To Lady Violet Lebas.
Dear Lady Violet,--Who can admire too much your undefeated resolution to admire only the right things?I wish I had this respect for authority!But let me confess that I have always admired the things which nature made me prefer,and that I have no power of accommodating my taste to the verdict of the critical.If I do not like an author,I leave him alone,however great his reputation.Thus I do not care for Mr.Gibbon,except in his Autobiography,nor for the elegant plays of M.Racine,nor very much for some of Wordsworth,though his genius is undeniable,nor excessively for the late Prof.Amiel.Why should we force ourselves into an affection for them,any more than into a relish for olives or claret,both of which excellent creatures I have the misfortune to dislike?No spectacle annoys me more than the sight of people who ask if it is "right"to take pleasure in this or that work of art.Their loves and hatreds will never be genuine,natural,spontaneous.
You say that it is "right"to like Virgil,and yet you admit that you admire the Mantuan,as the Scotch editor joked,"wi' deeficulty."I,too,must admit that my liking for much of Virgil's poetry is not enthusiastic,not like the admiration expressed,for example,by Mr.Frederic Myers,in whose "Classical Essays"you will find all that the advocates of the Latin singer can say for him.
These heights I cannot reach,any more than I can equal that eloquence.Yet 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!Does it touch thee at all,oh gentle spirit and serene,that we,who never knew thee,love thee yet,and revere thee as a saint of heathendom?
Have the dead any delight in the religion they inspire?
Id cinerem aut Manes credis curare sepultos?
I half fancy I can trace the origin of this personal affection for Virgil,which survives in me despite the lack of a very strong love of parts of his poems.When I was at school we met every morning for prayer,in a large circular hall,round which,on pedestals,were set copies of the portrait busts of great ancient writers.
Among these was "the Ionian father of the rest,"our father Homer,with a winning and venerable majesty.But the bust of Virgil was,Ithink,of white marble,not a cast (so,at least,I remember it),and was of a singular youthful purity and beauty,sharing my affections with a copy of the exquisite Psyche of Naples.It showed us that Virgil who was called "The Maiden"as Milton was named "The Lady of Christ's."I don't know the archeology of it,perhaps it was a mere work of modern fancy,but the charm of this image,beheld daily,overcame even the tedium of short scraps of the "AEneid"daily parsed,not without stripes and anguish.So I retain a sentiment for Virgil,though I well perceive the many drawbacks of his poetry.
It is not always poetry at first hand;it is often imitative,like all Latin poetry,of the Greek songs that sounded at the awakening of the world.This is more tolerable when Theocritus is the model,as in the "Eclogues,"and less obvious in the "Georgics,"when the poet is carried 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.Virgil had that love of rivers which,I think,a poet is rarely without;and it did not need Greece to teach him to sing of the fields:
Propter aquam,tardis ingens ubi flexibus Mincius et tenera praetexit arundine ripas.
"By the water-side,where mighty Mincius wanders,with links and loops,and fringes all the banks with the tender reed."Not the Muses of Greece,but his own Casmenae,song-maidens of Italy,have inspired him here,and his music is blown through a reed of the Mincius.In many such places he shows a temper with which we of England,in our late age,may closely sympathize.
Do you remember that mediaeval story of the building of Parthenope,how it was based,by the Magician Virgilius,on an egg,and how the city shakes when the frail foundation chances to be stirred?This too vast empire of ours is as frail in its foundation,and trembles at a word.So it was with the Empire of Rome in Virgil's time:
civic revolution muttering within it,like the subterranean thunder,and the forces of destruction gathering without.In Virgil,as in Horace,you constantly note their anxiety,their apprehension for the tottering fabric of the Roman state.This it was,I think,and not the contemplation of human fortunes alone,that lent Virgil his melancholy.From these fears he looks for a shelter in the sylvan shades;he envies the ideal past of the golden world.
Aureus hanc vitam in terris Saturnus agebat!