Nitchie Vergil and English Poets
Nitchie Vergil and English Poets
Nitchie Vergil and English Poets
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VERGIL
AND
THE ENGLISH POETS
BY
ELIZABETH NITCHIE, Ph. D.
Instructor in English in Goucher Collegb
^^^'^^^
^ 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
. . .
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
Not only the career of Aeneas, but the life of his creator
was recognized as a legitimate subject for romanticizing,
i
Part Tuniaon, op. cit., Graf, op. cit., and for the legends current in
II,
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
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."
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
And Virgil then did shape the small bees of the aire.
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,
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
D 1519.
42 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS
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.
She is also
holde of alle quenes flour,
for to seke
The quene, and of her socour her beseke;
Swich renoun was ther spronge of her goodnesse.
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.
:
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.
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
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,
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
r
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 67
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,'
I
J -. Schoole, published in 1659, but written in 1636, while it
'
There had been a prose version of the Aeneid in Gaelic before 1400,
*
It was his great desire that his favorite poet should become
known to all his countrymen. "Go, wlgar Virgill," he says,
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:
" 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
vivid:
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."
CHAPTER V
SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE
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
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
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
or to Mantuan's
Home then, my full fed lambs; the night comes, home apace,
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.
and he replies,
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.
^
I
/ His lips an altar, where I'll offer up
As many kisses as the sea hath sands.
Is fled to sea.
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
Dear England,
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
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. . . .
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
'
Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum,"
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
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,
By doom of battle,
(P. L. 2. 528-532, 546-550)
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,
passage broad,
Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to Hell,
to compare
Great things with small,
(P. R. 4. 563-4)
and the lines,
quantum ad auras
vertice
aetherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit.
{Aen. 4. 445-6)
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
CHAPTER VII
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
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-
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.'
* Aen. 4. 74-76.
DRYDEN AND POPE 157
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)
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
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
: ;
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
to
The black night that sits immense around.
The models for this may be found in the following lines from
the first Georgic:
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
These are the very words of Vergil translated into the past
tense, with the usual elaboration
pervades
Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.*
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:
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
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
it tristis arator
maerentem abiungens fraterna morte iuvencum.
{Georg. 3. 517-8)
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. . . .
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
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:
• Cf Milton's description
. of the building of Pandemonium, Par. Lost,
Book I. U. 670-730.
LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 209
intremere omnem
murmiu'e Trinacriam.
(Aen. 3. 571, 575-7, 581-2)
LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 211
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
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:
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
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.*
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.'
' ' '
Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,
Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre;
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;
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;
All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out in many a golden phrase.
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?
rolled out his Vergil, giving first the thunder, then the wash
of the sea in the lines
' 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
Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatam.
(Am. 1. 282)
(Aen. 5. 710)
" 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,
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
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.)
1700 (?)
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.
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