Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/261

 Tx] CLASSIC METRE AND CHRISTIAN EMOTION 243 tered Latin literature. Latin feeling was not Greek feeling. Yet the expression of emotion in poetry- is necessarily in some accord with the structure of the verse ; and emotional expression in Latin poetry was affected by the use of Greek metres. Their early development had been in unison with the evolution of the thought and feeling of Greek poetry ; they would always carry with them something of the quality of its ancient thoughts and sentiments, which might also survive in the words of the Greek poems or in bor- rowed Latin phrase. It may be doubted whether Homer's spirit dwelt in Ennius' stiff hexameters. It might be more at ease in the epic poem in which classical Latin poetry cul- minated. A lover woos by self-surrender. Virgil wooed and won the epic hexameter. With what mastery he made that his own is beautifully and subtly shown in the Virgilian expression of emotion. The pagan heart had matured in the centuries between Homer and Vir- gil ; it had gained in tenderness ; sentiments had re- fined, emotions had deepened. The older poet com- passed the emotional range of his age. Virgil's pure nature and supremely sympathetic genius held the noblest feeling of his time. His contemplative, sad- dened temperament endued all human situations with the pathos of mortality, the pathos of heroic endeavor frustrated or saddened in its success by the hardship of the toil. Through all his modes of feeling, through his g^eat heart's grief over the helplessness of life, his expression is controlled, beautiful, always in harmony with the music of his hexameters. The lover of Vir- gil may take as illustration any pathetic passage and