Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/32

 14 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS poets were close friends, and Horace mentions Virgil as being in the party which accompanied Maecenas from Rome to Brundisium about the year 41 b.c. Be- tween 41 b.c. and 2>7 B - c ne composed, as already stated, his "Eclogues" or " Bucolics." In these idylls we find many simple and natural touches, great beauty of metre and language, and numerous allusions to the persons and cir- cumstances of the time. The fourth of these ten short poems is dedicated to Pollio, and is to be noted as the one quoted by Constantine as leading to his conversion to Christianity. "It is bucolic only in name, it is allegorical," writes George Long, " mystical, half historical, and prophetical, enigmatical, anything in fact but bucolic." The best-known imitation of his idyll is Pope's " Mes- siah." Pleasing as all these poems are, they do not represent rural life in Italy, they are in most part but echoes of Theocritus. It is to the suggestion of Maecenas that we owe Virgil's most perfect poem, his " Georgics," which he commenced after the publication of the " Bucolics." To suppose these four books of verses on soils, fruit-trees, horses and cattle, and finally on bees, as a practical, treatise to guide and instruct the farmer, is absurd. Few farmers have time or inclination to read so elaborate a work. It is probable that Maecenas, while recognizing the talent of the " Bucolics," saw likewise the unreality of their pictures of life, and gave him the subject of the " Georgics " as being in the same line as that the poet seemed to have chosen for himself, and yet as less liable to lead to imitations and pilferings from Greek originals. In fact there was no work that he could follow. In this work we find great inv provement in both taste and versification, and the rather uninviting subject is treated and embellished in a way that makes his fame rest in great part on the poem. The fourth book, especially, with its episode of Orpheus and Eurydice will live forever for its plaintive tenderness. The work was completed at Na- ples, after the battle of Actium, 31 b.c, while Augustus was in the East. In b.c. 27 the emperor was in Spain, and thence he addressed a request to let him have some monument of his poetical talent, to celebrate the emperor's name as he had done that of Maecenas. Virgil replied in a brief letter, saying, "As regards my '^Eneas,' if it were worth your listening to, I would willingly send it. But so vast is the undertaking that I almost appear to myself to have commenced it from some defect in understanding ; especially since, as you know, other and far more important studies are needed for such a work." In the year b.c. 24, we learn from the poet Propertius, that Virgil was then busy at the task, and in all probability the former may have heard it read by its author. The old Latin commentators preserve several striking notices of Virgil's habit of reading or reciting his poems, both while he was composing them and after they were completed, and especially of the remarkable beauty and charm of the poet's ren- dering of his own words and its powerful effect upon his hearers. " He read," says. Suetonius, " at once with sweetness and with a wonderful fascination ; " and Seneca had a story of the poet Julius Montanus saying that he himself would at- tempt to steal something from Virgil if he could first borrow his voice, his elocu- tion, and his dramatic power in reading ; for the very same lines, said he, which