VIRGIL’S ETERNAL FAME

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1047, 11 August 1930, Page 12

VIRGIL’S ETERNAL FAME

CiREAT POET OF TWENTY CENTURIES AGO Some men are said to think in continents, but the fact that Virgil was boru 2,000 3'ears ago compels us to think in millenniums. He appeared upon our globe in 70 8.C., and before his death he had won the admiration and reverence of his native land and laid the foundation of a fame that will endure as long as the human race. Schoolboys in his own day were conning his poetry, and there is no university in our time but introduces him to generous youth as one of the greatest poets that ever lived. Like all men of noble nature he was extremely modest, shrank from public gaze, was embarrassed when cheered on entering a theatre, and seemed almost as shy as a young girl. It is difficult to visualise across the gulf of time the face and form of the poet, and indeed the materials for doing so are too scanty. According to an author not always reliable, Virgil was tall, looked rather rustic, and like a person threatened with tuberculosis. A pavement mosaic shows him with a broad brow, penetrating eye, fine nose, generous mouth and strong chin. Notwithstanding these attractive features, he wears the appearance of a somewhat emaciated person. He was born at Mantua, and his father seems to have been in a position to send him to school at Cremona and Milan, and thereafter to Rome, where the young men of the day were expected to complete their education by taking a course of rhetoric and philosophy. His healtffy mind was repelled by the bombast that "called the youths to drivellings insane.” When he was about 21 years of age he made his first venture into poetry, but bis serious work began with the Eclogues or Selected Poems. At once men felt that a new star had appeared. Till now poetry had been shackled by pedantry in the name of art, but Virgil burst the bands asunder and charmed his countrymen by the natural ease and grace and melody of his verse. These ten Selected Poems marked the dawn on an era which, as indicated by the alternative title of Bucolics or Pastorals was a call to a return to nature and elevation of mind. It was rightly regarded as the beginning of a true romanticism in literature. Tired of endless wars, the poet painted a picture of a Golden Age inaugurated by Octavian. So closely did he identify the reign of peace with the advent of a child that ardent believers regarded him as a prophet heralding the Messiah. The Eclogues brought Virgil under the notice of Maecenas, who, wishing to keep him in Rome, presented him with a villain. For a few years he wrote little, but travelled with his patron and Horace. There are evidences, too, that he did a good deal or reading at this period, and after seven years of toil he produced his Georgies, or the Art of Husbandry. The poem arose out of the land question. Some of Italy’s richest country had been parcelled out among returned soldiers, many of whom knew little of farming. Large tracts of good arable land had been given up to grazing because wheat could be imported. Trade routes were, however, threatened by the enemy, and famine prices were feared. What did Virgil’s poem seek to accomplish? He called his countrymen to realise the need of unwearied and manly toil. "Country people,” says Mackail, "unable to face the competition of cheap foreign foodstuffs raised by slave labour that poured in from all parts of the Mediterranean, and affected by the universal restlessness which had come over the world, they drifted into towns and became an unemployed and discontented proletariat, a loose ballast which was a constant danger to the ship of state as it laboured through the waves of political revolution.” The craving for city life spread like a cancer. To check this the Government created small holdings, and Virgil wrote the Georgies. His aim was to revive the Roman ideal of agriculture as the one occupation worthy of a Roman citizen. As Ter.nyson has it in his beautiful lines, Virgil sang of “wheat and woodland. tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd.” The glory of Virgil’s Georgies poem lies in the fact that it is all in praise of Italy and of a life in constant contact with Nature, and leading to the regeneration of industry. The curious have calculated that this poem of 2,000 lines, written in seven yeajs, comes out at less than a line a day. But Dryden calls it “the best poem of the best poet.” Virgil meditated a still higher flight, the writing of a great national epic. To this he devoted the last 11 years of his life. The result was the the story of iEneas, the Trojan, the founder of Rome. It told the fall of Troy, the arrival of HSneas in Italy, his experiences there and his success in setting up a new kingdom. The most pathetic feature of his last and glorious poem is that, on his deathbed, he left directions that the “jEneid” should be destroyed. "I think myself almost mad to have embarked upon it.” The Emperor Augustus happily forbade the destruction of the poem, and it was published as we have it today. It leapt at once to the position of the national poem, was circulated widely, and still holds its place as an essential part of education. It is reported that bits of it are found "cut on the walls of the public baths in Rome, and scribbled on stucco in the buried streets of Pompeii.” An advanced secondary school in Rome, opened in 268. C., was the first to use the poetry; of Vir-

girl. The “vEneid” became a kind of Bible, and men opened it at random in search of divine guidance. People worshipped at the tomb of Virgil, and Paul was said to have wept at it. At Christmas services at Rheims he was called to bear witness of Christ, and was described as “Maro, prophet of the Gentiles.” At a later stage superstition regarding him degenerated into the grotesque. Several cities have spent much ink and labour in discussing whether Virgil was a stoic or an epicurean. Mackail impatiently dismisses such efforts, and says Virgil was not a philosopher, but a poet. Readers with a more practical turn of mind may be tempted to long for another Virgil, who would help in stemming the drift to the cities, and charm men by his entrancing pictures of life on the land. Statesmen who care more for facts that theories will smile, half in pity and half in disdain, at the blindness of the policy which permitted the product of slave labour to undersell the home product and drive the settlers to the city. But the true service and significance of Virgil was remote from these issues. It was his aim to create a united nation, and for this end he advocated small holdings, side by side with large estates. He was the apostle of nationhood, and that of the noblest type. He provided at once a new ideal and a new impulse, and in the doing of it passed from this “bank and shoal of time” at the early age of 51 years. As he was the first so he remains the greatest of national Italian | poets. ® Fervent admirers have gathered from his writings a series of half lines throbbing with poignant tenderness. He felt in his utmost soul the pathos of suffering, the “lacrimae rerum,” the tears of things, the brief sweetness of life, the sorrows of departing, the greatness of the soul, the hope that flickered and yet cannot be extinguished. Here then is a consummate artist born 2,000 years ago, yet moving us marvellously by his incomparable poetry, and still more by the tenderness of his sympathy with the human race. As a true poet he is a true prophet, with a message of comfort to weary men. His predictions were greater than he knew, and his poetry nobler than he dreamed. It would be difficult to praise him too much. FATE OF TOP-WEIGHTS THREE WINNERS IN 30 YEARS AURORA BOREALIS MAY STOP THE ROT The fortune of top-weights in the Grand National Steeplechase at Riccarton is little better than in the case of the hurdlers, for horses carrying No. 1 saddle cloth have registered victories on but three occasions. They have, however, run second twice and been placed third on three occasiuns. With the more fancied candidates for tomorrow’s race under a cloud, Aurora Borealis may come into her own. The records covering a period of 30 years are as under:-r 1900— Black Dust, 11.6, unplaced. 1901— Moifaa, 13.6, unplaced. 1902 The Guard, 13.2, unplaced. 1903 Scallywag, 11.5, unplaced. 1904 Haydn, 12.0, unplaced. 1905 Kaitere, 12.5, unplaced. 1906 Kaitere, 12.0, unplaced 1907 Kaitere, 13.3, third. 1908— Kaitere, 12.8, unplaced. 1909 Kurus, 11.3, unplaced. 1910— Capitol, 12.0, unplaced. 1911— Corazon, 12.3, second. —Continuance, 12.3, unplaced. 1913 Paritutu, 11.9, unplaced. 1914 Bercola, 11.13, second. Captain Jack, 11.13, unplaced. 1915 -£ im Loolan, 11.7, unplaced. s r^ eburn ’ nil. unplaced. 1917 Crib, 11.13, third. 1918— Master Strowan, 12.7, third 1919 Waimai, 12.7, unplaced. 1920 Lochella, 12.7, unplaced 1921 Coalition, 12.7, first 1922 Coalition, 12.7, unplaced. 1923 Oakleigh, 12.0, first. 1924 Oakleigh, 12.5, unplaced i lr Roseberry, 12.3, unplaced. g ass,n ’ Thr ough, 10.11, unplaced. 1927—Beau Cavalier, 11.7, first Cavalier, 12.5, unpiaced. 1929—Kawini, 10.13, unplaced. RACING FIXTURES AUGUST 12, 14, 16—Canterbury J.C. Grand rent 23—Pakuranga Hunt (Ellerslie). “3—Hawke s Bay Hunt (Hastings). 27 Dannevlrke R.C. 28— Hunt (Dannevlrke). 30—Taranaki Hunt (New Plymouth). SEPTEMBER 6—Mar ton J.C. 13 —Otago Hunt (Wingatui). 11, 13—Wanganui J.C. 20—Ashburton J.C. 20. 22 —Avondale J.C. » 25, 27—Geraldine R.C. 27—Hawke’s Bay J.C. OCTOBER 4—Napier Park R.C. 4 Kurow J.C. 4, 6—Auckland R.C. 9, 11 —Dunedin J.C. 10, 11£—Otaki Maori R.C. 16. 18—South Canterbury J.C. 18—Masterton R.C. 25, 27—Wellington R.C. 27—Waikato Hunt (Cambridge). 27—Waverley R.C. 27—Waipawa County. 27—North Canterbury R.C. 27. 29—Gore R.C. 30. Nov. I—Poverty Bay T.C. NOVEMBER I—Banks Peninsula R.C. I—Carterton R.C. 5 Birchwood Hunt. 6, B—Whangarei R.C. 8, 10, 12. 15—Canterbury J.C. 13, 15—Dargaville R.C. 15, 17—Waikato R.C. 19, 20—Win ton J.C. 22—Levin R.C.