He explains its antiquities, and the poet skilfully affords us a hint of the destiny for which this village, the future Capitol, hidden by brambles, was reserved.* How striking is the picture! How vivid is the contrast to a man well acquainted with antiquity! How dull is it in the eyes of him who brings to the reading of Virgil no other preparation than a natural taste, and some knowledge of the Latin language! XVIII. The better a person understands antiquity, the more will he admire this poet's ingenuity. His subject was slender enough; the flight of a band of exiles, the fightings of a few peasants, and the establishment of a paltry village, comprehend all the boasted labours of the pious Æneas. But the poet has ennobled them, and in doing so has known how to render them still more interesting. By an illusion too refined not to escape the notice of the generality of readers, and too felicitous to be displeasing to competent judges, he embellishes the manners of the heroic ages, but while he adorns, does not disguise them. The pastoral Latinus and the seditious Turnus are transformed into mighty monarchs. All Italy trembles for the fate of her liberty. Eneas triumphs over gods and men. Moreover, Virgil knew how to throw all the Roman glory over the Trojans. The founder of Rome casts the founder of Lavinium into the shade. It is a kindling fire; soon it will envelope the whole world in its flames. Eneas, (if I may be allowed the expression,) contains within himself the germ of all his descendants. When besieged in his camp, he recalls to our minds Cæsar at Alexia.‡ We do not divide our admiration. suggestu fori, captâ hostium classi, suffixit; si tamen illa, classis; nam sex fuêre rostratæ. Sed hic numerus illis initiis navale bellum fuit." (L. Annæi Flori, lib. i. cap. 11.) Propertius had a glimpse of the same idea, but confusedly :— "Cossus at insequitur Veïentis cæde Tolumni, Necdum ultra Tiberim, belli sonus, ultima præda Propertii Elegiæ, lib. iv. eleg. 11, ver. 23. But in the whole tirade he mingles two ideas, which are very different in their essences and consequences. The comparison of Rome flourishing with Rome newly founded, penetrates the mind with a feeling of magnificence and pleasure. Whereas, those uncultivated wastes where the ruins of the ancient Veii could with difficulty be discovered, inspire the thoughts with a tender melancholy. * Virgil, Æneid, lib. viii. v. 185-370. Hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit, Romanoque foro et lautis mugire Carinis. + Nothing is more difficult than for an author brought up in luxury, to describe simplicity of manners without meanness. If you read Penelope's Letter, in Ovid, you will be disgusted by the same rusticity which in Homer is delightful. Read Mademoiselle de Scudéry, and you will be disagreeably surprised at meeting with the pomp of the palace of Louis XIV. at the court of Tomyris. To catch the spirit of manners, it is necessary to live among them. Reflection supplied the place of experience to Virgil, and perhaps to Fenelon. They were aware that it was necessary to decorate them a little, to please the fastidious delicacy of their readers; but they also knew that they would shock that delicacy itself, were they to overload them with ornaments. I ought to have said Alesia. Alexia is an erroneous reading of some editions of the Commentaries; but the most ancient manuscripts always have Alesia, in agreement with other authors. Notice de l'Ancienne Gaule, par M. d'Anville, p. 49. Never does Virgil better employ this sort of art than when, descending with his hero to the infernal regions, his imagination appears untrammeled. He there creates no new or fantastic beings. Romulus and Brutus, Scipio and Cæsar, are there seen exactly such as Rome admired or dreaded them. XIX. The Georgics are always read with that vivid taste which is due to the beautiful, and with that delicious pleasure, which is inspired by their agreeable subject into every sensible and well cultivated mind. That admiration is, however, increased, when their author's design is found to be as exalted as its execution is beautiful. I always take my model from Virgil. His elegant verses and the precepts of his friend Horace fixed the Romans taste, and may prove instructive to the most remote posterity. But to explain my ideas properly, it is necessary to draw them from some little distance. XX. The first Romans fought for glory and for their country. After the siege of Veii,* they received a trifling stipend, and sometimes rewards after the triumphs;† but they regarded them as a favour and not as a debt. When the war was finished, each soldier became a citizen, retired into his cottage and hung up his now useless arms, ready to resume them at the first signal. When Sylla restored peace to the republic, affairs were greatly changed. More than three hundred thousand men, accustomed to slaughter and luxury, without property, country, or principles, looked for recompenses. Had the dictator paid them in money according to the rate afterwards settled by Augustus, they would have cost him more than thirty-two millions of our money, an immense sum in the most prosperous times, but at that period greatly above the means of the republic. Sylla took a course dictated more by necessity and by his own private interest, than by a regard to the welfare of the state. He conferred lands on the soldiers. Forty-seven legions were dispersed up and down Italy. * Livy, lib. iv. cap. 59, 60. † Livy, lib. xxx. cap. 45, &c. Arbuthnot's Tables, p. 181, &c. This rate was 3000 drachmas, or 12,000 sesterces, for the private legionary soldier, (Dion. Cassius, lib. liv.; Lipsii Ex. ad lib. i. Annalium Taciti C.), twice as much for a cavalry soldier, or for a centurion, and four times as much for a tribune, (Wotton's History of Rome, p. 154.) The Roman legion, after its augmentation by Marius (Rosini Antiq. p. 964), consisted of six thousand infantry, and three hundred horse. This vast body had but sixty-six officers, viz. sixty centurions and six tribunes. The following is the calculation : 282,000 Legionaries at 3000 drachmas, or 12,000 sesterces, 2820 Centurions, and 14,100 cavalry, at 6000 drachmas, or 282 Tribunes at 12,000 drachmas, or £420 each £28,905,000 3,468,600 Total 115,650 £32,489,220 According to Mr. Arbuthnot's calculations, this sum would only amount to £30,705,220, the drachma being worth 74d. English (Arbuthnot's Tables, p. 15); but according to some investigations I have made, the Attic drachma of the later times, equal to the Roman denarius both in weight and value, was worth 8d. sterling. (See my manuscript remarks on the weights, &c. of the ancients; Hooper, p. 108; and Eissenschmidt, p. 23, &c.) Four and twenty military colonies were founded.* This was a ruinous expedient: if they were mingled with the other inhabitants, they quitted their habitations to meet each other again; if they were left united in a body, the first seditious rebel found in them an army all ready made. These veteran warriors, tired of repose, and thinking it beneath them to acquire by the sweat of their brow what might be procured at the mere expense of a little blood, dissipated their new property in debauchery, and hoping for safety only in a civil war, powerfully aided Catiline's designs. § Augustus, embarrassed by the same difficulties, followed the same plan, and feared from it the same results. Unhappy Italy still smoked "With fires by her dying freedom lit." || + The hardy veterans had bought their possessions only at the expense of a bloody war, and their frequent acts of violence sufficiently showed that they still fancied their weapons were in their hands.¶ XXI. What then could be more conformable with the mild policy of Augustus, than to employ his friend's melodious songs to reconcile them to their new condition? Therefore did he advise him to compose this work. Da facilem cursum, atque audacibus annue cœptis ; Virgil. Georgic. lib. i. v. 40. Agriculture had, however, been treated of by more than fifty Greek authors;** Cato's and Varro's treatises were surer, more minute, and more exact guides than a poet could possibly be. But was it not more necessary to confer on soldiers a taste for rustic repose, than to instruct them in the knowledge of husbandry? From thence arise all those affecting descriptions of the innocent pleasures enjoyed by the peasant, his sports, his fireside, his delightful seclusion, as opposed to the frivolous amusements of other men, and to their business still more trifling than their amusements. In this description, there are striking and unexpected features, sly and happy hits, which show that Virgil possessed a talent for satire which he was prevented from cultivating only by more exalted views and by the goodness of his disposition.++ What veteran would not recognise himself in old Corycius? ++ Accustomed, like them, to arms in his younger days, he at last found happiness * Livy, lib. lxxxix.; Epitome Freinsheim. Suppl. lib. lxxxix. cap. 34. Respecting the particular of military colonies, the Cenotaphia Pisana of Cardinal Norris may be consulted; the second chapter of his first dissertation contains very instructive details on this subject. + Taciti Annales, lib. xiv. p. 249, edit. Lipsii. Tacitus de Moribus Germanorum, p. 441. § Sallust in Bello Catilinario, p. 40; Cicero in Catilinam, Oratio ii. cap. 9. || Racine, Mithridates, Act iii. scene 1. See Donatus in Vitâ Virgilii; Virgil, Eclogue ix. v. 2, &c. **Varro de Re Rusticâ, lib. i. cap. 1. ++ Hic petit excidiis urbem, miserosque penates, Virg. Georg. lib. iv. v. 125, et seq. T T Virg. Georg. lib. ii. v. 505, et seq. in a wild retreat, which he had by his labours transformed into a paradise.* The inhabitants of Italy, weary of dragging on a life filled by so many well-founded fears, deploring with Virgil the calamities of the times, and complaining that they saw their prince carried away by the violence of the veterans, Ut cùm carceribus sese effudêre quadriga, Virg. Georg. lib. i. v. 512. then recommenced their labours with the hope of a renewal of the golden age. XXII. According to my ideas, then, Virgil is not a mere author describing country pursuits. He is a second Orpheus, who only touches his lyre to make wild beasts lay aside their ferocity, and to unite them in the bonds of morality and law.† I His poetry did accomplish this wondrous effect. The veterans became insensibly accustomed to repose. They peacefully passed the thirty years which elapsed before Augustus had, not without difficulty, established a military chest to pay them in money.‡ XXIII. Aristotle, who enlightened the darkness of nature and art, was the father of criticism. Time, whose slow but sure justice, at last replaces error by truth, has broken the philosopher's statues, but has confirmed the critic's decisions. Destitute of observations, he laid down chimeras as facts. Educated in Plato's school, and by the writings of Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, and Thucydides, he drew his rules from the nature of things and from a knowledge of the human heart. He has illustrated them by examples taken from the most perfect models. Two thousand years have elapsed since Aristotle's time. Critics have brought their art to perfection. Still, they are not yet agreed as to the object of their labours. A Le Clerc, a Cousin, a Desmaiseaux, and a Sainte Marthe § all offer us different definitions of it. For my own part, I think they are all too indefinite or too arbitrary. Criticism is, in my opinion, the art of judging of authors and their works. What they have said, whether they have said it well, and whether they have spoken truth.|| Under the first of these branches is included grammar, a knowledge of languages and manuscripts, the discrimination of supposititious works, and the restoration of corrupted passages. Under the second is comprehended the whole theory of poetry and eloquence. The third opens an immense field, *He was one of the pirates to whom Pompey had given land. See Servius in loco, and Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii. p. 56. + Sylvestres homines sacer interpresque Deorum Dictus ob hoc lenire tigres rabidosque leones, Horace, Ars Poetica, v. 391. Tillemont, Histoire des Empereurs; Taciti Annales, lib. i. p. 39; Dionysius, lib. iv. p. 565; Suetonius in Augustum, cap. 49. § Le Clerc, Ars Critica, lib. i. cap. 1. This truth must be confined to historical truth, the correctness of their testimony, not that of their opinions. This last sort of truth belongs rather to the province of logic than to that of criticism. the critical examination of facts. The whole tribe of critics may, then, be divided into grammatical, rhetorical, and historical critics. The exclusive pretensions advanced by the first, have been injurious not only to their own labours, but also to those of their brethren. XXIV. The domain of criticism includes all the past conditions of mankind, all the creations of genius, all the deductions of reason, and all the collections of research. Discrimination, tact, and penetration of mind are all necessary for its proper exercise. I follow the man of letters into his study, I see him surrounded with the productions of all ages; his library is well stored; his mind is enlightened, but not overloaded. He looks around on every side. The most remote author from his present occupation is not forgotten; a ray of light may even there be met with, which will confirm the critic's discoveries or stagger his hypotheses. The scholar's labour is accomplished. Our modern philosopher stops there, and praises the compiler's memory, who has sometimes been his own dupe, and has mistaken the materials for the edifice. XXV. But the real critic sees that his task has only just begun. He weighs, combines, doubts, and decides. Exact and impartial, he yields only to reason, or to that authority which is the rationale of facts.* The most respectable name sometimes yields to the testimony of authors, on whom circumstances alone confer a transient importance. Ready and fertile in resources, yet he has no deceitful cunning; he is willing to sacrifice the most brilliant and specious theory, and does not make his authors speak the language of his own conjectures. A friend to truth, he seeks only for those kinds of proofs which are appropriate to his subject, and with them he is content. He does not sweep the scythe of analysis over those delicate beauties which wither at the slightest touch; but at the same time, far from being content with barren admiration, he dives into the most obscure recesses of the human heart to obtain a satisfactory explanation of his pleasures and dislikes. Modest and sensible, he does not display his conjectures as truths, his inductions as facts, his probabilities as demonstrations. XXVI. It has been said that geometry is a good sort of logic, and this was supposed to be conferring on it high praise; but it is a greater glory to science to develop and perfect mankind, than it is to enlarge the boundaries of the known universe. But may not criticism claim part of this honour? It has even this advantage, that geometry is concerned with demonstrations which are to be found only in itself, while criticism weighs the different amounts of probability. It is by the comparison of these that we regulate our daily actions, and often decide on our future destiny. Let us balance a few critical probabilities. XXVII. Our age, which appears to believe itself destined to change every sort of law, has engendered a kind of historical Pyrrhonism, useful but dangerous. M. de Pouilly, a man of brilliant but superficial talent, who cited more authors than he had ever * That is, authority drawn from experience. † This is principally intended of the elements of geometry and of criticism. |