, each man
had been trained in the reading of the classics, and was
probably a facile performer in exercises in Latin verse and
prose. The grammar schools of the period aimed to give
each boy a thorough education in that ancient tongue before
he reached the university, and to put him through a course
of discipline which was intended to produce an accom-
plished writer of letters, themes, verses and orations in the
language of Cicero and Vergil. The mechanical apparatus
for such a complete and thorough training was easily avail-
able, for grammars, lexicons and texts had multiplied during
124
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 125

the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and much


good work had been done abroad. Some of the
critical

greatest names in classical scholarship belong to this period,


and in Holland especially was gathered a group of scholars
such as Vossius, and Daniel and Nikolaas Heinsius, whose
reputation and influence were international, and who were
in touch with John Selden and other English scholars.
The emphasis in the classical training of this century was
placed on the practical use of Latin in writing, for it was
still the language of learned men everywhere, and the only

tongue sure to be universally understood. Scientific prose,


like that of Bacon and Harvey and even of Newton, as late
as 1687, was written in Latin, although in some cases, as
in that of the Advancement of Learning, there was an English
version as well. The Latin verse of men like Milton and
Cowley was by no means a mere academic exercise, but a
mode of expression universally acceptable and intelligible.

It is significant of the general familiarity with Latin that


Kynaston translated Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida into
Latin, that it might have an international circulation.
With this dexterity in the use of Latin, and the system
of translation and re-translation in the class-room by which
the result was secured, there was no possibility of ignorance
of the masterpieces of Roman literature. And the work
of Vergil, who was called "incomparable" by Ben Jonson,
the classicist, and was placed far above his Greek masters
by Phineas Fletcher, the writer of moral allegory after
the pattern of Spenser, and was imitated in his Praise of
Spring by Richard Crashaw, the prince of the contrivers of
conceits, could not fail to leave its mark on all the literature
of the period, in one form or another. It was a period when
even a band of idle young gallants knew their Vergil well
enough to adopt the name of the ''Tityre-tu's."
Naturally his influence on the lyric poets was compara-
126 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
tively slight.Jonson and Herrick were indebted rather to
Horace and Catullus and Anacreon for form and subject-
matter, although their early practice in Vergilian hexam-
eters may well have helped to give artistic polish to their
verses, and they had assimilated much Vergilian lore that
showed itself in incidental allusion and reference. It is

easy to find examples of this, such as Herrick's phrases,


"Cynthius, pluck ye by the ear," or "a wood of darts,"
or Jonson's references to the voyage of Aeneas in his Epi-
gram On the Famous Voyage, and The Voyage Itself, in
which the adventure is concluded

Sans help of Sibyl, or a golden bough.

Or there is more elaborate imitation, as in the poem of


Crashaw mentioned above, or William Drummond of Haw-
thomden's River of Forth Feasting, which is full of echoes
of the tone of the Pollio, as in the lines beginning,

Let Mother Earth now deck'd with flowers be seen,


And sweet-breath'd zephyrs curl the meadows green,
Let heaven weep rubies in a crimson shower,

and of the fifth Eclogue in

To virgins, flowers; to sunburnt earth, the rain;


To mariners, fair winds amidst the main;
Cool shades to pilgrims, whom hot glances bum.
Are not so pleasing as thy blest return.

And Cowley, whose Mistress belongs with the other examples


of the early seventeenth century love of conceits, and who
chose for the motto of that volume, haeret lateri lethalis
arundo, says in his poem Sleep,

Let her but grant, and then will I


Thee and thy Kinsman Death defy,
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 127

and in The Heart Fled Again, devotes a stanza to the story


of Dido
Even so the gentle Tyrian Dame,
When neither Grief nor Love prevail,
Saw the dear object of her flame,
Th' ingrateful Trojan hoist his sail:
Aloud she call'd to him to stay;
The wind bore him, and her lost words away.

The continuation of the pastoral tradition through the


early portion of the century has already been spoken
of, and Milton's part in it has been discussed.^ It
would be natural, in a man of Milton's comprehensive
learning and thorough scholarship to find the poet who
would set the standard for the imitation of Vergil. And
in a sense he did, but it was a standard too far above and
too far apart from the capabilities of the other minds of the
period. As in his Ode on the Nativity, he showed himself
touched by the contemporary fondness for conceits, but
used them in a way that raised this juvenile poem far above
those by any of his fellow-concettists, so in his use of the
conventional pastoral elegy he struck a lyric note of which
none of his predecessors had given even a hint. And his
place at the culmination of the development of the classical
epic is one at such heights above his nearest competitor,
that there is no comparison in the matter of actual achieve-
ment between them. Thus he reflected three of the most
important tendencies in the seventeenth century, but he
was in no sense typical of them. His "soul was like a star
and dwelt apart."
The early work of Milton, except for his Lycidas, shows
little Vergilian influence. His Latin poetry is clearly
O vidian in style rather than Vergilian, and he several times
1 Chapter V.
128 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
definitely expresses his preference for the later poet. In
his first Elegy, writing of his own "exile," he voices the wish
that Ovid had never suffered worse exile than he, in which
case,
Non tunc lonio quicquam cessisset Homero,
Neve foret victo laus tibi prima, Maro.

Yet he naturally has a few Vergilian echoes in his Latin, as


for example in this same Elegy, in the sentence, "Quid sit
amor nescit," and in the list of dreadful figures that sit in
the cave of Murder and Treachery and the description of
Rumor in the verses In Quintum Novembris.
On the whole, Milton's classicism is of a Greek nature
rather than a Latin. The classical allusions in his minor
poems are generally of Hellenic origin, and his prose shows
a decided preference for the Greek. The Georgics is the
only poem of Vergil's that is recommended in his treatise On
Education, although it is not credible that the Aeneid would
have had no place system of education. But
in his ideal
when we come to his great epic, the influence of the Aeneid
is traceable as well as that of the Iliad. Before we
consider in detail the Vergilian elements in Paradise Lost,
however, we must go back nearly a century and examine
the earlier epics and their relations to classical structure.
The an epic poem had been strong among
desire to write
the Elizabethans. As we have already seen, Spenser evi-
dently had the feeling that he was doing for England what
Vergil had done for Rome. The figure of Arthur was un-
doubtedly looked upon somewhat in the same light in
relation to the history of Britain as the figure of Aeneas
in connection with the legendary founding and the develop-
ment of Rome. The fact that he was essentially a romantic
figure did not deter the poets from Spenser to Blackmore
from using or thinking of using him as the central hero
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 129

of an epic which was professedly based on classic models


in some respects at least. He had surpassed Brutus in
epic interest. Ben Jonson is reported to have said that
"for a Heroik poeme, ther was no such ground as King
, . .

Arthur's fiction."
The historic interest had great vitality in the sixteenth
century. It is shown in the large number of historical plays
that were produced on the Elizabethan stage, and also in
the subjects chosen by the epic poets of the last part of
that century and the first part of the next. These "saurians
in English literature," as Lowell called them, were answer-
ing a realdemand on the part of their readers in giving them
"epic poems" which would satisfy their desire to know
more of their country's story and gratify their national
pride. The enthusiasm which followed the defeat of the
Spanish Armada perpetuated itself not only on the stage
but in the productions of the printing-houses. The chron-
icles ofHolinshed and Hall furnished the necessary informa-
tion, and were popular as sources for plays and poems. The
work of Camden, Stow, and Sir Robert Cotton
later historical
responded to the same conditions as the poems of Warner,
Daniel and Drayton.
William Warner's Albion's England was the first of the
"saurians." Meres classes him with Spenser as one of
the chief heroic poets of the English, comparing him with
Vergil,but there is little of the classical epic about this
"continued historic of the same kingdome, from the originals
of the first inhabitants thereof," beginning with Noah and
the Flood, except the fact that it is in twelve books. It is
interesting, however, that the account of Aeneas' treason
and banishment from Troy and his arrival in Italy, finds its
place in due time in Warner's leisurely narrative, at the
end of the second book. But appended to the poem is

"An Addition in Proese to the Second Booke of Albion's


130 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

England: Contayning a Breuiate of the true Historie of


Aeneas." He does not mention Vergil's name, but gives
a fairly full abstract of the Aeneid, omitting the sixth book
entirely and expressing his belief that the story of Juno's
causing the storm is "a poeticall fiction." There are some
curious turns in the narrative, and he mentions Boccaccio's
version of Dido's death and gives an account of Aeneas'
descendants.
Samuel Daniel's History of the Civil Wars is the next in
point of time. His model, however, is definitely the Phar-
salia, and although his

What fury, what madness held thee so,

Dear England,

goes back ultimately to the convention of Vergil's

Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso,

it evidently depends directly on Lucan's

Quis furor, o cives, quae tanta licentia ferri


Gentibus invisis Latium praebere cruorem!

There was an evident pretense at epic structure, but the


poem is guiltless of anything approaching epic unity.
A large portion of the work of Michael Drayton was
patriotic in purpose. His legends drawn from the chronicles
and his England's Heroicall Epistles point to his interest in
his country's story, even though they have no importance
in an historical way. The Barons' Wars, completed and
published in 1603, was a revision of a poem published in
1596 under the title of Mortimeriados, a name which indi-
cates the epic pretensions of the poem. It begins with the
proposal of the subject and the somewhat Vergilian lines,

Me from the soft lays and tender loves doth bring.


Of dreadful fights and horrid wars to sing.
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 131

although the reminiscence of Spenser's introductory stanzas


is perhaps stronger than that of Vergil. The figure of Mis-
chief instilling poison into the various characters of the
story is doubtless due to a memory of Vergil's picture of
Alecto as she visits Amata, then Turnus, and finally
first

the Trojans, and inspires them all with the impulses which
lead to the conflict between the Trojans and the Latins.
But again there is no epic structure, in spite of the promise
of it in the proposal of the subject and the invocation which
begin the poem. The Poly-Olbion, eighteen cantos of which
appeared in 1612 and the remaining twelve in 1622, makes
no pretense at being epic in form. It is "A Chorographical
description of all the Tracts, Rivers, Mountains, Forests,
and other Parts of the Renowned Isle of Great Britain, with
Intermixture of the most Remarkable Stories, Antiquities,
Wonders, Rarities, Pleasures, and Commodities of the
same." a true "saurian" with nearly fifteen thousand
It is
vertebrae in its backbone, a "strange Herculean task," as
its own author called it. Its chief interest to us is in its
patriotic purpose and Aeneas
in its telling of the story of
as an introduction to the story of Brute, in a form which
is dependent on Vergil, and not on the mediaeval Dares

story. In this respect it shows an advance over Warner,


who relegated Vergil to an appendix.
To these earlier writers of the heroic poem it would not be
necessary to give so much space, if it were not true that
they were the forerunners of the classical epic of Cowley and
Milton, and that each one of them showed in one way or
another that Vergil was in his mind, even though he did
not imitate the form of the Aeneid. They represent, how-
ever, a kind of poetry that was slightly to one side of the
main trend of the early seventeenth century. They were
all comparatively unimportant, and the prominent poets

of that time confined themselves largely to short poems,


132 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
lyrical, pastoral, or satirical.But about the middle of the
century there came a change, and many long sustained
narrative poems were produced by the leading writers.
Even the satires, like Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, were
cast in the form of a story. How much of this was due to
the critical discussion, both in France and England, of the
characteristics of the "heroicpoem," it would be difficult
to say. But doubtless the poets were eager to try their
hand at working out the current theories. In France the
epic had an even greater popularity than in England for a
few years after 1650. " En 15 ans," says Lanson, *' six
grandes epopees paraissent, qui forment un total de 136
chants, et dont quelques-unes ont eu assez longtemps le
renom de chefs-d'oeuvre. Je n'en parlerai pas," he con-
tinues, "ce sont les parties mortes et bien mortes de la
litterature classiques." The names of these, Saint Louis,
Alaric, La and Childehrande,
Pucelle, Clovis, Charlemagne,
indicate an interest in history, but Biblical subjects were
also used, as in Saint-Amant's Moyse sauve, Godeau's Saint
Paul, and Coras' Jonas, Josue, Samson, and David.
After the "saurians" the epic in England branched out
in two different directions. The historic background no
longer attracted the epic poet. Milton dallied with the
thought of an epic on the Arthurian story, but that was in
his youth, before the historical fervor had abated. The
two types of literature which affected the further develop-
ment of the epic were the rather inharmonious ones of the
French sentimental romance and the Biblical stories.
The two chief examples of the first of these classes are the
Gondibert of Davenant and the Pharonnida of Chamberlayne.
The former, of which less than half was completed, is pref-
aced by a long letter to Hobbes, and also a reply from that
philosopher, containing much praise of the new poem,
including the statement that "it would last as long as the
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 133

Iliad or the Aeneid." But it is evident that with the drama


and the French romances as models in form and subject-
matter, the result was necessarily far from a classical epic,
and Vergil had no influence on either style or material.
The same thing is true of Pharonnida, which was published
in 1659, an excellent example of discursiveness and all
that not classical in structure.
is

But side by side with the love of the French romances


which was characteristic of a large portion of the reading
public of the seventeenth century, was the Puritan interest
in the Bible. The translation of the Bible into English under
James and the emphasis placed by the Puritans on the
I,

authority of Holy Writ, had nearly made of the English


a "people of one book." Decided stress in education in
both Latin and Greek was placed on patristic learning, and
the Church Fathers were quoted nearly as frequently as
the classics. All this naturally reacted upon the poetry
of the century, and Biblical stories furnished good subjects
for epics, which, unlike the romantic heroic poems, were
classical in form.
Sir Wilham Alexander began a poem, Jonathan: an
Heroicke Poeme Intended, but did not write more than the
first book. Giles Fletcher's Christ's Victorie and his brother's
Locusts, or Apollyonists are of interest to us because of their
influence on Milton. Milton's best-known English predeces-
sor in the religious epic was Abraham Cowley, who was also
the most VergiUan of all the epic poets. His prose as well
as his poetry shows his admiration of Vergil, "whose Foot-
steps," he says in one place, "I adore." Constant allusion
and quotation, often inaccurate, give evidence of his familiar
knowledge of this "best poet." In his poem on the Motto
to the Miscellanies, tentanda via est, he says,

Come my best Friends, my Books, and lead me on,


134 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
and after a welcome to the "great Stagirite" and to "learn'd
Cicero," he cries,

Welcome the Mantuan Swan, Virgil the Wise,


Whose verse walks highest but not flies.
Who brought green Poesie to her perfect Age;
And made that Art which was a Rage.

And in his Ode: Upon a Copy of Verses of my


the occasion of
Lord Broghill, he definitely expresses, although in a humorous
way, his reverence for Vergil above all other poets:

Then in a rage I took


And out at window threw
Ovid and Horace, all the chiming crew.
Homer himself went with them too,
Hardly escap'd the sacred Mantuan Book.

Four books, all that were ever finished, of his Davideis, a


Sacred Poem of the Troubles of David, were published in 1656,
in a volume containing also the Miscellanies, the Mistress
and the Pindarique Odes. In the Preface to the volume, he
writes thus of the Davideis: "I come now to the last Part,
which is Davideis, or an Heroical Poem of the Troubles of
David; which I designed into Twelve Books; not for the
Tribes sake, but after the Pattern of our Master Virgil;
and intended to close all with that most Poetical and excel-
lent Elegie of Davids on the death of Saul and Jonathan:
For I had no mind to carry him quite on to his Anointing
at Hebron, because it is the custom of Heroick Poets (as
we see by the examples of Homer and Virgil, whom we
should do ill to forsake to imitate others) never to come
to the full end of their Story, but onely so near, that every
one may see it." In the same Preface he explains carefully
the superior advantages of sacred subjects over profane
ones. "Amongst all holy and consecrated things which
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 135

the Devil ever stole and alienated from the service of the
Deity, . . . there is none that he so universally, and so
long usurpt, as Poetry. It is time to recover it out of the
Tyrants hands, and to restore it to the Kingdom of God,
who is the Father of it." In ancient times, "those mad
stories of the Gods and Heroes" served the purpose of a
religious stimulus to the people, for "there was no other
Religion, and therefore that was better than none at all."
But for the Christian, "Does not the passage
Moses and of
the Israelites into the Holy Land, yield incomparably more
Poetical variety, then the voyages of Ulysses or Aeneas?"
And so he continues through several more comparisons,
finally concluding, "All the Books of the Bible are either
already most admirable, and exalted pieces of Poesie, or
are the best Materials in the world for it."
The poem itself gives Cowley an opportunity to display
a vast amount of Biblical knowledge, and the Notes permit
him to supplement this and also to add much classical lore
as well. He is quite frank in his Notes about admitting
his debts to Homer and but
Vergil, especially the latter,
indeed they are sufficiently obvious without his mention
of them. The poem opens in conventional fashion, and here
as elsewhere the model is evidently Vergil rather than
Homer
I sing the Man who
Judahs Scepter bore
In that right hand which held the Crook before. . . .

Much danger first, much toil did he sustain,


Whilst Saul and Hell crost his strong fate in vain.

This is followed by an invocation and prayer for divine


guidance, which occasions the following note: "The custom
of beginning all Poems, with a Proposition of the whole
work, and an Invocation of some God for his assistance
to go through with it, is so solemnly and religiously ob-
136 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

served by all the ancient Poets, that though I could have


found out a better way, I should not (I think) have ven-
tured upon it. . . . The Grecians built this Portal with
less state, and made but one part of these Two; in which,
and almost all things else, I prefer the judgment of the
Latins." Thus he is constantly appealing to the authority
of the classical epics to justify his practice, as in the use of
a second Invocation, the image employed to describe the
swiftness and lightness of Asahel, and the catalogue of the
companions of David, which he thinks that he
in the last of
has surpassed the ancients inasmuch as they, especially
Homer, are too detailed and diffuse. He also invokes
Vergil's authority for the use of half-lines, saying, "Though
none of the English Poets, nor indeed of the ancient Latin,
have imitated Virgil in leaving sometimes half-verses (where
the sense seems to invite a man to that liberty) yet his author-
ity alone is sufficient, especially in a thing that looks so
naturally and gracefully; and I am
from their opinion,
far
who think that Virgil himself intended to have filled up
those broken Hemistiques."
The story of David's youthful adventures offers many op-
portunities for parallels with those of Aeneas, and Cowley
takes full advantage of them. David's vision of the future
history of his race is evidently reminiscent of the sixth
book of the Aeneid, and his welcome at the court of Moab
is like that of Aeneas at Carthage. Like Dido, Moab says,

Swift Fame, when her round journey she does make.


Scorns not sometimes Us in her way to take.
Are you the man, did that huge Gyant kill? ^

By Moab David is entertained with a feast, where he sees


the story of Lot pictured in tapestries, and where, after the
» Cf. Aen. 1. 567-8, 617.
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 137

goblet is passed around, Melchor, like lopas, sings a lay in


which
His noble verse through Natures secrets lead,

and Joab tells the king the story of David's early life. Thus
Cowley manages to introduce the conventional ''episode,"
after the same manner as Aeneas' narrative at Dido's ban-
quet, and continues it in David's recounting of further events
in his own and Saul's past history on the next day when
they go to hunt. So it is obvious that not only in single
lines, such as

And with proud prancings beat the putrid ground,

which Cowley tells us is "in emulation of the Virgilian Verse,

'
Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum,"

but in the general structure of the poem and the episodes


and descriptions in it, Cowley is taking Vergil as his model.
Denham expressed the contemporary recognition of his
indebtedness to the classics

Horace's wit, and Virgil's state,


He did not steal, but emulate!
And when he would like them appear,
Their garb, but not their clothes did wear.

Cowley's Davideis was praised by Rymer, who had weighed


Gondibert in the Aristotelian balance and found it wanting.
And so when Addison came to criticize Paradise Lost* he
applied the test which had been used for the epic since the
critics of the Renaissance had formulated the rules of Aristo-

3 Am. 8. 596.
* The Spectator, Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285, 291, 297, 303, 309, 315,
321, 327, 333, 339, 345, 351, 357, 363, 369.
138 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

tie and Horace. examine it," he said, "by the rules


''I shall

of epic poetry, and see whether it falls short of the Iliad or


Aeneid in the beauties which are essential to that kind of
writing." He finds, upon investigation, that it fulfills the
requirements that the "fable" be "one, great, and entire."
The unity it secures as do its great predecessors, by plunging
into the midst of things, as Milton himself says in the Argu-
ment to the first book. It is complete in all its parts, hav-
ing beginning, middle and end. And it is great, even in
details, greater than the Iliad or the Aeneid. He then
considers in the manner the characters, the
prescribed
sentiments, and the language, and concludes, that while
there are defects in the poem, as in the actions of Sin
and Death and the picture of the Limbo of Vanity, which
seem more hke Spenser and Ariosto than Homer and Vergil,
still on the whole it measures up to the classical standards.

All this seems rather futile criticism to the modern lover of


Paradise Lost, but these were the serious standards of that
time by which a poem must stand or fall. And obviously
Milton was guided by these classic principles, although one
never feels that they were shackling his genius.
In considering the influence of the classics on Milton,
this conventional epic structure must be taken into account.
But there arises at once the question whether the main
influence is that of Homer or Vergil. The fact that Milton
was a lover of the Greeks rather than of the Romans might
lead to the conclusion that the father of epic poetry was
chiefly responsible; and the proposal of the subject and
invocation and prayer for divine guidance and illumination,
the narration of things past by means of the conversation
between Raphael and Adam, the vision of the hero's de-
scendants, the epic combats and the epic similes, are not
exclusively Vergilian, except perhaps the vision of the
future, which is reminiscent of Aeneas' conversation with
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 139

his father in the Underworld. But it must be remembered


that for various reasons Vergil's Aeneid furnished the best
model for the classical epic. In the first place, it was far
better known than were the Homeric poems. The English-
man of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was trained
in a Roman rather than a Greek atmosphere, and was
able to read and appreciate the Aeneid more fully than
the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the second place, the greater
artificiality of the Latin poem from the point of view of
mere form, gave it a higher position as a model. It was
easier to apply the "rules" to the Aeneid than to the Iliad.
Its greater brevity undoubtedly made
more usable as a
it

pattern, and the generally recognized fact that Vergil had


comprehended within the limits of a single poem the plots
of both the Homeric epics, commended his work to those
pseudo-classic apostles of the concise. The Aeneid was the
most perfect and most concentrated example of epic tech-
nique, and consequently critics and poets united in praising
it and utilizing it. Hence it may be assumed that Milton
was no exception, and that while the Homeric poems with-
out doubt were in his mind as he planned Paradise Lost,
and assuredly furnished a large number of images and sug-
gestions for certain passages, it is certain that Milton de-
pended chiefly on the Aeneid as the model for the structure ^/^
of his epic.
But as Addison said, "Imust here take notice that Milton
is everywhere full of hints, and sometimes literal trans-

lations taken from the greatest of the Greek and Latin poets."
And Vergil furnishes his share. The very first words that
Satan speaks to Beelzebub in Hell,

Ifthou beest he — but Oh how fallen! how changed


From him!
(P. L. 1. 84-5)
: «

140 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS


recall the words of Aeneas when he was telling of the ap-
parition of Hector on the last night of Troy:

ei mihi, quails erat, quantum mutatus ab illo

Hectore qui redit exuvias indutus Achilli.


{Aen. 2. 274-5)

The catalogue of the fallen angels is more like that of the


warriors in the seventh Aeneid than like that of the ships
in the second bookand the description of the
of the Iliad,
building of Pandemonium certainly owes something to the
account of the building of Carthage in the general spirit of
the passage.^ And there soon follows, though not directly
in connection with the building of the palace, Vergil's favorite
picture of the bees
As bees
In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides.
Pour forth youth about the hive
their populous
In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank.
The suburb of their straw-built citadel.
New rubbed with balm, expatiate, and confer
Their state-affairs.
(P. L. 1. 768-775)

Vergil's account of the occupations of the heroes in the


Elysian Fields was certainly the model for Milton's descrip-
tion of the sports indulged in by the fallen angels. To
quote only a few lines from each, Milton's

Part on the plain, or in the air sublime.


Upon the wing or in swift race contend,
As at the Olympian games or Pythian fields;

6 Cf. P. L. 1. 376-521 and Aen. 7. 641-817, P. L. 1. 670-730 and


Aen. 1. 421-9.
« Cf. Aen. 1. 430-6 and Georg. 4. 149-169.
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 141

Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal


With rapid wheels, or fronted brigads form. . . .

. . . Others, more mild,


Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes angelical to many a harp
Theirown heroic deed, and hapless fall

By doom of battle,
(P. L. 2. 528-532, 546-550)

is much like Vergil's

pars in gramineis exercent membra palaestris,


contendunt ludo et fulva luctantur harena;
pars pedibus plaudunt choreas et carmina dicunt.
. quae gratia currum
. .

armorumque fuit vivis, quae cura nitentis


pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos.
conspicit, ecce, alios dextra laevaque per herbam
vescentis laetumque choro paeana canentis
inter odoratum lauri nemus, unde superne
plurimus Eridani per silvam volvitur amnis.
(Aen. 6. 642-4, 653-9)

Addison said that the description of the actions of Sin


seemed more akin to the romances of Spenser and Ariosto
than to the epics of Homer and Vergil, but the appearance of
Sin is certainly a classical picture. She who

seemed woman to the waist, and fair.

But ended foul in many a scaly fold,


. . . About her middle rovmd,
A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked,
(P. L. 2. 650-1, 653-4)

is surely Vergil's Scylla, whom he describes in almost these


very words:
prima hominis facies et pulchro pectore virgo
pube tenus, postrema immani corpore pistrix
delphinum caudas utero commissa luporum.
{Aen. 3. 426-8 and cf. 1. 432.)
142 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
The descent Raphael was evidently described with
of
the account of the flight of Mercury in mind, as Milton's
words, "Like Maia's son he stood," would indicated Like
Aeneas at the beginning of his narrative of the fall of Troy,
Raphael complies with Adam's request with the prefatory
remark,
High matter thou injoin'st me, prime of Men —
Sad task and hard,
*
{P. L. 5. 563-4)

and like Aeneas, Satan passes through the midst of his hosts
invisible, and emerges "as from a cloud." ^
finally
Beside these passages which are like Vergil not only in
expression but in context, there are many lines and phrases
that are clearly Vergilian. Such, for example, are the lines,

Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began,

which at once recalls the familiar plurima volvens, and

Tells the suggested cause, and casts between


Ambiguous words,

Sinon's voces ambiguas. The

passage broad,
Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to Hell,

enshrines the well-known facilis descensus Averni, and, si

parva licet componere magnis,^^ the words of the Messiah to


his Father,

^ Cf. Aen. 1. 300-301, 4. 253-8 and P. L. 5. 266-277.


» Cf. Aen. 2. 3.
» Cf. Aen. 1. 411-414, 516-518, 579-581, 586-8, and P. L. 10. 441-452.
'" Milton copies this line from Georg. 4. 176 four times, P. L. 2.
921-2, 6. 310-11, 10. 306, P. R. 4. 563-4. It is also used by Cowley,
Dryden, Pope and Tickell.
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 143

Father Eternal, thine is to decree ;

Mine both in Heaven and Earth to do thy will


Supreme,
(P. L. 10. 68-70)

are like those of Aeolus to Juno,

tuus, o regina, quid optes


explorare labor; mihi iussa capessere fas est.
(Aen. 1. 76-77)

Examples might be multiplied almost indefinitely, but these


are sufficient to show how strongly Vergil affected Milton's
phraseology.
Paradise Regained, which is constructed rather on the
"brief model" of Job than the ''diffuse" model of the classics,

shows little Vergilian influence. Its first line resembles the


discarded first line of the Aeneid:

I,who erewhile the happy Garden sung


By one man's disobedience lost, now sing
Recovered Paradise to all mankind.
(P. R. 1. 1-3)

There is a repetition of the favorite clause,

to compare
Great things with small,
(P. R. 4. 563-4)
and the lines,

nor slept the winds


Within their stony caves, but rushed abroad
From the four hinges of the world, and fell
On the vexed wilderness, whose tallest pines.
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks.
Bowed their stiff necks,
(P. R. 4. 413-418)
144 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
combine Vergil's description of the storm, when una Eurus-
que Notusque ruunt, and of the oak to which Aeneas is com-
pared when assailed by Anna's pleas, which

quantum ad auras
vertice
aetherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit.
{Aen. 4. 445-6)

It would be a satisfaction if there were any possibility of


establishing a definite relationship between the hexameters
of Vergil and the blank verse Addison said,
of Milton.
"Milton has copied after Homer rather than Virgil in the
length of his periods, the copiousness of his phrases, and the
running of his verses into one another." But Tennyson,
perhaps a more sympathetic critic though hardly a greater
admirer of both poets, English and Latin, spoke more than
once of the similarities between their poems in sound and
movement. Surely if any one could appreciate the stately
harmonies of Vergil's verse, it was this

God-gifted organ-voice of England,

and we know that their methods of workmanship were much


the same, a method of laborious polishing of each line until
it reached the perfection which is characteristic of the finished

work of both poets. No one is so like Vergil in this partic-


ular as Milton, except perhaps Pope, and while Milton's
own genius is a sufficient explanation, it is pleasant to think,
with Tennyson, that it is partly because he had studied
Vergil's verse.
But while Milton is so largely indebted to the classical
poets for diction and form, he is quite in agreement with
Cowley in thinking that the ancient pagan stories, and
indeed the tales of chivalry as well, are inferior to those
of the Bible as subjects for epic poetry. This belief he
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 145

expresses in unmistakable words at the beginning of the


ninth book of Paradise Lost

I now must change

These notes to tragic — foul distrust, and breach


Disloyal, on the part of man, revolt
And disobedience; on the part of Heaven,
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given.
. . Sad task! yet argument
.

Not less but more heroic than the wrath


Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused;
Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's that so long
Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son.
(P. L. 9. 5-10, 13-19)

Paradise Lost stands as an example of a poem inwhich


supreme genius has triumphed over the restrictions imposed
by the conventions of the classical epic. Where genius
was lacking, however, the result of an endeavor to write
after the pattern of Vergil and Homer was a sad failure.
This is illustrated by the four epics of Sir Richard Blackmore,
a better physician, apparently, than he was a poet. In
these he returned to subjects drawn from English history or
legend, and called his four poems Prince Arthur, King
Arthur, Eliza, and Alfred. They are most carefully worked
out along the recognized epic lines, with Vergil as the
model rather than Homer. But in spite of this conscientious-
ness in complying with the rules, they called forth a storm
of criticism, although Prince Arthur was well liked by the
class of readers who were not troubled by the relation of
the author to the classics. "Of his four epic poems,"
wrote Johnson, "the firsthad such reputation and popularity
as enraged the critics; the second was at least known enough
: :

146 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS


to be ridiculed; the two last had neither friends nor enemies."
John Dennis was one of the critics who were enraged by the
success of Prince Arthur, and he wrote a book of more than
two hundred pages to prove that Blackmore had not suc-
ceeded, and that he had not shown the "judgment" of his
model, Vergil,
Another form of verse in the seventeenth century, which
pointed forward to the time of Pope and his followers, is

the mock-epic or burlesque, of which the chief example is

Butler's Hudihras. This poem has various imitations of


Vergil, notably the parody of the description of Fame

There is a tall long-sided dame,


(But wondrous light) ycleped Fame,
That like a thin cameleon boards
Herself on air, and eats her words;
Upon her shoulders wings she wears
Like hanging sleeves, lined through with ears,
And eyes, and tongues, as poets list,
Made good by deep mythologist
With these she through the welkin flies.
And sometimes carries truth, oft lies. . . .

This tattUng gossip knew too well


What mischief Hudibras befell;
And straight the spiteful tidings bears
Of all, to th' unkind Widow's ears.
(Part II, Canto 1)
"

And if, as has been said, Scarron's Virgile Travesti was the
model for Butler's style, undoubtedly furnished the sug-
it

gestion for such passages as this. About the same time that
the first and second parts of Hudihras were published,
Charles Cotton issued his burlesques of the first and fourth
books of the Aeneid, certainly under the stimulus of Scarron's
work. They were printed together in 1670 under the title
" Cf. Aen. 4. 173-197.
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 147

of Scarronides, or Virgil and this book went


Travestie,
through fourteen editions by 1807, and stimulated the
production of other burlesques of a similar nature, such as
Maronides and Cataplus and the Irish Hudibras, and the
History of the Famous Love between a Fair Noble Parisian
Lady and a Beautiful Young Singing-Man. All these
were definite parodies of portions of the Aeneid, and they
undoubtedly inspired much of the imitation of Vergil in
the mock-epics of the next century.
:

CHAPTER VII

DRYDEN AND POPE


When Pope, in his Temple of Fame, imitated Chaucer's
Hous ofFame, he, like his master, placed the poets of antiq-
uity on pillars. His Vergil, however, was standing not upon
a pillar "of tinned iron cleere" but on a golden column,

On which a shrine of purest gold was rear'd;


Finished the whole, and labour'd every part,
With patient touches of unwearied art:
The Mantuan there in sober triumph sate.
Composed his posture and his looks sedate;
On Homer still he fixed a rev'rent eye,
Great without pride, in modest majesty.
In living sculpture on the sides were spread
The Latian wars, and haughty Turnus dead;
Ehza stretched upon the fun'ral pjTe,
Aeneas bending with his aged sire
Troy flamed in burning gold, and o'er the throne
"Arms and the man" in golden ciphers shone.

The few lines of this passage explain in part the attrac-


first

tion which Vergil had for Pope, and emphasize the phase
of his genius which commanded especial admiration in the
age of Dryden and Pope. It was the "patient touches of
unwearied art" which admitted him to Pope's Temple of
Fame.
At no previous time had the appreciation of Vergil rested
so largely upon an admiration of his style. The pseudo-
classic ideals of restraint and regularity were satisfied by
148
DRYDEN AND POPE 149

the perfect finish of Vergil's hexameters, and his admirers


were fain to follow the precepts of Horace and the example of

Old Virgil who would write ten lines, they say,


At dawn, and lavish all the golden day
To make them wealthier in his readers' eyes.

The Renaissance advocacy of imitation of the ancients was


revived with a new significance, or rather a new emphasis.
Form and style were the gods which the English Augustans
served, and those gods took on the semblance of Horace in
the satire, the epistle, and the verse essay, and of Vergil in
the pastoral, the didactic poem, and the mock-epic. Of
serious epic there was comparatively little, and that little
was based rather on Homer than on Vergil, although of
course it was impossible for Glover and Wilkie to avoid some
echoes of Vergil. Indeed, the former was said to have
shown "Virgil's sober rage." Wilkie, whose Epigoniad
did not appear until 1757, twenty years after Glover's
Leonidas, was beginning to come under the influence of the
growing preference for Greek, and the reaction from the
admiration for the imitative art of Vergil.
The age was essentially Latin in its culture. The superior
"fire" and "invention" of Homer might arouse admiration
in the minds of some was a cold sort
critics of Vergil, but it

of flame when translated into heroic couplets, and the


compensating merits of the Roman poet in judgment and
moral purpose found plenty of defenders. The Latin char-
acter of the classical culture of the period shown, not only
is

in the general Roman polish of the literature, but in the


great preponderance of Latin quotations in the prose, and
the far more general use of the Latin authors for mottoes
in the periodicals, pamphlets, and volumes and collections
of poems. Horace was the greatest favorite for mottoes,
as is natural in view of the greater quotability of the Odes
150 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
and also of the sententiousness of many of the lines in the
Satires and Epistles which lend themselves to citation.
But Vergil was not far behind in popularity. Of the mottoes
in the Spectator, for instance, one hundred and thirty-nine
are from Vergil, two hundred and thirty-nine from Horace,
and five hundred and fifty-six from all other authors, includ-
ing only a very few from the Greek.
Indeed, Vergil was a part of the air that the man of letters
breathed in the pseudo-classic period, and it was practically
impossible at that time for a poet or prose writer to avoid
quotations and echoes of his poems, or allusions to the
tale of Aeneas' adventures. Dean Swift, who could hardly
be thought of as possessing a nature sympathetic with that
of Vergil, uses him constantly. There is scarcely a poet whom
some admirer does not call the Vergil of his age, scarcely a ver-
sifier who does not refer many times to the story of Aeneas,

scarcely a traveler who does not visit Vergil's tomb and recall
in verse or prose hisemotions on the occasion of this sacred
pilgrimage or his memories of the poet's works at Rome and
other places associated with his name, scarcely a prose
critic who does not use his lines again and again for illus-

tration or adornment. Also there is scarcely a poet who


does not try his hand at translating at least an Eclogue
or a portion of a book of the Georgics or the Aeneid, and Addi-
son, who himself had made versions of a part of the fourth
Georgic and the story of Achaemenides, praises Dryden's
Virgil in words which are an eloquent commentary on the
literary and educational standards of the time. "The
illiterate among our countrymen," he says, "may learn to
judge from Dryden's Virgil of the most perfect epic per-
^
formance."
The age of classicism which translation was
was a period in
cultivated as one of the chief forms of poetry. During the
1 The Freeholder, No. 40.
DRYDEN AND POPE 151

seventeenth century there had come a change in the theory


of translation from Ben Jonson's advocacy of the hteral
version. While Chapman and Harington had urged a free
translation, with an effort to reproduce the spirit rather than
the letter, the translators of Vergil had before this time been
fairly faithful. Gavin Douglas had prided himself upon
following Vergil as closely as he could, and Surrey and
Phaer had both clung quite closely to the original. But in
1656, Sir John Denham published a translation of a portion
of the second book of the Aeneid, which he had written
twenty years before, together with a brief essay expressing
his ideas of what a translation should be. "I conceive it
to be a vulgar error," he said, "in translating poets, to
affect being a fidus interpres. . . . Poesie is of so subtle a
spirit, that in pouring out of one language into another, it

will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the


transfusion, there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum.
. . And therefore if Virgil must needs speak English,
.

it were fit he should speak not only as a man of this Nation,

but as a man of this Age." This new kind of translation,


with its effort to walk beside an author instead of at his
heels, was believed in and practised by Denham and Waller
and a host of smaller poets of the new classical school,
including the well-known names of Sir William Temple,
Joseph Addison, the Earl of Roscommon, and Sir Charles
Sedley. The first few lines of Denhara's Passion of Dido for
Aeneas, with their un-Vergilian pun, will illustrate the free-
dom with which these translators treated their original.

Having at large declar'd Jove's embassy,


Cyllenius from Aeneas straight doth fly
He command,
loth to disobey the god's
Nor wiUing to forsake this pleasant land,
Asham'd the kind Eliza to deceive,
But more afraid to take a solemn leave,
152 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
He many ways his labouring thoughts revolves.
But fear o'ercoming shame, at last resolves
(Instructedby the god of thieves) to steal
Himself away, and his escape conceal.^

All of these men, however, attempted to render only a por-


tion of the works of Vergil into English, some confining
themselves to a part of a single book of the Georgics or the
Aeneid. Many of them produced poems more rightly named
paraphrases than translations. Two versions of the entire
works of Vergil had been made before that of Dryden,
that of the Earl of Lauderdale and that of John Ogilby,
which was published first in 1649, and underwent various
revisions and appeared in many editions. It was "adorned
with Sculptures" which, I fear, are the most interesting
parts of the book.
But the hand of genius was laid to the task of trans-
lating Vergil in the last decade of the seventeenth century,
and whatever may be our opinion of Dryden's Virgil as a
translation, we must admit that it is a splendid example
of the possibilities of the heroic couplet. "Lay by Virgil,"
he wrote in the Dedication of his Aeneid, ". when you . .

take my version," and it is thus separately that it must


be judged. "The way I have taken," he said, "is not so
straight as metaphrase, nor so loose as paraphrase; some
things too I have omitted, and sometimes have added of
my own. ... I have endeavored to make Virgil speak such
English as he would himself have spoken, if he had been
born in England, and in this present age."
The critical dedications and prefaces to the various
portions of the translation are important not only in being
examples of the first modern prose, but also as expressing
Dryden's theories of translation, which are summarized
2 Aen. 4. 276-286, and of. 11. 331-9.
DRYDEN AND POPE 153

in the quotation just given, and his estimate of Vergil.


Of the Pastorals he had a high opinion, although he recog-
nized that they were the work of a young man, and he thought
that in the fourth, sixth, and eighth Eclogues Vergil at-
tained "a pitch as lofty as ever he was able to reach after-
wards."
In the Dedication of the Aeneid, he comes to the defense
of Vergil against his detractors, who were many in those
days of controversy not only over the relative merits of
the ancients and moderns, but also over the superiority of
Homer or Vergil. The French generally remained loyal
to Vergil, and Voltaire, in the Appendix to his Henriade,
said, "Homere a fait Virgile, dit-on; si cela est, c'est sans
doute son plus bel ouvrage." Dryden takes up the cudgels
for Vergil and argues against the criticisms of his "moral,
the duration or length of time taken up in the action of the
poem, and what they have to urge against the manners
of his hero." He finds in the Aeneid both a political and
a moral purpose, and in its hero the pattern of a perfect
prince. Hence he is necessarily pious, for perfection begins
and ends in piety, but he is also courageous "in an heroicall
degree." So he continues, taking up one by one the familiar
attacks upon the poem and its chief character. When he
comes to the defense of Aeneas against the charge of infidelity
to Dido, he gives a new turn to the question by claiming that
Vergil was trying to please the Romans by disgracing the
founder of the race of their enemy, Carthage, for "he shows
her ungrateful to the memory of her first husband." Could
the romancers of the Middle Ages have heard this, their
hair would doubtless have stood on end with horror at such
heresy
In common with other critics of his time, Dryden thought
that the Georgics were Vergil's finest work, "the best poem
of the best poet," as he called them. The perfection and
154 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

finish of the versification of this poem naturally appealed


to the writers of the classic school. "Virgil wrote his
Georgics,'^ continues Dryden, "in the full strength and vigor
of his age, when his judgment was at the height, and before
his fancy was declining."
Dryden wrote his translation in great haste, and had to
call upon some of his friends to aid him in completing his
task. Addison and Chetwood furnished the Prefaces to
the Georgics and the Eclogues, and also the Life of Virgil
and the arguments for the different books. Dryden ac-
knowledges the assistance he got from them, and also the
aid which he received from the Earl of Lauderdale's transla-
tion of the Aeneid, which he had seen in manuscript. It
was not published, however, until after the death of its
author and after the appearance of Dryden 's version, when
the same nobleman's translations of the Eclogues and Georgics
were combined with that of the Aeneid. As their editor
claims, they are much closer to the Latin than Dryden 's
rendering, but they are not such good poetry.
Dryden had no false modesty in regard to his work. "I
have endeavored," he says, "to follow the example of my
master, and am the first Englishman, perhaps, who made
it his design to copy him in his numbers, his choice of words,

and his placing them for the sweetness of the sound." He


goes on to speak of those of his countrymen who have
translated episodes and other portions of Vergil's work with
great success, naming Roscommon, Denham, Waller, and
Cowley, as well as the Earl of Mulgrave, to whom the transla-
tion of the Aeneid is dedicated. "But it is one thing," he
continues, "to take pains on a fragment, and translate it
perfectly; and another thing to have the weight of a whole
author on my shoulders. They who believe the burden light,
let them attempt the fourth, sixth, or eighth Pastoral;

the first or fourth Georgic; and amongst the Aeneids, the


DRYDEN AND POPE 155

fourth, the fifth, the seventh, the ninth, the tenth, the
eleventh, or the twelfth: have suc-
for in these I think I
ceeded best." And again in a note on the first Georgic, he
says, "The poeti:y of this book is more sublime than any
part of Virgil, if I have any taste: and if ever I have copied
his majestic style, it is here." It is fair, therefore, to test
Dryden's translations by passages from these books, and see
whether he has succeeded or not.
Although Dryden expressed himself as willing to be
judged by his work in the twelfth book, among others, he
also admits that he found his work growing more difficult
as he progressed. Certainly his couplets at the very end
of the Aeneid do not begin to approach the grandeur of
Vergil's hexameters. The lines describing the fall of Turnus
seem forced
The hero measured first, with narrow view.
The destined mark; and, rising as he threw.
With its full swing the fatal weapon flew.
Not with less rage the rattling thunder falls.
Or stones from battering engines break the walls;
Swift as a whirlwind, from an arm so strong,
The lance drove on, and bore the death along.
Naught could his sevenfold shield the prince avail.
Nor aught beneath his arms the coat of mail
It pierced through all, and with a grisly wound
Transfix'd his thigh, and doubled him to ground.
With groans the Latins rend the vaulted sky:
Woods, hills, and valleys, to the voice reply.'

It is same books instances of


also possible to find in these
Dryden's admitted elaboration of his original. It seems
an inevitable characteristic of the translations of this period,
and although Dryden and others attempt to justify them-
selves by asserting their intention to make Vergil speak
» Aen. 12. 919-929.
156 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
as he would in their country and age, such additions always
give the impression of having been made to suit the exigencies
of therhyme. In the following lines, for instance, there is

no need for all the information:

And now she leads the Trojan chief along


The busy throng;
lofty walls, amidst the
Displays the Tyrian wealth and rising town,
Which love, without his labor, makes his own.
This pomp she shows, to tempt her wand'ring guest;
Her faltring tongue forbids to speak the rest.

The three lines in the Latin are quite sufficient to picture


the situation, and are far more effective:

nunc media Aenean secmn per moenia ducit


Sidoniasque ostendat opes urbemque paratam,
incipit effari mediaque in voce resistit.^

But there are also passages in these chosen books that


represent Dryden's work at its best. In Dido's first remon-
strance with Aeneas when he plans to depart, the translator
has lifted his couplets to a high level of sustained passion
and the lines flow so smoothly that the couplet structure
is not sufficiently obtrusive to interfere with the effect of the
unity of the passage:

See, whom you fly! am I the foe you shun?


Now, by those holy vows so late begun.
By this right hand have nothing more
(since I
To challenge, but the faith you gave before),
I beg you by these tears too truly shed.
By the new pleasures of our nuptial bed;
If ever Dido, when you most were kind,
Were pleasing in your eyes, or touch'd your mind;

* Aen. 4. 74-76.
DRYDEN AND POPE 157

By these my prayers, if prayers may yet have place,


Pity the fortunes of a falling race!
For you have provoked a tyrant's hate,
I

Incens'd the Libyan and the Tyrian state;


For you alone I suffer in my fame,
Bereft of honour and exposed to shame! ^

And while Dry den never can be Vergil, his description of


the storm in the first Georgic may be compared without
hesitation with its original. If ever he has copied his
majestic style, it is here:

Oft have I seen a sudden storm arise,


From all the warring winds that sweep the skies
The heavy harvest from the root is torn,
And whirl'd aloft the lighter stubble borne :
^

With such a force the flying rack is driven.


And such a winter wears the face of heaven
And whole sheets descend of sluicy rain,
oft
Suck'd by the spongy clouds from off the main:
The lofty skies at once come pouring down,
The promised crop and golden labours drown.
The dikes are filled; and with a roaring sound,
The rising rivers float the nether ground;
And rocks the bellowing voice of boiling seas rebound.
The father of the gods his glory shrouds,
Involved in tempests and a night of clouds;
And, from the middle darkness flashing out.
By he deals his fiery bolts about.
fits

Earth feels the motions of her angry god,


Her entrails tremble, and her mountains nod;
And flying beasts in forests seek abode:
Deep horror seizes every human breast;
Their pride is humbled, and their fear confessed,
While he from high his rolling thunder throws.
And fires the mountains with repeated blows:
» Aen. 4. 314-323.
:

158 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS


The rocks are from their old foundations rent;
The winds redouble, and the rains augment
The waves on heaps are dashed against the shore;
And now the woods, and now the billows roar.*

Dryden's translation went through a large number of


editions during the eighteenth century, and its progress
was attended by a crowd of satellites, versions of small
portions of Vergil's works, following with more or less fidelity

the work of their model. Some, Doctor Trapp, who


like
translated the whole of Vergil into English, "with large
explanatory notes and critical observations," departed from
the straight road of following Dry den, and even branched
off into blank verse. Trapp, who had been since childhood
a passionate admirer of him whom he called "not only a
Poet, but a Philosopher, and a Divine," believed that it was
the translator's duty to "draw Virgil as like as you can;
to think of improving him is arrogant; and to flatter him
is impossible." Therefore he criticized Dryden for being
too free in his translation, saying, "When you most admire
Mr. Dryden, you see the least of Virgil."
In 1753 appeared the translation of the Aeneid by Christo-
pher Pitt, together with versions of the Eclogues and Georgics
by Joseph Warton, who also served as editor and wrote
notes to the whole and essays on pastoral, didactic, and epic
poetry. Although Warton criticized Dryden very severely
for inaccuracies and positive errors in his translation, he
did not scruple to borrow from him occasionally. He says
in the preface to the book, "Mr. Pitt has borrowed about
sixty lines from Mr. Dryden, and I myself about a dozen,"
although it is safe to say, that the diction of Warton's version
of the Eclogues was more influenced by the phraseology of
Pope's Pastorals. But Warton has not admitted that in
« Gearg. 1. 316-334.
DRYDEN AND POPE 159

his discussion of he has followed Dryden's


epic poetry
Dedication to the Aeneid almost word for word for nearly
a page. The translation is in heroic couplet, with all the
vices, to a modern reader, of that form of verse, especially
as a vehicle in which to represent Vergil's hexameters. Yet
Pitt has succeeded in giving a fairly stirring rendering of
several episodes, such as the fall of Troy, and at times
surpasses Dryden in vigor and movement:

Now far within, the regal rooms disclose,

Loud and more loud, a direful scene of woes;


The roof resounds with female shrieks and cries,
And the shrill echo strikes the distant skies.

The trembling matrons from place to


fly place,
And kiss the pillars with a last embrace;
Bold Pyrrhus storms with all his father's fire;

The barriers burst; the vanquish'd guards retire;


The shatter'd doors the thund'ring engines ply;
The bolts leap back; the sounding hinges fiy;
The war breaks in; loud shouts the hostile train;
The gates are storm'd; the foremost soldiers slain:
Through the wide courts the crowding Argives roam.
And swarm triumphant round the regal dome.^

There was undoubtedly a Vergilian influence on the


prose of the eighteenth century as well as upon the poetry.
Addison himself may have
caught some of the mellowness
of the master's style, although his English is too simple and
colloquial to merit Young's description of it as "a sweet
Virgilian prose." He approaches more nearly the Vergilian
dignity in his verse, especially in his Cato. Of all the eigh-
teenth century prose writers, Burke comes closest to the Ver-
gilian polish and perfection, and this is perhaps accounted
for by the fact that he always had a "ragged Delphin Virgil"
not far from his elbow. He is said to have engaged in a
T 48&-495.
Aen. 2.
160 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
dispute with Doctor Johnson over the relative merits of
Homer and and to have been the advocate of the Latin
Vergil,
poet.^ Doctor Johnson himself, although he preferred
Homer, knew Vergil well, and had practically memorized the
Eclogues.^
Although the actual effect of the style of a poet upon a
prose writer is too intangible to be analyzed with satis-
factory accuracy, the extent to which Vergil was in the
minds of nearly all the writers of the period
is to be seen not

only in the number of allusions and quotations, but in the


general tendency of the critical work to hold up his poems as
models to be imitated and as standards by which the achieve-
ments of others might be judged. This tendency has al-
ready been spoken of in connection with Addison's papers
on Paradise Lost, and John Dennis' book attacking Black-
more 's Prince Arthur.
This latter volume an excellent example of pseudo-
is

classic criticism, concerned with the mechanics of the epic


rather than its poetic value. Dennis discusses the same
questions that engaged the attention of Dryden in his
critical prefaces. Dryden, whose chief importance for us
lies in his translation of Vergil, which has been discussed,

had intended to write an epic poem, but he never accom-


pHshed the task. What his success would have been, we can
only conjecture, but doubtless he would have observed the
rules and at the same time shown something of the individual-
ity which he displayed in his criticism, and have surpassed
the efforts of men like Blackmore and Glover and Wilkie.
In 1666 he had written his Annus Mirabilis, of which he
said in the prefatory letter to Sir Robert Howard, "I have
called my poem historical, not epic, though both the actions,
and actors are as much heroic as any poem can contain.
* See Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. by G. B. Hill, vol. iii, p. 220.
• See Boswell's Johnson, ed. HiU, vol. iv, p. 252.
DRYDEN AND POPE 161

But since the actionnot properly one, nor that accom-


is

phshed in the last successes, I have judged it too bold a


title for a few stanzas, which are little more number
in
than a single Iliad or the longest of the Aeneids." But
although he will not call the poem epic, Vergil is his model.
In the same letter, after a discussion of the relative merits
of Ovid and Vergil, Ovid excelling in the "tender strokes,"
Vergil in his "masterly" descriptions of actions and persons,
he says, "Yet before I leave Virgil, I must own the vanity to
tell you, and by you the world, that he has been my master

in this poem: I have followed him everywhere, I know not


with what success, but I am sure with diUgence enough:
my images are many of them copied from him, and the
rest are imitations of him. My expressions also are as
near as the idioms of the two languages would admit of in
translation." To illustrate this, many a line and stanza
might be quoted. The line,

Beyond the year, and out of Heaven's high way,

for example, is Vergil's extra anni solisque vias, and the


simile.
So glidessome trodden serpent on the grass,
And long behind his wounded volume trails,

is an imitation of the lines from the third Georgic, describing


the wounded snake,

cum medii nexus extremaeque agmina caudae


solvuntur, tardosque trahit sinus ultimus orbis.
(11. 423-4)

Probably the most familiar passage of all is the simile of


the bees, which owes much to the passages in the fourth
Georgic and the first Aeneid}^
"CJf. Aen. 1.430-6, and Georg. 4.149-169.
162 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
All hands employed, the royal work grows warm;
Like labouring bees on a long summer's day,
Some sound the trumpet for the rest to swarm.
And some on bells of tasted lilies play;

With gluey wax some new foundation lay


Of virgin-combs, which from the roof are hung;
Some armed within doors upon duty stay
Or tend the sick or educate the young.

In many other places, not only in the Annus Mirahilis,


but also in his other poems, Dryden uses similarly close
imitations of Vergil, borrowing from this "best poet," as
he called him, more frequently than from any other. It is
the beginning of that open and avowed imitation and adop-
tion of passages from Vergil which is so characteristic of the
pastoral and didactic poems of the next century.
While the influence of Vergil in this period seems to be
in general a thing of externals, in reality it goes deeper
than that, and the surface imitation of the style of the
Eclogues, the form of the Aeneid, and the general plan and
method of the Georgics is a mere outward manifestation of a
real appreciation of that quality in which Vergil is supreme
among classic poets, the technical perfection of his work.
Pope and Thomson and their contemporaries show little
trace of a conception of the spirit of Vergil, of the sense of
pathos in his poetry, but this is simply saying that they were
not Romanticists, and that therefore the subjective ele-
ment in literature did not appeal to them.
It was a very positive advantage, however, that these
neo-classic critics and poets had, of perceiving and imitating
and praising that phase of Vergil's genius which has never
been questioned, but which had never been fully appre-
ciated before. They represented a distinct advance over
the somewhat childlike enjoyment of the mere story which
DRYDEN AND POPE 163

was to be found in Chaucer and the romancers, and they


paved the way for the fuller appreciation of the nineteenth
century, which, while it found beside the mere perfection
of style in the work of Vergil a vivid imagination and a poetic
insight into human life, still continued to emphasize the
beauty of his verse as the means by which he was enabled
to give his message to the world.
Undoubtedly the classic school found too in the work of
Vergil a certain regularizing and standardizing of poetic
forms, which they welcomed especially in their reaction
from the exaggerations of the Marinists. He gave them
models which they could follow within the bounds of common
sense, and the weight of his authority and his example
added value to their work in their own eyes. Their poetry
they felt was no spasmodic mushroom growth, ruled by the
whims of the individual, but had its roots fixed in antiquity,
and was like Vergil's own oak, which
quantum vertice ad auras
aetherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit.

The couplet as Pope used it was one of themost remark-


able things in the history of English poetry, and it seems
quite evident that not only did he admire Vergil for the
finish of but he also tried to approach the
his lines,
same perfection. There is no possibility of setting side by
side the hexameters of Vergil and the couplets of Pope and
saying, "The polish of these English lines is in imitation
of these Latin verses," for the nature of the two meters is

too diverse. But each is chiseled out of marble, although


the tools are different, and Pope undoubtedly got his inspira-
tion for the practice of this art from a study of the methods
and results of Vergil's workmanship. It is far more probable
that this came from the Latin than from the Greek, not
only because Vergil was preeminent in this quality, but also
164 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

because Pope's genius, like that of others of his time, was


essentially Latin. The influence of Vergil in this respect
is hard to analyze, and any detailed consideration of it
must consist largely in a citation of passages in which Pope
has actually borrowed the phraseology of his master. The
deeper significance of the attraction which Vergil exerted
on the EngUsh master of form must be felt rather than
seen and described.
The Eclogues of Vergil Pope thought the "sweetest poems
in the world," and it was this sweetness of versification that
he endeavored to imitate in his Pastorals. He felt that
he had succeeded, for even late in life he regarded these
early poems as the most correct and musical of his works.
Many of his contemporaries agreed with him, one admirer
exclaiming.

Oh could thy Virgil from his orb look down,


He'd view a courser that might match his own!

And Lord Lyttleton fancied the shade of Vergil addressing


Pope as
Great Bard! whose numbers I myself inspire,
To whom I gave my own harmonious lyre.

Between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, Pope composed


an epic poem, Alcander, Prince of Rhodes, imitating the style
of all the great epic poets. But the poem suffered the fate
which Vergil planned for the Aeneid. At sixteen, however,
according to his own statement. Pope wrote his four Pastorals,
named after the four seasons of the year, a scheme which
he borrowed from some of the earlier pastoral poetry, and
which perhaps furnished the chief suggestion to Thomson
for his arrangement of the Seasons. They were not published,
however, until 1709, when Jacob Tonson included them in
the sixth part of the Poetical Miscellany, the first volumes
DRYDEN AND POPE 165

of which had been compiled by Dryden. Undoubtedly


both the poems themselves and the Discourse on Pastoral
Poetry which preceded them, underwent considerable revi-
sion before they appeared in print. They had circulated,
however, among the literary men of the time in manuscript,
and had received high praise. Walsh, in a letter to Wycher-
ley, in April, 1705, wrote, "It is not flattery at all to say
that Virgil had written nothing so good at his Age."
The Preface, or Discourse on Pastoral Poetry, which
Walsh called "very judicious and learned," is, to the modern
reader, a collection of rather trite and obvious remarks gath-
ered from Rapin, Fontenelle, and the Preface to Dryden's
Virgil. Of chief interest to us is Pope's statement at the
close that whatever merit his own pastorals might possess
"is to be attributed to some good old authors, whose works,
as I had leisure to study, so I hope I have not wanted care
to imitate."
That these good old authors are Theocritus, Vergil and
Spenser, is sufficiently obvious. The opening Hues of Spring
are in imitation of those of Vergil's sixth Eclogue, and those
of the three succeeding Pastorals follow closely the first lines
of the pastorals of Spenser, Vergiland Theocritus. There
is good evidence, however, that Vergil was more in the

mind of Pope as he wrote these poems than his English or


his Greek model. "The collection of passages imitated from
the classics," Warton tells us in his edition of Pope's Works,
"marked margin with the letter P. was made by the
in the
accurate and learned Mr. Bowyer the Printer, and given to
Pope at his desire, as appears from the MSS. Notes of Mr.
Bowyer now before me." With practically no exception,
the passages so marked are from Vergil, and careful search
will reveal more that Mr. Bowyer failed to find or Pope did
not care to note.
The temptation to which all commentators are open,
166 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
however, is to discover parallels where none exist. They
are prone to go to extremes such as moved Tennyson to
complaint and Landor to ridicule. The phraseology of
Vergil was so familiar to Pope that it was inevitable that
he should echo it frequently. It is hardly safe, however,
to assume that when he says "a secret transport touched
the conscious swain," he "had in his eye," as one of his
editors puts it, the line from the first book of the Aeneid,

Latonae taciturn pertemptant gaudia pectus;


(Aen. 1. 502)

or that because he says.

But now the reeds shall hang on yonder tree,

he is thinking definitely of the verse.

Hie arguta sacra pendebit fistula pinu.


{Ed. 7. 24)

But it is perfectly possible to point out line after line which


is manifestly written with the words of Vergil in mind.
Perhaps the diction of Dry den's translation of Vergil had
some influence on Pope's phraseology. But everyone who
has studied with any degree of care the various transla-
tions of any author, will readily admit the difficulty which
two men find in discovering different words and phrases for
the same passage, unless the translation be very free and
far from the original.
It is an interesting fact that often the earlier version of
the lines in Pope's Pastorals is nearer the Latin than the later
form in which they appeared. Perhaps Pope's maturer
judgment advised him to avoid such close imitation. A
good example of this is to be found in the lines in Summer,
As in the crystal spring I view my face,
Fresh rising blushes paint the watery glass.
DRYDEN AND POPE 167

Originally these ran,

Oft in the crystal spring I'd cast a view,


And equalled Hylas if the glass be true.

This version makes far more appropriate the parallel to


which the note marked "P" calls attention:

nuper me in litore vidi,


cum placidum ventis staret mare, non ego Daphnim
iudice te metuam, si numquam fallit imago.
{Ed. 2. 25-27)

Spring, the first of Pope's Pastorals, though it opens with


the lines from the sixth Eclogue of Vergil, is in its form an
imitation of the third and seventh, especially the third.
Two shepherds engage in a contest in song, calling upon
another swain to decide between them. Pope's Strephon
stakes a lamb, Vergil's Damoetas, a heifer; in each case
the opponent offers a bowl which is described at length.
Pope prided himself upon his imitation of Vergil's "quis
fuit alter?" in the hesitation of hisDaphnis at the word
"Zodiac." In a speech copied straight from Vergil, the
umpire tells the two contestants to begin and "sing by
turns." They obey, and in alternate quatrains which are
a patchwork of ideas and phrases, now from the third Eclogue,
now from the seventh, they recount the praises of their
sweethearts. They tell of the kind glances or inviting nods
which they have received, of how they have been won to
agreement with the likes and dislikes of the maidens, and
of the effect which the presence or absence of the "nymphs"
has upon the face of Nature. The pastoral closes with the
putting of two riddles, and the inabihty of the judge to
decide between the two singers. All these features may be
found in Vergil, in a less artificial form. Pope complains
that Vergil refines upon Theocritus and is inferior to him in
168 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
simplicity and propriety of style; but he himself out-
Vergils Vergil in his treatment of his original.
Summer, the second Pastoral, is again a combination of
two of Vergil's Eclogues, the second and the tenth. Some
hints for the opening address to Dr. Garth are taken from
the dedication to Pollio in the eighth Eclogue, and the
image of the sympathy of dumb Nature with the lover's
grief is found in the first lines of the same poem. But like
Corydon and Gallus, Alexis sits bewailing his hopeless love
till the woods answer him. He calls upon the Muses, re-
proaching them for their absence in lines closely imitative
of that passage in the Gallus which has been made especially
famous because of Milton's use of it. Accompanying his
song on the flute which Colin bequeathed to him, as Damoe-
tas had given his to Corydon, Alexis implores his love to
come and share with him the delights of the country, remind-
ing her, as Gallus assured his Lycoris, that

Descending gods have found Elysium here.

He closes with the complaint that the coolness of evening


brings him no relief from the scorching fire of love, but he
does not follow this lament with the half-cynical remonstrance
of Corydon with himself for neglecting his pastoral duties.
The original of the third Pastoral is given in one of the
notes marked "P." It "consists of two parts, like the
Vlllth of Virgil." With full realization of his dependence
upon the Latin eclogue, Pope calls upon the "Mantuan
nymphs" for their aid. He sings of two shepherds, Hylas
and Aegon, of whom
This mourned a faithless, that an absent, Love.

Hylas, however, is the first to sing, andlament closes


his
with a cry of joy, like that of the second singer in the Phar-
maceutria of Vergil,
DRYDEN AND POPE 169

Ye powers, what pleasing frenzy soothes my mind!


Do lovers dream, or is my Delia kind?
She comes, my Delia comes! —
now cease my lay,
And cease, ye gales, to bear my sighs away

The return of Delia is effected, however, without any use


of enchantment. Aegon
without hope, for his mistress is
is

faithless, and his "mournful lay," with its bitter "I know
thee, Love" (nunc scio quid sit Amor), ends with a threat of
suicide like that which closes the first half of Vergil's poem.
In both parts of the Pastoral is a refrain, similar to those in
Vergil. In form, this Pastoral follows more closely than
any of the others a single model, but its diction shows less
Vergilian influence than either of the preceding.
The latter fact is true also of the fourth Pastoral, the
Daphne. In general this elegy is modeled on the fifth of
Vergil which is a lament for Daphnis, put into the mouths
of two shepherds. Pope puts the whole song into the lips
of Thyrsis, including the reassurance that Daphne still

lives and
wondering mounts on high
Above the clouds, above the starry sky,
just as
candidus insuetum miratur limen Olympi
sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis.
(EcL 5. 56-57)

This was Pope's favorite among but it must be


his Pastorals,
said that the artificiality of the whole machinery of *' Nymphs
and Sylvans" and "weeping loves" with their "golden darts"
seems more apparent and more offensive here than any-
where else. Possibly it is because we are forced to com-
pare it, not only with the original in the Latin, but with the
Lycidas of Milton as well, in which much of the same material
was used.
170 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
Windsor which was written at
Forest, the first part of
the same time that the Pastorals were, and the second
part in 1713, when the entire poem was pubHshed, shows,
especially in the first part, many characteristics similar to
those of the Pastorals. There is not so much imitation of
Vergil here, however. Pope is indebted largely to Statius
and Ovid for suggestions and passages. It is interesting
to notice that he uses the first line of his Pastorals as the
last of Windsor Forest, as Vergil had made the first line of
his Eclogues the last of his Georgics.
Unquestionably the best known of the Eclogues is the
Pollio, the poem which was partially responsible for Vergil's
peculiar reputation in the Middle Ages and the best known
;

of Pope's pastoral poems is probably the Messiah, A Sacred


Eclogue, in Imitation of VirgiVs Pollio. This is not the
place to discuss the identity of the child of Vergil's poem.
It is sufficient to say that the tradition that it referred to
the birth of Jesus persisted down day and beyond
to Pope's
it. The general theory at that time was the one which
Augustine had advanced, that Vergil himself was not in-
spired, but was adopting the ideas of a Sibylline prophecy of
Christ. "In reading several passages of the prophet Isaiah,"
wrote Pope in the Advertisement prefixed to the poem,
"which foretell the coming of Christ and the felicities attend-
ing it, I could not but observe a remarkable parity between
many of the thoughts and those in the Pollio of Virgil. This
will not seem surprising, when we reflect that the eclogue
was taken from a Sibylline prophecy on the same subject.
One may judge that Virgil did not copy it line for line, but
selected such ideas as best agreed with the nature of pastoral
poetry, and disposed them in that manner which served
most to beautify his piece. I have endeavored the same
in this imitation of him, though without admitting any-
thing of my own; since it was written with this particular
DRYDEN AND POPE 171

view, that the reader, by comparing the several thoughts,


might see how far the images and descriptions of the Prophet
are superior to those of the Poet. But as I fear I have prej-
udiced them by my management, I shall subjoin the pas-
sages of Isaiah, and those of Virgil, under the same disad-
vantage of a literal translation." In view of this, it is natural
that Pope should be nearer Isaiah than Vergil in his lan-
guage, and such is the case. He does introduce an appro-
priate passage from the fifth Eclogue,

intonsi montes, ipsae iam carmina rapes,


ipsa sonant arbusta, Deus, deus ille, Menalca!
(Eel. 5. 63-64)

But because of his express desire to make the language of


Isaiah appear more beautiful than that of Vergil, he has
"managed" every case to elaborate upon the
in almost
ideas of the prophet rather than those of the poet. For
instance, he writes.

The smiling infant in his hand shall take


The crested basilisk and speckled snake.
Pleased the green lustre of the scales survey,
And with their forky tongue shall innocently play.

This is obviously an adornment of the Hebrew, "And


the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the
weaned put his hand on the cockatrice' den,"
child shall
rather than of the simple Latin, " Occidet et serpens." John-
son's translation of the Messiah of Pope into Latin repays
careful study. It is significant that it is not Vergilian,
which it could scarcely avoid being if the English had been
strongly colored with the language of the Pollio. He does
use the phrase, "Priscae vestigia fraudis," and also "Qualis
!

172 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

rerum nascitur ordo," which have no foundation in Pope's


verse, but these are due to Johnson's memory of Vergil
rather than Pope's.
In the same number of Tonson's Miscellany in which
Pope's Pastorals appeared, were printed the Pastorals of
Ambrose Philips. These were imitations of Spenser rather
than of the classics, and Philips, like his master, discarded
classical names, and in many ways tried to avoid setting
and allusions which were inappropriate to shepherd life in
England, although he by no means lost sight of his Vergil.
In the very passage in which he praised the song of Colin
Clout, he used Vergilian lines:

Drawn by the magick of th' enticing sound


What troops of mute admirers flock'd around
The steerlings left their food, and creatures wild
By nature formed insensibly grew mild."

These poems were responsible one of Pope's numerous


for
literary quarrels. In the Guardian, No. 32, appeared a
paper cast in the form of a pastoral allegory, in which the
names of Theocritus, Vergil, Spenser, and Philips were
given as those of the descendants of the ancient king of
the shepherds. Pope, incensed at the omission of his
name, and the preference shown to his rival, wrote a paper
and sent it anonymously to the Guardian in which he ridi-
culed the work of Philips and exalted his own. But it
was done in such a way that he appeared to be praising
his rival, and the criticism was taken in good faith by Steele,
who submitted it to Pope before accepting it, being unwill-
ing to hurt his feehngs. Pope affected magnanimity, and
allowed it to be pubUshed, but his irony was so subtle that
the majority of his readers, hke Steele, missed the point.

" Cf. Ed. 8. 2-4.


DRYDEN AND POPE 173

In 1714, Gay published his Shepherd's Week, doubtless at


the instigation of Pope, with the intention of holding the
simple, homely pastoral up to ridicule. The "Proeme to
the Courteous Reader" announces the purpose of the poet
to keep his shepherds and shepherdesses true to nature.
And in spite of the ridiculous names of Cloddipole and
Blouzelinda, Bumkinet and Clumsilis, and the obvious
burlesque of the conventional forms and language. Gay's
own poetic gift and love for nature have made of these
pastorals something more delightful than a mere satire.
Many of his readers thought that he was satirizing, not the
eighteenth century pastoral, but Vergil himself, and there
is reason for this belief, for his burlesques are nearer to the
Latin than many of the serious imitations.
But the burlesques Gay, of Shenstone, of Jago, of
of
Walsh, of the "Right Honourable L. M. W. M.," and of the
Dean of Saint Patrick's himself, clever and numerous as
they were, apparently had no deterring effect on the pro-
duction of Eclogues. After a comparative rest during
the latter half of the seventeenth century, the form sprang
up with renewed vigor and greater artificiality,but with
less religious and social allegory and satire. It was such a
convenient vehicle for the expression of the despair of a
lover or of grief over the death of the Queen or some
noble patron, that no amount of ridicule could stop it,

and it finally died out only with the birth of the new love
for nature which could not admit the artificiality of such
an outworn form. With some exceptions, such as that of
Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, even when the attempt was
made to keep the characters and surroundings true to English
country life, the result was absurd in its artificiality. Nearly
every poet and poetaster who lived and wrote in the first
thirty or forty years of the eighteenth century, tried his
174 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

hand at at least one pastoral/^ and for the most part it is

true that, as Churchill says,

Then the rude Theocrite is ransack'd o'er,


And courtly Maro call'd from Mincio's shore;
Sicilian Muses o'er our mountains roam,
Easy and free as if they were at home.

The influence of the Aeneid on Pope is not so definitely


marked as that of the Eclogues. That he was familiar
with it and that he made frequent use of it, is obvious,
but his works display no such careful and systematic imita-
tion of this poem as of the pastorals. In his translation of
the first book of the Thehaid of Statins, one is tempted to
find Vergilian phraseology. But it is difficult to decide
in most cases whether the influence is direct or not, for
Statins himself was such a close student of Vergil that his
Latin is greatly affected by the language of the poet whom
he so deeply reverenced. There are a few instances, however,
" The following is a Ust of the chief examples of the eighteenth
century pastoral. Undoubtedly many other writers, too obscure for
their works to have survived in separate form or to have been included
in the standard collections of poetry, were guilty of similar efforts.
This list includes only pastorals of the type of the formal eclogue,
not the pastoral Ijrrics or ballads, whose name was also legion. Am-
brose Philips, Pastorals; Gay, Shepherd's Week, Eclogues; Thomas
Warton, Five Pastoral Eclogues; Ramsay, Richy and Sandy; Collins,
Persian Eclogues; Shenstone, Colemira, On Certain Eclogues; Churchill,
The Prophecy of Famine; Cunningham, Palaemon; Wm. Thompson,
The Magi; Wm. Broome, Daphnis and Lycidas, A Pastoral; Jago,
Ardenna, The Scavengers; John Scott, Moral Eclogues, Amoebean Eclogues;
John Logan (?), Damon, Menalcas and Meliboeus; Blacklock, A Pastoral;
Right Hon. L. M. W. M., Six Town Eclogues; Swift, A Town Eclogue;
Lyttelton, The Progress of Love, A Monody; Prior, A Pastoral to the
Bishop of Ely; Congreve, The Mourning Muse of Alexis; Fenton,
Florelio; Pomfret, A Pastoral Essay on the Death of Queen Mary; Walsh,
Pastoral Eclogues, The Golden Age Restored; Barford, The Great Shep-
herd; Wm. Mason, Musaeus, The Dean and the Squire.
DRYDEN AND POPE 175

where Pope undoubtedly had Vergil in mind. In the


description of Mercury, for example, which in the original
is strongly reminiscent of the Aeneid, the translator could
not refrain from reproducing the Maia genitum of Vergil in
"son of May," although there was nothing in Statins to
justify it.

But the practice of the writers of this period was to spend


more time criticizing the Aeneid than imitating it. Some
such criticism we find in Pope's Preface to his translation
of Homer, with the usual contrast between the "invention"
of Homer and the "judgment" of Vergil, and the con-
clusion that the Greek poet is the superior in most respects.
The mock epic, however, was a favorite form of writing
at this time, and afforded opportunities for Vergilian imi-
tations. The 1728 edition of the Dunciad began.

Books and the man I sing, the first who brings


The Smithfield muses to the ears of kings,

and Pope's own notes to the edition of 1729 cite many


Burlesque
passages from Vergil as the originals of his lines. ^^
imitations of the conventions of the Aeneid are to be found
in that "heroi-comical" poem, the Rape of the Lock. The
second paragraph, like that of the Aeneid, inquires the
causes of so mighty a contest:

Say what strange motive, goddess! could compel


A well-bred lord to assault a gentle belle?

and there follows the query.

And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage?

13 One of the appendices to the 1729 edition is the Virgilius Restau-


ratus: seu Martini Scribleri Summi Critici Castigationum in Aeneidem.
There follows a "specimen" containing a number of burlesque emenda-
tions, all in Latin.
176 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
which corresponds to the famous question in the Aeneid,
"tantaene animis caelestibus irae?" It is needless to
quote in full the passages beginning, "The powers gave
ear, and granted half his prayer," "O thoughtless mortals!
ever blind to fate," "While fish in streams or birds delight
in air," "But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed,"
"Happy! ah ten times happy," and others, each of which
will call to mind the Vergilian passage which is cleverly
parodied. The speech of Ariel to the sylphs is in true
epic style, and might be paralleled in Vergil. The punish-
ments which he threatens do not need the mention of Ixion
to remind us of the sixth book of the Aeneid, and the reader
has probably made for himself the comparison between the
hard-hearted baron and Aeneas before he reaches the couplet,

Not half so fix'd the Trojan could remain,


While Anna begg'd and Dido raged in vain.

Martinus Scriblerus, the creation of Swift and his


fellow club-members, realized the necessity for imitation
in an epic poem, for in his Recipe for making such a
concoction, he gives definite directions based on Vergil.
"For a Tempest. Take Eurus, Zephyr, Auster and
Boreas, and cast them together in one verse: add to
them of rain, lightning, thunder (the loudest you can)
quantum sufficit: mix your clouds and billows well together
till they foam, and thicken your description here and there

with a quicksand. Brew your tempest well in your head,


before you set it a blowing." "For a Burning Town. If
such a description is necessary (because it is certain there
is one in Virgil) old Troy is ready burnt to your hands."

Martinus Scriblerus was later made the hero of the Scrib-


leriad: an Heroic Poem, by Richard Owen Cambridge, the
chief exponent and apologist of the mock-epic genre. The
aim of most of the other writers of the mock-heroic poem was
DRYDEN AND POPE 177

satirical.Dryden's MacFlecknoe and Pope's Dunciad were


the models for a whole series of satires in more or less mock-
heroic form, and Hilliads, Consuliads, and Rosciads were
the fashion for many years. Swift's Battle of the Books,
though in prose, belongs to the same general type, and
Fielding's "prose epic," Tom Jones, contains many a bur-
lesque of the epic style, especially of the Homeric or Ver-
gilian simile. On the other hand there isGay's Fan, which
seems more like the Rape of the Lock, with its graceful fun-
making at the expense of society. Somerville's Hobhinol,
or the and Paul Wliitehead's Gymnasiad
Rural Games,
both contain echoes of the fifth book of the Aeneid, and in
burlesque fashion tell of foot-races, wrestling-matches, and
boxing-bouts, for which the Vergilian account furnishes the
basis. Somerville's purpose was partially satirical also,
for he says in his dedication to Hogarth, ''In this at least
let us both agree, to make Vice and Folly the Object of our
Ridicule."
Cambridge, however, does not think this type of mock-
epic the model to be followed. The true mock-heroic poem,
he says in his mock-serious Preface, is one which has the
burlesquing of the classic epics as its sole purpose. He
holds up Don Quixote as a model example of the species,
but discards the satires of Dryden and Pope because they
have a divided aim. The chief requisite of a mock-epic is
that it should follow the ancients as nearly as possible, and
that there should be absolute propriety between the hero
and the subject. His hero, Scriblerus, is an eminently proper
hero for a mock-epic, because, as the readers of his Memoirs
will remember, he was brought up on a knowledge of the
classics. There will be, therefore, in the poem, many
passages intended as imitations of the ancients, which none
but those who are familiar with the classics will understand.
With this introduction, he plunges into the story of his
178 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
hero,who is driven by "wrathful Saturn's unrelenting rage"
through many dangers on land and sea. Overtaken by a
sandstorm in the desert, guided by a comet like that which
pointed the way for Aeneas and Anchises on their depar-
ture from Troy, he meets a band of pilgrims to whom he
relates his previous adventures. These include a storm at
sea, an encounter with the Acrosticks, whose leader proph-
esies that he and his followers will be forced to drink
iron, his love-affair with the Queen of the country on whose
shores he lands, which is told in great detail and with almost
continual burlesque of the story of Aeneas and Dido, and the
funeral games for a dead Acrostick. Not only these inci-
dents, but also many in the succeeding history of Scriblerus,
show that Cambridge is thinking chiefly of the Aeneid in
his burlesque.
Thus the most elaborate example of this type of poetry
is based largely on Vergil, and this is the main phase of

the formal imitation of the Aeneid in this period. The


bones of the epic convention, stirred by the breath of Augus-
tan criticism, are clothed with flesh again only to don the
cap and bells.
CHAPTER VIII

THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS


The pastoral and epic traditions in the eighteenth cen-
tury both furnished material for burlesque and satire, even
at the very height of the popularity of these types of verse.
But the followers of Thomson were ofa too serious
cast to make fun each other; and with
of themselves or of
the exception of Swift and Gay, whose City Shower and
Trivia were both written long before the Seasons appeared,
all the imitators of the Georgics of Vergil were in sober

earnest. The was a part of the spirit of


didactic temper
the age in the eighteenth century, and it manifested itself,
not only in these professed imitations of the Georgics, but
in the verse essays and moral epistles which were a favorite
form of poetry with Pope and his followers. Although
the type developed along the lines of moral and spiritual
instruction as well, the poems which embody practical
instructions for the farmer, the hunter, the shepherd, or the
gardener are those which owe the most to Vergil. Yet
many a Preface to a poem any subject from Sick-
treating of
ness to the Pleasures of Imagination, and many a passage
in such poems, acknowledged tacitly or openly that he was
the source of inspiration.
James Thomson was by far the greatest and most in-
fluential group which combined rules for the
poet of the
countryman with descriptions of nature. His influence was
felt, not only in England, but also on the continent, in

France and Germany, both in descriptive poetry and in


purely didactic verse. He was not the pioneer in this
179
;

180 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS


however, for Garth's Dispensary had appeared in 1699
field,

and John Phihps' Cyder in 1706. Nor was he the most


thoroughly didactic, and the precepts of many of his fellows
sound more VergiUan than his descriptions. The opening
of Cyder, the first example of the didactic poem of nature,
is quite like the Georgics:

What soil the apple loves, what care is due


To orchats, timeliest when to press the fruits.

Some further lines in the same poem express the ideal of


thisgroup of poets illustrated by the practice of Vergil,
an ideal which they all tried to attain, but which none
but Thomson succeeded in approaching:

Nor is it hard to beautify each month


With files of parti-colour'd fruits, that please
The tongue and view at once. So Maro's Muse,
Thrice sacred Muse! commodious precepts gives
Instructive to the swains, not wholly bent
On what is gainful sometimes she diverts
:

From solid counsels, shows the force of love


In savage beasts; how virgin face divine
Attracts the helpless youth through storms and waves,
Alone, in deep of night : then she describes
The Scythian winter, nor disdains to sing
How under ground the rude Riphaean race
Mimic brisk Cyder with the brakes' product wild
Sloes pounded. Hips, and Servis' harshest juice.

Thus he returns to his subject, and in Miltonic blank verse,


which is the almost invariable medium of these didactic
poets, he endeavors to mingle poetry with precepts as his
master had done. So, nearly forty years later, Akenside
appeals to the same authority to justify his digressions from
the subject, saying in his prefatory discussion of the design
THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 181

of his poem on
the Pleasures of the Imagination, that the
author has been led "to introduce some sentiments which
may perhaps be looked upon as not quite direct to the
subject; but since they bear an obvious relation to it, the
authority of Virgil, the faultless model of didactic poetry,
will best support him in this particular."
In Lyttelton's fourteenth Dialogue of the Dead, that be-
tween Pope and Boileau, the French critic asks his Enghsh
disciple,"Who is the poet that arrived soon after you in
Elysium, whom I saw Spenser lead in and present to Virgil,
as the author of a poem resembUng the Georgicsf On his
head was a garland of the several kinds of flowers that
blow in each season, with evergreens intermixed." And
Pope gives the obvious answer, "Your description points out
Thomson." Thus the friend and editor of the leader of the
didactic nature poets of the eighteenth century recognized
the fact that Vergil furnished the model on which the Seasons
was formed. But it must be remembered that the garland
of flowers and evergreens was largely Thomson's own.
There is great danger that a discussion which pretends to
treat only one side of a subject should leave a one-sided
impression. While Thomson undoubtedly Vergil's
was
debtor in many respects, both in the general form of his
work and in a large number of details, yet he differed from
him in nearly as many points. His fundamental aim was
to describe rather than to teach, and it is rather to some of
his followers, such as Dyer and Somerville, that the term
"didactic" should be applied, for it is more expressive of the
purpose of their work than of that of Thomson. Not that
Vergil never used description in the Georgics purely for its
own sake, for he showed the hand of a master in such a
picture as that of the garden of the senex Corycius or that
of the life under the water in the episode of Aristaeus;
nor that Thomson never taught, for he did it frequently and
: ;

182 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

with true Vergilian effect, as in the account of the pre-


cautions to be taken against the plague of locusts. But it
is true that both his long descriptions and his moral re-
flections are foreign to the manner of Vergil.Thomson
mingled imitation and originality in his work much after
the fashion of his own advice to the fisherman overtaken by
the heat of noon

There let the classic page thy fancy lead


Through rural scenes; such as the Mantuan swain
Paints in the matchless harmony of song
Or catch thyself the landscape, gliding swift
Athwart imagination's vivid eye.

In the Preface to the second edition of Winter, which


appeared in June, 1726, Thomson makes a plea for the
adoption of more elevated subjects for poetry. No subject,
he claims, more elevating or more amusing than Nature,
is

and the best poets, ancient and modern, have been happiest
when at leisure to meditate and sing her works. He in-
stances the book of Job, and then continues, "It was this
devotion to the works of Nature that, in his Georgics, in-
spired the rural Virgil to write so inimitably; and who
can forbear joining with him in this declaration of his,
which has been the rapture of the ages." There follows
the well-known passage from the second Georgic,^ where
the poet longs for the opportunity to study the processes
of Nature, or at least to observe her manifestations. In
this place, Thomson has made a commonplace transla-
tion of these verses, but later, in the closing lines of Autumn,
he has given a fine paraphrase of the passage, which was
evidently a favorite one with him, for it is recognizable
in several other places. The lines in Autumn, coming as
they do at the end of the last-written portion of the Seasons,
1 Georg. 2. 475-486.
THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 183

sum up his doctrine and also serve to emphasize the bond


between him and Vergil:

O Nature! all-sufficient! over all!

Enrich me with the knowledge of thy works!


Snatch me to heaven; thy rolhng wonders there,
World beyond world, in infinite extent.
Profusely scattered o'er the blue immense.
Shew me; their motions, periods and their laws,
Give me to scan ; thro' the disclosing deep
Light my blind way: the mineral Strata there;
Thrust, blooming, thence, the vegetable world;
O'er that the rising system, more complex,
Of animals; and higher still, the mind.
The varied scene of quick-compounded thought.
And where the mixing passions endless shift;
These ever open to my ravish'd eye;
A search, the flight of time can ne'er exhaust!
But if to that unequal; if the blood.
In sluggish streams about my heart, forbid
That best ambition; under closing shades.
Inglorious, lay me by the lowly brook.
And whisper to my dreams.

Thus both by express statement and by implication,


Thomson refers to the authority of Vergil to justify his
choice of subject, and again in Spring he says,

Nor ye who live


In luxury and ease, in pomp and pride.
Think these lost themes unworthy of your ear;
Such themes as these the rural Maro sung
To Rome, in the full height
wide-imperial
Of elegance and taste, by Greece refined.

It would be easy and tiresome to fill many pages with


parallel passages from Vergil and Thomson, some of them
with little justification, the similarity often arising merely
184 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
from the likeness in subject-matter. But there are many-
lines which offer conclusive evidence that Thomson was
writing with his eye on Vergil as well as on the object. In
discussing these, it will be best to consider the four parts of
the poem in the order in which they were written, rather
than in the order in which they are usually printed.
In the form in which we now read Winter, there are more
Vergilian reminiscences than in any other portion of the
Seasons, with the possible exception of the concluding lines
of Autumn. The picture of the ox covered with snow and
of the deer buried in the drifts, the instructions to the
shepherds for the care of their flocks in the cold weather,
the account of the storm at sea, and above all the enumera-
tion of the signs of approaching tempest, owe much to Vergil.
The last two are worth considering in detail. The lines,
Turns from its bottom the discoloured deep,

The black night that sits immense around.

. . . the mountain billows to the clouds


In dreadful tumult swelled,
and
. . . now the inflated wave
Straining they scale, and now impetuous shoot
Into the secret chambers of the deep,

contain all the essential features of the description of the


storm in the first book of the Aeneid. There are to be
found the corresponding lines,

totumque a sedibus imis


una Eurusque Notusque ruunt, (11. 84-85)

. . . ponto nox incubat atra, (1. 89)

. . . fluctusque ad sidera tollit, (1. 103)


THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 185

hi summo in fluctu pendent; his unda dehiscens


terrain inter fluctus aperit, furit aestus harenis,
(II. 106-107)

and again in the account of Scylla and Charybdis,

toUimur in caelum curvato gurgite, et idem


subducta ad manis imos desedimus unda.
(Aen. 3. 564-5)

The most interesting thing about these echoes of Vergil is

that none of them appears in the early editions of Winter.


In the texts of the two 1726 editions, the passage almost is

entirely free from any suggestion of the Latin. In the 1730


edition, most of the Vergilian features are present, and that
of 1744 completes the transformation by changing

The loud night, that bids the wave arise

to
The black night that sits immense around.

The same thing is true of the description of the signs of


approaching storm, which is closely modeled on certain
lines in the first Georgic. The brief passage of six lines in
the 1726 edition is practically without indication of Ver-
gilian influence. In the text of 1730, seven lines are added,
four of which are distinctly Vergilian, and in 1744 the pas-
sage is expanded to thirty-five lines chiefly by the addition
of what are virtually translations of the Latin. Of the fol-
lowing passage, all except the first line, the first part of the
fourth, and a few words in the last two, are new in the 1744
text:
The stars obtuse emit a shivering ray;
Or frequent seem to shoot athwart the gloom,
And long behind them trail the whitening blaze.
Snatch'd in short eddies, plays the wither'd leaf;

And on the flood the dancing feather floats.


186 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
With broadened nostrils to the sky upturned,
The conscious heifer snuffs the stormy gale.
Even as the matron, at her nightly task.
With pensive labour draws the flaxen thread,
The wasted taper and the crackling flame
Foretell the blast. But chief the plumy race,
The tenants of the sky, its changes speak.
. The cormorant on high
. .

Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land.


Loud shrieks the soaring hern; and with wild wing,
The circling sea-fowl cleave the flaky clouds.

The models for this may be found in the following lines from
the first Georgic:

saepe etiam stellas vento impendente videbis


praecipitis caelo labi, noctisque per umbram
flanmiarum longos a tergo albescere tractus;
saepe levem paleam et frondes voUtare caducas,
aut summa nantis in aqua conludere plumas.
(U. 365-9)
. . . bucula caelum
suspiciens patulis captavit naribus auras.
(U. 375-6)
ne nocturna quidem carpentes pensa pueUae
nescivere hiemem, testa cum ardente viderent
scintillare oleum et putris concrescere fungos.
(11. 390-2)
. medio celeres revolant ex aequore mergi
. .

clamoremque ferunt ad litora, cumque marinae


in sicco ludunt fulicae, notasque paludes
deserit atque altam supra volat ardea nubem.
(U.361^)

More lines might be quoted from both poems, but these are
sufficient to show the fidelity with which Thomson followed
Vergil.
THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 187

It is significant that, according to the statement of G. C.


Macaulay, as the indebtedness to Vergil increases, that
to other poets decreases in the successive editions. The
same critic is incUned to credit that increase to the influ-
ence of Lyttelton.2 It is in Winter, too, that Vergil is

placed emphatically first among the shades of the great


poets. In the first edition he is hailed as

Maro! the best of poets and of men,

and in the second as

Maro! the glory of the poet's art,

while in the final form, the praise is softened somewhat but


not lessened

Behold who yonder comes! in sober state.


Fair, mild, and strong, as is a vernal sun:
'Tis Phoebus' self, or else the Mantuan swain!

Summer, which appeared in 1727, has fewer Vergilian


first

reminiscences than Winter. There is a slight echo of that


favorite passage which he had already quoted in the Preface
to the second edition of Winter, in the lines beginning,

Thrice happy he! that on the sunless side


Of a romantic mountain, forest-crowned.
Beneath the whole collected shade reclines,

and it is possible that the closing apostrophe to Philosophy


was suggested by this same passage. In the 1727 and 1730
texts, were some lines describing the starting of a forest
fire, which were modeled upon Vergil, but these are omitted

in the later editions. The long passage, however, contain-


ing the praise of Britain and the enumeration of the great
2 James Thomson. (English Men of Letters ) pp. 145-6.
188 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

names in her history, obviously owes much to a similar


passage in the second Georgic in praise of Italy.^ The
likeness is rather in the general idea and purpose of the
passage than in individual phrases or expressions. Both
begin with a description of the fertility of the soil and the
prosperity of the country, and then pass to an account of
the cities with their active business life, and the harbors
which give evidence of supremacy in commerce. Then
follows an enumeration of the great names in the history of
each country, although Thomson's list includes men of
letters as well as statesmen and warriors. Each poet con-
cludes with an address to his beloved land. As is char-
acteristic of much of the English imitation of Latin, Thomson
is more verbose than Vergil. The name of each hero is the
touch of the rowel which spurs on the English Pegasus for
several lines; whereas the Latin poet leaves the elaboration
to his reader, adding to the proper name at most only a
single epithet. The "weighty brevity" of the classic
writers, which Landor so much admired, was difficult for
the average Englishman to imitate.
There are a number of passages in Spring where Thomson
is following Vergil, among them the descriptions of the
battle of the bulls with the heifer standing by, of the singing
of the birds at the coming of Spring, and of the nightingale
robbed of her young:

Oft when returning with her loaded bill,


The astonished mother finds a vacant nest,
By the hard hand of unrelenting clowns
Robbed, to the ground the vain provision falls;
Her pinions ruffle, and low-drooping scarce
Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade,
Where all abandoned to despair she sings
Her sorrows through the night; and on the bough
» Georg. 2. 136-176.
THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 189

Sole-sitting, still at every dying fall

Takes up again her lamentable strain


Of winding woe, tiU wide around the woods
Sigh to her song, and with her wail resound.

This is an elaboration of Vergil's lines,

qualis populea maerens philomela sub umbra


amissos queritur fetus, quos durus arator
observans nido implumis detraxit; at ilia

flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen


integrat, et maestis late loca questibus implet.
{Georg. 4. 511-515)

The description of the Golden Age is a treatment of a


theme so universal in all literature that it is impossible to
trace it to any one model. When Thomson writes,

But now those white unblemished minutes, whence


The fabling poets took their golden age,
Are found no more amid these iron times,

he may be thinking of Horace and his longing for the arva


heata, of Isaiah and his picture of the reign of the Prince of
Peace, or of any of their numerous imitators. But when
we examine the lines which were in the early editions, but
were not included in those of 1744 and 1746, it is clear
that Vergil is his chief though not his only model. Thomson
departs here from the Georgicsi, which contain merely a
suggestion for the passage, and follows the fourth Eclogue,
many of the lines being close imitations of the Latin:

The knotted oak


Shook from his boughs the long transparent streams
Of honey, creeping through the matted grass.
Th' uncultivated thorn a ruddy shower
Of fruitage shed, on such as sat below. ...
:

190 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS


Nor had the spongy full-expanded fleece
Yet drunk the Tyrian dye. The stately ram
Shone through the mead, in native purple clad,
Or milder saffron; and the dancing lamb
The vivid crimson to the sun disclosed.

These are the very words of Vergil translated into the past
tense, with the usual elaboration

incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva,


et durae quercus sudabunt roscida mella. . . .

nee varios discet mentiri lana colores,


ipse sed in pratis aries iam suave rubenti
murice, iam croceo mutabit vellera luto;
sponte sua sandy x pascentis vestiet agnos.
(Ed. 4. 29-30, 42-45)

It would be interesting to know what caused Thomson to


discard Vergilian echoes here and add them in the later
editions of Winter.
Perhaps the answer is to be found in a passage in Autumn.
Here he follows Vergil's description of the rise of the various
arts as it is given in the first Georgic,* when the Roman
poet, instead of lamenting the advent of agriculture and
commerce as he had in the fourth Eclogue, regards all the
difficulties placed in the way of man as blessings given by
Jove which might enable mortals to climb upward in the
scale of civilization:

pater ipse colendi


haud facilem esse viam voluit, primusque per artem
movit agros curis acuens mortalia corda,
nee torpere gravi passus sua regna vetemo.

Both poets, on maturer thought, seem to have rejected the


image of the idleness and luxury of the Golden Age, and to
* Gearg. I. 118-159.
THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 191

have sung the song of labor. Perhaps Thomson felt the


stories of the Golden Age to be what he called them in the
1728 edition, "gaudy fables," unsuitable for a "Genius fired
with the charms of Truth and of Nature." In this account
of the progress of civilization, he is in accord too with the
theories of modern scientists and of that strangely modern
ancient, Lucretius.
^
Vergil's description of a torrent of rain in the first Georgic
furnished the model for Thomson's harvest storm, as it did
for Swift's City Shower. The simile in the second book of
the Aeneid,^ in which Aeneas compares himself as he stands
upon housetop and watches the flames sweep nearer,
his
to a shepherd gazing from a rock at the onrush of a mountain-
torrent flooding the fields, was the basis of the following
lines:
Fled to some eminence, the husbandman
Helpless beholds the miserable wreck
Driving along; his drowning ox at once
Descending, with his labours scattered round
He sees,

of which the last lines are close to the Vergilian

. . . sternit sata laeta boumque labores.

I have already quoted the closing lines of Autumn, and


shown their relation to a passage in the second Georgic.
But the similarity begins many lines back of this. In the
first place, in order to introduce the lines on Stowe in the

1744 edition, a passage was incorporated which had been


originally in the early editions of Winter, beginning.

Oh! bear me then to vast embowering shades.

About two hundred Unes later, Thomson begins his praise


8 Georg. 1. 311-334. « Aen. 2. 304-308.
192 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
of countrywhich continues throughout the passage
life,

quoted above to the end of the poem. It begins,

Oh knew he but his happiness, of men


The happiest he! who far from pubhc rage
Deep in the vale, with a choice few retir'd,
Drinks the pure pleasure of the rural life.

This again, Golden Age, is a favorite theme with


like the
many poets, but none has given it perhaps such full expres-
sion as Vergil in the lines ^ which serve as a model for those
of Thomson:
fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint,
agricolas! quibus ipsa procul discordibus armis
fundit humo facilem victiun iustissima tellus.

It is not only the similarity in phraseology in these two


passages, of which many examples might be quoted, but the
general harmony and feeling between them which
of thought
marks the influence of Vergil upon Thomson. There are
many other things which show the kinship of the two poets,
as their common dehght in sounding names, the frequent
allusions to Vergil in Thomson's letters and in his other
poems, and the emotion which his reading of the Latin
aroused in him. But nothing marks it so definitely as this
passage, which reveals their common "devotion to the
works of Nature," which Thomson recognized as the inspira-
tion of the Georgics, and their common belief in a Deity who

pervades
Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.*

As is evident from the passages quoted above, Thomson


shows in his relation to Vergil the sympathy of one great
poet of nature for another, and manifests his influence
^ Georg. 2. 458 fif. » Of. Georg. 4. 219-227 and Aen. 6. 724-7.
THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 193

in single passages and general tone, rather than in the


scheme or purpose of his work. Thomson's followers,
however, seized upon the didactic element of his poem,
and taking the hint partly from him and partly from Vergil
himself, they developed that side of Thomson's work through
all the extremes of tediousness and absurdity. James
Grainger, the author of the Sugar Cane, "a West India
Georgic" in four books, the favorite number, since it had
been chosen by both Vergil and Thomson, calls the roll of
the chief didactic poets:
Spirit of Inspiration, that didst lead
Th' Ascraean poet to the sacred mount,
And taught 'st him all the precepts of the swain;
Descend from Heaven, and guide my trembling steps
To Fame's eternal dome, where Maro reigns;
Where pastoral Dyer,' where Pomona's bard.
And Smart ^° and Somervile " in varying strains,
Their sylvan lore convey.

To this list, however, we must add the names of John Arm-


strong, who wrote on
the Art of Preserving Health, and of
William Thompson, whose subject was Sickness; of David
Mallet, whose Fancy took flight over the whole world in
his Excursion, and of Mark Akenside, the commemorator
of the Pleasures of Imagination; of Thomas Tickell, who
wrote a fragment of a poem on Hunting, of Robert Dodsley,
the author of a poem called Agriculture, of Matthew Green,
whose subject was the Spleen, of Soame Jenyns, who gave
instructions in verse on the Art of Dancing, and finally of
William Mason, in whose English Garden, one of the best
of the descendants of the Seasons, didactic poetry, accord-
ing to Warton, "is brought to perfection, by the happy com-
'Dyer wrote The Fleece.
'°Christopher Smart wrote The Hop-Garden.
" Somerville's poem was The Chase.
194 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
bination of judicious precepts, with the most elegant orna-
ments of language and poetry." Nor must we forget Eras-
mus Darwin's Botanic Garden, the second part of which, the
Loves of the Plants, moved the editors of the Anti-Jacobin to
unholy mirth and clever parody in the Loves of the Triangles.
Many of these well-intentioned poets thought that they
were supplying a deficiency in the works of Vergil.
Somerville, for instance, remarks that the subject of the
Chase might well have been treated in the third Georgic,
but that Vergil devotes only ten verses to it, and confines
his discussion of dogs to greyhounds and mastiffs. And
by the time we have worked our way through these weari-
some wastes, we are ready to apply Mason's query to the
whole school, and to sympathize with him when he says,

Yet, while I thus exult, my weak tongue feels


Its ineffectual powers, and seeks in vain
That force of ancient phrase which, speaking, paints.
And is the thing it sings. Ah Virgil! why.
By thee neglected,^^ was this loveliest theme
Left to the grating voice of modern reed?
Why not array it with the splendid robe
Of thy rich diction, and consign the charge
To Fame, thy hand-maid, whose immortal plume
Had borne its praise beyond the bounds of Time?

Cowper in The Task shows to some extent the influence


of Thomson and his followers. He is continuing the com-
bination of didactic and rural poetry which appears even
in Wordsworth, although both poets are more concerned
with drawing moral and religious lessons from Nature than
with giving practical directions to the rustic. This is
especially true of the author of the Prelude. In The Garden
Cowper gives in true Vergilian fashion instructions for the
>2 See Georg. 4. 147-8.
THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 195

growth of "no sordid fare, a cucumber," for which the


gardener must build a hotbed.

First he bids spread


Dry fern or litter'd hay, that may imbibe
The ascending damps, then leisurely impose,
And lightly, shaking it with agile hand
From the full fork, the saturated straw.

Another passage tells of the care necessary for flowers in a


greenhouse

The soil must be renew'd, which, often wash'd,


Loses its treasure of salubrious salts,
And disappoints the roots: the slender roots
Close interwoven where they meet the vase
Must smooth be shorn away; the sapless branch
Must fly before the knife; the wither'd leaf
Must be detach'd, and, where it strews the floor,
Swept with a woman's neatness, breeding else
Contagion, and disseminating death.

Lines like these have the true didactic sound, and may well
have been written under the influence of either Vergil or
Thomson. That the Georgics were not far from Cowper's
mind as he wrote the Task is evident from the comparison
drawn from the fourth Georgic to aid in describing the Rus-
sian palace of ice:

In such a palace Aristaeus found


Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale
Of his lost Bees to her maternal ear.

And Vergil's famihar lines,

O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint,


agricolas! quibus ipsa procul discordibus armis
fundit humo faeilem victum iustissima tellus,
iOeorg. 2. 458-60)
196 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

may have found an echo in Cowper's wish:

O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,


Some bomidless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more.
CHAPTER IX
LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS
TteE study of Latin has until recent years kept the noise-
less tenor of its way, for the most part unshaken by the
various changes in educational theory or literary practice.
Throughout the centuries it has remained steadily the
basis of culture in England, and until recently its value
and necessity have not been questioned. But at certain
times, notably in the first and
half of the sixteenth century
in the Romantic Period, there has been a sudden growth of
an interest in Greek literature which for the time has thrown
Latin into the background. But even then, although it
has not led the spectacular life of its elder sister, it has
quietly held its own, and, like Cinderella, done the daily
chores that the more brilliant sister might go out into society.
And there was always the possibility of a visit from the
Fairy Godmother, by means of whose enchantments the
beauty of the drudge might be shown to the world.
Such a period of comparative neglect of Latin was ushered
in with the Romantic Movement in England. About the
middle of the eighteenth century, at the beginning of the
revolt against rules and formalism and imitative poetry,
the spontaneous graces of the Greeks won more admirers
than the regular art of the Romans. Cowper's favorite
poet was Homer and not Vergil, and Wilkie followed the
Greek model in his Epigoniad, and attacked Vergil on
the ground of plagiarism. In his Dream he says to Homer,
Let Titynis himself produce his store,
Take what is thine, but little will remain:
Little I wot,and that indebted sore
To Ascra's bard, and Arethusa's swain;
And others too beside, who lent him many a strain.
197
198 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

This attack by Wilkie, however, is extreme. For the


most part, writers merely ignored the Latin poet in favor
of the Greek. Gray and his friend Mason, CoUins and Cow-
per, Coleridge ^ with his training under the Reverend James
Bowyer, all showed their preferences for the earlier litera-
ture. The later Romanticists also preferred the Greek,
and their interest in Hellenic Hterature and art was fostered
by their intense enthusiasm for the brave struggle that the
modern Greeks were making for liberty and independence.
These facts explain the scarcity of references to Vergil or
imitations of his poems in the work of men like Byron and
Shelley.^ All these poets knew Vergil, but he did not find
a prominent place in their poetry.
Many years before the Lyrical Ballads appeared, the
formal classical epic had gone out of fashion, and men had
gradually ceased to care for the polished brilliancy of the
mock-heroic. They were beginning to think with Field-
ing that nothing could be more absurd than the invoca-
tion of a muse by a modern. The time had gone by,
too, for sober didactic poems, with elaborate digressions
on the beauties of Nature expressed in stilted and laborious
blank verse, even though the Seasons retained its popularity
well into the middle of the century. The Loves of the Tri-
angles was an ad absurdum for the average
effective reductio
examples of this type of versifying. There was of course
no sudden or final revolt against the mock-epic of Pope or
the didactic poem of Thomson. The Rape of the Lock was
See his Biographia Ldieraria (Everyman's Library), p. 3. Coleridge
^

once said, "If you take from Virgil his dictioil and meter, what do
you leave him?" Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Cole-
ridge, edited by H. N. C., p. 30.
* See Prometheus Unbound, II. 2. 90 S., where there is a reference
to Vergil's sixth Eclogue, and Hellas, 11. 1060 S., with an echo, ad-
mitted by Shelley, of the Pollio. Also see Keats, Ode to Apollo, stanza
3. Shelley translated part of the tenth Eclogue.
LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 199

still admired, and the Dunciad furnished Byron with a


model Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
for his English Rogers'
didactic poem, The Pleasures of Memory, appeared in the last
decade of the eighteenth century. But in general the
movement of the Romanticists was away from the formal
and the imitative. The new nature poets had no use
for the artificial pastoral, and objected as much to
the meaningless generalities of the diction of Pope and
his contemporaries as to their transplanted nymphs and
shepherds. Some of the earlier Romanticists endeavored
to make Vergil argue on their side of the question, and
plead for a true love of nature. Joseph Warton, for instance,
in his Enthusiast, writes,

And great Aeneas gazed with more delight


On the rough mountains shagged with horrid shades, . . .

Than if he enter'd the high Capitol


On golden columns rear'd, a conquered world
Exhausted, to enrich its stately head.
More pleased he slept in poor Evander's cot.
On shaggy skins, luU'd by sweet nightingales.
Than if a Nero, in an age refined.
Beneath a gorgeous canopy had plac'd
His royal guest.

But on the whole, the attitude was that of Crabbe, the


realist, who rebelled against the classical pastoral in these
words:
On Mincio's bank, in Caesar's bounteous reign.
If Tityrus found the Golden Age again.
Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong,
Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song?
From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray,
Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way? '

» The Village, published in 1783.


200 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

In view of these facts, it is obvious that if we are to find


Vergilian influence at this time when the individual was
so important, it will be, not in any school, like the pastoral
or the didactic but in individual writers, whose
poets,
inevitable early training in the classics has left with them
a memory of Vergil which other interests cannot efface,
and which is too precious to abandon. It will be in a Beattie,
who writes,

Fain would I sing (much yet unsung remains)


What sweet delirium o'er his bosom stole.
When the great shepherd of the Mantuan plains
His deep majestic melody 'gan roll.

It will be in a single poem like Laodamia, which Words-


worth wrote after re-reading Vergil with his son. It will
be in a Cowper, who, in spite of the fact that he liked the
Homeric epics better than the Aeneid, was
never weary of the pipe
Of Tityrus, assembUng as he sang,
The rustic throng beneath his fav'rite beech.

And most of all it will be in a Landor, the greatest classicist


of the periodamong the men of letters, as Swinburne called
him, "a child of Rome."
Landor's pleasure in the classics never flagged;
he read
and studied them throughout his life from his schooldays
to the last years in Italy, when he found a relief from his
troubles in teaching Latin to Miss Kate Field, his young
American friend. The first direct evidence of his interest
in Vergil is to be found in a translation of a portion of the
fourth Georgic which he made in 1794. In spite of its

high literary quality, he never published it, but the first

twenty lines are printed in the biography by Forster,* who


* Life and Works of Walter Savage Landor, vol. I, p. 24.
LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 201

found the translation among Landor's papers. And the


constant references to Vergil in his letters, the frequent quo-
tations from his writings, and the large amount of criticism
of him contained in the Imaginary Conversations and in the
critical essays on Theocritus and Catullus, are sure proofs
of his knowledge of and interest in the greatest of the Latin
poets.
Landor was interested in the great writers of the past
not merely as authors. He must call them all up before
him, and make them talk again in an idiom as nearly their
own as possible. But in his re-creation of the personality
of Vergil, he has not proved himself equal to the subject,
unless it is true that he was consciously representing Vergil's
shyness by painting him in the most neutral colors. It
would not be remarkable, however, if he had failed to attain
to full sympathy with a man of Vergil's nature. A char-
acter whose outstanding qualities were modesty and hatred
of strife, could hardly be thoroughly understood by a man
whose chief delight was in stirring up feuds with his neigh-
bors and cultivating the feeling of being abused. In any
case, we have in the dialogue between Virgilius and Horatius
a colorless representation of the former, in whom there are
no evidences of a genius great enough to write the Aeneid.
Horace is far more strongly individualized, and it is through
his words chiefly that we obtain whatever impression we
get of his companion. Some facts we do glean from Vergil's
words as to his indebtedness to antiquity and his unwilling-
ness to disturb the religious faith of the people, but these seem
rather forced references to his work, and throw little light
on his personality. A slight feeling of contempt for the
gentle, retiring disposition of the poet tinges the words
which Landor puts into the mouth of Porson, with a strange
forgetfulness of the third ode of the first book of Horace.
"The ancients," he said, "used to give the sea the color
202 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

they saw in it, . .Virgil blue-green, as along the coast of


.

Naples and Sorrento: I suspect, from his character, he


never went a league off land. He kept usually, both in
person and poetry, to the vada caerulea.'" To be absolutely
fair, however, the reply of Southey must be added: "But

he hoisted purple sails, and the mother of his Aeneas was


at the helm."
Vergil was by no means Landor's favorite poet, even
among the Romans. Ovid, in his opinion, had the finest
imagination of all the ancient Romans, and was more like
Homer than Vergil was. Vergil was inferior to Euripides
in poetical power, to Lucretius in vigor, to Catullus in ele-
gance and grace. He concedes that all their powers to-
gether could not have composed the Aeneid, a poem which
shortly before he has called the "most mis-shapen of epics."
In fact, almost every word of praise is accompanied by a
qualifying "but." At the beginning of the Imaginary
Conversations, Landor cautions the reader against credit-
ing to him any of the opinions which he puts into the mouths
of his characters. But when the same estimate is repeated
over and over again in different dialogues, the reader begins
to think that the personal feeling of the author had some-
thing to do with its formulation. Therefore when we read
that Messala considered the description of Winter in the
third Georgia^ "unworthy of even a secondary poet,"
with "no selection of topics, no arrangement, no continuity,"
and that Petrarch said that "of all who have ever dealt with
Winter, he is the most frost-bitten," and that in Porson's
opinion, "incomparably better is Cowper's Winter than Vir-
gil's, which is indeed a disgrace to the Georgics," and that

this passage is one of those severely criticized by Home


Tooke, the conclusion is inevitable that Landor himself
thought that these lines were poor work. We may there-
's
LI. 349-383.
LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 203

fore fairly take the words which the speakers in his dialogues
utter in regard to Vergil as indicative of Landor's own
ideas.
Certainly the general impression gained from the first

reading of his criticisms of Vergil is that Landor was not


very favorably disposed toward him. The destructive criti-
cisms far outnumber the constructive. But upon closer
examination of the facts, it becomes clear that this numerical
superiority is might seem at first sight.
not as significant as it

For, as in the case of the remarks on the description of


Winter, Landor is prone to dwell upon certain points. Thus
he expresses his low opinion of the fourth Eclogue many
times. It lacks harmony, says Messala; it is a mass of
incoherent verses, says Calvus, another contemporary; and
men of later periods speak of it as the dullest and poorest
poem which Italy has produced, and as a sin for which
the author needs to be forgiven. Similarly he records
again and again his sense of the unfitness of the episode of
Eurydice in the Georgics, and of the bathos, the affectation,
the inflated language of which Vergil is guilty. In the
second place, it is evident that these criticisms are almost
entirely on small points. Such and such lines are bad,
here is an instance of tautology, of hypallage, of unpleasant
repetition of sounds, of anachronism. With an array of
examples to prove their validity, which seems formidable un-
til we realize that here again Landor is repeating, and

making the same lines do double and even treble duty,


statements like these are repeated with annoying insistence,
till we are ready to cry out with Boccaccio, ''You really
have almost put me out of conceit with Virgil."
But here Landor would undoubtedly answer with Pe-
trarch, "I have done a great wrong then both to him and
you. Admiration," he continues, "is not the pursuivant to
all the steps even of an admirable poet; but respect is
204 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
stationary. Attend him when the ploughman is unyoking
the sorrowful ox from his companion dead at the furrow;
follow him up the arduous ascent where he springs beyond
the strides of Lucretius; and close the procession of his
glory with the coursers and cars of Elis." Indeed in more
general terms, Landor is perfectly ready to praise the state-
liness, the gravity (in the true Latin sense), the harmony,
rhythm, and boundless variety of Vergil's versification,
which "nothing in Latin excels." Although he believes
that Vergil's pastorals are almost as inferior to those of
Theocritus as Pope's are to his, yet he says, " Even in these
there not only are melodious verses, but harmonious sen-
tences, appropriate images, and tender thoughts. Once
or twice we find beauties beyond any in Theocritus." Even
the Georgics, which receive the lion's share of criticism, are
"admirable" and contain passages better than any in
Catullus, especially that touch of nature in the lines,

it tristis arator
maerentem abiungens fraterna morte iuvencum.
{Georg. 3. 517-8)

While Landor speaks frequently of the faults in con-


struction which mar the Aeneid, he awards to it more praise
than blame, and is evidently especially impressed by the
power of the fourth book. The characters do not always
please him. He compares the heroes of the Aeneid to the
half-extinct frescoes of Raphael, but attributes the indis-
tinctness, not to the ravages of time, but to the deficiency
in the genius of the artist. "No man," he says (this time
in his own person), "ever formed in his mind an idea
of Dido, or perhaps ever wished to form it; particularly on
finding her memory so extensive and her years so mature,
that she could recollect the arrival of Teucer at Sidon."
But later in the same conversation with Abb6 Delille, he
LAND OR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 205

says that the passion of Dido always true to nature;


is

and in the course of his criticism of Catullus, he gives expres-


sion in the strongest terms to his admiration of this episode
in the "mis-shapen epic," which shows that Landor was not
always captious in his criticism, but could express most
generously his appreciation of what he really believed was
a fine passage. He was thoroughly honest in his opinions,
without a doubt his error lies in lack of proportion. Neither
;

in Catullus, Lucretius, nor Homer, he says, "is there any-


thing so impassioned, and therefore so subhme as the last
hours of Dido in the Aeneid. Admirably as two Greek
poets have represented the tenderness, the anguish, the
wrath and vengeance of Medea, all the works they
terrific

ever wrote contain not the poetry which Virgil has con-
densed into about one hundred verses: omitting, as we
must, those which drop like icicles from the rigid lips of
Aeneas; and also the similes which, here as everywhere,
sadly interfere with passion. In this place Virgil fought
his battle of Actium, which left him poetical supremacy in
the Roman world, whatever mutinies and conspiracies
may have arisen against him in Germany or elsewhere. . . .

Virgil is by the arrogance of self-sufficient poets,


depreciated
nurtured on coarse fare, and dizzy with home-brewed flattery.
Others who have studied more attentively the ancient
models, are abler to show his relative station, and readier to
venerate his powers. Although we find him incapable of
contriving, and more incapable of executing, so magnificent
a work as the Iliad, yet there are places in his compared
with which the grandest in that grand poem lose much of
their elevation. Never was there such a whirlwind of pas-
sions as Virgil raised on those African shores, amid those
rising citadels and departing sails. When the vigorous
verses of Lucretius are extolled, no true poet, no sane critic,
will assent that the seven or eight examples of the best
206 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

are equivalent to this one: even in force of expression, here


he falls short of Virgil."
But while Landor clearly knows the poetry of Vergil
thoroughly, and is able both to appreciate its beauties and
to pick out he wastes his critical energies upon
its faults,

such futile comparisons as that just quoted, and he misses


entirely the deeper significance of the poems. He regards
all three, Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, as pieces of literary
workmanship, and criticizes them as such. Inconsistencies
and anachronisms Aeneid call for his disapproval,
in the
— in the Aeneid, a poem admittedly left incomplete, upon
the perfecting of which Vergil intended to spend three more
years, and which, according to the legend, he asked to have
destroyed after his death. bestowed upon
His approval is

a single line, which he calls "the noblest verse in the Latin


language," or upon the episode of Dido's death, or the words
of Mezentius to his horse, or the description of a summer
storm. But no word of the Eclogues as the first
there is

evidence of a new tradition in Latin poetry, or of the Aeneid


as a great national poem. He does not seem to have had
even the realization that Dante had of the universal signi-
ficance of the great Roman epic. He is more like the mediae-
val rhetoricians and grammarians, with their tendency to
pick out individual passages for consideration. Unhke
them, however, he no blind reverence
feels for everything
that Vergil wrote, but blames as well as praises, and is

ready to give a reason for the faith that is in him. It

is the Romantic method of individual appreciation in


criticism. The reign of Aristotle and the "rules" is

over.
But in order to realize what that was that Landor missed,
compare with this summary of his opinions, the following
words of a critic of the last decade of the nineteenth cen-
tury. In his Latin Literature, J. W. Mackail speaks of the
LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 207

Eclogues as follows: "Their true significance seems to have


been at once realized as marking the beginning of a new era;
and amid the storm of criticism, laudatory and adverse,
which has raged around them for so many ages since, this
cardinal fact has always remained prominent. Alike to the
humanists or the earlier Renaissance, who found in them
the sunrise of a golden age of poetry and the achievement
of the Latin conquest over Greece, and to the more recent
critics of this century, for whom they represented the echo
of an already exhausted convention and the beginning of the
decadence of Roman poetry, the Eclogues have been the real
turning-point, not only between two periods of Latin Litera-
ture, but between two worlds." ^ This ability to see the real
significance of these poems is not joined with any blindness
to their faults, for this passage is followed by one in which
their weaknesses are pointed out with an unerring hand.
Again, in comparing the following words, which sum up
the fundamental qualities of the Aeneid, with Landor's
estimate of the same poem, consider how much the latter
has left unsaid. "The earlier national epics of Naevius
and Ennius had originated the idea of making Rome
. . .

itself. . the central interest, one might almost say the


.

central figure, of the story. To adapt the Homeric methods


to this new purpose, and at the same time to make his epic
the vehicle for all his inward broodings over life and fate,
for his subtle and delicate psychology, and for that philo-
sophic passion in which all the other motives and springs
of Ufe were becoming included, was a task incapable of
^
perfect solution."
The direct influence of Vergil upon Landor is noticeable
chiefly in Gebir. His style, both in poetry and prose, shows
a marked Latin influence, but there is little possibiUty of

6 P. 93. ' Pp. 96-97.


208 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

tracing this directly to Vergil. Such participial construc-


tions as occur in the lines,

Lamented they their toil each night o'erthrown,


or
Him overcome, her serious voice bespake,

are proofs of the effect upon him of long familiarity with


Latin idiom, but not necessarily Vergilian idiom.
But Gehir plainly shows Vergilian influence in the narra-
tive itself. This poem is not classical in theme, but is, like
Southey's narrative poems, an epic on a "romantic theme
with classical or at least unromantic handling." But even
the romantic theme is indebted in some degree to the Aeneid.
The poem begins in the orthodox epic fashion,

I sing the fates of Gebir.

In the later Latin version, the firstwords are "Fata cano."


The first thirty-four lines of the second book describe the
building of the city, and instantly recall the description of
the building of Carthage as Aeneas and Achates saw it

from the which overhung the town.^ It is impos-


hill

sible to believe that Landor did not have in mind the lines
of the Latin poet at the time he was writing these. The
Gadites are hard at work preparing a place for their city:

Some raise the painted pavement, some on wheels


Draw slow its luminous length, some intersperse
Salt water through the sordid heaps, and seize
The flowers and figures starting fresh to view;
Others rub hard large masses, and essay
To polish into white what they misdeem
The growing green of many trackless years.

• Cf Milton's description
. of the building of Pandemonium, Par. Lost,
Book I. U. 670-730.
LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 209

Far off at intervals the axe resounds


With regular strong stroke, and nearer home
Dull falls the mallet with long labour fringed.
Here arches are discover'd; there huge beams
Resist the hatchet, but in fresher air
Soon drop away : there spreads a marble squared
And smoothen'd; some high pillar for its base
Chose it, which now lies ruin'd in the dust.

While the actual deeds performed are not identical, yet,


in view of the spirit of the passage and the use of detaU in
the description, Vergil's account of the building of Carthage
unquestionably furnished a model for the lines quoted
above
instant ardentes Tyrii : pars ducere muros
molirique arcem et manibus subvolvere saxa,
pars optare locum tecto et concludere sulco;
iura magistratusque legunt sanctumque senatum.
hie portus alii effodiunt; hie alta theatris
fundamenta locant alii, immanisque columnas
rupibus excidunt, scaenis decora alta futuris.
quaUsapes-
(^ en. 1. 423-430)

and here follows the typical Vergilian simile which Landor


does not make use of.

The book of Gehir is undoubtedly a reminiscence of


third
the sixth book of the Aeneid. Gebir, conducted by Aroar,
as Aeneas by the Sibyl, descends to the Underworld, where
he sees the shades of his ancestors enduring punishment.
As in Vergil, there is a description of the "happy fields."
As Aeneas meets his father, so does Gebir, though the
parent of the latter is not in Elysium.
In the sixth book there are two passages in which Landor
must have had Vergil in mind. The first is where the
nymph promises to tell Tamar
210 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
What makes, when Winter comes, the Sun to rest
So soon on Ocean's bed his paler brow.
And night to tarry so at Spring's return.

These are almost the identical words of the bard lopas,


who sang at the banquet which Dido gave in honor of her
Trojan guest. He told

quid tantum oceano properent se tingere soles


hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
{Aen. 1. 745-6)

Again the description of Aetna is very much like that in


the third book of the Aeneid. The two entire passages
should be compared, but the following lines from each will
serve for the purposes of illustration.

And now Sicanian Aetna rose to view:


Darkness with lightmore horrid she confounds.
Baffles the breath and dims the hght of day.

He heard the roar above him, heard the roar


Beneath, and felt it too, as he beheld,
Hurl, from Earth's base, rocks, mountains to the skies.

These are Landor's lines. Vergil's are as follows:

sed horrificis iuxta tonat Aetna minis.

interdum scopulos avulsaque viscera montis


erigit eructans, hquefactaque saxa sub auras
cum gemitu glomerat fundoque exaestuat imo.

intremere omnem
murmiu'e Trinacriam.
(Aen. 3. 571, 575-7, 581-2)
LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 211

Landor's Latin verse is quite Landorian. Anyone who


reads the Latin version of Gehir, for instance, and an equal
number of hues in the Aeneid, consecutively, will be struck
at once with the difference in the rhythm of the hexameters.
Needless to say, the Roman "wielder of the stateliest meas-
ure" has the advantage in smoothness and polish. Yet
here in the midst of un-Vergilian measures are many Ver-
gilian phrases and cadences. It was almost inevitable
for one who knew his Vergil well, and who wanted to speak
in Latin hexameter verse of a wounded breast, to use the
words sub pectore vulnus, for it is a favorite verse ending
of Vergil's, occurring at least four times in the Aeneid.
The familiar steteruntque comae is echoed by Landor, with the
same shortening of the e,and fit strepitus, en age rumpe
moras, and parce tuo generi are well-known Vergilian expres-
sions. A careful study of the seven books of Gebirus has
revealed over a dozen verse-tags, and nearly as many phrases
at the beginning of lines, which recall Vergil, beside many
other word-combinations in other places in the verse, and
some echoes that cannot be identified exactly. The pro-
portion is about the same in his other hexameter verse.
Landor's wish that Vergil in particular might be followed
by the younger poets, and the following words of Petrarch
in the Pentameron, sum up Landor's practice and theory in
regard to the poems of Vergil " If younger men were present,"
:

said Petrarch, "I would admonish and exhort them to


abate no more of their reverence for the Roman poet on
the demonstration of his imperfections, than of their love
for a parent or guardian who had walked with them far
into the country, and had shown them its many beauties
and blessings, on his lassitude or his debility. Never will
such men receive too much homage. He who can best
discover their blemishes, will best appreciate their merit,
and most zealously guard their honor."
CHAPTER X
TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS
Although Landor was really a Romanticist, he lived
to see the great poets of the Victorian era. The continua-
tion of the life of this enthusiastic lover of the classics, is

in a sense typical of the continuity of the classical tradi-


tion throughout the nineteenth century. For there was no
decided break between the Romantic Period and the Vic-
torian Period, although there was a certain growth toward
a more complete and scholarly understanding and apprecia-
tion of Greek and Latin. It was still a question of indi-
vidual judgment, but it was the judgment of the individual
trained in a scholarly method of historical criticism. Edu^
cation was no longer the privilege of a small circle, but
was rapidly becoming the right of all men, and the reading
public was growing apace. It is an indication of the wide-
spread interest in the classics, that translations of the master-
pieces of Greek and Latin were issued in cheap
literature
form, evidently intended to meet the needs and desires of
those whose curiosity about them was great, but whose
scholarship was not equal to reading them in the original.
With the growing complexity of the life of the nineteenth
century, however, and the multiplication of interests, es-
pecially in view of the industrial changes that were taking
place with such bewildering rapidity and all the altera-
tions in the modes of and thought that these involved,
life

the classics were in a measure elbowed out of much of the


literature of the period. Some writers, like Matthew Arnold,
took refuge in the past, and tried to find in the classics or
212
TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 213

in the literature of the Middle Ages a protection from


the assaults of modern materialism. Others dealt frankly
with the new problems, and ignored the old subjects for
poetry. Still others, as Shelley had done already, used

the classics and stories derived from them for the purpose
of discussing the modern questions inan indirect manner.
But the knowledge of the classics runs like an undertone
through almost all of the hterature of the time, expressed
or unexpressed. The day of merely formal imitation for
the form's sake is gone; the day of sympathetic and for
the most part scholarly interpretation and use of the classics
for all the various purposes which an author of the many-
sided Victorian Period set before him, has come.
The popularity of Greek continued, and the word classi-
cism, used in connection with the latter half of the
nineteenth century, immediately suggests the thought of
Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon, of Arnold's Merope, of
Tennyson's Ulysses, and of Browning's Aristophanes^ Apology.
Vergil no longer retained his place as the best of poets;
his work was no longer the chief literary influence on the
poetry of the time. And yet he was generally known and
loved, loved greatly by many men, and perhaps more wisely
than ever before. Poets and critics had ceased to assert
that the Aeneid was greater than the Iliad and the Eclogues
finer than the Idylls of Theocritus. At the same time
they were beginning to apply a more historical method of
criticismand to lay by the severe attacks upon Vergil's
poetry for its artificiality. They were coming to see that
comparisons of Vergil to Homer or Theocritus or Lucretius
or Ovid were futile and worse than futile, for they blinded
the critic to the fact that all these poets were distinguished
important in its way, and that
for different qualities, each
there was no real or useful comparison to be made between
them. Vergil was admired for what he was rather than
214 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
criticized for what he might have been. They might con-
tinue to prefer to read one writer rather than another, and
in general the Victorians preferred the Greeks, but the
days of hterary dictatorship, when one man or one group
of men said, "This poet only shall be admired and imitated,"
were gone, it is to be hoped never to return. Vergil was
now standing on his own feet, judged by his own merits,
not according to "rules" nor yet according to the capricious
hkes or dislikes of a Romantic opponent of "the artificial."
After standing so long in the blaze of two fires, kindled by
the zeal of the pseudo-classicists and of those who repre-
sented the other extreme of hcense in poetry as a reaction
against their dictates, he was at last free to bask in the
warmth of a tolerant and sympathetic criticism, which took
his work much as a matter of course, with never a thought
of discarding him from the equipment necessary for a basis
for the culture of every well-educated man. The classics
still formed the main part of the school training of the

majority of boys.
A knowledge of his work was necessary above all for any
man who intended to lead a public life in the nineteenth
century. Latin quotations rolled from the tongues of
Parliamentary orators with as much ease as English verses,
and it was understood that their auditors comprehended
what was said in that ancient tongue with equal facility.
In the words of a modern critic speaking of Vergil,^ "No
Englishman should be indifferent to a writer who has been
quoted by Englishmen in every crisis of modern
illustrious
history, by Walpole and Pulteney, by Carteret and Chatham,
by Fox and Pitt, by Gladstone and Lowe, by the most emi
nent statesmen in

Herbert Paul, Men and Letters: The Classical Poems of Tennyson,


1

and The Decay of Classical Quotation.


TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 215

the northern island,


Sundered once from all the human race,
Toto divisos orbe Brilannos."

And in another essay he says, "In 1866 Mr. Gladstone and


Mr. Lowe, both as good scholars as Peel, almost exhausted
the second book of the Aeneid, and left the Trojan horse
without a leg to stand on. Vergil was treated as if he had
been a living writer of dispatches, instead of a poet whose
language was no longer spoken, and who had been dead
nearly nineteen hundred years."
While any detailed consideration of Victorian prose is
outside the scope of this book, it is significant of the
widespread knowledge of Vergil that there is scarcely a
prose writer of the period who does not quote him or allude
to him at some time. Dickens, whose books, according to
his biographer, contain not one allusion to the classics, is
the exception among novelists, for George Eliot quotes
Vergil, and Thackeray's stories are full of allusions and
references and citations. Andrew Lang, whose name in
connection with the classics will always be associated with
Homer, says that he does not like much of Vergil's poetry .^
"Yet," he continues, "must Virgil always appear to us
one of the most beautiful and moving figures in the whole
of literature. How sweet must have been that personality
which can still win our affections, across eighteen hundred
years of change, and through the mists of commentaries,
and school-books, and traditions!" He charges his poetry
with the old romantic condemnation of "imitative." But
he especially admires the Georgics, "when the poet is car-
ried away into naturalness by the passion for his native land,
by the longing for peace after cruel wars, by the joy of a
country life." He translates the passage in the second
'^
Letters on Literature; On Virgil.
216 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

Georgia in which Vergil expresses his longing for a quiet con-


templative life, from public cares, and adds, "It is in
free
passages of this temper that Virgil wins us most, when he
speaks for himself and for his age, so distant, and so weary,
and so modern; when his own thought, unborrowed and
unforced, is wedded to the music of his own unsurpassable
style." He says the Aeneid is "a beautiful empty world,
where no real life stirs, a world that shines with a silver
lustre not its own, but borrowed from 'the sun of Greece.'"
The poet is himself only here and there, in the Dido episode,
and in passages of reflection and description, "as in the
beautiful sixth book."
It did not need the phenomenal memory of Macaulay
in those days to bear enough of Vergil's hexameters in mind
to use them on occasion, although it must be admitted that
probably few men would have undertaken, as Macaulay
did, to amuse themselves as they walked home from the
House of Commons at two o'clock in the morning, by trans-
lating Vergil. Macaulay manifested his familiarity with
the Aeneid also in his amusing Prophetic Account of a Grand
National Epic Poem, to be entitled "The Wellingtoniad,'^ and
to be published A.D. 282^, many of the incidents of which
are burlesques of the narrative of Vergil's poem.
These are two phases of the appeal of Vergil to individuals
in the Victorian period, and Matthew Arnold represents still
another. He sums up his own feeling toward him in his
Essay on Joubert, in connection with a remark of Joubert's
that coupled the names of Vergil and Racine. "And indeed
there is something supreme in an elegance which exercises
such a fascination as Virgil's does; which makes one return
to his poems again and again, long after one thinks one
has done with them; which makes them one of those books
that, to use Joubert's words, 'lure the reader back to them,
as the proverb says good wine lures back the wine-bibber.'
TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 217

And the highest praise Joubert can at last find for Racine
is this, that he is the Virgil of the ignorant."
Arnold's prose gives ample evidence of his acquaintance
with Vergil in reference and allusion, but the Latin poet
has left little impress upon his poetry. Sohrab and Rustum
is modeled on Homer rather than Vergil, and is to be com-
pared with the Aeneid only in things like epic similes, which
are common to both the classic poets. Except for the
manuscript and translation of Vergil, William Morris gives
no indication of Vergilian influence, all his classical material
coming to him by way of the Greek, and the Rossettis are
far from Vergilian. Swinburne's tastes are almost exclu-
sively Greek. Clough's Vacation Pastoral has lines from the
Eclogues for its mottoes, and the last verse of the tenth
Bucolic of Vergil serves as the title of one of his poems, and
similar conditions may be found in the work of many a
Victorian poet. Thus the poetry of the period in general
shows no marked Vergilian influence, although the knowl-
edge of his work is implicit in nearly all of it.
Robert Browning is a rather interesting exception. His
wife's classical bent was almost entirely Greek. In her
Vision of the Poets, she speaks thus of Vergil, the only ex-
tended mention of him in her poems:

And Virgil; shade of Mantuan beech


Did help the shade of bay to reach

And knit around his forehead high;


For his gods wore less majesty
Than his brown bees hummed deathlessly.

The lawyers in the Ring and the Book quote Vergil fre-
quently, and in two definite ways Browning shows Vergilian
influence. His only direct use of the Latin poet is in his
poem, Pan and Luna, which is an elaboration of three lines
218 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

in the third Georgic,^ "sk bold rerendering of the myth that


Vergil enshrines," as Stopford Brooke calls it. But more
interesting than this is an anecdote told by Joaquin Miller,
which illustrates the fact that for many nineteenth century
critics, it was the meter and seemed his
style of Vergil that
chief call to fame. Not many would go as far as Coleridge
and assert that there was nothing else of value in his verse,
but many agree that the molding of a perfect meter and
the use of a nearly faultless diction are his greatest achieve-
ments. Joaquin Miller tells that he was invited by the
Archbishop of Dublin to meet Browning and some other
friends. ''Two of the Archbishop's beautiful daughters
had been riding in the park with the Earl of Aberdeen.
'
And did you gallop? asked Browning of the younger beauty.
'

'I galloped, Joyce galloped, we galloped all three.' Then


we all laughed at the happy and hearty retort, and Browning,
beating the time and clang of galloping horses' feet on the
table with his fingers, repeated the exact measure in Latin
from Virgil; and the Archbishop laughingly took it up,
in Latin, where he left off. I then told Browning I had
an order —
it was my first —
for a poem from the Oxford
Magazine, and would hke to borrow the measure and spirit
of his 'Good News' for a prairie fire on the plains, driving
buffalo and all other life before it into a river. 'Why not
borrow from Virgil as I did? He is as rich as one of your
gold mines, while I am but a poor scribe.'" * And indeed
the rhythm and movement of the Good News, allowing for
the actual difference in the meter, is much like that of
certain passages in Vergil. Perhaps the line that Browning
quoted to illustrate his measure was the famous
quadripedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum,
» Georg. 3. 391-3.
* The Complete Poetical Joaquin Miller. San Francisco,
Works of
1897, p. 59. This anecdote is told in a note on the poem, Kit Carsori's
Ride, which is written in Browning's meter.
TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 219

or that verse which describes Sabnoneus,

demens qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen


aere et cornipedum pulsu simularet equorum.
{Aen. 6. 590-1)

In the nineteenth century there have been almost innumer-


able translations of the works of Vergil, a clear indication
of the universal knowledge of and interest in his poetry.
They have been rendered chiefly into blank verse, although
English hexameters and even the Spenserian stanza have
been used. Of these, the work of R. and C. R. Kennedy, of
John Conington, whose monumental edition of Vergil is the
most scholarly yet produced in English, of C. P. Cranch in
America, and of J. W. Mackail, deserves especial mention.
The last of these, the work of a man who has written much
and with profound sympathy on classical subjects, is par-
ticularly satisfactory, especially his prose version. It is

not so much the work of professed classical scholars


that we are interested in, however, as that of men
whose names loom large in English poetry. Words-
worth translated a part of the Aeneid, and thereby incurred
the criticism of Coleridge, and late in life he published a
small portion of it. Cowper and Shelley also translated
certain small sections of Vergil's work. Doubtless many
a poet tried his schoolboy hand at a version of some lines
of Vergil, as did some of our American men of letters. But
the most ambitious attempt of the nineteenth century was
the translation of the Aeneid into rhymed fourteeners by
William Morris.
Morris was primarily a student of the Middle Ages, and
his treatment of classical subjects conformed to the mediae-
val method. It is a question which can never be settled
just how he would have handled the story of Aeneas if he
had used it as a subject for original, independent treatment.
220 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

His tendency would probably have been in the direction


of Chaucer and the author of the Eneas; but as it was, he
confined himself to the limits of a translation.
His first approach to Vergil was made in an essentially
mediaeval fashion. The stupendous task of making a manu-
script of the Aeneid, as he had of the Icelandic sagas, Omar
Khayyam, and Horace, was half completed in the years
1874-1875. It was written out through the sixth book,
with the exception of a few lines at the close. The work
was done on vellum, and the pages were to be most elabor-
ately decorated with borders and initials in gold and colors,
and ornaments with figures in the text. Twelve half-page
drawings were made by Burne-Jones, but the great floriated
letters in gold and colors were Morris' own work.
Although the manuscript was left incomplete, it had its
fruit in an interest which imposed upon Morris a task fully
as great as that of reproducing the original Latin. "As
to my illumination work," he wrote to Mr. Murray in
March, 1875, " it don't get on just now, not because I shouldn't
like to be at it, but because I am doing something else with
Virgil, to wit, doing him into English verse: I have got
toward the end of the seventh book, and shall finish the
whole thing and have it out by the beginning of June, I
hope." He had begun the work in the preceding December,
and made daily notes of his progress, recording for fourteen
weeks the number of lines completed each day. He did not
finish the translation as soon as he had hoped, however; it
was not until November 4, 1875, that he could write in a
letter to Mr. Murray, "The Virgil translation published
to-day." But the completion of nearly ten thousand lines
in about eleven months necessitated rapid work. Accord-
ing to his record, the smallest number of lines that he trans-
lated in one week was three hundred and fifteen, the largest,
six hundred and thirty-five.
TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 221

As was natural, the translation aroused much criticism,


both favorable and adverse. It was the work of a man who
was in no sense a classical scholar, and it approached Vergil
from a side new to the Victorian Latinists. The translator
was evidently a man who knew Vergil and loved the story
he told, with the affection of a mediaeval writer
but loved it

of romance rather than that of a nineteenth century stu-


dent. His attitude was definitely a romantic one, tinged
with the ideas of the Middle Ages. J. W. Mackail, in his
Life of William Morris, defends this attitude.^ On the
other hand, Andrew Lang called both manner and method
mistaken. Other critics have taken a more moderate
stand, and half blamed, half praised.
For myself, it is a great temptation to use the hackneyed
but still expressive words, and say that it is a very pretty
poem, but not Vergil. Nothing could be more literal than
Morris' rendering of the Latin. The translation follows
the original almost line for line. In fact, in all but two
of the books, the number of verses in the Latin and in the
English is the same, and in those two exceptions, the differ-
ence is only one line. He even keeps the half-lines, a fact
which shows with what scrupulous care he clung to the
original. And yet, in spite of this fidelity, the spirit of the
lines is changed. Any effort to transport bodily a great work
of literature from antiquity to modern times, and then to
deck it out in the garments which belong to still another
tradition, is robing, as it were, the Venus de Milo in hoop-
skirts or putting a mansard roof on the Parthenon.
The mediaeval flavor is on almost every page of the trans-
lation. The arguments of the books furnish good examples,
' "He
vindicated the claim of the romantic school to a joint owner-
ship with the classicists in the poem which is not only the crowning
achievement of classical Latin, but the fountain-head of romanticism
in European literature." Vol. I. p. 322.
222 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

especially that of the fourth: "Herein is told of the great


love of Dido, Queen of Carthage, and the woeful ending of
her." One is tempted to use the spelling of Dan Chaucer.
And almost any passage, chosen at random, will furnish an
illustration, as this from the second book, where Aeneas
is endeavoring to persuade his father to fly with him from

the doomed city:

And didst thou hope, O father, then that thou being left behind,
My foot would fare? Woe worth the word that in thy mouth I
find!
But if the gods are loth one whit of such a town to save,
And thou with constant mind wilt cast in dying Troy-town's
grave
Both thee and thine, wide is the door to wend adown such ways;
For Pyrrhus, red with Priam's blood, is hard at hand, who slays
The son before the father's face, the father slays upon
The altar. Holy Mother, then, for this thou ledst me on
Through fire and sword! —
that I might see our house filled with
the foe,
My father old, Ascanius, Creusa lying low,
All weltering in each other's blood, and murdered wretchedly.
Arms, fellows, arms! the last day's light on vanquished men doth
cry.
Ah! give me to the Greeks again, that I may play the play
Another while: not unavenged shall all we die to-day.*

The very proper names, such as "Palinure," sometimes take


on a strange mediaeval spelling, and the use of quaint
archaic words adds to the effect. Instances might be
multiplied almost indefinitely, but a few will suffice, such
as the translation of dux by "Duke," pono by "streak,"
draco by "worm," bello clari by "mighty under shield,"
senectus by "Eld," sterno by "spill," and infesta pinus
by "fir of fight."
• Aen. 2. 657-670.
TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 223

The meter, the old rhymed "fourteener," the suggestion


forwhich Morris may have taken from Chapman or Phaer,
approaches the stateliness of the original, but is very monot-
onous. It lacks the variety of the Vergilian hexameters,
and frequently misses entirely metrical effects which com-
mand admiration in the Latin.
The exigencies of the rhyme, added to the closeness of
the translation, are probably responsible for many of the
awkward inversions, clumsy expressions, bad rhythms, and
incoherent lines, as well as for the constant use of "do"
as an auxiliary verb, and of prepositional phrases instead
of the possessive pronoun, such as ''hand of him." Many
of these rough places might have been smoothed had Morris
taken more time for the polishing of his translation. The
rapidity with which he turned out his lines allowed such
verses as the following to pass unchallenged by his own
critical judgment

Aeneas caught upon the pass the door-ward's slumber gave,


or
O'ertopped by Ida, unto those Troy's outcasts happy sign,

or the really wretched opening lines of the ninth book.


Nor did it give time to eUminate awkward repetitions, which
have no model in the original, such as "how great doth great
Orion sweep," or "Venus sore at heart for her sore- wounded
son." The obscurity of some of his verses is equal to that
in Browning's Agamemnon, of which one critic said that he
needed the Greek in order to understand the English. Of
actual errors there are very few; in a few instances Morris
has added something in translation which gives a tone
different from that of the original, but such alterations
are rare.
While the translation on the whole is a poor translation,
it does not lack good qualities. Its fidehty to the Latin
"

224 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

is a great merit, and there are passages which for dignity


and simplicity may be favorably compared with the Latin.
The passion in Dido's prayer for vengeance rises nearly to
the elevation of Vergil's powerful lines, and the spirit of
Aeneas' words is admirably caught in the simile.

As when before the furious South the driven flame doth fall
Among the corn or like as when the hill-flood rolls in haste
:

To waste the fields and acres glad, the oxen's toil to waste,
Tearing the headlong woods along, while high upon a stone
The unready shepherd stands amazed, and hears the sound come
on.'

But among all the poets of this period, there was only
one who caught the real spirit of Vergil and enshrined it in
his verse. The others touched him here and there, admired
and borrowed his rhythm or a quotable line or two. But
Tennyson comprehended all the phases of his genius and
remains today the best interpreter of Vergil among the
English men of letters. Andrew Lang, writing about
Vergil in his Letters on Literature, which have already been
quoted, said, "There will come no other Virgil, unless his
soul, in accordance with his own philosophy, is among us
to-day, crowned with years and honours, the singer of
'
Ulysses,' of the Lotos Eaters,' of Tithonus,' and Oenone.'
' ' '

Much has been said and written about the resemblances


between Tennyson and Vergil, and about the indebtedness
of the English poet to his Roman predecessor. "Some one
once called me the English Virgil," said Tennyson himself
with evident pleasure. Indeed more than one has done
so. In 1875, in an article in Macmillan's Magazine, the
Reverend R. D. B. Rawnsley, signing himself "A Lincoln-
shire Rector," emphasized by means of copious quotations
the similarities between the two in their faculty of observing
natural phenomena, their love of the sea, their joy in the
' Am. 2. 304-308.
TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 225

pomp and circumstance of war, their tenderness, their


melancholy, their philosophy, and their style. In 1891
was published a book called Illustrations of Tennyson,^
by Churton Collins, the threefold purpose of which, according
to the Preface, was to trace in Tennyson's poems the imi-
tations of and transferences from other authors, to illus-
trate his poems, and to point out the connection between
ancient and modern literature. Of this book, the entire
first chapter is devoted to a comparison between the style

of Vergil and that of Tennyson. After a detailed discus-


sion of the similarities between them, with many examples
to prove his point, the author sums up his remarks with
the following vigorous statement: "In a word, the diction
of Tennyson is, in its essential characteristics, as nearly the
exact counterpart to that of Virgil as it is possible for verbal
expression in one language to be the counterpart of that in
another." Ten years later, in an unsigned article in the
Quarterly Review for January, 1901, an elaborate parallel
is drawn between the lives of the two men, after the manner
of Plutarch. And not only does the writer set forth the
resemblances in the events in their lives, as far as we are
able to compare them in view of our scanty knowledge about
Vergil, but he carries out the comparison to include the
similarities in their character, their method of work, their
personal appearance, their attitude toward critics and the
attitude of critics toward them, their conceptions of their
epic heroes, their philosophy, their knowledge of nature,
their patriotism, their scholarship, and their language.
These comparisons are interesting chiefly because they
show why the work and personality of Vergil so strongly
attracted Tennyson. But all these reasons, all the points of
sympathetic contact, which have here been elaborated with
' Some of this material had already been published in the Cornhill
Magazine.
226 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

such pains, are to be found in the clearest and simplest of


forms in the poem To Virgil, which Tennyson wrote at the
request of the Mantuans for the nineteenth centenary of
the Roman poet's death.

Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,

Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre;

Landscape-lover, lord of language, more than he that sang the


Works and Days,
All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase;

Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive
and horse and herd;
All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word;

Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers;


Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with
flowers;

Chanter of the PoUio, glorying in the blissful years again to be,


Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless
sea;

Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind;


Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind;

Light among the vanished ages; star that gildest yet this phantom
shore;
Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to
rise no more;

Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple Caesar's


dome —
Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound forever of Imperial Rome —
Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd, and the Rome of freemen
holds her place,
I, from out the Northern Island, sunder'd once from all the human
race,

I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began,


Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man.
TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 227

Many have one of the most perfect of Tenny-


called this
son's poems. is no other appreciation of
Certainly there
the work and genius of Vergil which is more satisfying to
a lover of the Mantuan poet, or gives him more delight.
Not only does it show at its highest that rare sympathy
of Tennyson's with the "vanished ages," but it proves his
ability to pick out those qualities, those gifts, those pur-
poses in the Roman which are really significant. Contrast
this method of criticism with that of Landor, and see what
a different Vergil we have. There is the poet who reached
the lowest depths of poor versification in his description of
Winter; here is he who is "lord of language," with

All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out in many a golden phrase.

There is the author of the "most mis-shapen of epics;"


here he whose "ocean-roll of rhythm sounds forever of
is

Imperial Rome." Granting that Vergil did not have


time to perfect his Aeneid as he would have wished, the
question is, where the emphasis should be placed. Is it
fairer to Vergil to remember him as a writer guilty of in-
congruities, bathos, incoherence, and puerilities, or as the

Light among the vanished ages; star that gildest yet this phantom
shore;
Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and reahns that pass to
rise no more?

Surely Vergil finds his true interpreter in Tennyson rather


than in Landor; Tennyson loved him since his day began.
He loved him and knew him. The ode is almost a transla-
tion, not of the poems of Vergil, but of that personality
which was the aspect of the Roman poet which most power-
fully attracted Andrew Lang. As Frederick W. H. Myers
has said, "Apart from the specific allusions, almost every
phrase recalls some intimate magic, some incommunicable
:

228 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

fire." ^ The praise is not merely verbal and perfunctory;


it on a firm foundation of thorough knowledge. When
rests
Tennyson was asked what he meant by the "lonely word,"
he gave as an example the well-known cundantem rarmim,
which has been so frequently assailed by critics of Vergil.
But Tennyson was right, for it is actually one of the most
remarkably significant phrases in the whole Aeneid, in its
suggestion of Aeneas' eager haste.
But perhaps even more than the "landscape-lover,"
or the "chanter of the Polho," or even the "light among
the vanished ages," Vergil was to Tennyson the

Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man.

This very Ode Tennyson's most successful attempt to


is

approach the "ocean-roll of rhythm" of the Latin. His


friends bear witness to the delight he took in reading or
reciting favorite hexameters. "He was perpetually quoting
Homer and Vergil," wrote Henry Graham Dakyns,^" "and
to my mind there was nothing for grandeur of sound like
his pronunciation of Latin and Greek as he recited whole
passages or single lines in illustration of some point, of
metre, perhaps, or thought, or feeling. . Then how he
. .

rolled out his Vergil, giving first the thunder, then the wash
of the sea in the lines

fluctus uti medio coepit cum albescere ponto,


longius ex altoque sinum trahit, utque volutus
ad terras immane sonat per saxa neque ipso
monte minor procumbit, at ima exaestuat unda
verticibus nigramque alte subiectat harenam."
{Georg. 3. 237-41)

' Quoted in Alfred Lord Tennyson. A Memoir, by his Son. Vol. II,
pp. 481-4.
'° Tennyson, Clough, and the Classics, in Tennyson and his Friends.
TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 229

And adds as other favorite hnes of his father's,


his son
those sounding ones in the sixth book of the Aeneid,

demens qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen


aere et cornipedum pulsu simularet equorum,
(Aen. 6. 590-1)

and
Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatam.
(Am. 1. 282)

In The Daisy Tennyson himself tells how


we past
From Como, when the light was gray,
And in my head for half the day,
The rich Virgihan rustic measure
Of Lari Maxume, all the way,
Like ballad-burthen music kept."

Tennyson frequently compared the movement of Milton's


poetry with that of Vergil's. "Milton had evidently studied
Virgil's verse," he said once to Warren, President of Mag-
dalen, Oxford ; and again in connection with a similar remark,
"If Virgil is ought to be in this elaborate
to be translated, it

kind of blank verse." It is an interesting commentary


on Tennyson's attitude toward the classics that he made
only one attempt at translation, a short passage from the
Iliad. Vergil he did not try to render into English, or at
least leftno evidence of ever having done so. The condi-
tional clause in the remark quoted above shows that he
believed that the poems were better left undisturbed in their
original tongue.
he admired so greatly the
It is interesting too that while
Latin hexameters, he considered that hexameters in English

" Cf. Georg. 2. 159 ff.


230 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
were a "barbarous experiment." He would probably have
agreed with Landor, who said, "English and German hexam-
eters sound as a heavy cart sounds, bouncing over boul-
ders." Tennyson was interested in making experiments in
various other Latin meters, the Alcaic, the hendecasyllabic,
and even the diflBcult and remarkable galliambic. This
shows how sensitive he was to sound and rhythm, and
explains why the sonorous majesty of the Vergilian meter
appealed to him so strongly. But for his own dignified
and serious epic poems, he preferred the English blank verse,
which he wielded in stately fashion; yet he never equalled
the ocean-roll of the Roman master of rhythm, except in
the long lines of the Ode.
Of the echoes of Vergilian hues and phrases which are
numerous in Tennyson's poetry, and of the allusions to the
Aeneid, the Georgics, and the Eclogues, I wish to say very
little. Many of the parallels were pointed out by Tennyson
himself in the notes which he left with his son, who also
added others. Some of them were intentional paraphrases
and translations, such as
This way and that dividing the swift mind;

some merely accidental parallels or unconscious echoes of


hnes which had become almost Tennyson's own through
long familiarity with them. Careful and complete work
along this Hne has been done by Churton Collins in his
Illustrations of Tennyson, published in 1891, and by W. P.
Mustard in his Classical Echoes in Tennyson, 1904, and to
them I refer anyone who is eager to investigate these rem-
iniscences further. The value of such collections is to em-
phasize what we are already aware of, Tennyson's love for
the classics and his enormous learning. There are one or
two passages, however, striking enough to warrant mention
here. In the Idylls of the King, there are a number of
TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 231

reminiscences of the Dido episode. Compare, for example,


the hnes in Geraint and Enid, which tell how she

ever failed to draw


The quiet night into her blood,

with those which describe the distress of the Carthaginian


queen
neque umquam
solvitur in somnos oculisve aut pectore noctem
accipit.
{Aen. 4. 529-531)

Less close is the parallel in the following

Death like a friend's voice from a distant field

Approaching through the darkness, call'd the owls ;

Wailing, had power upon her, and she mixt


Her fancies with the sallow-rifted glooms
Of evening, and the moanings of the wind,

where there are clear echoes of the Vergilian lines,

hinc exaudiri voces et verba vocantis


visa viri nox cum terras obscura teneret;
solaque culminibus ferali carmine bulbo
saepe queri, et longas in fietum ducere voces.
{Aen. 4. 460-3)

Most interesting of all is the poem Will, the spirit of which


is precisely that of Vergil's

quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est,

(Aen. 5. 710)

and of his reported saying, which


on the authority of
rests
Donatus, "that no virtue is more useful to a man than
patience, and that there is no lot so hard that a brave man
232 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS

cannot conquer by bearing


it it wisely." Hence Tennyson's
strong-willed man,

Who seems a promontory of rock


That, compressed round by turbulent sound,
In middle ocean meets the surging shock
Tempest-buffeted,

is fitly described with the help of a simile which comes


straight from Vergil,

ille vastum quae prodit in aequor,


velut rupes
obvia ventorum fm-iis expostaque ponto,
vim cunctam atque minas perfert caeUque marisque
ipsa immota manens,
(Aen. 10. 693-6)

On the whole the investigation of the classical reminis-


cences in Tennyson has led to the conclusion that he is more
indebted to Vergil than to anyone else, with the possible
exception of Homer and Horace. But many of the "faint
Homeric echoes, nothing worth," are due to the require-
ments of the subjects of his poems, such as Oenone and the
Lotos Eaters, and many of the Horatian phrases had become
commonplaces. The nature of the Vergilian echoes more
than any others would indicate that Tennyson had absorbed
and assimilated the Vergilian material, that he had lived with
Vergil rather than studied him.
So it is quite fitting that the consideration of the influ-
ence of Vergil should close with Tennyson, who is the last
of the great poets of England to show in a decided form the
effect of his Vergilian reading, and is the poet who, more than
any other, can be called Vergilian. It is not only the echoes
and reminiscences of the poems of Vergil in his work that
make him important in the history of the influence of the
TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 233

Roman poet upon the English writers. It is the instinc-


tive sympathy between them, the innate resemblance that
made so many men agree in calling him the English Vergil.
Many another poet has been more imitative of Vergil than
he, many another has quoted him more frequently. But
no one has penetrated so deeply into the Vergilian spirit,
and no one has expressed it so fully as Tennyson in his
poem To Virgil. The Roman poet takes in the poetry of
Tennyson somewhat the same place that the Bible has
taken in the literature of England for so many centuries.
One scarcely thinks of separating the quotations in either
case from their context and calling attention to them by
inverted commas.
And Tennyson will probably be the last poet to show
marked Vergilian influence, painful as the admission is to a
lover of the classics. But rare is the man in these days,
unless he is a student or teacher of the classics, who sits

down each night, as Dr. Johnson did, and reads through a


book and hardly less rare the writer who carries
of Vergil,
in his memory more than a few of the most familiar Vergilian
lines. There are still some echoes in our modern prose and
poetry of famous phrases, like lacrimae rerum, varium et
mutabile semper femina, or arma virumque, and there will
continue to be as long as Vergil is read in school and college.
But although a recent volume of poetry bears the title,
Per Arnica Silentia Lunae,^"^ how many will recognize its
origin? We shall miss much of our inheritance if the influ-
ence of the classics is taken from our future poetry. We
shall miss more if we lose the ability to feel the presence
of the great minds and spirits of antiquity in the literature
that England has already produced. If Vergil becomes
merely a name to the reader of English poetry, much of the

" William Butler Yeats, Per Arnica Silentia Lunae. N. Y., 1918.
234 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
work of Spenser, Milton and Tennyson will lose its meaning,
if not its beauty. He will have to forego part of the poten-
tial enjoyment of poetry who cannot say as he reads it,

I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began,


Wielder of the stateUest measure ever moulded by the lips of man.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. This Bibliography contains only such books as deal with
the relations of Vergil to a certain English writer or group of writers.
Other books of reference have been mentioned, with bibhographi-
cal information, in the notes. would be impracticable to in-
It
clude in the Bibliography the titles of all the chief books used in
connection with the foregoing discussion. Such a Ust would be
merely an enumeration of the works of the chief English poets and
prose writers. The text of Vergil used is that edited by F. A.
Hirtzel, in the Scriptorum Classicorum Bihliotheca Oxoniensis.

Baynes, Thomas Spencer: What Shakespeare Learnt at School,


in Shakespeare Studies, London & New York, 1894.
Collins, Churton: Illustrations of Tennyson, London, 1891.
Studies in Shakespeare, Westminster, 1904. I. Shake-
speare as a Classical Scholar.
CoMPARETTi, Domenico: Vergil in the Middle Ages, translated
by E. F. M. Benecke, London, 1895.
Klaeber, Fr.: Aeneis und Beowulf, in Archiv fur das Studium
der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 1911, Band 126.
Leland, Charles Godfrey: The UnpubUshed Legends of Virgil,
London, 1899.
Long, Omera Floyd: The Attitude of Alcuin toward Vergil, in
Studies in Honor of B. L. Gildersleeve, Johns Hopkins Press,
1902.
Mustard, W. P. Classical Echoes in Tennyson, New York, 1904.
:

(Rawnsley, Rev. R. D. B.) Tennj'-son and Virgil, by a Lincoln-


:

shire Rector, Macmillan's Magazine, 1875.


Stapfer, Paul: Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity. Trans-
lated from the French by Emily J. Carey, London, 1880.
Chapter IV. Shakespeare's Classical Knowledge.
Tunison, Master Virgil, the Author of the Aeneid as he
J. S.:

Seemed in the Middle Ages, Cincinnati, 1888.


Zappert, Georg: Virgils Fortleben im Mittelalter, Vienna, 1851.
235
236 BIBLIOGRAPHY
II. The a list of translations, burlesques, parodies,
following is

and imitations of the works of Vergil. Those marked * are Ameri-


can translations; those marked ** have been discussed in the
text.

TRANSLATIONS
Gavin Douglas: The xiii Bukes of Eneados of the Famose Poete
Virgin. 1553.**
Henry, Earl of Surrey: Certain bokes (II & IV) of Virgiles
Aenaeis. 1557.**
T. Ph AER The seven first bookes
: of the Eneidos of Virgill. 1558.**
The nyne Bookes of the Eneidos ... with so much of
first

the tenthe Booke, as since his death could be found.


1562.
The whole Bookes of the Aeneidos of
xii Virgill ... by T.
Phaer ... and ... T. Twyne. 1573.
(Other editions, 1583, 1584, 1596, 1600, 1607, 1620.)
Richard Stanyhurst The first Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis,
:

translated into Enghsh Heroical Verse. 1582, 1583.**


William Webbe: The first and second Eclogues, (in his Dis-
course on English Poetrie). 1586.
A. F. (Fraunce or Fleming) TheBucoUks of P. V.
: M. . . . together
with his Georgiks. 1589.
The Lamentation of Corydon for the loss of Alexis. 1591.
J. Brinsley: Virgils Eclogues, with his Booke De Apibus. 1620.
S. T. Wrothe: The Destruction of Troy, or the Acts of Aeneas,
translated out of the second booke of the Aeneads of Virgill.
1620.
W. L. (Lisle): Virgils Eclogues. 1628.
T. May: Virgils Georgicks. 1628.
J. Vicars: The XII Aeneids of Virgil. 1632.
G.Sandys: The first booke of Virgils Aeneis. 1632.
Sir John Denham: The Destruction of Troy. 1636. (Published
1656.)
The Passion of Dido for Aeneas. (?)**
John Ogilby: The Works of P. V. M. 1649. His "second
English Virgil," 1654.**
BIBLIOGRAPHY 237

E. Waller: Part of the Fourth Book of Virgil. 1657. Later


completed by Sidney Godolphin, and published 1679.
J. Harrington: Virgils Aeneis, the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth
books. 1659.
Sir R. Howard: The Fourth Book of Virgill. 1660.
J. Boys: Aeneas his Errours (Book HI). 1661.
Aeneas his Descent into Hell (Book VI). 1661.
Sir R. Fanshaw: The Fourth Book of Virgill's Aeneis. 1664.
Dryden's Miscellany Poems: 1684-1709.
1684 Part I.Part of Virgil's Fourth Georgick ... by the
Earl of Mulgrave.
The Praises of Italy out of Virgil's second Georgic. By
Mr. Chetwood.
The Entire Episode of Nisus and Euryalus. Trans-
lated from the Fifth and Ninth Books of Virgil's
Aeneids, by Mr. Dryden.
Virgil's Eclogues, Translated by Several Hands. (Eel. 1,
John 2, Mr. Tate and Mr. Creech; 3, Mr,
Caryll;
Creech; 4, Mr. Dryden; 5, Mr. Duke; 6, the Earl
of Roscommon; 7, Mr. Adams; 8, Mr. Stafford and
Mr. Chetwood; 9, Mr. Dryden; 10, Mr. Stafford.
Also translated or rather imitated in the Year 1666.
By Sir WilUam Temple.)
1685 Part II. The Entire Episode of Mezentius and Lausus
... By Mr. Dryden.
The Speech of Venus to Vulcan.By Mr. Dryden.
Part of Virgil's Fourth Georgick. By Mr. Creech.
The Episode of the Death of Camilla. ... By Mr. Staf-
ford.

1693 Part III. Aeneas his Meeting with Dido in the Elyzian
Fields. ... By Mr. Wolseley.
Amor omnibus idem . . . (Georg. 3. 209-285, by Dryden.)
Part of Virgils First Georgick ... By Henry Sacheverell.
1694 Part IV. A Translation Fourth
of all of Virgil's
Georgick, except the Story of Aristaeus, by Mr.
Jo. Addison.
238 BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Passion of Dido for Aeneas ... By S. Godolphin and
E. Waller. (See above.)

1704 Part V. Milton's Style imitated in a Translation of a


Story out of the Third Aeneid. By Mr. Joseph
Addison.

1709 Part VI. The Love of Gallus ... By J. Trapp.


The Description of the Prodigies which attended the
Death of JuUus Caesar . . . By J. Trapp.

Thomas Fletcher: Poems on Several Occasions and Transla-


tions; wherein the First and Second Books of Virgil's Aeneids
are attempted into Enghsh. 1692.
John Lewkenor: Metellus's Three Dialogues . . .The Third is of
Translations; with Virgil's Dido and Aeneas. 1694.
John Dryden: The Works of Virgil: containing his Pastorals,
Georgics, and Aeneis. Translated into EngUsh verse. 1697.**
L. Milbourne: The First Book of Virgil's Georgics made English.
1698.
J. B.: The Young Lover's Guide. As also the Sixth Aenaeid, and
Fourth Eclogue of Virgil. 1699.
Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire: Part of the Story of
Orpheus. (?)

Sir Charles Sedley: The Fourth Book of Vir^l. (Georgics 4) (?)

Chetwood: The Second Georgic. (?) (See above, Dryden'a


Miscellany, Pt. I)
Richard, Earl of Lauderdale: The Works of Virgil. 1708-9 (?),

1700 (?)

(?) The Golden Age. 1703.


N.Brady: Virgil's Aeneis. 1716,1717.
Wm. Hamilton: The Episode of Lausus and Mezentius. 1719.
The Corycian Swain. (?)
Mr. Sherbourne: The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid.
1723.
W. Benson: Virgil's Husbandry. (Georg. 1) 1725.
J. Trapp: The Aeneis of Virgil. 1718-20.
The Works of Vu-gil. 1731.**
J. Theobald The second Book of Virgil's Aeneid. 1736.
:
BIBLIOGRAPHY 239

(?) An Introduction of the ancient Greek and Latin measures


into British Poetry: attempted in ... a Translation of
Eclogue (and) fourth Eclogue. 1737.
Virgil's first
A. Strahan: The First Aeneid. 1739. Another ed. with Trans-
lation of the First Eclogue by F. Atterbury. 1767.
J. H. The second book of Virgil's Aeneis. 1740.
:

J. Hamilton: Virgil's Pastorals. 1742.


J. Mabtyn: The Georgicks of Virgil, with an EngUsh translation
and notes. 1741.
The Bucolicks of Virgil, with an EngUsh translation and
notes. 1749.
(?) The Georgics of Virgil. (Georg. 1) 1750.
Christopher Pitt and Joseph Warton: The Works of Virgil in
Latin and English The Aeneid translated by C. Pitt.
. . .

The Eclogues and Georgics, with notes on the whole, by J.


Warton. 1753.**
R. Andrews: The Works of Virgil Englished. 1766.
T. Nevile: The Georgics of Virgil. 1767.
B. Newburgh: A Translation of Some Parts of Virgil's Georgics.
1769.
Walter Harte The Episode of Orpheus and Eurydice.
: (?)
Edward BuRNABT Greene The Ceir is of Virgil. 1780. :

W. Mills: The Georgics of Virgil. 1780.


J, Tytler: The four first Eclogues. 1781.
J. Morrison: The Second Book of Virgil's Aeneid. 1787. (2nd
ed.)
W. H. Melmoth: The Whole Genuine Works of Virgil. (Dry-
den's translation, "revised and improved.") 1790 (?)
James Beresford The Aeneid. 1794.:

Hon. P. C. Smythe: The Episode of Aristaeus. 1795.


C. Alexander: The Works of Virgil. 1796.
W. Sotheby: The Georgics of Virgil. 1800.
William Gowper The Moretum. 1803.
:

L.M.Sargent: The Culex of Virgil. 1807.*


J. R. Dease: The Georgics. 1808.
W. Stawell: The Georgics. 1808.
240 BIBLIOGRAPHY
C. Boyd: Virgil's Georgics, with the First, Fourth, Sixth and Tenth
Eclogues. 1808.
Davidson: The Works of Virgil translated into English prose.
1810.
J. Penn: The Fourth Eclogue. 1810.
(?) The Sixth Book of the Aeneis of Virgil. 1814.
William Cowper: The Aeneid, Book VIII, 11. 18 ff. 1815.
F.Wrangham: Virgil's Bucohcs. 1815.
William Wordsworth: Translation of a Part of the First Book
of the Aeneid. 1816.
C. Symmons: The Aeneis. 1817.
Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Tenth Eclogue, vv. 1-26. (?) (Pub.
1870.)
J. Ring: A Translation of the Works of Virgil: partly original,
and partly altered from Dryden and Pitt. 1820.
R. Hoblyn: a Translation of the First Book of the Georgics.
1825.
A. W. Wallis: Select Passages from the Georgics of Virgil. 1833.
I. Butt: The Georgics, translated into English Prose. 1834.
J. Blundell: Hexametrical Experiments; or a version of four
of Virgil's Pastorals. 1838.
J. M. King: The Georgicks. 1843.
J. Henry: The Aeneis, Books I and II. 1845.
W. Sewell: The Georgics. 1846.
J. M. King: The Aeneid of Virgil. 1847.
W. H. Bathurst: The Georgics. 1849.
R. and C. R. Kennedy: The Works of Virgil. 1849.
E. Cobbold: The Georgics of Virgil. 1852.
G.B.Wheeler: The Works of Virgil. 1852.
W. Sewell: The Georgics of Virgil, hterally and rhythmically
translated. 1854.
R. C. Singleton: The Works of Virgil. 1855-59.
C. R. Honey: A Translation into English Verse of Virgil's Fourth
Georgic. 1859.
R. D. Blackmore: The Farm and Fruit of Old; a Translation in
verse of the First and Second Georgics of Virgil. By a Market-
Gardener. 1862.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 241

J. Miller: The Aeneid of Virgil. 1863.


W. Grist: The Aeneid. Book I. 1864.
J. B. Rose: The Georgics of Virgil. 1865.
J. Conington: The Aeneid of Virgil, translated into English verse.
1866.**
J. B. Rose: The Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil. 1866.
E. F. Taylor: The Aeneid of Virgil. Books I and XL 1867.
C. S. Calverley: The Idylls of Theocritus and the Eclogues of
Virgil. 1868.
T. H. NoYEs: The Eclogues of Virgil. 1868.
R. M. Millington: The BucoUcs or Eclogues of Virgil, trans-
lated into heroic verse. 1870.
A Translation of Virgil's Eclogues into Rhythmic Prose.
1870.
The Story of Aristaeus and his Bees. 1870.
E. E. Middleton: The First Two Books of the Aeneid. 1870.
(?) A prose Translation of Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics, by an
Oxford Graduate. 1870.
R. D. Blackmore: The Georgics of Virgil. 1871.
J. M. King: The Georgics of Virgil in four Books. 1871. (Dif-
ferent from the 1843 translation.)
J. Lonsdale and S. Lee: The Works of Virgil. 1871. (Globe
ed.)
G. K. RiCKARDS: The Aeneid of Virgil, Books I-VI. 1871.
**
C. P. Cranch: The Aeneid. 1872.*
F. D. Morice: The Bee. Virgil's Fourth Georgic. 1872.
Lord Ravensworth: The Aeneid of Virgil, Books VII-XII.
1872.
T. Clayton The Aeneid of Virgil, Books I-VI. 1873.
:

William Morris: The Aeneids of Virgil. 1875.**


E. Harper The Story of Troy. (Aen. 1 and 2.)
: 1876.
M. P. W. Boulton: Translation of the Sixth Book of Virgil's
Aeneid. 1877.
W. J. Thornhill: The Passion of Dido. 1878.
The Aeneid of Virgil. 1878.
H. H. Pierce A Rhythmic Prose Translation of
: Virgil's Aeneid.
1879.*
242 BIBLIOGRAPHY
S. P. Virgil's Georgics, Book IV.
Reed: 1879.
A. Malet: The Aeneid. 1880.
H.W.Preston: The Georgics of Vergil. 1881.*
J. Rhoades: The Georgics. 1881.
T. S. Burt: The Aeneid, Georgics and Eclogues ... to-
of Virgil
gether with other of his poems; to which are appended
Maphaeus Vegius' Book XIII, etc. 1883.
Samuel Palmer: EngUsh Version of the Eclogues. 1883.
"Eta" (W. Cunningham): Virgil's First Pastoral: or, the Exiles
Mantua. 1884.
of
B. H. Hampden-Jones: Vergil's Aeneid, Books IX and X. 1884.
J. W. Moore The : Sixth Book of the Aeneid. 1884.
J.A.Wilstach: The Works of Virgil. 1884.*
E. J. L. Scott: The Eclogues of VirgU. 1884.
H. Hailstone: Virgil's Aeneid, II. 1886.
W. J. Thornhill: The Aeneid. 1886.
Sir Charles Bowen : Virgil in English Verse. Eclogues and Aeneid,
I-VI. 1887.
A. A. I. Nesbitt: Vergil: Aeneid. (In Tutorial Series.) 1887, etc.
Oliver Crane: Virgil's Aeneid. 1888.*
"Delta": The First Book of the Aeneid. 1888.
Mary E. Burt: Bees. A Study from Vergil. Revised and
adapted from Da\adson's Translation. 1889.*
H. W. Hunting: Virgil's Aeneid, IV, V. 1889.
J. W. Mackail: The Eclogues and Georgics. 1889.**
J. Perkins: Virgil's Aeneid, Books IV and V. 1889.
H. T. Dufton: A Prose Translation of the Second Book of the
Aeneid. 1890.
H. W. Hunting: Aeneid VI. 1891.
W. Farrar: Vergil's Aeneid, Book VI. 1893.
A. H. Bryce: The Works of Virgil. 1894.
Sir Theodore Martin: The Aeneid of Virgil, Books I-VI. 1896.
Rt. Hon. Sir G. 0. Morgan: The Eclogues of Virgil. 1897.
J. W. Mackail: The Eclogues, done into English Prose. 1899.**
(?) The Book of Virgil's Aeneis. (?)
First
Henry Smith Wright: The Aeneid. 1903-1908.
J. W. Mackail: The Georgics. 1904.* **
BIBLIOGRAPHY 243

James Rhoades: The Aeneid of Virgil. 1906.


John Conington: The Poems of Virgil, translated into English
Prose. 1907.**
R. S. Conway: The Fourth Eclogue, in Virgil's Messianic Eclogue.
1907.
D. E. Seligman: The Aeneid, Book VI. 1907.
E. Fairfax Taylor: The Aeneid translated into English verse.
1907. (Everyman's Library.)
John Jackson: Virgil. 1908.
J.W.Mackail: The Aeneid. 1908.**
Theodore C. Williams: The Aeneid of Virgil. 1908.*
Harlan HoGE Ballard The Aeneid of Virgil. 1911.*
:

Theodore C. Williams: The Georgics and Eclogues. 1915.*


Robert Bridges: Ibant Obscuri: an Experiment in the Classical
Hexameter. 1916.
Joseph J. Mooney: The Minor Poems of Virgil. 1916.

BURLESQUES, PARODIES AND IMITATIONS


Charles Cotton: Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie. (Aen. 1

and 4.) 1670.**


John Phillips: Maronides, or Virgil Travesty, the Fifth Book.
1672.
Maronides, or Virgil Travesty. (Book VI.) 1673.
(?) Cataplus, or Aeneas his Descent to Hell. 1672.
^ (?) The Golden Age Restored. (In Dryden's Miscellany Poems,
Part II.) 1685.
(?) The taken from the
Irish Hudibras, or Fingalian Prince:
Sixth Book of Virgil's "Aeneids," and adjusted to the present
State of Affairs. 1689.
.
(?) The History of the Famous Love, between a fair, noble
. . .

Parisian Lady, and a beautiful young Singing-Man. 1692.


x(?) The Tryall of Skill between Squire Walsingham and Mother
Osborne. An Eclogue in imitation of Virgil's Palaemon.
1734.
(?) Mother Gin. A Tragi-Comical Eclogue; being a paraphras-
tical imitation of the Daphnis of Virgil. 1737.
244 BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Hallam: The Cocker: a poem. In Imitation of Virgil's third
Georgic. 1742.
John Ellis: The Canto added by Maphaeus Twelve
to Virgil's
Books of Aeneas, from the original Bombastic, done into
English Hudibrastic; with notes beneath, and Latin text in
every other page annext. 1758.
(?) The Story of Aeneas and Dido Burlesqued. 1774.*
(?) An Elegy in a Riding-House, In Imitation of Virgil's First
Pastoral. Latin and English. 1778.
(?) The Patriots, a PoUtical Eclogue. (A Parody of Virgil's
first Eclogue.) 1796.
G. Daniel: Virgil in London, or Town Eclogues. 1814.
(?) An Idyll on the Battle. (In Blackwood's Edinburgh Mag.)
1823.

\ Thomas Moore: The Milling-Match between Entellus and


Dares. (?)

(?) A Kerry Pastoral, in imitation of the First Eclogue of Virgil.


1843. (Reprint.)
(?) The Siege of Oxford. Fragments from the Second Book of
the "Nova Aeneis." 1852.
(?) The Death of the Sea-Serpent, by PubUus Jonathan Virgilius
Jefferson Smith. (In Punch.) 1852.
F. C. Burnand: Dido. (A dramatic burlesque.) 1860.
(?) A Free and Independent Translation of the First and Fourth
Books of the Aeneid of Virgil. 1870.*
(?) The Georgics of Bacchicles. In Three Books. (?)
INDEX
Addison, Joseph, 137-138, 139, Barford, Mr., 174n.
141, 144, 150, 151, 154, 159, Barnfield, Richard, 106.
160. de Barri, Gerald, 70.
Aelfric, 30. Basse, William, 106.
Aeneas Sylvius, 70. Battle of the Seven Arts, The, 67, 69.
Aesop, 73. Beattie, James, 200.
Agricola, Johann, 71. Bede, 25-26.
Akenside, Mark, 180-181, 193. Benoit de Saint-Maure, 18, 61.
Alamanni, Luigi, 78, 99. Beowulf, 27-30.
Alcuin, 23, 26-27. Bernard of Chartres, 17, 67.
Aldhelm, 24-25. Blacklock, Alexander, 174n.
Alexander, Sir William, 133. Blackmore, Sir Richard, 128, 145-
Alfred, 27. 146, 160.
Anacreon, 126. Boccaccio, 43, 62, 63, 70, 76, 100,
d'Andeli, Henri, 67, 69, 70. 130.
Anglo-Saxon vernacular poetry, Boethius, 55n, 69.
27. Boiardo, Matteo Maria, 78.
Anti-Jacobin, 194. Boileau, Nicholas, 10, 181.
Antonio and Mellida, 122. Bowyer, Mr., 165.
Areopagus, The, 91. Brathwaite, Richard, 106.
Ariosto, 78, 111, 114n, 138, 141. Broome, WilUam, 174n.
Aristotle, 10, 67, 68, 69, 74, 75, Browne, William, 106.
137, 206. Browning, EUzabeth Barrett, 217.
Armstrong, John, 193. Browning, Robert, 213, 217-219,
Arnold, Matthew, 212, 213, 216- 223.
217. Bryskett, Lodowick, 104.
Ascham, Roger, 72, 73, 74. Burke, Edmund, 7, 159-160.
Augustine, Saint, 170. Burley, Walter, 20, 22.
Ausonius, 63n. Burne-Jones, Edward, 220.
Butler, Samuel, 146.
Bacon, Francis, 125. Byron, Lord, 198, 199.
Baebius ItaUcus (Pindar the The-
ban), 18n. Caesar, 73.
Baif, Jean Antoine de, 79, 99. Calpumius Siculus, 1.
Barclay, Alexander, 101. Cambridge, 74.
245
246 INDEX
Cambridge, Richard Owen, 176- Cowley, Abraham, 126-127, 131,
178. 133-137, 142n, 144, 154.
Camden, William, 129. Cowper, WiUiam, 194r-196, 197,
Carteret, John, 214. 198, 200, 202, 219.
Cato, 66, 68, 73. Crabbe, George, 199.
Catullus, 126, 201, 202, 204, 205. Cranch, C. P., 219.
Caxton, WiUiam, 9, 20, 47, 62-65, Crashaw, Richard, 125, 126.
80, 81, 82. Cunningham, John, 174n.
Centos, 14.
Chamberla3Tie, William, 132. Daniel, Samuel, 123, 129, 130.
Chapman, George, 98, 151, 223. Dante, 13, 14-15, 17, 61n, 100,
Chatham, Earl of, 214. 114n, 206.
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 8, 9, 13, 16, 23, Dares Phrygius, 9, 18, 40, 57, 58,
34, 38, 39-59, 72, 82, 95, 116, 61, 66, 79, 97, 131.
125, 148, 162, 220, 222. Book Darwin, Erasmus, 194.
of the Duchess, 40. Canter- Davenant, Sir WiUiam, 132.
bury Tales, 39, 41. Hou^ of Denham, Sir John, 137, 151-152,
Fame, 41, 42-59. Legend of 154.
Good Women, 40, 41, 42, 43- Dennis, John, 146, 160.
54. Troilus and Criseyde, Dickens, Charles, 215.
40n, 42, 57, 58. Dictys the Cretan, 18, 61.
Cheke, John, 72. Didactic poetry, 10, 179-196, 198.
Chetwood, William, 154. 199.
Chrysoloras, Manuel, 70. Dido plays, 79, 116-118.
Churchill, Charles, 174 and note. Dodsley, Robert, 193.
Cicero, 31, 69, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, Dolce, Lodovico, 79, 116.
77, 124, 134. Dolopathos, 16, 20.
Cinthio, 79. Donatus, 15, 16, 231.
Claudian, 58. Don Quixote, 177.
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 217. Dome, John, 75.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 121, Douglas, Gavin, 9, 17, 20, 65, 80-
198, 219. 86, 87, 89, 93, 121, 151.
Colet, John, 71. Drayton, Michael, 106, 123, 129,
ColUns, Churton, 225, 230. 130-131.
Colhns, WilUam, 174n, 198. Drummond, WiUiam, 126.
Columella, 1. Dryden, John, 10, 87, 132, 148,
Congreve, WiUiam, 174n. 150, 152-158, 159, 160-162,
Conington, John, 219. 165, 166, 177. 152-
Virgil,
Conrad of Querfurt, 21, 33. 158. Annus Mirabilis, 160-
Cotton, Charles, 146-147. 162.
Cotton, Sir Robert, 129. Dyer, John, 181, 193.
INDEX 247

Eliot, George, 215. Grainger, James, 193.


Elyot, Sir Thomas, 73. Gray, Thomas, 198.
Eneit, 19. Green, Matthew, 193.
Eneydos, 19, 47, 62-65, 80. Grimoald, Nicholas, 94, 99.
Ennius, 207. Grocyn, WiUiam, 71.
Epic, 1, 9, 10, 109-113, 128-146, Guarini, Giovanni Battista, 70.
149. In France, 132. Re- Guido delle Colonne, 18, 57, 61.
ligious epic, 132, 133-145.
Epirota, 15. Hall, Edward, 129.
Erasmus, Desiderius, 71, 72. HalUwell, Edward, 116.
Euripides, 5, 74, 202. Harington, Sir John, 151.
Evelyn, John, 35. Harvey, Gabriel, 104, 111.
Harvey, WilUam, 125.
da Feltre, Vittorino, 70.
Hawes, Stephen, 16, 23, 59, 92.
Fenton, Elijah, 174n.
Hegius, 71.
Fielding, Henry, 177, 198.
Heinsius, Daniel and Nikolaas,
Fletcher, Giles, 133.
125.
Fletcher, Phineas, 106-108, 125,
Herrick, Robert, 126.
133.
Heywood, Thomas, 119.
Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de,
Hobbes, Thomas, 132.
165.
Hoccleve, Thomas, 60.
Fox, Charles, 214.
Hogarth, WilUam, 177.
Frischhn, Nikodemus, 79.
HoUnshed, Raphael, 129.
Fulgentius, Fabius Planciades, 17,
Homer, 3, 4, 5, 18, 27, 57, 58, 77,
31,92.
78, 111, 113, 123, 128, 134,
Gager, WiUiam, 117. 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 144,
Gallery of Gallant Inventions, A, 95. 145, 149, 152, 160, 161, 175,
Garland, John, 68, 70. 177, 197, 200, 202, 205, 207,
Garth, Samuel, 180. 213, 217, 232.
Gawain and the Greene Knight, 39, Hoole, Charles, 73.
60-61. Horace, 28, 31, 66, 73, 98, 112, 126,
Gay, John, 173, 174n, 177, 179. 134, 138, 149, 150, 188, 201,
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 37. 220, 232.
Gervase of Tilbury, 21, 33.
Gesta Romanorum, 36. Isaiah, 170, 171, 188.
GOdas, 24.
Gladstone, William, 214, 215. Jacke Jugeler, 122.
Glover, Samuel, 149, 160. Jago, Richard, 173, 174n.
Googe, Barnabe, 101. Jenyns, Soame, 193.
Gower, John, 16, 23, 34-35, 39, 40, Jerome, 23, 63n.
54, 59-60, 93. JodeUe, Etienne, 79, 116.
248 INDEX
John of Salisbury, 17, 26n, 30-32, Lydgate, John, 16, 61-62, 93.
67, 68, 70, 92. Ljf/e of Virgilitis, The, 20, 22, 92,
Johnson, Samuel, 145, 160, 171, 98.
172, 233. Lyly, John, 72.
Jonson, Ben, 98-99, 120, 122-123, Lyrical Ballads, 198.
124, 125, 126, 129, 151. Lyttelton, Lord, 164, 174n, 181,
Joseph of Exeter, 19, 61. 187.
Josephus, 58.
Joubert, Joseph, 216, 217. Macaulay, Thomas Babington,
Justin, 63n. 216.
Juvenal, 75. Mackail, W., 206-207, 219, 221.
J.
MaUet, David, 193.
Keats, John, 198n.
Mantuan, 76, 78, 101, 102, 105,
Kennedy, R. and C. R., 219.
106, 108.
Kirchmayer, 79.
Map, Walter, 36.
Knaustius, 79.
Marlowe, Christopher, 23, 79, 92,
Kynaston, Sir Francis, 125.
117-118.
Landor, Walter Savage, 11, 12, Marot, Clement, 79, 100, 102.
166, 188, 200-211, 212, 227, Marston, John, 122.
230. Imaginary Conversa- Mason, William, 174n, 193, 194,
tions, 201-207. Gebir, 207- 198.
210. Latin poems, 211. Meres, Francis, 123, 129.
Lang, Andrew, 215-216, 221, 224, Merlin, 23, 34, 35.
227. Miller, Joaquin, 218.
von Lange, 71. Milton, John, 7, 10, 37, 108-109,
Lauderdale, Earl of, 152, 154. 127-128, 131, 132, 137-145,
Layamon, 37. 168, 169, 208, 229, 234.
Lily, William, 71, 72. Lycidas, 108-109, 127. Comus,
Linacre, Thomas, 71. 109. Paradise Lost, 128,
Livy, 75. 137-143, 145, 160. Paradise
"L. M. W. M., Right Honorable," Regained, 143-144.
173, 174n. Mock-epic, 10, 146-147, 175-178,
Lodge, Thomas, 106. 198.
Logan, John, 174n. Molza, 80, 86.
Loves of the Triangles, The, 194, More, Sir Thomas, 71.
198. Morris, WiUiam, 89, 217, 218-224.
Lowe, Robert, 214, 215. Manuscript of the Aeneid,
Lowell, James Russell, 129. 220. Translation of the
Lucan, 31, 58, 64n, 75, 130. Aeneid, 220-224.
Lucretius, 3, 6, 191, 202, 204, 205, Mulgrave, Earl of, 154.
213. Mustard, W. P., 230.
INDEX 249

Naevius, 207. Prior, Matthew, 174n.


Nash, Thomas, 79, 117-118. Propertius, 77.
Naude, Gabriel, 16. Pulci, Luigi, 78.
Neckam, Alexander, 22, 32-33, 70. Pulteney, WilUam, 214.
Nennius, 24, 37.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 125. Quarles, Francis, 106.
Nicolas of Clemangis, 71. Quintihan, 75.
Ogilby, John, 152.
Ovid, 1, 5, 31, 40, 43, 45, 54, 55, Racine, Jean Baptiste, 216, 217.
58, 60, 68, 69, 71, 73, 75, 98, Raleigh, Sir Walter, 111, 112.
120, 127, 128, 134, 161, 170, Ramsay, Allan, 173, 174n.
202, 213. Raphael, 204.
Oxford, 68-69, 74-75. Rapin, 165.
Ritwise, John, 116.
Pastoral, 10, 100-109, 127, 164-
Robinson, Nicholas, 117.
174, 199.
Rogers, Samuel, 199.
Paul, Herbert, 214n.
Roman de la Rose, 114.
Peele, George, 106, 117.
Petrarch, 76-77,
Roman de Troie, 18.
9, 70, 74, 78,
Romans d'Eneas, 19, 40, 43, 47, 52,
100.
62, 220.
Phaer, Thomas, 80, 87, 88-90,
Ronsard, Pierre de, 79.
151, 223.
Roscommon, Earl of, 151, 154.
Philips, Ambrose, 172, 174n.
Philips, John, 180.
Rossetti, Christina and Dante
Gabriel, 217.
Pilatus, 70.
Rucellai, Giovanni, 78, 99.
Pitt, Christopher, 158-159.
Rymer, Thomas, 137.
Pitt, WilHam, 214.
Plautus, 74, 75.
Pliny, 75. Sabie, Francis, 106.
Politian, 70, 78. SackviUe, Thomas, 95-97, 110.
Pomfret, John, 174n. Sallust, 73, 75.
Pope, Alexander, 10, 142n, 144, Salvatio Romae, 22, 23, 33-35, 62,
148, 162, 163-172, 174-176, 82n.
177, 179, 181, 198, 199, 204. Sannazaro, Jacopo, 76, 78, 100,
Alcander, 164. Pastorals, 102, 108.
164-169, 170. Discourse on Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 79.
Pastoral Poetry, 165. Wind- Scarron, Paul, 146.
sor Forest, 170. Messiah, Scott, John, 174n.
170-172. Thebaid, 174-175. Scott, Sir Walter, 86.
Dunciad, 175, 199. Rape of Scriblerus, Martinus, 175n, 176-
the Lock, 175-176, 198. 178.
.

250 INDEX
Sedley, Sir Charles, 151. Tennyson, Alfred, 7, 11, 12, 107n,
Selden, John, 125. 144, 166, 213, 224-233, 234.
Selling, William TiUy of, 71. "The English VergU," 224-
Seneca, 73, 117. 225, 233. To Virgil, 22&-229,
Servius, 16. 230, 233. The Daisy, 229.
Seven Sages, The, 23, 34. Idylls of the King, 230-231.
Shakespeare, WilUam, 98, 120- Will, 231-232.
122. Terence, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 198, 213, Thackeray, William Makepeace,
219. 215.
Shenstone, WiUiam, 173, 174n. Theocritus, 2, 101, 102, 103, 109,
Sidney, Sir Philip, 68, 93, 101. 165, 167, 172, 174, 197, 201,
Sihus Itahcus, 1. 204, 213.
Smart, Christopher, 193. Thompson, William, 174n, 193.
SomerviUe, Wilham, 177, 181, 193, Thomson, James, 10, 162, 164,
194. 179-193, 194, 195, 198. The
Sophocles, 74. Seasons, 181-192, 198.
Southey, Robert, 202, 208. Tickell, Thomas, 142n, 193.
Spectator, The, 137, 138, 150. "Tityre-tu's," The, 125.
Spenser, Edmund, 9, 17, 35, 93, Tonson, Jacob, 164.
96n, 100-105, 107, 108, 110- Tottel's Miscellany, 94.
116, 123, 125, 128, 131, 138, Trapp, Joseph, 158.
141, 165, 172, 181, 234. Turbervile, George, 63n, 94.
Shepheardes Calender, 101- Tusser,Thomas, 99.
105. Faerie Queene, 110-116. Twyne, Thomas, 87, 89.
Stanyhm-st, Richard, 90-91. Tyndale, William, 72.
Statins, 58, 170, 174.
Steele, Sir Richard, 172. Valerius Flaccus, 1.

Stow, John, 129. Valerius Maximus, 75.


Strode, Ralph, 40. Vegius, Maphaeus, 65, 70, 77-78,
Suetonius, 75. 80, 89.
Surrey, Earl of, 80, 86-88, 121, Vergil: Life and work, 1-7.
151. Style, 6, 7. In the Middle
Swift, Jonathan, 67, 150, 173, Ages, 8, 13-38; grammarian,
174n, 177, 179, 191. 8, 15; rhetorician, 8, 16;
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, prophet of Christ, 8, 16, 17,
200, 213, 217. 83, 170; moralist and writer
of aUegory, 16-17, 31-32, 77,
83, 92-93; writer of romance,
Tasso, Torquato, 78-79, 111. 8, 18-20; magician, 20-
8, 16,

Temple, Sir William, 151. 23, 32-36, 59, 92. In the


INDEX 251

fifteenth century, 8, 9, 39-65. Waller, Edmund, 124, 151, 154.


And humanism, 9, 66-91; in Walpole, Sir Robert, 214.
education, 66-76; in Utera- Walsh, WilUam, 165, 173, 174n.
ture, 76-91. In the Renais- Waltharius, 14n.
sance, 9, 92-123; in drama, Warner, WiUiam, 61n, 63n, 97,
116-123. In the seventeenth 123, 129-130, 131.
century, 9, 124-147; educa- Warton, Joseph, 158-159, 165,
tion, 124—125; lyric poets, 199.
125-127; epic poets, 128-146; Warton, Thomas, 174n.
parodies, 146-147. In the Webbe, WiUiam, 88.
pseudo-classic period, 10, 148- Wessel, 71.
196. In the Romantic period, Whitehead, Paul, 177.
11, 197-211, 212. In the Wilkie, William, 149, 160, 197,
Victorian period, 11, 12, 212- 198.
234; in oratory, 214-215; in Wilham of Malmesbury, 36.
prose, 215-217. Transla- Wimpfeling, 71.
tions, 80-91, 150-159, 219- Wither, WiUiam, 106.
224, 229; list of translations, Wolsey, Cardinal, 72, 116.
burlesques, parodies, and imi- Wordsworth, WilUam, 194, 200,
tations, 238-246. 219.
Vergil's pillar of tinned iron, 57- Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 94, 95.
59, 148. Wycherley, William, 165.
Vida, Marco Girolamo, 78, 79, 95.
Voltaire, 153. Yeats, WiUiam Butler, 233.
Vossius, Gerardus Johannes, 125. Young, Thomas, 159.
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