116 ON THE LATER BUCOLIC POETS OF ROME. 'Epigramma de Tribus Pastoribus,' eight closely packed lines, specifying the antecedents, fortunes, occupations, ages, musical qualifications, loves, and love-presents of three shepherds. Severus Sanctus, 'rhetor et poeta Christianus,' has a dialogue in Asclepiad stanzas, 'de Mortibus Boum,' in which Buculus laments the loss of his cattle by an epidemic, finds that Tityrus' herds have escaped by being signed with the cross, and becomes himself a convert from Paganism to Christianity. One Vespa writes Iudicium Coci et Pistoris, iudice Vulcano,' in which the baker and the cook extol their own art and depreciate each other's, in verses of no classical merit, but with some humour, the cook being told that he is responsible for the suppers of Thyestes and Tereus, and replying that his art supplies liver for Tityus, wings for Icarus, and beef for Europa. Last comes an Eclogue by the venerable Bede, Conflictus Veris et Hiemis, sive Cuculus,' Spring and Winter arguing in verse before a company of shepherds for and against the appearance of the cuckoo, till the judges, naturally enough, decide that the cuckoo shall come, and conclude 'Salve, dulce decus, cuculus, per saecula salve.' THE student of Virgil may be said to enjoy a singular adva preservation of those works of Greek poetry which his aut to have imitated. A few fragments are all that is left of body of lyric song which, after having been the delight of Greece was yet a nation, lived again at Rome in the Od inspiring their spirit and dictating their metre. Still m our knowledge of the poems which are supposed to have ser for Ovid's Metamorphoses, such as the Hesiodic 'Hoial' or the of Nicander. Not only may we suppose that we have los many thoughts, images, and phrases, which the possession would have enabled us to clear up, but the whole relation poems to their originals becomes a matter of inference and jecture. But in possessing Theocritus, Hesiod, and Homer, that we possess, as it were, the exciting causes of the I Georgics, and the Aeneid. They do not indeed represent al influences which must have told upon Virgil's genius, or d the origin of the peculiar manner in which he has conducted imitation but they show us what it was that in each su first stimulated his general conception of his subject-wha he admired in the literature of Greece, and sought to repro his own countrymen: they enable us to judge of him not o but as a critic of the poetry of others. With regard to Hesiod, indeed, there is considerable reas whether we possess the whole of what Virgil set himself to co agricultural precepts are cited from Hesiod-for instance, a ture of the olive and the vine-which find no place in the Days, as we now read them; and though some of these may of by the consideration that the name of Hesiod was often lo to anything which might fall under the head of rural didac remains of a more strictly Hesiodic character to render so pothesis necessary-whether it be the popular German the extant Works and Days, interpolated as the same authority them to be, represent only a part of the work which was rea i Mure's Hist. of the Literature of Greece, vol. ii. p. 378. up in the exordium of the First Book. In any case, however, we be sure that what we have lost bears no proportion in value, as a of estimating the relations of Hesiod and Virgil, to what we hav served. The recovery of the whole of Hesiod's poetry would dou supply us with illustrations of many passages in the Georgics: it needed to indicate and shadow forth, though it might possibly de the contrast between the poet of Augustan Rome and the half-my minstrel of Boeotia. The Works and Days are the earliest classical representative o species of poetry which is known as the Didactic-a variety whic been extensively cultivated in later times, and may be said to flourished in England down to the end of the last century. Ye not too much to assert that a critic who wished to justify the disf with which didactic poetry is regarded by the writers and readers present day might find his strongest arguments in an examinati Hesiod's poem, not by attempting to derogate from its characterist cellences, but by using it as a witness to show that the class of con tions of which it is a specimen was not calculated for perman Colonel Mure is not exceeding his customary modesty of theo when he delivers it as his opinion that "had prose composition already popular in Hesiod's time, the Works and Days would pro have been embodied in that form." It is indeed obviously the pr of a time when verse was the one mode of formal composition, r mending itself to the reader's memory by its portability, and t writer's imagination, as differing most from that common ever speech which it must have seemed impossible to invest with any a associations. Hesiod doubtless was sensible of the pleasures of a poser, and sought for such graces of imagery and style as lay with horizon: but his first object was to enunciate those practical rules 2 Vol. ii. pp. 389, 390, 501 foll. 3 "Tu canis Ascraei veteris praecepta poetae, Quo seges in campo, quo viret uva iugo." (Prop. 3. 26. 77, 78.) 4 Page 391. 125 sp au passtu stiu. practical teaching with the charms of versification continu tempted by writers who forgot to ask themselves under w stances that union had first been realized. It was easy something more systematic than the Works and Days, wh covery of images appropriate to rural life, yet not unsuited to of the Muse, furnished a sufficient employment to the poet's poetical grammarians of Alexandria were naturally attracted of composition which, though perhaps incompatible with a s found criticism, has peculiar points of affinity to the temper age: and the Alexandrianizing poets of Rome were not u follow the example. The Phaenomena of Aratus found at le tinguished translators: Lucretius and Manilius gave the form of poetry to the truths of science, Virgil and Horace to the and the rear is brought up by such poets as Gratius, Neme Serenus Sammonicus. In the so-called Augustan age of En ture the same causes were seen to produce the same effects Essays on Satire, Essays on Unnatural Flights in Poetry, Translated Verse, Essays on Criticism, Essays on Man: A serving Health, Arts of Dancing, and even Arts of Cookery and the Fleece, and the Sugar-cane. Some of these the wor gotten: others are still read with pleasure, not however for t contained in them, but for the terse language and polish which those precepts are enforced. But whatever may the Hesiodic spirit is absent from one and all alike. If we a to track it to its lurking-places in English poetry, we must times more nearly resembling Hesiod's own, when old T write, not for critics, but for farmers, and the Five Hundred Good Husbandry were received as respectable poetry because known to be good sense. 5 be the Colonel Mure rightly remarks that the Works and Day more correctly described as a Letter of Remonstrance and Brother. It is round the grasping, lazy, improvident Perses, Пlépon, as his brother calls him more than once, that the v gathers itself, parts of it, it is true, being connected with him 5 Page 385. |