Part 27

Nor is it old Donatus only who relates this; we have the same account from another very credible and ancient author; so that here we have the judgment of Cicero, and the people of Rome, to confront the single opinion of this adventurous critic. A man ought to be well assured of his own abilities, before he attacks an author of established reputation. If Mr Fontenelle had perused the fragments of the Phoenician antiquity, traced the progress of learning through the ancient Greek writers, or so much as consulted his learned countryman Huetius, he would have found, (which falls out unluckily for him,) that a Chaldæan shepherd discovered to the Egyptians and Greeks the creation of the world. And what subject more fit for such a pastoral, than that great affair which was first notified to the world by one of that profession? Nor does it appear, (what he takes for granted,) that Virgil describes the original of the world according to the hypothesis of Epicurus. He was too well seen in antiquity to commit such a gross mistake; there is not the least mention of _chance_ in that whole passage, nor of the _clinamen principiorum_, so peculiar to Epicurus's hypothesis. Virgil had not only more piety, but was of too nice a judgment to introduce a god denying the power and providence of the Deity, and singing a hymn to the atoms and blind chance. On the contrary, his description agrees very well with that of Moses; and the eloquent commentator Dacier, who is so confident that Horace had perused the sacred history, might with greater reason have affirmed the same thing of Virgil; for, besides that famous passage in the sixth Æneïd, (by which this may be illustrated,) where the word _principio_ is used in the front of both by Moses and Virgil, and the seas are first mentioned, and the _spiritus intus alit_, which might not improbably, as M. Dacier would suggest, allude to the "_Spirit moving upon the face of the waters_;" but, omitting this parallel place, the successive formation of the world is evidently described in these words,

_Rerum paulatim sumere formas_:

And it is hardly possible to render more literally that verse of Moses, "_Let the waters be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear_," than in this of Virgil,

_Jam durare solum, et discludere Nerea ponto._

After this, the formation of the sun is described, (exactly in the Mosaical order,) and, next, the production of the first living creatures, and that too in a small number, (still in the same method,)

_Rara per ignotos errent animalia montes._

And here the foresaid author would probably remark, that Virgil keeps more exactly to the Mosaic system, than an ingenious writer, who will by no means allow mountains to be coeval with the world. Thus much will make it probable at least, that Virgil had Moses in his thoughts rather than Epicurus, when he composed this poem. But it is further remarkable, that this passage was taken from a song attributed to Apollo, who himself, too, unluckily had been a shepherd; and he took it from another yet more ancient, composed by the first inventor of music, and at that time a shepherd too; and this is one of the noblest fragments of Greek antiquity. And, because I cannot suppose the ingenious M. Fontenelle one of their number, who pretend to censure the Greeks, without being able to distinguish Greek from Ephesian characters, I shall here set down the lines from which Virgil took this passage, though none of the commentators have observed it:

#----eratê d' hoi hespeto phônê, Krainôn athanatous te theous, kai gaian eremnên, Hôs ta prôta genonto, kai hôs lache moiran hekastos#, &c.

Thus Linus too began his poem, as appears by a fragment of it preserved by Diogenes Laertius; and the like may be instanced in Musæus himself; so that our poet here, with great judgment, as always, follows the ancient custom of beginning their more solemn songs with the creation, and does it too most properly under the person of a shepherd. And thus the first and best employment of poetry was, to compose hymns in honour of the great Creator of the universe.

Few words will suffice to answer his other objections. He demands why those several transformations are mentioned in that poem:--And is not fable then the life and soul of poetry? Can himself assign a more proper subject of pastoral than the _Saturnia regna_, the age and scene of this kind of poetry? What theme more fit for the song of a god, or to imprint religious awe, than the omnipotent power of transforming the species of creatures at their pleasure? Their families lived in groves, near the clear springs; and what better warning could be given to the hopeful young shepherds, than that they should not gaze too much into the liquid dangerous looking-glass, for fear of being stolen by the water-nymphs, that is, falling and being drowned, as Hylas was? Pasiphaë's monstrous passion for a bull is certainly a subject enough fitted for bucolics. Can M. Fontenelle tax Silenus for fetching too far the transformation of the sisters of Phaëton into trees, when perhaps they sat at that very time under the hospitable shade of those alders and poplars--or the metamorphosis of Philomela into that ravishing bird, which makes the sweetest music of the groves? If he had looked into the ancient Greek writers, or so much as consulted honest Servius, he would have discovered, that, under the allegory of this drunkenness of Silenus, the refinement and exaltation of men's minds by philosophy was intended. But, if the author of these reflections can take such flights in his wine, it is almost pity that drunkenness should be a sin, or that he should ever want good store of burgundy and champaign. But indeed he seems not to have ever drank out of Silenus's tankard, when he composed either his Critique or Pastorals.

His censure on the fourth seems worse grounded than the other. It is entitled, in some ancient manuscripts, the "History of the Renovation of the World." He complains, that he "cannot understand what is meant by those many figurative expressions:" but, if he had consulted the younger Vossius's dissertation on this Pastoral, or read the excellent oration of the emperor Constantine, made French by a good pen of their own, he would have found there the plain interpretation of all those figurative expressions; and, withal, very strong proofs of the truth of the Christian religion; such as converted heathens, as Valerianus, and others. And, upon account of this piece, the most learned of all the Latin fathers calls Virgil a Christian, even before Christianity. Cicero takes notice of it in his books of Divination; and Virgil probably had put it in verse a considerable time before the edition of his Pastorals. Nor does he appropriate it to Pollio, or his son, but complimentally dates it from his consulship; and therefore some one, who had not so kind thoughts of M. Fontenelle as I, would be inclined to think him as bad a Catholic as critic in this place.

But, in respect to some books he has wrote since, I pass by a great part of this, and shall only touch briefly some of the rules of this sort of poem.

The first is, that an air of piety, upon all occasions, should be maintained in the whole poem. This appears in all the ancient Greek writers, as Homer, Hesiod, Aratus, &c. And Virgil is so exact in the observation of it, not only in this work, but in his "Æneïs" too, that a celebrated French writer taxes him for permitting Æneas to do nothing without the assistance of some god. But by this it appears, at least, that M. St Evremont is no Jansenist.

M. Fontenelle seems a little defective in this point: he brings in a pair of shepherdesses disputing very warmly, whether _Victoria_ be a goddess or a woman. Her great condescension and compassion, her affability and goodness, (none of the meanest attributes of the divinity,) pass for convincing arguments, that she could not possibly be a goddess.

_Les Déesses, toûjours fières et méprisantes, Ne rassureroient point les bergères tremblantes Par d'obligeans discours, des souris gracieux. Mais tu l'as vu: cette auguste personne, Qui vient de paroître en ces lieux, Prend soin de rassurer au moment qu'elle étonne; Sa bonté descendant sans peine jusqu' à nous._

In short, she has too many divine perfections to be a deity, and therefore she is a mortal; which was the thing to be proved. It is directly contrary to the practice of all ancient poets, as well as to the rules of decency and religion, to make such odious preferences. I am much surprised, therefore, that he should use such an argument as this:

_Cloris, as-tu vu des déesses Avoir un air si facile et si doux?_

Was not Aurora, and Venus, and Luna, and I know not how many more of the heathen deities, too easy of access to Tithonus, to Anchises, and to Endymion? Is there any thing more sparkish and better-humoured than Venus's accosting her son in the deserts of Libya? or than the behaviour of Pallas to Diomedes, one of the most perfect and admirable pieces of all the Iliads; where she condescends to _raillé_ him so agreeably; and, notwithstanding her severe virtue, and all the ensigns of majesty with which she so terribly adorns herself, condescends to ride with him in his chariot? But the Odysseys are full of greater instances of condescension than this.

This brings to mind that famous passage of Lucan, in which he prefers Cato to all the gods at once:

_Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni_--

which Breboeuf has rendered so flatly, and which may be thus paraphrased:

Heaven meanly with the conqueror did comply; But Cato, rather than submit, would die.[292]

It is an unpardonable presumption in any sort of religion, to compliment their princes at the expence of their deities.

But, letting that pass, this whole Eclogue is but a long paraphrase of a trite verse in Virgil, and Homer;

_Nec vox hominem sonat: O Dea certe!_

So true is that remark of the admirable Earl of Roscommon, if applied to the Romans, rather, I fear, than to the English, since his own death:

----one sterling line, Drawn to French wire, would through whole pages shine.

Another rule is, that the characters should represent that ancient innocence, and unpractised plainness, which was then in the world. P. Rapin has gathered many instances of this out of Theocritus and Virgil; and the reader can do it as well as himself. But M. Fontenelle transgressed this rule, when he hid himself in the thicket to listen to the private discourse of the two shepherdesses. This is not only ill breeding at Versailles; the Arcadian shepherdesses themselves would have set their dogs upon one for such an unpardonable piece of rudeness.

A third rule is, that there should be some _ordonnance_, some design, or little plot, which may deserve the title of a pastoral scene. This is everywhere observed by Virgil, and particularly remarkable in the first Eclogue, the standard of all pastorals. A beautiful landscape presents itself to your view; a shepherd, with his flock around him, resting securely under a spreading beech, which furnished the first food to our ancestors; another in a quite different situation of mind and circumstances; the sun setting; the hospitality of the more fortunate shepherd, &c. And here M. Fontenelle seems not a little wanting.

A fourth rule, and of great importance in this delicate sort of writing, is, that there be choice diversity of subjects; that the Eclogue, like a beautiful prospect, should charm by its variety. Virgil is admirable in this point, and far surpasses Theocritus, as he does everywhere, when judgment and contrivance have the principal part. The subject of the first Pastoral is hinted above.

The Second contains the love of Corydon for Alexis, and the seasonable reproach he gives himself, that he left his vines half pruned, (which, according to the Roman rituals, derived a curse upon the fruit that grew upon it,) whilst he pursued an object undeserving his passion.

The Third, a sharp contention of two shepherds for the prize of poetry.

The Fourth contains the discourse of a shepherd comforting himself, in a declining age, that a better was ensuing.

The Fifth, a lamentation for a dead friend, the first draught of which is probably more ancient than any of the pastorals now extant; his brother being at first intended; but he afterwards makes his court to Augustus, by turning it into an apotheosis of Julius Cæsar.

The Sixth is the Silenus.

The Seventh, another poetical dispute, first composed at Mantua.

The Eighth is the description of a despairing lover, and a magical charm.

He sets the Ninth after all these, very modestly, because it was particular to himself; and here he would have ended that work, if Gallus had not prevailed upon him to add one more in his favour.

Thus curious was Virgil in diversifying his subjects. But M. Fontenelle is a great deal too uniform: begin where you please, the subject is still the same. We find it true what he says of himself,

_Toûjours, toûjours de l'amour._

He seems to take pastorals and love-verses for the same thing. Has human nature no other passion? Does not fear, ambition, avarice, pride, a capriccio of honour, and laziness itself, often triumph over love? But this passion does all, not only in pastorals, but in modern tragedies too. A hero can no more fight, or be sick, or die, than he can be born, without a woman. But dramatics have been composed in compliance to the humour of the age, and the prevailing inclination of the great, whose example has a more powerful influence, not only in the little court behind the scenes, but on the great theatre of the world. However, this inundation of love-verses is not so much an effect of their amorousness, as of immoderate self-love; this being the only sort of poetry, in which the writer can, not only without censure, but even with commendation, talk of himself. There is generally more of the passion of Narcissus, than concern for Chloris and Corinna, in this whole affair. Be pleased to look into almost any of those writers, and you shall meet everywhere that eternal _Moi_, which the admirable Pascal so judiciously condemns. Homer can never be enough admired for this one so particular quality, that he never speaks of himself, either in the Iliad or the Odysseys: and, if Horace had never told us his genealogy, but left it to the writer of his life, perhaps he had not been a loser by it. This consideration might induce those great critics, Varius and Tucca, to raze out the four first verses of the "Æneïs," in great measure, for the sake of that unlucky _Ille ego_. But extraordinary geniuses have a sort of prerogative, which may dispense them from laws, binding to subject wits. However, the ladies have the less reason to be pleased with those addresses, of which the poet takes the greater share to himself. Thus the beau presses into their dressing-room; but it is not so much to adore their fair eyes, as to adjust his own steenkirk and peruke, and set his countenance in their glass.

A fifth rule (which one may hope will not be contested) is, that the writer should show in his compositions some competent skill of the subject matter, that which makes the character of persons introduced. In this, as in all other points of learning, decency, and oeconomy of a poem, Virgil much excels his master Theocritus. The poet is better skilled in husbandry than those that get their bread by it. He describes the nature, the diseases, the remedies, the proper places, and seasons, of feeding, of watering their flocks; the furniture, diet, the lodging and pastimes, of his shepherds. But the persons brought in by M. Fontenelle are shepherds in masquerade, and handle their sheep-hook as aukwardly as they do their oaten reed. They saunter about with their _chers moutons_; but they relate as little to the business in hand, as the painter's dog, or a Dutch ship, does to the history designed. One would suspect some of them, that, instead of leading out their sheep into the plains of Mont-Brison and Marcilli, to the flowery banks of Lignon, or the Charante, they are driving directly _à la boucherie_, to make money of them. I hope hereafter M. Fontenelle will chuse his servants better.

A sixth rule is, that, as the style ought to be natural, clear, and elegant, it should have some peculiar relish of the ancient fashion of writing. Parables in those times were frequently used, as they are still by the eastern nations; philosophical questions, ænigmas, &c.; and of this we find instances in the sacred writings, in Homer, contemporary with king David, in Herodotus, in the Greek tragedians. This piece of antiquity is imitated by Virgil with great judgment and discretion. He has proposed one riddle, which has never yet been solved by any of his commentators. Though he knew the rules of rhetoric as well as Cicero himself, he conceals that skill in his Pastorals, and keeps close to the character of antiquity. Nor ought the connections and transitions to be very strict and regular; this would give the Pastorals an air of novelty; and of this neglect of exact connections, we have instances in the writings of the ancient Chineses, of the Jews and Greeks, in Pindar, and other writers of dithyrambics, in the choruses of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. If M. Fontenelle and Ruæus had considered this, the one would have spared his critique of the sixth, and the other, his reflections upon the ninth Pastoral. The over-scrupulous care of connections makes the modern compositions oftentimes tedious and flat: and by the omission of them it comes to pass, that the _Pensées_ of the incomparable M. Pascal, and perhaps of M. Bruyère, are two of the most entertaining books which the modern French can boast of. Virgil, in this point, was not only faithful to the character of antiquity, but copies after Nature herself. Thus a meadow, where the beauties of the spring are profusely blended together, makes a more delightful prospect, than a curious _parterre_ of sorted flowers in our gardens: and we are much more transported with the beauty of the heavens, and admiration of their Creator, in a clear night, when we behold stars of all magnitudes promiscuously moving together, than if those glorious lights were ranked in their several orders, or reduced into the finest geometrical figures.

Another rule omitted by P. Rapin, as some of his are by me, (for I do not design an entire treatise in this preface,) is, that not only the sentences should be short and smart, (upon which account he justly blames the Italian and French, as too talkative,) but that the whole piece should be so too. Virgil transgressed this rule in his first Pastorals, (I mean those which he composed at Mantua,) but rectified the fault in his riper years. This appears by the _Culex_, which is as long as five of his Pastorals put together. The greater part of those he finished have less than a hundred verses; and but two of them exceed that number. But the "Silenus," which he seems to have designed for his master-piece, in which he introduces a god singing, and he, too, full of inspiration, (which is intended by that ebriety, which M. Fontenelle so unreasonably ridicules,) though it go through so vast a field of matter, and comprises the mythology of near two thousand years, consists but of fifty lines; so that its brevity is no less admirable, than the subject matter, the noble fashion of handling it, and the deity speaking. Virgil keeps up his characters in this respect too, with the strictest decency: for poetry and pastime was not the business of men's lives in those days, but only their seasonable recreation after necessary labours. And therefore the length of some of the modern Italian and English compositions is against the rules of this kind of poesy.

I shall add something very briefly, touching the versification of Pastorals, though it be a mortifying consideration to the moderns. Heroic verse, as it is commonly called, was used by the Greeks in this sort of poem, as very ancient and natural; lyrics, iambics, &c. being invented afterwards: but there is so great a difference in the numbers of which it may be compounded, that it may pass rather for a genus, than species, of verse. Whosoever shall compare the numbers of the three following verses, will quickly be sensible of the truth of this observation:

_Tityre, tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi_--

the first of the Georgics,

_Quid faciat lætas segetes, quo sidere terram_--

and of the Æneïs,

_Arma, virumque cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris._

The sound of the verses is almost as different as the subjects. But the Greek writers of Pastoral usually limited themselves to the example of the first; which Virgil found so exceedingly difficult, that he quitted it, and left the honour of that part to Theocritus. It is indeed probable, that what we improperly call rhyme, is the most ancient sort of poetry; and learned men have given good arguments for it; and therefore a French historian commits a gross mistake, when he attributes that invention to a king of Gaul, as an English gentleman does, when he makes a Roman emperor the inventor of it. But the Greeks, who understood fully the force and power of numbers, soon grew weary of this childish sort of verse, as the younger Vossius justly calls it, and therefore those rhyming hexameters, which Plutarch observes in Homer himself, seem to be the remains of a barbarous age. Virgil had them in such abhorrence, that he would rather make a false syntax, than what we call a rhyme. Such a verse as this,

_Vir, precor_, uxori, _frater succurre_ sorori,

was passable in Ovid; but the nicer ears in Augustus's court could not pardon Virgil for

_At regina pyrâ...._

so that the principal ornament of modern poetry was accounted deformity by the Latins and Greeks. It was they who invented the different terminations of words, those happy compositions, those short monosyllables, those transpositions for the elegance of the sound and sense, which are wanting so much in modern languages. The French sometimes crowd together ten or twelve monosyllables into one disjointed verse. They may understand the nature of, but cannot imitate, those wonderful spondees of Pythagoras, by which he could suddenly pacify a man that was in a violent transport of anger; nor those swift numbers of the priests of Cybele, which had the force to enrage the most sedate and phlegmatic tempers. Nor can any modern put into his own language the energy of that single poem of Catullus,

_Super alta vectus Atys_, &c.

Latin is but a corrupt dialect of Greek; and the French, Spanish, and Italian, a corruption of Latin; and therefore a man might as well go about to persuade me that vinegar is a nobler liquor than wine, as that the modern compositions can be as graceful and harmonious as the Latin itself. The Greek tongue very naturally falls into iambics, and therefore the diligent reader may find six or seven-and-twenty of them in those accurate orations of Isocrates. The Latin as naturally falls into heroic; and therefore the beginning of Livy's History is half a hexameter, and that of Tacitus an entire one. The Roman historian[293], describing the glorious effort of a colonel to break through a brigade of the enemy's, just after the defeat at Cannæ, falls, unknowingly, into a verse not unworthy Virgil himself--

_Hæc ubi dicta dedit, stringit gladium, cuneoque Facto, per medios...._ &c.