Rinaldo, youthful, vehement, impassioned, is the ideal of a hero not yet weaned from the passions of the world. Vehement, capricious, and irascible, he disturbs, like Achilles, the council of the chiefs by his wrath, and is seduced by the beauty of Armida to abandon the cause of the cross; yet even in her enchanted gardens, and when surrounded by all that can fascinate the imagination and allure the senses, the sparks of a noble nature are not extinct in his breast; he is recalled to his duty by the sight of her warriors; he flies the arms of the syren; he penetrates with invincible courage the enchanted forest; and when he descends purified from the stains of the world from the lofty mountain, on whose summit at sunrise he had dedicated himself to God, he is the worthy and invincible champion of the cross. Not less bold than his youthful rival, not less enthusiastic in his affections, Tancredi is the victim of a romantic passion. But it is no enchantress for whom he pines; it is no seducing frail one who allures him from the path of duty. Clorinda appears in the Saracen ranks; her arms combat with heroic power for the cause of Mahomet; the glance which has fascinated the Christian knight came from beneath the plumed helmet. Lofty enthusiasm has unstrung his arm – devoted tenderness has subdued his heart – the passion of love in its purest form has fascinated his soul; yet even this high-toned sentiment can yield to the influences of religion; and when Tancredi, after the fatal nocturnal conflict in which his sword pierced the bosom of his beloved, is visited by her in his dreams, and assured that she awaits him in Paradise, the soul of the Crusader is aroused within him, and he sets forth with ardent zeal to seek danger and death in the breach of Jerusalem. It cannot be said that these characters are so natural as those of Homer, at least they are not so similar to what is elsewhere seen in the world; and therefore they will never make the general impression which the heroes of the Iliad have done. But they are more refined – they are more exalted; and if less like what men are, they are perhaps not the less like what they ought to be.
How is it, then, if Virgil is so inferior to Homer and Tasso in the unity of action, the concentration of interest, and the delineation of character, that he has acquired his prodigious reputation among men? How is it that generation after generation has ratified the opinion of Dante, who called him his "Divine Master" – of Petrarch, who spent his life in the study of his works? How is it that his verses are so engraven in our recollection that they have become, as it were, a second nature to every cultivated mind, and insensibly recur whenever the beauty of poetry is felt, or the charms of nature experienced? Rest assured the judgment of so many ages is right: successive generations and different nations never concur in praising any author, unless his works, in some respects at least, have approached perfection. If we cannot discern the beauties, the conclusion to be drawn is that our taste is defective, rather than that so many ages and generations have concurred in lavishing their admiration on an unworthy object. Nor is it difficult to see in what the excellence of Virgil consists; we cannot read a page of him without perceiving what has fascinated the world, without concurring in the fascination. It is the tenderness of his heart, his exquisite pathos, his eye for the beauty of nature, the unrivalled beauty of his language, which have given him immortality, and to the end of time render the study of his works the most perfect means of refining the taste and inspiring a genuine feeling of poetic beauty.
So melodious is the versification, so delicate the taste, so exquisite the feeling, so refined the sentiment of Virgil, that it may truly be said that he will ever remain the model on which the graces of composition in every future age must be formed. Of him more truly than any human being it may be said, "Nihil quod tetegit non ornavit." The Georgics demonstrate that, in the hands of genius, and under the guidance of taste, the most ordinary occupations of rural life may be treated with delicacy, and rendered prolific of beauty. The dressing of vines, the subduing of the clod by the sturdy heifers, the different manures for the soil, the sowing of seed, the reaping of harvest, the joys of the vintage, the vehemence of storms, the snows of winter, the heats of summer, the blossoms of spring, the riches of autumn, become in his hands prolific of description and prodigal of beauty. Even the dumb animals are the objects of his tender solicitude. We hear the heifers lowing for their accustomed meal in winter; we gaze on the sporting of the lambs in spring; we see the mountain goat suspended from the shaggy rock in summer; we sympathize with the provident industry of the bees; we even feel we have a friend in the little underground nest of the field mouse. The opening lines of the Eclogues, which every schoolboy knows by heart, give an earnest of the exquisite taste which pervades his writings: —
"Tityre, tu patulæ, recubans sub tegmine fagi,
Sylvestrem tenui musam meditaris avena;
Nos patriæ fines et dulcia linquimus arva.
Nos patriam fugimus: tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra,
Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas."
Virgil, it has been said, was so strongly impressed with the inferiority of the Æneid to what he conceived epic poetry should be, that he desired that poem to be thrown into the flames after his death; yet though deficient in the principal requisites of an epic poem, so far as the structure of the story and the delineation of the characters are concerned, what exquisite beauties does it contain – what an assemblage of lovely images has it brought together – what an irreparable loss would its destruction have been to all future generations of men! Not all the genius of subsequent ages could have supplied its place. There are beauties in the Æneid, which neither Thomson in descriptive, nor Racine in dramatic poetry, have been able to rival.
If Homer excels all subsequent writers in conception of character, vigour of imagination, and graphic delineation, Virgil is not less unrivalled in delicacy of sentiment, tenderness of feeling, and beauty of expression. There are many more striking scenes in the Iliad, more animating events, more awful apparitions; but in the Æneid, passages of extraordinary beauty are much more numerous. What is present to the imagination when we rise from the former, is the extraordinary series of brilliant or majestic images which it has presented; what is engraven on the memory when we conclude the latter, is the charming series of beautiful passages which it contains. There are many more events to recollect in the Grecian, but more lines to remember in the Roman poet. To the Iliad, subsequent ages have turned with one accord for images of heroism, traits of nature, grandeur of character. To the Æneid, subsequent times will ever have recourse for touches of pathos, expressions of tenderness, felicity of language. Flaxman drew his conception of heroic sculpture from the heroes of the Iliad: Racine borrowed his heart-rending pathetic from the sorrows of Dido. Homer struck out his conceptions with the bold hand, and in the gigantic proportions, of Michael Angelo's frescoes; Virgil finished his pictures with the exquisite grace of Raphael's Madonnas.
Virgil has been generally considered as unrivalled in the pathetic; but this observation requires to be taken with a certain limitation. No man ever exceeded Homer in the pathetic, so far as he wished to portray it; but it was one branch only of that emotion that he cared to paint. It was the domestic pathetic that he delineated with such power: it was in the distresses of home life, the rending asunder of home affections, that he was so great a master. The grief of Andromache on the death of Hector, and the future fate of his son begging his bread from the cold charity of strangers – the wailings of Priam and Hecuba, when that noble chief awaited before the Scæan Gate the approach of Achilles – the passionate lamentations of the Grecian chief over the dead body of Patroclus – never were surpassed in any language; they abound with traits of nature, which, to the end of the world, will fascinate and melt the human heart. The tender melancholy of Evander for the fate of Pallas, who had perished by the spear of Turnus, is of the same description, and will bear a comparison with its touching predecessor. But these are all the sorrows of domestic life. Virgil and Tasso,