MASTER NEGA TIVE NO. 91-80249 MICROFILMED 1991 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code ~ concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material... Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOR: YEAMES, H. H. TITLE: ON TEACHING VIRGIL PLACE: S.L DA TE : [1912] COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC MTrRQFORM TARHFT Master Negative it Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record 1 BKS/PROD Books FUL/BIB NYCG91-B75711 Acq Maintenance NYCG-NE FIN ID NY( IDiNYCG^ :G91-B75711 - Record 1 of 1 - Record updated today 91-B75711 RTYP:a ST:p FRN: MS: EL: AD:08-21-91 CC:9668 BLT:ain DCF:? CSC:? MOD: SNR: ATC: UD:08-22-91 CP:nyu L:eng INT:? GPC:? BIO:? FIC:? CON: :??? 1 PC:r PD:1991/1912 REP:? CPI:? FSI:? ILC: :???? MEI:? II:? 1 MMD: OR: POL: DM: RR: COL: EML: GEN: BSE: 040 NNC{:cNNC 100 10 Yeames, H. H. 245 10 On teaching VirgilJ:! iCmicroform], 260 1 [1912]. 300 26 p. LOG ORIG QD 08-21-91 • Restrictions on Use: TOCHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: ijjkod^ FILM SlZE:_3^J::^r^ IMAGE PLACEMENT: IAOIA^IB IIB DATE FILMED: ^_i_ INITIALS.. ^ S^ FILMED BY: RESEARCf-I PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBR1DGe7ct % ^.^, r Association for Information and image Management 1100 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1100 Silver Spring. Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 3 4 mi IIIiIiiiiIiiiiIimiIiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIiimIiii 8 9 10 n 12 13 14 15 Inches T I M I I 1 2 I M . i| ii | ii |iin| i iii|l i | i i|li,i i |liji| l i^ ^ ^^ mm 1.0 S I.I 1.25 ■ 56 ■ 71 Itt m u 2.8 3.2 |4 2.5 1.4 2.2 2.0 1.8 1.6 MfiNUFPCTURED TO flllM STflNDfiRDS BY fiPPLIED IMAGE, INC. ^ "liC^-^i^-X/w'^^'^ ,^^.^^, ON TEACHING VIRGIL • •• .'. \ 1 1 .• •. 1*1 1 1 • • • • 11 • • • • - 1 > I • • • » • > • • » * • • ■' • * • < . . t . • •• » • J • t • • > • • * • 1 1 I 1 • • < > H. H. YEAMES Reprinted for private drculation from The School Review, Vol. XX, No. i, January 191 2 r. *' ■•-.":. ' ',_,'■ -v 1 1 ;%.■'. A.- J^'-^jJ^ THE SCHOOL REVIEW A JOURNAL OF SECONDARY EDUCATION VOLUME XX NUMBER I JANUARY, 1912 WHOLE . NUMBER 191 ON TEACHING VIRGIL' H. H. YEAMES Hobart College, Geneva, New York degli altri poeti onore e lumcj vagliami il lungo sttidio e il grande amore che mi ha fcUto cercar to tuo volume, —Dante, Inferno^ I, %^, Culture is like religion, a thing about which one should not be dogmatic. Both words have been much abused: the scomers of the one thing, like the professors of the other, have too often thought they have to do merely with externals— a form of observance, a mode of speech, an attitude of mind. In reality, one like the other lies at the very heart of life and feeds the springs of character itself. It is a still, small voice not to be heard in the din of the market- place, a fragrant flower that cannot bloom in traflSc-trodden ways. It is one of those greatest things more real for their indefiniteness and intangibility, more potent for their very lack of show and noise. The cultivated man is not merely the gentleman of taste and refinement, with intellectual resources to occupy his leisure hours, but the "humane" man, the highest development of the human being, because his outlook upon Kfe is broader, his sympathy is deeper, his interest in what men are doing now is more enlightened, « A paper read, in part, at the annual meeting of the New York State Classical Teachers' Association at Syraciise, December 30, 19 10. z THE SCHOOL REVIEW for his understanding of what men have thought and said and done in the past. Literature is the worthy record of what men have thought and said and done in the past. It forms therefore the chief element of culture, the chief subject of education. For culture is the true end of higher education — culture, and not practical efficiency : that is the ideal of technical or professional training. Lovers of literature, needless to say, hold culture to be not only the broadest but also the surest foundation for the highest type of efficiency; they hold that vision should precede service, and that ** where there is no vision the people perish." One cannot answer those who do not agree with this ideal: he would be speaking in an unknown tongue. Such extravagant attacks upon the classics as are made by a college professor in a recent number of the Popular Science Monthly call for no rejoinder, because the writer shows himself beforehand temperamentally incapable of understanding the other side. We have to let such words pass — non ragionam di lor^ ma guarda e passa — regretting only that a serious journal should choose to print them. Would it print (let us suggest) an equally sincere plea from a student of literature with no taste for scientffic studies, and therefore no sympathy with them, who nevertheless felt called upon to assert that science is without educational value ? Sympathy and under- standing are the very prerequisites for any just judgment. He who, lacking these, sets himself up for a critic provokes retort in Horace's pithy and pregnant phrase, Lucum ligna putas. When a man has eyes only for firewood or marketable timber, he will feel contempt rather than admiration for the sacred grove with the mystery and beauty of its inviolable trees. No argument will purge such blear-eyed vision: it needs collyrium; or is it hellebore ? As to the old and outgrown quarrel of modern versus ancient languages, which this same writer tries to pick up again — here he may be answered. The scholar whose work lies in modem lan- guages will be the first to grant that no adequate knowledge of his subject is possible without some acquaintance with the linguistic and literary sources. Modem literature is unintelligible without Greece, modern language is inexplicable without Rome. Trans- lation, we are told, will suffice to give acquaintance with ancient ON TEACHING VIRGIL 3 literature, at least; but how much more true this is of modem literature! English versions of French and German classics are far more satisfactory than translations from Greek and Latin, because modern modes of thought and expression, and modem verse-forms have much in common; whereas no ancient poet has been rendered in a way to satisfy those who know him. Each fresh attempt recalls Bentley's alleged remark on Pope's Iliad: ''A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." Much as we admire or enjoy such translators of Virgil as Dryden, Coning- ton, Fairfax-Taylor, or Mr. Theodore Williams, no one of them, nor all together, can more than suggest his essential quality: his magic remains incommunicable. If one must get great literature through the unsatisfying medium of translation, it is far better that the modern literatures should come to him that way; both because they are essentially less great than the ancient, and because translators can do them greater justice. I cannot help adding that the classicist is more likely to have a fair reading- knowledge of modern languages, a fair acquaintance with modern literatures, than is the modernist to have first-hand acquaintance with the classics. This, however, is an aside. Any definition of culture, however undogmatic, will include some knowledge of literature and some appreciation of poetry, the consummate flower of literature. Next to our own English literature in richness and value to us is that of the ancient world, those books which men have agreed to call the Classics; and among these Virgil occupies a unique and for us a pre-eminently important place— a position in no way affected by the general superiority of Greek over Roman literature. He remains one of the few books, like the Bible, Shakespeare, Homer, Plato, and Dante, indispensable to culture in even the narrowest conception of it. The reasons for this high eminence are various. In the first place, he at once became a classic and accordingly a model for study in school. It was probably in his lifetime that Caedlius Epirota, "fond nurse of tender bardlings" (tenellorum nutricula vatuniy as Domitius Marsus called him), began to teach his poems.' * Suet. De gram. 16. 4 THE SCHOOL REVIEW And this position he has held ever since, in one unbroken tradition coming down through the Middle Ages — ^in whose darkness he was almost the only hght — to our own day and to us penitus toto divisos orbe,^ To the dominion of his poems the gods have set no bounds of space or time: his ego nee metas rerum nee tempora pono, imj)eriiim sine fine dedi.» The signs of the times seem to promise an increase rather than any decline of interest in Virgil. His place in the curriculum would therefore seem secure, and the service he is destined to render to countless generations still is no less than that he has performed for the nineteen centuries past. The loving study of such a poet is in itself a Uberal education. His position in the schools is due, of course, not to the influence of schoolmasters, but to his recognized rank in Uterature. He is in a sense the first of modem poets and the last of the great ancients; he stands alone on the height which divides and yet unites the old and the new worlds. All the streams of ancient song are tributary to his genius, and his own poetry is the fountain-head of many a river that has refreshed European lands. He enshrined in imperish- able verse the great ideals of a great civilization; he was not only the poet of a great epoch, but also an epoch-making poet. In him the Graeco-Roman civilization found its truest interpreter, and chiefly through him handed down its legacy of inspiration to the modem world. "He is the great mediator between antiquity and Christendom; he maintained in poetry equally with Plato in philosophy the imbroken continuity of the human spirit," says Professor Woodberry,^ in words that suggest the phrase of the Emperor Alexander Severus, who called Virgil " the Plato of poets,"^ It is not easy to recall any great poet since Virgil's day who has not caught some inspiration from him; and if the future has great poets in store, his torch will be passed on from hand to hand, the 'jEc. 1. 67. »i4e». I. 279. 3 Essay on Virgil, in GrecU Writers. 4 '* Vergilium autem Platonem poetarum vocabat ejusque imaginem cum Ciceronis simulacro in secimdo larario habnit" {Lampridius 31). Of Virgil and Plato the same legend is related, how bees settled on their infant lips. ON TEACHING VIRGIL 5 royal Virgilian line will "stretch out to the crack of doom.'* And what a line it is! Lucan and Statins, Dante and Tasso, Spenser and Milton, Dryden and Pope, Wordsworth and Tennyson are only a few among his disciples. He is like his own oak tree, stand- ing unmoved by time or storm, with roots drawing nurture from all that is best in the past, with branches outspread in every direction to the upper air and bearing leaves "for the healing of the nations": quantum vertice ad auras aetherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit. ergo non hiemes illam, non flabra neque imbres convellunt; inmota manet, multosque nepotes, multa vinim volvens durando saecula vincit. tunc fortis late ramos et bracchia tendens hue illuc, media ipsa ingentem sustinet umbram.* Poetry can never outgrow his influence; in fact, such influence is a stream which deepens though diffused, fed by the showers and tributary springs. As Pope sings in Virgilian strains: Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, Above the reach of sacrilegious hands; Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, Destructive war and all-involving age. See, from each clime the learned their incense bring! Hear, in all tongues consenting paeans ring! Hail, bards triumphant, bom in happier days, Immortal heirs of imiversal praise! Whose honors with increase of ages grow. As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow.' Virgilian accents, but "oh, how frail to that large utterance of the early gods!" — magnanimi heroes, nati meliorihus annis. But it is not poets only who have felt his influence: his impress is on great men of every sort, of every land and time, and on great movements too. It would be hard to overestimate the influence on Christian thought of the sixth book of the Aeneid. The mysterious fourth Eclogue has had more effect on men's minds than any other short poem ever written. According to Eusebius, who ought to know, it was instrumental in the conversion of the Emperor Con- stantine, and Gibbon with customary irony suggests that "Virgil may deserve to be ranked among the most successful missionaries ' Georg. 2, 291. > Essay on CrUicism, 181. THE SCHOOL REVIEW of the Gospel."^ Part of Pope's sonorous paraphrase retains a place in our hymnbooks, and is sung at the Christmas season in many a Christian church' — a vmique tribute to a pagan poet, sole survival of that mediaeval regard for Virgil as a prophet and almost a Christian, in Dante's memorable words, "as one who goes by night and carries the Kght behind him, and profits not himself, but after him makes men wise."^ This feeling culminated in the legend of St. Paul's visit to the tomb of Virgil on Posilippo hill, after his landing at Puteoli. In the often-quoted words of a hymn sung as late as the fifteenth century: Ad Maronis mausoleum ductus, fudit super eum piae rorem lacrimae; quem te (inquit) reddidissem, si te vivum invenissem, poetarum maxime.^ ' A legend this, but suggestive of what is profoundly true — the inti- mate connection between Virgil's teaching and Christian thought: our poet has his place among the Fathers. The vision of a universal empire of righteousness and peace uniting all nations in one ideal was conceived by Virgil and given imperishable form. This great conception has been as potent as any human thought — far more potent, for instance, than the magnificent abstractions of Plato's Republic, great as the influence of that book has been on men's minds — and has helped to shape such vast historic structures as the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy CathoUc Church. The poet who could give voice to such an ideal, in strains of the noblest poetry ever written, combining the beauty and finish of Greek art with the martial stateliness of the Roman genius, pre-eminent in war and law, and with something of the moral fervor of Hebrew prophecy, is certainly one of the « Of alio Constantinif chaps. 19-21. Vide Sainte-Beuve, Portraits litUraires, t. Ill, " Virgile et Constantin le grand"; and Gibbon's Decline and FaU, chap. 20. » "Rise, crowned with light," etc. ^Purg. 22, 67: facesti come quei che va di notte, die porta il lume retro e s6 non giova, ma dopo sh fa le persone dotte. 4 Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages, p. 98. ON TEACHING VIRGIL 7 world's great poets. No wonder that Augustine, the author of De civitate dei, felt such passionate love for him; or that Dante, the author of the De monarchia, with a reverence that was almost wor- ship, acknowledged him as his master in his own great poem, which marks the awakening of the modern world and enshrines forever the faith of the Middle Ages. "Apollo and Neptune (says Horace in one of Landor's Imaginary Conversations) by their united power raised the walls of Troy; Virgilius single-handed will have raised an imperishable Rome." Virgil's ''image and superscription" are stamped on so many minds, not merely because he has always been studied at school, but because his verse is of a sort that one must needs love as well as admire. So it happens that Virgilian words, phrases, and lines have become, more than any other poet's, "the chosen coin of fancy," rich in accumulated association. Sainte-Beuve in his delightful way suggests that some editor should do for Virgil what has been done for Homer, point out the memorable occasions in which his verses have played a part by means of some happy allu- sion or citation— "a pretty chapter of VirgiHan amenities."^ We wish that he had lived to write this chapter. Here I can only suggest, in the hastiest way, a fraction of what it might contain. Such allusions range all the way from the motto of one of our very newest states (Oklahoma)— /a^>(?r omnia vincit'—hsLck through the ages to the admiring and conceited exclamation attributed by an impossible fiction to Cicero when he heard one of the Eclogues recited, and appropriated by Virgil from him— magnae spes altera Romue,^ The infinite pathos of Dido's plaint— /w?c solum nomen quoniam de conjuge restate— is enhanced when we learn that Virgil himself 'Nouveaux lundis, t. XI, "(Euvres de VirgUe": Je m'6tais souvent propose ce joh chapitre d'am6nit6s virgiliennes. *Georg. I, 145. *Aen. 12, 168. The story is told in the Life attributed to Donatus, 41 : ac cum Cicero quosdam versus audisset, et statim acri judicio intellexisset non communi vena editos, jussit ab mitio totam Eclogam recitari; quae cum accurate pemotasset, m fine ait, magnae spes altera Romae: .quasi ipse linguae Latinae spes prima fuisset et Maro futunis esset secunda. quae verba postea Aeneidi ipse inseniit. < Aen. 4, 324. a TEE SCHOOL REVIEW faltered as he read it.* At his reading with such wonderful feeling and charm before Augustus and his sister the passage about young Marcellus— the most touching lines in all poetry— Octavia fainted away.* What indignation on one occasion Augustus put mto the great line, Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatamP Crazy Caligula in one of his burlesque campaigns impersonated Aeneas and sacrilegiously exhorted his men with durate et vosmet rebus servate secundis,^ To Nero in his craven fear of death one of his officers flung the scornful question, usque adeone mori miserum est?^ —very appropriate to one who had vowed that, if things turned out well, he would dance on the pubUc stage the part of Tumus.^ Hadrian used to say of the ill-fated Verus, whom he had adopted as his successor, ostendent terris hunc tantum fata J Diocletian as he stabbed the prefect Aper to enforce his claim to the throne exclaimed, gloriare, Aper, Aeneae magni dextra cadis} Clodius Albinus, destined to be the unsuccessful opponent of Septimius Severus, was fond of quoting at school, arma amens capio,^ Virgil's lines are equally at home on the lips of Roman emperors and of Christian saints. St. Augustine is continually quoting him: how he repents his youthful interest in the wanderings of Aeneas, forgetful of his own wanderings from God; his tears for Dido mstead of for his own sins, and all the lure of pagan art, from which the Christian was bound to fLet—atque ipsius umbra Creusae!^'' Fenelon could never read without admiring tears the noble words: « Servius: dicitur autem ingenti adfectu hos versus pronuntiasse, cum privatim paucis praesentibus recitaret Augusto, nam recitavit voce optima. *Aen, 6, 883. Donatus, 46: tres omnino libros recitavit: secundum videlicet, quartum, et'sextum. sed hunc praecipue ob Octaviam: quae cum recitationi inter- esset, ad Ulos de fiUo suo versus, tu Marcellus eris, defecisse fertur; atque aegre refocil- lata, dena sestertia pro singuio versu VergiUo dari jussit. Cf . 43 '• pronuntiabat autem ami suavitate turn lenociniis miris. iAen, I, 282; Suet. Aug. 40. *Aen. i, 207; Suet. Col. 45- s Aen, 12, 646; Suet. Nero 47. * Suet. Nero 54. ' Aen. 6, 870; Life of Hdius, by Spartianus, 4. » Aen. 10, 830; Life of Numerianus, by Vopiscus, 13. 9 Aen. 2, 314; Life, by Capitolinus, 5. «»Aen. 2, 772; Confessions i, 13: tenere cogebar Aeneae nesdo cujus errores, oblitus errorum meorum; et plorare Didonem mortuam, quia se occidit ob amorem; cum interea meipsum in his a te morientem, Deus vita mea, siccis oculis ferrem miser- ON TEACHING VIRGIL 9 aude, hospes, contemnere opes et te quoque dignum finge deo, rebusque veni non asper egenis.' And of the same couplet the virile Dryden wrote: *Tor my part, I am lost in the admiration of it; I contemn the world when I think of it, and myself when I translate it.'*' It was Virgil's words which sounded in the ears of Savonarola, leading him to forsake the world for a life of religion : heu, fuge crudelis terras, fuge litus avarum.^ And Virgil's was the line simg with the Benedictus by the angel- choir when Paradise opened to Dante's raptured vision: tnanibus date lilia plenis.^ And so on down to modem times, which furnish examples as numerous. How often in British statesmanship have Virgil's lines played a part, never perhaps more impressively than when Pitt, as he pleaded for the abolition of African slavery till morning light streamed through the windows of the House of Commons, prophetically cited the vivid Unes: nos ubi primus equis Oriens adflavit anhelis, illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper.s Then there is the curious chronicle of the sortes Virgilianae, from the days of the Roman emperors to the days of our Puritan fathers. From these yoimg Hadrian learned that he was missus in imperium magnum.^ Alexander Severus, consulting Virgil in the temple at Praeneste, when Heliogabalus was plotting against him, received the doubtfid response: si qua fata aspera rumpas, tu Marcellus eris,"^ and in his youth his future rule had been predicted, rimus. quid enim miserius misero, non miserante seipsum; et flente Didonis mortem, quae fiebat amando Aeneam; non flente autem mortem suam, quae fiebat non amando te ? . . . . jam vero imimi et unum duo, duo et duo quattuor, odiosa cantio mihi erat; et dulcissimum spectaculum vanitatis, equus ligneus plenus armatis; et Trojae incendiimi, atque ipsius umbra Creusae. Men. 8, 364. This and other examples are cited from the eloquent and enthusi- astic essay on VirgH by F. W. H. Myers, in Essays Classical, an appreciation which is itself a classic and to which every student of Virgil is deeply indebted. * Dedication to his translation of the Aeneid. * Aen. 3, 34; vide Milman's essay on Savonarola, p. 422. *Aen. 6, 884; vide Pur g. 30, 21. * Gtorg. I, 250; vide Rosebery's Life of PiU, chap. 6. *Aen. 6, 812; vide Life, by Spartianus, 2. "^Aen.t, 882; vide Life, by Lampridius, 4. lO THE SCHOOL REVIEW ON TEACHING VIRGIL II when he sought advice about his education: tu regere imperio popu- loSy Romanej memento.^ The first Gordian learned the fate of his son: ostendent terris hunc tantum fata.^ The second Claudius learned of his own short reign (a.d. 268-270) in the line: tertia dum Latio regnantem viderit aestas;^ but was consoled by the prophecy for his posterity, his ego nee metas rerum nee tempora pono.^ The ill- fated Clodius Albinus was spurred on in his rash ambition for empire when as a tribime he consulted the Virgilian oracle in the temple of Apollo at Cumae: his rem Romanam magno turhante tumultu Sistet eques.^ And so on down to modem times, once more, for the most impressive instance, when Charles I consulting Virgil in the Bodleian Library at Oxford on the outbreak of the civil war drew upon himself the tremendous curse pronoimced by Dido upon the recreant Aeneas: at bello audacis populi vexatus et armis, finibus extorris, conplexu avolsus luli, auxilium inploret, videatque indigna suonim funera; nee cum se sub leges pads iniquae tradiderit, regpo aut optata luce fruatur; sed cadat ante diem mediaque inhumatus arena.^ It is true that Virgil's pre-eminence has not been undisputed. If Varius and Plotius had partly heeded his dying behest, and if Octavian had insisted on preserving only the three great books known to him from Virgil's own reading, we can well believe that there would never have been any dispute, that this superb fragment would have stood in all men's minds as the high-water mark of ^ Aen. 6, 848 £F.; vide Life^ by Lampridius, 14. * Aen. 6, 869; vide Capitolinus, Gordiani TreSy 20. * Aen. I, 265; vide Life^ by Trebellius, 10. *Aen. I, 278; vide Life^ by Trebellius, 10. s i4c«. 6, 857; vide Life, by Capitolinus, 5. * Aen. 4, 615. This striking story, given by most commentators without reference, is to be foimd in Memoirs of the Most Material Transactions in England, for the Last Hundred Years, Preceding the Revolution in 1688. Written at the Desire of the Late Queen Mary, by James Welwood, M.D. (Physician to William III), London, 1749 (ist ed. 1 700) , pp. 90 flf . Dr. Welwood introduces the anecdote as follows : " Then bef el him an Accident, which though a Trifle in it self, and that no Weight is to be laid upon any thing of that nature; yet since the best Authors, both Antient and Modem, have not thought it below the Majesty of History to mention the like, it may be the more excusable to insert it." poetry, and the lost books would have been lamented far more than the lyrics of Sappho or the comedies of Menander.* The horror and pity of Book II strike a higher note than all the warfare of the Iliady and a note new in poetry. The passion and tragedy of Book IV, the first love story in Uterature dealt with psychologically and sympathetically, place Virgil on a level with the greatest dramatists; you have to look to Aeschylus or Shakespeare for his equal. Here we may say of Virgil what he himself said of Pollio: sola Sophocleo tua carmina digna cothurno.^ For the majesty and mystery of Book VI you seek in vain a parallel in all "the reahns of gold"; no poetry reaches a higher level or sounds a loftier note than that subHme music blended of moral earnestness and religious awe, the stateliness of history and the charm of legend, an infinite tenderness for the pathos of life and a high faith in the divine spirit animating and directing all things to some great end. These are the books for which Voltaire claimed a great superi- ority over the works of all the Greek poets.^ It is safe to say that Virgil's hostile critics have been moved chiefly by the inevitable fact that he is not always up to his own highest level. The same thing is true to a much greater degree of Shakespeare and Milton, and everybody knows that quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. We should never forget VirgiFs own dissatisfaction with his unfin- ished work and his pathetic wish to have it destroyed. Other objections to our poet arise from misconceptions. There are three main accusations: one as to his alleged plagiarism, the second as to his alleged flattery of Augustus, the third as to the alleged weakness of character in his hero. I trust that even this brief paper will serve to answer such ill-considered charges. To the charge of plagiarism Virgil himself made the best reply, when accused of borrowing from Homer, that it is easier to steal 'Donatus, 46: tres onmino libros recitavit, secundmn videlicet, quartum, et sextum— and 52 : qui cum gravari morbo sese sentiret, scrinia saepe et magna instantia petivit, crematurus Aeneida; quibus negatis, testamento comburi jussit, ut rem inemen- datam imperfectamque. verum Tucca et Varius monuerunt id Augustum non permissunun. 'Ec. 8, 10. » Dictionnaire philosophique, s.v. "Epopee": "B me semble que le second livre de VEnSide, le quatrifime, et le sixiSme, sont autant au-dessus de tous les pontes grecs et de tous les latins, sans exceptions." 12 THE SCHOOL REVIEW ON TEACHING VIRGIL 13 his club from Hercules than a verse from Homer.' We recall Voltaire's witty saying: Homere a fait Virgile, dit-on; si cela est, c^est sans doute son plus hel ouvrage.^ "People accuse Virgil of plagiarizing," exclaimed Tennyson," but if a man made it his own, there was no harm in that; look at the great poets, Shake- speare included."^ Virgil had absorbed and assimilated all the culture of his time, he knew intimately the great poets, Latin as well as Greek, but his reading he had made his own, and the echoes come back with a subtle transmutation of soimd, the reflections appear with a delicate enrichment in his setting/ We are told that the moonlight of Virgil is pale beside the bright sun of Homer, shining in the glad morning of the world ;S and we reply that moon- light too has its beauty, a pensive charm, a melancholy grace, a tenderness and mystery that have as potent an appeal to some moods. Why compare such different things? The moon, how- ever, shines with borrowed light! Homer himself, we have come to see, is the product of a long and highly artificial culture, the successor of an extinct dynasty of bards; as Kipling tells us: When *Omer smote *is bloomin' lyre, He*d 'card men sing by land an' sea; An ' what he thought 'e might require 'E went an* took, the same as me. "Both argosies," says Professor Mackail," are freighted with the treasure of many sunken ships."' An answer to the charge of flattery is foimd first in the spirit of the time, and second in the really sublime ideal which lay behind VirgiFs glorification of Caesar. In the reign of Augustus appeared a phenomenon unique in history: the formation of a state religion, introduced without vio- lence, accepted without revolt, and practised with a fervor and spontaneity which give no groimd for accusing the people of a > Donatus, 64: facilius esse Herculi clavam quam Homero versum surripere. * Appendix to the Henriade, "Essai sur la po6sie 6pique," chap. 3. > Memoir of Tennyson, by his son, Vol. 11, p. 385. 4 See some very suggestive and discriminating remarks on ce mode d^imitaiion iclectique in Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux lundisj t. XI, " (Euvres de Virgile." s For instance, by Andrew Lang, in his Letters on Literature. • * * Virgil and Virgilianism," in the Classical Review, May, 1908. shamefxil compliance. In the cult of the Caesars were fused many old and widespread religious ideas; the emperor became the personification of Rome whose benefits were summed up in the two words, pax Romana,^ This cult became a great unifying influence, it helped to put the element of imity and universality into the popular idea of divinity, and to develop the conception of an orderly and ethical government of the universe. It imquestion- ably played a great part in preparing the world for Christianity .» The worship of Peace and of Augustus as giver of peace seems hardly unnatural when we think of the terrible century which cul- minated at Actium, with its twelve civil wars, conceived of by Virgil as a punishment inflicted by the wrath of heaven on the sins of men. Rome had turned aside from her great destiny, and now was being regenerated by a heaven-sent leader who was to usher in a new age of peace and righteousness.^ Virgil's worship of Augustus is not the flattery of a court poet, but the veneration and awe of a poetic and prophetic soul contem- plating the great man who occupied a imique place in history — descendant of Aeneas and his spiritual coimterpart, with a like divine mission to accomplish on a vaster scale: to extend the blessings of peace and civilization and religion to all the world, to lead Rome on to the fulfilment of her larger destiny, to crown her political empire with a higher spiritual dominion. Augustus is divine first of all as the giver of peace. Deus nobis haec otia fecit (sings Titynis in the first Eclogue), namque erit ille mihi semper deus. The fourth Eclogue is an exultant Gloria over the new hope of the world, the Golden Age about to be born. The first Georgic closes with a magnificent and indignant lament over the crime and madness of the civil wars, and a fervent prayer to Rome's guardian gods to preserve the young prince of peace till he shall have accomplished his work of regeneration. In the great prophecy of Aeneid i. it is not the gorgeous line of Rome's martial « Seneca De prov. 4, 14. * Vide Duruy, Hist, des Romains, t. IV, p. 18, and an interesting paper by A. P. Ball on "The Theological Utility of the Caesar Cult," in the Classical Journal, May, 1910. * See the magnificent peroration of the first Georgic, and the profoundly suggestive essay by Professor Conway on "The Messianic Idea in Virgil," in the Hibbert Journal, Vol. V. ) ' 14 THE SCHOOL REVIEW ON TEACHING VIRGIL 15 III 1 1 triumphs that impresses one most in the stately verses, but the sweet and solemn ending in a paean of peace: aspera tunc positis mitescent saecula bellis, cana Fides et Vesta, Remo cum fratre Quirinus jura dabunt; dirae ferro et conpagibus artis claudentur Belli portae.' So in Book VI it is not Rome's warrior heroes in that grand pro- cession of prophetic figures who attract the chief attention— it is the heroes of peace: quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat, quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti, inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artis, quique sui memores alios fecere merendo." And the chief spur to Aeneas in his great adventure is the vision of his illustrious descendant, who is to bring back the Golden Age: hie vir, hie est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis, Augustus Caesar, Divi genus, aurea condet saecula qui rursus Latio regnata per arva Satumo quondam.3 Horace in like manner sang of Augustus the peacemaker: quo nihil majus meliusve terris fata donavere bonique divi nee dabunt, quamvis redeant in aurum tempora priscum.* The second Aeneas [says Duniy] passes tranquil and mild through the midst of a disturbed world, cahning the passions which he no longer shares, bringing back upon earth the order which the gods maintain m heaven, and carrying in his hands the destinies of the new Rome, of which he will be in his turn the guardian god, divus Augustus^ Ideas and ideals like these are most appealing and suggestive when conveyed in the mediimi of poetry, but we find them both implicit and explicit in the sober prose of history. Time would fail to give merely a Ust of references. The impression produced by the character and purpose of Augustus confronts us everywhere. Men. I, 291. *Aen. 6, 661. s Hist, des RomainSj t. IV, p. i73' i Aen. 6, 791. I the crucified Savior which the Italians call pietd — symbolizing all the tragedy of life and the divine consolation that transfigures it — we remember Virgil, who first gave expression to the feeling we think of as Christian, a tenderness for all unhappy things and a faith that all sorrow serves some higher end . This is really his chief characteristic, best suggested in his best known phrase, those words of haunting, imtranslatable charm — lacrimae rerum. Pious Aeneas is not merely the type of a righteous king, like Tennyson's Arthur, but a Prince of Peace, a sort of Messiah, destined to bring not only religion and civi- lization into Italy, but also, through his descendants in the fulness of time, a new spirit upon earth of peace and good-will to men. That pietas is Virgil's chief motive who will doubt when he recalls the most aflFecting passages in his poetry, from that early pastoral lament for Gallus down through all his verse, in great episodes or in "pathetic half-lines"? — the tragedy of Troy, the doom of Dido, the moving story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the tears of Hector's Andromache, the dirge of young Marcellus, the parting of Pallas and Evander and the grief for Pallas untimely slain, the heroic death of Nisus and Euryalus, the mourning for the maid Camilla, and the indignant pity for savage but gallant Tumus, falling a victim to that destiny which for Virgil means progress and enlightenment. Nullus erit in illis scriptis liber [says Seneca, writing to a young man who was consoling himself by turning Virgil into Greek] qui non plurima varietatis humanae incertorumque casuum et lacrimarum ex alia atque alia causa fluen- tiimi exempla tibi suggerat.' In all the carnage of the later books, wherein half-heartedly Virgil follows his father Homer non passibus acquis, the lines that have the true, authentic note are those of a pity and tenderness unknown to Homer. The carnage of the second book is not at all Homeric; that incomparable description of the death-agony of Troy is a strain of higher mood than all the battle-scenes of the Iliad; the tragedy and terror are suffused with a yearning sympathy that is Virgil's own. Since Virgil, then, occupies so unique a place in literature, in history, and in the curriculum, how unique is the opportunity of ^ Ad Polybium de consolatione 11, 5. the teacher of Virgil! The instructor in the preparatory school sometimes envies the college teacher his wider range of class read- ing; but I think that no one who has the good fortune to teach Virgil can rightly envy any other lot. The highest Roman litera- ture falls somewhat short of Virgil, and his position, as I have already said, is in no way affected by the general superiority of Greek over Roman literature. The nobility and earnestness of Lucretius are deeply imbued with an indignant pessimism in strong contrast with Virgil's melancholy but loving tenderness. The exquisite grace of Horace's odes has still something exotic and artificial, something not quite sincere, while his most earnest satires and epistles rarely rise to the heights of poetry, and nearly always wind up with a somewhat mocking laugh. The passion and power of Catullus, unmatched in some few lines, do not make up for his consummate selfishness and his sins against decency. The magnificent prose of Cicero and Seneca — both magnificent though whole worlds apart— fails of some of its due effect from the evident weaknesses of character these men display. (The magnificent prose of Tacitus, with its premonitions of the later Latin of St. Augustine or the Vulgate Bible, is itself steeped in the poetry of Virgil.) But in Virgil we have not only "one who uttered nothing base," but one whose life was as pure as his writings.' The student of Virgil is keeping the very best of company. He echoes Horace's warm outburst on meeting Virgil with Plotius and Varius (the friends who became his literary executors, and to whom we owe the Aeneid): animae qualis neque candidiores terra tulit, neque quis me sit devinctior alter.* A white soul indeed, burning at white heat with love for all things beautiful, admiration for all things noble, sympathy for all things » "But Virgil's songs are pure, except that horrid one beginning /offwo^wm pastor Corydon" (Byron, Don Juan, i, 42). The gossip of the pseudo-Donatus recalls the scandal-mongering Suetonius, to whom good critics have attributed this Life, and is evidently made up from Virgil's poems or alleged poems. The anecdote about the punning nickname given him at school— Parthenias (virginalis), like that given to Milton at Cambridge, "the lady of Christ's"— has a far more authentic sound, and teUs us just what we should expect about his pure and shy young manhood. *Sat, I, 6, 40. ¥ il' 1 1 20 THE SCHOOL REVIEW pitiful! In reading him we breathe a higher air and are illumined by a purer light; it is like gazing on his own sun-drenched Italian landscape with its inefiFable charm (which he has sung as no other poet has sung) from some airy height of Father Apennine; we are in an atmosphere like that of his Elysian fields, lighted by a radiance all their own: largior hie campos aether et lumine vestit purpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.* Moreover, few students continue their study of Latin beyond Virgil, and pathetically few get any taste of the great Greek poets; so to many he furnishes the only connecting link in the long chain of influence which binds us to the past. He is the one ** magic casement" through which may be had a glimpse of those '* faery lands forlorn" of the antique world. He is indeed the "golden branch amid the shadows," the open sesame to that sacred realm of the dead. To get some vision, even the dimmest, of this classic past through the eye of its noblest poet is worth all the arduous labor of the gradus ad Parnassum — that difficilis ascensus — the drudgery of Latin forms and syntax, and all the hard campaigning with Caesar in Gaul. Most schoolboys, I believe, are interested in the tale that Virgil has to tell; but every student who is at all ready to read him should get something more; he should get some realization that he is dealing with great poetry. Adequate preparation for beginning Virgil I should define to be a correct knowledge of Latin forms, a reasonable approximation to correct pronunciation and quantita- tive reading, and some knowledge of ancient history and myth — some conception of what Greece and Rome signify to the world. The Virgil course should be, then, above all things, what Professor Norton used to call his Dante class, a course in poetry, and the student should never be allowed to forget that Virgil is a supreme poet: maximus vates (as Seneca says) et velut divino ore instinctus,^ St. Augustine expresses the ideal: Vergilimn propterea parvuli legunt, ut videlicet poeta magnus omniumque praeclarissimus atque optimus teneris ebibitus animis non facile oblivione ON TEACHING VIRGIL 21 * i4e«. 6, 640. * De hrev. viiae 9, 2, possit aboleri, secundum illud Horati: "quo semel est imbuta recens servabit odorem testa diu."» The very first step toward this ideal is the reading aloud of the verse — reading, not scanning — ^in a way to bring out some of that music of "the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man." This seems an obvious remark, but there are teachers who neither read themselves nor hear their pupils read, who confine themselves to translation and to granunar. The music is inseparable from the poetry, and Tennyson's description of the Virgilian hexameter is no exaggeration: it is a different harmony from the "stfong- winged music of Homer," it is the Greek hexameter romanized and made a new thing, with Roman stateliness added to the Greek beauty. The noblest English verse can give no suggestion of its peculiar magnificence, its sweep and resonance and melody. The versification alone is a sufficient reason for the inadequacy of all English translations of Virgil. It would be a pity indeed if a stu- dent should translate the lines and never get a notion of the glorious music of the hexameter, "which in Virgil's hands became such an instrument as the world has never since beheld for expressing and arousing all the nobler emotions — armay amor, rectitudo, as Dante classifies them."' Virgilian grammar presents no added difficulties to the student fresh from Caesar or Cicero; rather he finds in Latin poetry a much more natural and flexible mode of expression than in prose; and the time hitherto devoted to grammar may now be given to more important things. If the pupil has been trained, as he should be, from the beginning to pronounce Latin quantitatively, not slighting imaccented long syllables in order to put exaggerated stress on the accented syllable, as our modem mode of English speech tempts us to do, there will be little difficulty with the metrical reading.^ Pupils so trained need never hear of the much-debated ictus, if they once grasp the difference between quantitative and accentual verse; they might « De civ. dei i, 3. * A. J. Butler, Forerunners of DanUy p. vi. 'Professor Knapp has some excellent remarks on this subject in the Classical Weekly, Vol. HI. 22 THE SCHOOL REVIEW ON TEACHING VIRGIL 23 even dispense with that most unpoetical and mechanical process of scanning — except on paper, for the enlightenment of their teachers at examination time/ Without hoping to read Latin verse as the Romans did, we need not despair of reading it in a way that would not set a Romanes teeth on edge. Let us consider that Shakespeare would hardly recognize as English our modern rendering of his lines; but do we get no music out of them ? Let us consider too that generations of Englishmen have read Virgil as so much accentual English verse, and have enjoyed and appreciated him to a degree that we in America are only beginning to approach. Our pronunciation with its Italian vowel-sounds is an immense gain in sonorousness and melody, and if we can only have due regard for quantity and refrain from undue attention to accent — which never in Southern Europe has such stress as our Northern tongues give to it — ^we are getting within hearing-distance of that "ocean- roll of rhythm." Distant though we may be from the sea that laves The Latian coast, where sprung the epic war, Arms and the Man, whose reascending star Rose o'er an empire,* we may catch its faint echo in the sea-shell which Remembers its august abodes And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. "Englishmen," complained Tennyson, "mil spoil verses by scanning when they are reading, and they confound accent and quantity."^ "Indeed, the American," says another Englishman, "seems to be the only modern left who can pronounce, let us say, Idbaratory or drdindry with regard both to accent and to quantity."* In Tennyson's Life we shall find, as well as in his poems, many suggestive hints as to the quantitative reading of verse, and many fine appreciations of Virgil. It is of Tennyson that F. W. H. Myers wrote: "Surely not philology nor history, but such a vital sense * Professor Bennett's pamphlet is a most helpful introduction to such reading: The Quantitative Reading of Latin Poetry, Boston: AUyn & Bacon, 1899. * Byron, Childe Harold y 4, 174. » Memoir of Tennyson, by his son, Vol. II, p. 12. < Professor AUbutt in an address on "The Speaking of Latin," Proceedings of the Third General Meeting of the Classical Association, London, 1906. of the spirit of classical poetry as he possessed is the true measure of antiquity and the flower of the past."' His own metrical experi- ments are perhaps the best start for one about to read Latin verse. Swinburne also has used classical meters with admirable musical effect. The student who can read such English poems has only the difficulty of elision to overcome in order to read Latin poetry with success — ^provided he has had the proper training in quantitative pronunciation. The lack of such training is a serious defect. High-school principals rarely put French and German classes into the hands of persons who cannot pronounce those tongues with reasonable correctness, but it sometimes seems as if they thought that beginning Latin can be taught by anybody. Given the daily realization that Virgil is at least verse, the stu- dent may come to feel that Virgil is poetry, and great poetry, partly through his innate taste and partly through his teacher's comments by the way. Some attention will be given in trans- lation to poetic diction, the varied vocabulary, the constant use of metaphor, the order and emphasis of words, and their larger meanings and associations; and some attempt will be made to suggest the wealth of the original in changing its gold into the silver or copper of current English. Readers are always charmed, I think, by the musical effect of alliteration and onomatopoeia, in which Virgil's verse is so surprisingly rich; they can be interested in the figures of speech— despite the terrible names— which play so large a part in poetry; and if they have any literary sense at all, they must take pleasure in some reminder of the abundant store of literary parallels that help to show the vast influence and inspiration which Virgil has exercised, as well as of the treasures of earlier poetry which he did not borrow, but absorbed, assimilated, and made his own. As an introduction to Virgil, there is no reason why even the high-school student should not read and appreciate the beautiful chapter in Professor Mackail's Latin Literature. The plea has often been made for reading in school parts at least of the last six books of the Aeneidy and there are encouraging signs of a movement in that direction. Some schools read the whole poem. It is also to be desired that pupils should get a taste of * Memoir of Tennyson, by his son. Vol. II, p. 482. u THE SCHOOL REVIEW ON TEACHING VIRGIL 25 P i Virgil in his Eclogues, if only for the sake of their extraordinary influence on later literature; as Professor Woodberry charmingly says: They are a nest of the singing birds of all lands; as one reads, voices of Italy, France, and England blend with the familiar lines, and a choiring vision rises before him of the world's poets in their youth framing their lips to the smooth-sliding syllables.* Pupils should not be cheated out of the fourth Eclogue, or the tenth. Above all they should read at least the great passages of the GeorgicSy VirgiFs most finished and original work, the earliest and greatest of nature poems, singing the majestic praise of Italy in the most patriotic and eloquent strains ever uttered. "Not the muses of Greece," says Andrew Lang, "but his own Casmenae, song-maidens of Italy, have inspired him here, and his music is blown through a reed of the Mindus.' We complain of lack of time, and justly; but if only the properly qualified students were admitted to Virgil, how much could be done! We waste our time and that of our classes over incompetent pupils. Democracy is a good thing, even in school, but there is no democracy of intellect; all men are not bom free and equal in mind, and the chief need of our education is the encouragement of intellectual distinction. Finally, the teacher will seek to suggest from time to time that the Aeneid is an epic "where more is meant than meets the ear" — of the beginner; that besides being a fine narrative, telling a heroic tale drawn from the old legends, and telling it with the utmost beauty of diction and versification, the Aeneid has three elements — faith, patriotism, and hiunanity — constantly appearing to the eye that looks beneath the surface, which make it a poem of religious, of national, and of universal appeal. Aeneas is a man of destiny (Jato profuguSyfatalis)y whose divine mission is to bring religion and civilization into Italy and to found the Roman race {Romanam con- dere gentem) — the chosen people^ who are destined to communicate « Great Writers, " Virgil." » Letters on Literature. *The idea of the Romans as a chosen people, like the Hebrews, with a special genius for religion, is found in Cicero. Vide N.D, 2, 8: si conferre volumus nostra ciun extemis, ceteris rebus aut pares aut etiam inferiores reperiemur, religione, id est cultu deorum, multo superiores. De harusp. response 19: quam volumus licet to all mankind the blessings of law and of peace (pacisque imponere morem), Aeneas is not only the ancestor of the Caesars, but the type of Augustus, who, after the terrible century of civil war in which Rome's career of foreign conquest had culminated, had restored peace to the exhausted world, and was engaged in restoring the old Italian morality and religion that had made Rome mistress of the world. It is Rome (we cannot too often repeat) that is the real hero of the Aeneid; the "ocean-roll of rhythm sounds forever of imperial Rome," and VirgiPs ideal of Rome makes this the greatest of epic themes — as great as Milton's (to "justify the ways of God to men") or Dante's (to glorify the Catholic Church), both somewhat spoiled for us by a dogmatic theology, both some- what less Christian than the pagan poem; greater far than the themes of Homer, that heroic action and that romantic adventure which are the imaginative ideal of a less reflective age. Aeneas' chief characteristic is piety — faith in the gods and submission to their will, and faithfulness to all his duties in life. He is not so much a hero of action as the personification of the great Roman virtue patientia, the type of the peace-loving ruler and philosophic statesman. He has survived his country's downfall, the loss of his wife and his father; he is an exile preserved against his will to be the instrument of a great destiny, that of grafting on the rude and rugged Italian stock the Greek culture and humane religion of the divinely descended Trojan line — the union which is to pro- duce in the fulness of time that imperial Rome which shall be the righteous and peaceful mother of all mankind. But Virgil's appeal is more than religious and national; it is imiversal; and this fact is due to his qualities as a man and a poet. With all his love of antiquity, he is so modern in spirit that his verse — antiquarian, legendary, pagan, and Roman as it is — comes home to the twentieth century fraught with more meaning perhaps than ipsi nos amemus; tamen nee numero Hispanos, nee robore Gallos, nee callidate Poenos, nee artibus Graecos, nee denique hoc ipso hujus gentis ac terrae domestico nativoque sensu Italos ipsos ac Latinos, sed pietate et religione, atque hac una sapientia, quod deorum immortalium numine omnia regi gubemarique perspeximus, omnes gentes nationesque superavimus. Ferrero says that Boissier was the first to discover that the Aeneid is a religious poem, but the comments of Macrobius are largely concerned with this aspect of the poem, and he puts into the mouth of Vettius the remark : promitto fore ut Vergilius noster pontifex maximus adseratur {Sat. i, 24, 16). 26 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 11 U' it bore to the first. His universal appeal is due to his pietaSy chief characteristic of the poet as of his hero — that sympathy which broods over everything, inanimate nature as well as human life, giving a deeper meaning to his words, suffusing them with a subtle, pathetic charm, a wistful tenderness, that are the very essence of poetry and of humanity. Thus his epic has come to be almost an allegory of human life, and the adventures of Aeneas can never cease to have a moving significance and a heart-felt appeal. On every page of Virgil those who read between the lines will find the sturdy morality of the old Roman religion (Romana potens I tola virtute propago), the sense of divine guidance in the humblest of human affairs as well as in the great movements of history {non haec sine numine dvoom eveniunt);^ they will find the enthusiastic patriotism of the Roman imperialist, believing in his race as the chosen people and in the Caesars as the ordained leaders of man- kind; and they will find also that deep human sjnnpathy which transcends the bounds of creed and sect, the barriers of race and time and language, that makes men one in the solemn sense of the mystery of life, the pathos of things human, and the high faith in a divine purpose which gives meaning and worth to everything. * Aen, 2, 777. t w