VIRGIL COMPARED WITH HOMER

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He

despondent, because he thought his work undone. begged that the "Eneid," since he could not complete it, might be burned; he called it a piece of lunacy that he ever consented to undertake so great a task; he valued the "Georgics" more highly, because they were within the compass of his powers. So Milton thought his "Paradise Regained," as respected its subject, a greater poem than his "Paradise Lost."

It is well for us that Virgil's dying injunctions were not carried out. Augustus knew too well the poetical and political value of the "Æneid" to permit it to be destroyed. Instead of burning it, he ordered it to be most carefully preserved; he commanded that it should be neither amended, added to, nor altered, in any way; through his influence it gained at once a circulation and fame entirely unexampled in ancient times. It remains the most complete picture of the Roman mind at its highest elevation. It is the noblest contribution to pure literature that has ever been made by the Latin race.

And yet we must not rate Virgil too high. Among ancient poets he is the second, not the first. We must grant that he is not a Homer. For while Virgil has talent-prodigious talent, Homer has genius. And the difference between the two is this: Genius is spontaneous, unconscious, free from the thought of self, working from an inner impulse that makes labor both a necessity and a delight. Talent, on the other hand, works with self-consciousness and effort. Virgil has prodigious Whatever labor and skill can do, he accomplishes. But the vivida vis, the creative power, the original insight into the heart of things, he has not, as Homer has.

talent.

Virgil does not set before us great characters, as Homer does. Achilles and Ulysses, Homer's heroes, are creations so distinct and yet so natural, that the passionate courage of the one and the wily wisdom of the other are almost historical realities to us. But it is not so with the hero of Virgil's poem. Eneas is more of a saint than a hero, more of a monk than a warrior. Saints are not necessarily uninteresting, but pious Æneas hardly excites in us a ripple of enthusiasm. Even his saintship is not decided, for everything seems right to him that will further his interest.

If Virgil has given us any wholly original character, it is that of Dido. Her figure is lifelike and complete. The gradual rise of her fatal passion for Æneas, and her throwing away of life when she finds herself abandoned, have in them more of the spirit of modern romance than can be found in all classical literature besides. Non humilis mulier-there is nothing small about her grief; and nothing so becomes her in her life as the grand air with which she leaves it:

My life is lived, and I have played

The part that fortune gave,
And now I pass, a queenly shade,

Majestic to the grave.

Yes,

And yet it is said that Apollonius Rhodius furnished Virgil with the outline of this picture of Dido. and even Homer had his predecessors. There were brave men before Agamemnon, and there were doubtless poets before Homer. To all men of genius it can be said: "Other men labored, and ye have entered into their labors." So the greatest literary productions of

ARTISTIC RATHER THAN SPONTANEOUS

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all the ages are inextricably intertwined with one another. Milton could never have written if Dante had not gone before; Dante presupposes Virgil; Virgil would have been impossible without Homer; Homer himself was probably the interpreter and unifier of a whole cycle of rhapsodists who glimmered like stars in the early morning of poetry before his own great epic sun had risen.

Still it is true that the power to set forth great personalities belongs to Homer in far larger measure than to Virgil. Homer can use his materials creatively, and out of them can fashion new forms, as Virgil cannot. The powerful invention, the dramatic instinct, the insight into character, which belong to the greatest poetry, are lacking in Virgil's work. The Germans distinguish between the Naturepos and the Kunstepos, between the epic poetry that is spontaneous and the epic poetry that springs from art. While Virgil gives the best specimen of the one, Homer must evermore be the noblest example of the other.

The interest of the "Eneid," unlike that of the "Odyssey" or the "Iliad," is not so much in the main story as in the episodes. The former poem is much more capable of partition. It may be doubted indeed whether Augustus and Virgil might not better have compromised matters by burning the last six books of the "Eneid" while the first six were preserved. No revision could ever have turned those last six into an "Iliad." In spite of the fact that Dante seems most moved by the closing scenes of the poem, and in spite of the fact that the Roman and imperial element is stronger in the last half than in the first, it still is true

that Virgil's literary fame would have been greater if that last half had not been written. This Latin Homer begins to nod when he gets half way through his task.

Yet Turnus, a character of much more heroic fibre than Æneas, would be lost to us if the last six books were lost, and the noblest type of Latin chivalry with him. How much we should lose if we lost the episode of Camilla, the virgin warrior, the Amazonian queen, whose onset is like the wind:

Nay, she could fly o'er fields of grain
Nor crush in flight the tapering wheat;
Or skim the surface of the main,

Nor let the billows touch her feet.

Macaulay, in his "Lays of Ancient Rome," has no more effective couplet than that in which he describes the rush of another army, that moves.

Like swift Camilla o'er the corn,

Camilla o'er the main.

And how could we part with that exquisite episode of Nisus and Euryalus, who occupy in ancient poetry the place which Damon and Pythias occupy in ancient prose? Here one noble youth dies to save another:

Love for his friend too freely shown,
This was his crime, and this alone.

It is the heathen confirmation of Paul's words: "For a good man some would even dare to die." But Virgil witnesses to "the rarity of this human charity," by predicting the immortality of fame which he will give it in his poem:

VIRGIL'S SPECIAL MERITS

Blest pair! if aught my verse avail,
No day shall make your memory fail
From off the heart of time,
While Capitol abides in place,
The mansion of the Ænean race,

And throned upon that moveless base
Rome's father sits sublime.

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Yet in spite of these brilliant and pathetic episodes, and the great constructive skill which Virgil has shown in weaving them into his story, the "Æneid" has developed passions rather than created persons, and in reading it we get no such impression of sustained and majestic power, as is made upon us when we enter the charmed circle of Homer.

When we have said this, however, we have said the most that can be said in disparagement of Virgil. He has merits of his own which Homer cannot equal, simply because Homer was born too early in human history. In all that pertains to moral earnestness, to refinement of taste, and to human sympathy, Virgil is superior to Homer. Certain historians of Latin literature complain that Virgil has always a divided mind; his spirit belonged to the ages of faith, and yet he sought to reconcile that faith with science. Let us rather say that Virgil takes the naïve and unquestioning beliefs of Homer and turns them into rational convictions, adds to them the knowledge of a later day, clothes them with the very perfection of literary workmanship, interprets them to the new age, and hands. them down to posterity.

Virgil feels the mystery of the unseen world more than Homer does; he cannot like Homer talk sportively