BOOKS.

MR. CHURCH'S " STORIES FROM VIRGIL."* Mn. Cnuncn's Storks from Virgil will be, we think, at least as popular as his Stories from Homer, and it may be even more so. At least to those who enjoy Virgil, they will often seem to gain something, as well as to lose much, by comparison with the original ; while, to those who enjoy Homer, it is impossible that any rendering, however simple or graceful, could give the ex- quisite charm of the original. Mr. Church is as great a master of a pure, simple, and poetic narrative style as there is in England. The present writer, at least, may honestly say that for many years he has had no literary pleasure from any new book so keen as be has derived from these two free renderings of Homer and of Virgil. Nor can he say that he enjoyed the Homer more than the Virgil. On the whole, we think the later book somewhat the more fascinat- ing of the two ; partly because it suffers less by reminding us of the original, partly because it gives us a conciseness and simplicity which the original necessarily wants. At the same time, we must admit that in the earlier part of this volume Mr. Church misses the style of Virgil more completely than he ever missed the style of Homer. The freshness, the ingenuousness, the wonder of the first part of his volume is more Homeric than Virgilian. In that part, moreover, the author loses many good opportunities of striking the great historic gong on which Virgil loves to sound the note of the coming Roman empire. When Jove smiles on the anxieties of Cytherma, "with the countenance with which he calms the firma- ment and the tempests," Mr. Church omits to record that attri- bute of divine grandeur, intended though it is to usher in the prophecy of the glory that is in store for Rome. He curtails, too, the intentionally grandiose words,—

" Sublimemque fares ad sidera cooli

Magnanimum JEneam, neque me sententia vertit,"

till they lose that roll of distant thunder which Virgil felt to be so effective ; and he omits altogether the line which we take to be, in some sense, a key to Virgil's poetic purpose,—

Romanos rornm dominos, gentemque togatam,"

—the line in which the end of this story of conflict and destiny is shadowed forth. It is the same with the story of the Siege of Troy. When Virgil paints the supernatural Powers fighting against

• Stories from Virgil. By Bey. Alfred J. Church, M.A. With ,24 Illustrations from Emilie Designs. London: Steles Jae/trod, and Halliday.

his chosen hero, in their hour of triumph and terror, in order the more to magnify the destiny reserved for /Eneas, Mr. Church too much abridges and tones down the picture,—though his story is here stately as well as simple :— " Then Venus spako thus : 'What meaneth all this rage, my son ? Hest thou no care for me? Hast thou forgotten thy father An- chises, and thy wife, and thy little son ? Of a surety the fire and the sword had consumed them long since, but that I cared for them and saved thorn. It is not Helen ; no, nor Paris, that bath laid low this great city of Troy, but the wrath of the Gods. Soo now, for I will take away the mist that covers thine oyes; see how Neptune with his trident is overthrowing the walls and rooting up the city from its foundations ; • and bow Juno stands with spear and shield in the Seaan Gate, and calls fresh hosts from the ships ; and how Pallas sits on the height with the storm-cloud about her and her Gorgon shield ; and how Father Jupiter himself stirs up the enemy against Troy. Fly, therefore, my son. I will not leave thee till thou shalt reach thy father's house.' And as she spako she vanished in the darkness. Then (lid .2Eneas see dreadful forms and Gods who were the enemies of Troy. and before his eyes the whole city seemed to sink down into the fire. Even as a mountain oak upon the hills on which the woodmen ply their axes bows its head while all its boughs shake about it, till at last. as blow comes after blow, with a mighty groan it falls crashing down from the height, oven so the city seemed to fall. Then did 2Eneas pass on his way, the goddess lending him, and the flames gave place to him, and the javelins harmed him not."

That is so fine, that we wonder it is not finer. There was no reason, surely, for not giving, in the same tense and with the same solemnity as Virgil, the vision which is presented to -Eneas as the scales fall from his eyes :— " Apparent dime facies, inimicaque TroPto Nuwina magna Drum," —is much grander and more solemn iu tone than Mr. Church's report of what " ..-Eneas did then see." Virgil, of course inten-

tionally, changed the form from mere narrative to words which might express his own direct vision of the supernatural agencies fighting against Troy, but yet powerless against the ancestor of Roman Kings. Why should not Mr. Church have changed it too ? Once more, Mr. Church is somewhat too terse and simple in his account of 2Eneas's first address to Queen Dido, when he calls upon the Gods to reward her for her generous pity for the poor remnant of the Trojans. ..TEneas, with that touch of Oriental passion and imagery which Virgil throughout his poem is careful to mark as distinctive of the supposed Phrygian element of the Roman stock, and as lending to the ruder and the hardier Latin race a thread of richness, of tenderness, and of imagination foreign to the Latin genius, passes into hyperbole, not to say almost ecstacy, as he dilates on the Queen's goodness. Yet it is almost impossible not so see in this passage Virgil's intention to magnify the mighty destinies of Rome, which were to swallow up those of Carthage, an intention manifested even in the very fact that he makes iEneas exalt the latter so extravagantly, on purpose, as it would seem, to magnify still more the power in which Carthage was to be absorbed :—

" Qllite to tam laota tulorunt Saecula! Qui tanti Worn genuero parentes! In frets dum fluvii current, dum montibus umbrae Lustrabunt convexe, polus dum sidera pascet, Somper hones, nomenque town, laudesquo manhunt."

Yet the happy ages which bore Dido, and the noble parents who boasted her their child, were all to be justified, not by the future of Carthage, but by the future of the conqueror of Carthage, who was to follow in the steps of 2Eneas, and requite Dido's posterity as JEneas requited her. Even Mr. Church makes the hyperbole of jEneas striking, but in Virgil's poem it is much more so, and was intended doubtless to exalt the destiny of the conquering by comparison with the greatness of the vanquished race :-

"Then snake ho to the queen, 'Le! I am ho whom ye seek, oven /Elneas of Troy, scarcely saved from the waters of the sea. And as for thee, 0 Queen, seeing that thou only bast been found to pity the unspeak- able sorrows Of Troy, and hiddest us, though we be but poor exiles and lacking all things, to share thy city and thy home, may the Gods do so to thee as thou doservest. And of a truth, so long as the rivers run to the seas, and the shadows fall on the hollows of tho hills, so long will thy name and thy glory survive, whatever be the land to which tho Gods shall bring me.' "

In the death of Dido, again, the simplicity of Mr. Church's story surpasses the dignity. We miss too much the traces of the grandeur of her misery,—a grandeur which, of course, to some extent exalts, and is intended to exalt, the dignity of him whom the Gods compelled to make this costly sacrifice to the destinies of Rome. Mr. Church would not have diminished the interest of his story, while we think he would have increased its effect, if ho had preserved such passages as this

Dukes exuviae, dum fats densque sinobant Accipito hanc animam, meque his exsolvite curia,"

—and still more that anticipation, at once most stately and most

Virgilian in its pathos, in which Dido anticipates her own great- ness in the world beyond the grave :— "Et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago."

But the too great simplicity of the earlier stories from Virgil disappears after the fifth book, and in the remainder of this charming volume we find the stateliness at least as remarkable as the simplicity of the strain. Nothing can be more classical, and at the same time more noble, than the account of the visit of 2Eneas to the Shades, or than the passage in which Mr. Church summarises the forecasts of Anchises to his son concerning the great future of Rome :— " Then /Enna looked and behold a river, and a great company of souls thereby, thick as the bees on a calm summer day in a garden of lilies. And when he would know the meaning of the concourse, Anchises said, These are souls which have yet to live again in a mortal body, and they are constrained to drink of the water of forgetfulness.' And /Emma said, 'Nay, my father, can any desire to take again upon them the body of earth ?' Then Anchises made reply ; ' Liston, my son, and I will tell thee all. There is one soul in the heaven and earth and the stars and the shining orb of the moon and the great sun himself; from which soul also cometh the life of man and of beast, and of the birds of the air, and of the fishes of the sea. And this soul is of a divine nature, but the mortal body maketh it slow and doll. Hence come fear and desire, and grief and joy, so that, being as it were shut in a prison, the spirit beholdeth not any more the light that is without. And when the mortal life is ended yet are not men quit of all the evils of the body, seeing that these must needs bo put away in many marvellous ways. For some are hung up to the winds, and with some their wickedness is -washed out by water, or burnt out with fire. But a ghostly pain we all endure. Then wo that are found worthy are sent unto Elysium and the plains of the blest. And when, after many days, the soul is wholly pure, it is called to the river of forgetfulness, that it may drink thereof, and so return to the %mid that is above.' Then he led Minas and the Sibyl to a hill, whence they could see the whole company, and regard their faces as they came ; and ho said, ' Come, and I will glow thee them that shall come after thee. That youth who leans upon a point- less spear is Silvius, thy youngest child, whom Lavinia shall bear to thee in thy old age. He shall reign in Alba, and shall be the father of kings. And many other kings are there who shall build cities great and famous. Lo! there is Romulus, whom Ilia shall bear to Mars. He shall build Rome, whose empire shall reach to the ends of the earth and its glory to the heaven. Seest thou him with the olive crown about his head and the white beard ? That is ho who shall first give laws to Rome. And next to him is Tullus, the warrior. And there are the Tarquins ; and Brutus, who shall sot the people free, aye, and shall slay his own eons when they would be false to their country. See also the Decii ; and Torqnatus, with the cruel axe ; and Camillus winning back the standards of Rome. There standeth one who shall subdue Corinth ; and there another who shall avenge the blood of Troy upon the race of Achilles. There, too, thou mayest see the Seipios, thunder- bolts of war, whom the land of Africa shall fear ; and there Regulus, busy in the farrows ; and there the Fabii, chiefly him, greatest of the name, who shall save thy country by wise delay. Such, my son, shall be thy children's children. Others with softer touch shall carve the face of man in marble, or mould the bronze ; some more skilfully shall plead, or map the skies, or tell the rising of the stars. 'Tie thine, man of Rome, to subdue the world. This is thy work, to set the rule of peace over the vanquished, to spare the humble, and to subdue the proud."

And having once mastered this style, Mr. Church never again loses it. It would be hardly possible, we think, to give in terser or nobler English the story of the Fury Alecto's visit to Turnus, to rouse him against -Eneas :-

" Now Tarnns was asleep in his palace, and Alecto took upon her the shape of an old woman, even of Chalybe, who was the priestess of Juno; and she spake, saying 'Turnus, wilt thou suffer all thy toil to bo in vain, and tby kingdom to be given to another ? King Latinus taketh from thee thy betrothed wife, and chooses a stranger that he should in- herit his kingdom. Juno commanded that I should tell thee this in thy sleep. Rise, therefore, and arm thy people. Consume these strangers and their ships with fire. And if King Latinus yet will not abide by his promise, lot him know for himself what Turnus can do in the day of battle.' But Turnus laughed her to scorn. ' That the ships of the stranger have come to the Tiber, I know full well. But tell me not these tales. Queen Juno forgetteth me not, therefore I am not afraid ; but thou, mother, art old, and wandorest from the truth, and troublest thyself for nought, and art mocked with idle fear. Thy business it is to tend the temples of the Gods and their images, but as for war, leave that to men, seeing that it is their care.' Greatly wroth was Alecto to hear such words. And even while he spake the young man shuddered and stared with his eyes, for the Fury hissed before him with a thousand snakes. And when he would have spoken more, she thrust him back, and caught two snakes from her hair, and lashed him therewith, and cried aloud, Old am I! and wander from the truth ! and am mocked with idle fears ! Nay, but I come from the dwelling of the Furies, and war and death are in my hand !'"

Hardly does the Latin of Virgil himself surpass this passage, in the terse grandeur of its rage :— " Adsum Dirarum ab soda sorornm, Bella menu, lotumque gem."

Equally fine is the close,—the Latin siege of the Trojan camp,— the great comparison between the hardy and simple West and the more luxurious and delicately-nurtured manners of the East put into the mouth of Numanus ; the death of Pallas and the mourning over him ; and the description of the imaginative palsy which falls on Turnus when the time of his destiny was full. We have only room to give one more passage, and we will take it from the mourning over Pallas, as containing a larger number of the highest Virgilian characteristics in it,—at once his tender. ness and his majesty, bis fine painting and his strong feeling— than any other passage of the same length :—

" Then he went to the tent where the dead body was laid, and old Accotes kept watch thereby,—Accetes, who had boon armour- bearer to Evander, and now had followed his son, but with evil fortune ; and the women of Troy, with their hair un- bound, mourned about him. But when they saw 2Eneas they beat their breasts, and sent up a great cry even to heaven. And when the king saw the pillowed head and the great wound in the breast he wept, and said, ' Ah I why did Fortune grudge me this, that thou sbouldst see my kingdom, and go back in triumph to thy father's home ? This is not what I promised to Evander when he gave thee to my charge, and warned me that the men of Italy were valiant and fierce. And now haply, old man, thou makest offerings and prayers for him who now bath no part nor lot in the Gods of heaven. Yet, at least, thou wilt see that he beareth an honourable wound. But what a son thou losest, 0

Italy ! and what a friend, thou, lulus Then he chose a thousand men who should go with the doad and share the father's grief. After this they made a bier of arbutus boughs and oak, and put also over it a canopy of branches, and laid the dead thereon, like unto a flower of violet or hyacinth which a girl hath plucked, which still bath beauty and colour, but the earth nourisheth it no more. And /Eneas took two robes of purple, which Dido had woven with thread of gold, and with one he wrapped the body and with the other the head. And behind were carried the arms which Pallas had won in fight ; and they led the old man Accotes smiting on his breast and tearing his cheeks, and throwing himself upon the ground; and the war-horse 2Ethen walked beside, with the great tears rolling down his cheeks. And also they bare behind him his helmet and shield, for all else Turnus bad taken ; and then followed the whole company, the men of Troy, the Arcadians, and the Tuscans, with arms reversed. And }Emma said, ' The same cares and sorrows of war call me elsewhere. Farewell, my Pallas, for ever!' And he departed to the camp."

That is hardly to be surpassed, though we do not quite know why Mr. Church speaks of Pallas as one " who now bath no part nor lot in the gods of heaven." That is his equivalent, w e suppose, for " Nil jam coelestibus illis debentem," but it does not seem to us at all a happy equivalent. While Virgil only says that Pallas no longer owes the Gods any of those sacrifices which his father is probably still ignorantly offering on his behalf, Mr. Church's phrase rather suggests a very different notion, that the Gods have ceased to care for him whom they have recalled from earth.

Certainly, the stories from the last six books of the "Eneid strike us as even better than those from Homer, though the asso- ciations suggested may not be quite so noble or so captivating. Even the first six books, though Mr. Church has not caught in them the special ring of the Virgilian genius, are so pure in their style, so rapid in their narrative, and so spirited in their colouring, that it is impossible to read them without the most lively pleasure. Nothing can be more spirited, for instance, than the story of the funeral games on the anniversary of the death of Anchises. But in the stories from the conclusion of the l'Elzeicl we have not only a delightful reminiscence of Virgil, but not unfrequently a real snatch of his genius,—the vibration of a true Virgilian note.