ME DEATH OF TURNUS. • Classical, as well as modern authors
have their ups and downs. The reverence with which Virgil was regarded in the Middle Ages had a mystical rather than a literary basis. The magic with which he appeals to modern critics is that of style—of the lines which have been compared with bars of gold. But he has never been a popular author in the sense that Horace has been and still is. "Pius Aeneas," as Mr. Wards Fowler admits, irritates men of the world like 0. J. Fox. The semantic and chivalrous temper of modern times goes out to the passionate Turnus and the forsaken Dido rather than the self-protective hero. Then again there has always been a school of critics who have instituted invidious comparisons between the noble simplicity of Homer and the studied' artistry of Virgil—who emphasize the derivative quality of his work, and regard it rather in the light of variations on an original theme than as a creative work of the first order. The fact that, in .the phrase of one of his most distinguishedcomraentators, he "disdained to say a, plain thing in a plain way " has told against him. And Virgil has suffered from over-familiarity as a school text-book ; from association with the deadening twenty-lines-a-lesson method. Yet he has never looked his devoted admirers, and some of the most splendid tributes to his. genius are of recent date. Foremost among these we should be inclined to place Tennyson's Ode, which is not only one of the half-dozen finest short odes in the English language, but a wonderfully felicitous summary of the matter and manner of Virgil's work. Then there is the brilliant and eloquent study of the late F. W. H. Myers in his Classical Essays. The labours of Conington and Nettle- ship, the prose translation of Mr. Mackail, and the admirable notes of Mr. T. E. Page occur in this context ; but the most conclusive evidence of the spell of Virgil is to be found in the voluminous and discursive commentary of Dr. Henry, the Dublin doctor who, aided by his devoted daughter, spent the last thirty years of his life in the study of his favourite author. Henry's Virgiliantravela—he crossed the Alps seventee-n times with his daughter, sometimes in snow—are perhaps the most extraordinary and touching episode in the romance of modern scholarship.
Mr. Wards Fowler's- further "Observations" supplement those already published on the seventh and eighth books of the Aeneid and follow the same method. The ugliness of the usual edition of a classic is avoided. The text and " observations " are given separately, and the latter are free alike from the pedantry and the acrimony of the professional commentator. The. hardest thing• he says of any of his predecessors is that "the ScotoheriticiSellar] Ls chilly as usual." The quality- of his °mice:mama is best expreased in the Latin phrase tnitie
Mr. Ward's Fowler loves his Virgil, and found him a solace
• The Death of Tweet : OWnsolies ts.e.Tixf th Beak of Me 46.IL Br W. Wards Bowler, Hon. LLD. BdIn. Omni: B. U. Bbelootil tea. net.l amid the constant anxiety of the winter of 1917 and the spring of 1918. He has no sympathy with those who only see in Virgil an imitator. Indeed, while agreeing with those authorities who believe that, had he lived, Virgil would have improved and revised his work, Mr. Warde Fowler finds him in the twelfth book " more completely master of his language and his metre than ever, more entirely free to use and vary them as he pleases." The result is not so pleasing as the " golden beauty of the Georgics." " It is not unlike what we experience in going back from Cymbeline to The Merchant of Venice ; or from Paradise Regained to the first two books of Paradise Lost ; or again from Beethoven's posthumous quartets to those of his middle period." But he goes on :— " In the whole range of poetry there is nothing, I think, outside Paradise Lost and the Divine Commedia so grand as the conclusion (11. 887-912] to the great poem. Homer is hero, Lucretius is here, others, perhaps, that we do not know of : Virgil calls in their aid to inspire him, to raise him to the highest level of which ancient poetry was capable. But the result is no amalgam ; it is Virgil and Virgil only, perfect in its nobility of diction, rhythm and imagination."
In commenting on an earlier passage, where the language comes from Homer, Mr. Warde Fowler does not hesitate to pronounce the Latin words more impressive and the expression quite as simple. The view of so sensitive and well equipped a critic commands respect, but we attach greater importance to his discussions of the psychology of Virgil and the character-drawing of the two contrasted heroes. The great point is that in this old family story, where the prudence of the father conflicts with the feeling of the mother for youth and beauty, we are expected to feel with Latinos, not Amata, " with Aeneas the mature representative of wisdom, not with the brilliant and passionate young lover. So it must ever be ; so it was a thousand times over in Roman social life, where mariages de convenance were the regular practice and the passion of love was the illegitimate thing. . . . None the less it takes us an effort to sympathize with Aeneas in this question ; and I am not sure that Virgil himself found it natural to do so. In the parallel case of Dido we may be sure that his heart was with the queen, and there are signs in this book that it was with Tumus too. Yet his judgment was always with Aeneas, and the twelfth book sways between the two moods. Virgil, we must remember, was not a Roman by birth ; he was really a Flomo, a Man in the widest sense of the term, with a large and generous outlook on the world. He had n heart above legal contracts. But in the end there returns on him the greater nobility, pietas, justitia, fides, of his own hero, and the book closes in the right key for a Roman, and perhaps for all of those who place the claims of society above those of the individual."
This passage is supplemented by another in which Mr. Warde Fowler admits that Virgil, like Milton after him, was attracted by the character, his own creation, of the champion of the wrong eide,and has made him so great a figure in his self-sacrifice for the wrong cause as to justify the word indignefa in the last line of the book. " But his is poetry, not philosophy, just as Milton's treatment of Satan is poetry, not theology." To Virgil poetry was all in all; "whatever in the whole range of human thought and fancy entered his mind, emerged from it as poetry, and poetry only." There are many other passages which invite quotation. We must confine ourselves to one from the charming sketch of the development of Ascanius. Apropos of the way in which AsCaniUS "rises suddenly above his own boyhood" in his reply to the old councillor's appeal never to forget Nisus and Euryalus, Mr. 1Varde Fowler adds in a footnote :— "This is the age for which Virgil, like Scott, had a peculiar tenderness
' Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth
When thought is speech and speech is truth.'
These two perfect linos occur in the Introduction to the Second Canto of Marmion. The Warden of Wadham remarks—in the Literary Supplement of the Times, June 13, 1910—that ' Scott's children are always just growing up.' It is so with Etnyalus, Lausus, and Pallas, and Asearuus grows all through the Aeneid."
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