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Vergil and the English Poets Columbia University Press Sales Agents Book .N h Copyright N^ CDRORIGHT DEPOSIT. Columbia Wini\itt0itv STUDIES IN ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS SALES AGENTS NEW YOltK LEMCKE & BUECHNER 30-32 Eabt 27tu Stueet LONDON HUMPHREY MILFORD Amen Corner, E.G. SHANGHAI EDWARD EVANS & SONS, Ltd. 30 North Szechuen Road VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS BY ELIZABETH NITCHIE, Ph. D. Instructor in English in Goucher Collegb ^^^'^^^ COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1919 All rights reserved < Copyright, 1919 By Columbia University Press Printed from type, April, 1919 ^ k7 i9!9 ©CI.A515690 -v- .', ( This Monograph has been approved by the Department of English and Comparative Literature in Columbia University as a contribution to knowledge worthy of publication. A. H. THORNDIKE, Executive Officer PREFACE This book has grown out of a long-standing interest in the classics and a feeling that the connection between the Uterature of Greece and Rome and that of England is too seldom realized and too seldom stressed by the lovers and teachers of both. As Sir Gilbert Murray has said in his recent presidential address to the Classical Association of England, The Religion of a Man of Letters, ^^ Paradise Lost and Prometheus Unbound are . the children of Vergil and Homer, of Aeschylus and Plato. Let us admit that there must of necessity be in all English literature a strain of what one may call vernacular English thought. ... It remains true that from the Renaissance onward, nay, from Chaucer and even from Alfred, the higher and more massive workings of our literature owe more to the Greeks and Romans than to our own un-Romanized ancestors." Vergil has probably exerted more influence upon the literature of England throughout its whole course and in all its branches than any other Roman poet. At certain periods Horace has taken precedence over him, and at other periods, Ovid; but it is doubtful whether the influ- ence of either has been as far-reaching or as varied as that of Vergil. A discussion of his influence upon the English poets, therefore, will serve as an illustration of that continuity of literature, that tradiiio, of which Sir Gilbert Murray speaks. I wish to thank those members of the English Depart- ment of Columbia University who, by their advice and aid, have made this book possible. I wish to express my appre- ciation especially of the unfailing kindness of Professor A. H. vii Viu PREFACE Thorndike, who has read the book in manuscript and proof, and has given me much valuable help. Professor William Peterfield Trent also has read it in manuscript and has given me constant assistance. Many helpful suggestions and criticisms, especially on the earher portions, have come from Professor H. M. Ayres. To Professor Nelson Glenn McCrea of the Department of Classical Philology is due the initial suggestion of the subject. He has never failed, while I have been working on the book, to give me encour- agement and advice, and his interpretation of the work of Vergil has been a constant source of inspiration. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. I^rTRODUCTION 1 II. The Mediaeval Tradition 13 III. Chaucer, His Contemporaries and his Imitators . 39 IV. Vergil and Humanism 66 V. Spenser and the English Renaissance 92 VI. Milton and the Classical Epic 124 VII. Dryden and Pope 148 VIII. Thomson and the Didactic Poets 179 IX. Landor and the Romanticists 197 X. Tennyson and the Victorians 212 Bibliography 235 I. Books of Reference 235 II. List of Translations, Burlesques, Parodies, and Imitations 236 Index 245 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION From the days when Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus wrote epics in imitation of the Aeneid, and Columella com- posed a verse treatise on horticulture after the manner of the Georgics, and Calpurnius Siculus copied the VergiUan style and subject-matter in his Eclogues, the influence of Vergil upon the literature of the world has been a constant force. Even in this practical, scientific twentieth century, a newspaper editor refers to his Eclogues in the heat of a political campaign, the echo of a half-forgotten passage learned in school-days comes back to a soldier in the trenches, an epic poem on the Volsung story is modeled on the struc- ture of the Aeneid, and the poet-laureate of England pubUshes a cento of translations of a brief passage in the sixth book, with a version of his own. It was to the sheer force of his genius that Vergil owed his long popularity. Neither his personaUty nor his life would have had sufficient appeal or interest to push forward works that were not of the highest merit. Shy and modest to such a degree that he earned the punning nickname of the Maiden (Virgo), this retiring idealist gave on his death- bed the command that the Aeneid should be burnt. Nor did his career have the historical importance of a Caesar or the romantic interest of an Ovid. His was a singularly 1 2 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS uneventful life, as far as we know it. He was born in the little village of Andes near Mantua in the year 70 B.C. His father was a small freeholder, tilling his own fields and raising timber and bees. Here Vergil gained the knowl- edge which he afterwards turned so wonderfully to account in the Georgics. He had, however, the best education pos- sible, first at Cremona, then at Milan, and finally at Rome itself, where he studied rhetoric and philosophy. In the confiscation of land after the battle of Phihppi, Vergil, whose father had meanwhile died, lost his little estate, but through the friendship of Polho, Gallus, and Varus, he was given in compensation land in Campania, and was introduced to, Octavianus. About this time, Vergil published his Eclogues, which immediately made a stir in the literary world, as the beginning of a new type of poetry in Rome, and the promise of future greatness in the author himself. Outwardly they are imitations of the Idylls of Theocritus, and they are cast in the conventional forms of the dialogue between two shepherds, the song-contest in alternate verse with a lamb or a graven bowl as the stake, the complaint of the lover over the hardheartedness or the faithlessness of his mistress, and the lament for a comrade who has died. Into this pastoral form Vergil has woven some personal allegory, in reference to the loss of his estate, the death of Julius Caesar, and the misfortunes of his friend Gallus. The ten poems are marked by a certain artificiality which is a fre- quent characteristic of imitative and allegorical poetry, and the execution shows the hand of a beginner, but of a beginner of great things. For the promise of the charm of Vergil's later poems is here, especially in the golden light of the fourth Eclogue and the romantic atmosphere of the story of the deserted Gallus. With the publication of the Georgics in 29 B.C., Vergil took his place at the head of Latin literature. Their beauty has INTRODUCTION 3 perhaps been obscured by the greater glory of the Aeneid. But Vergil never proved himself so surely a "lord of lan- guage" as he did in dealing with the unpromising subjects of " tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd," and to demonstrate it one has only to turn to him from the awk- ward dullness of The Fleece or The Chase. Lucretius put his philosophical teaching into poetry, for he said he must smear the lip of the cup with honey, that the bitter but beneficial dose within it might be made acceptable. So Vergil, commissioned by Augustus to revive in the hearts of the Romans a love for agriculture, put the precepts of husbandry into verse which he had time to bring as near perfection as possible. With a background of the beauty of Italy and the charm of the country, he laid the emphasis on the necessity of unending labor and on its sure ^reward in actual production and in the strengthening of character as wel as of body — a real Gospel of Work. The splendid digression in the second book of the Georgics on the glory of Italy, with its closing apostrophe to the "mighty mother of heroes," strikes the note of Vergil's last and greatest work. The Aeneid, begun shortly after the publication of the Georgics, occupied the poet's time until his death in 19 B.C., and yet he did not consider it finished. It embodied the best that was in him, his passionate love for his country, his veneration for his emperor, his broodings over the significance and purposes of human life. It inevi- tably challenged comparison with the great epics of Greece, and incurred the criticism of being a mere imitation. Imitative it indubitably is in mere externals; but the marvel is that from materials and framework originally Greek, Vergil has wrought a poem shot through and through with Roman feehng. Each suggestion from the Iliad or the Odyssey is reworked with the central pur- pose of impressing upon the Roman reader the grandeur 4 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS of the Rome that had been and the opportunity to make the Rome of the future, built on the soKd foundation of her history, even more glorious. So the catalogue of the Itahan forces in the seventh book is bound to the story by the element of national pride in these ancestors of the later Roman famihes; the pictures on the shield of Aeneas are not of a general character like those on the shield of Achilles, but tell the story of the growth of the Roman people; the episode of Dido is not a mere copy of the ad- ventures of Ulysses in the land of the Phaeacians, but is connected vitally with the Punic Wars of later years; the visit to the Underworld gives an opportunity for the proph- ecy by Anchises to his son of the future glories of the Roman race.
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