REMARKS AND DISSERTATIONS ON THE GEORGICS*. MR. R. HOLDSWORTH had designed for many years to publish an edition of Virgil's Georgics, with his notes to them. His death, and the frequent ill state of his health in the interval, prevented his carrying this design into execution. There is part of the preface which he intended to prefix to it; and several little strictures (probably toward a Dissertation on the Georgics) among his papers; which, though only strictures, as they are his, may deserve a place here. *VIRGIL'S GEORGICS are generally allowed to be the most correct of all his works; and yet, I believe, there is no part of them so much neglected, or so little read. And the reason is plain, because there is none so difficult to be understood. This difficulty does not, as I apprehend, arise from the poet's manner of expressing himself more obscurely in this poem than in his others; for if that were true, it would not then deserve the character it bears. But it seems rather owing, partly to the nature of the subject, and partly to the commentators, who have undertaken to explain it. The subject in itself may, perhaps, appear easy, as it chiefly relates to different parts of husbandry, and common affairs of life. But then we must consider that the lower and more humble the subject, the more necessary were metaphors to raise and ennoble it; which some of the commentators have not sufficiently observed, but have explained their Author in a too dry grammatical way. Again, we must consider that many of those things which Virgil treats about are liable to little changes in the same age, and much more in such different ages; and that every country has its own manner of culture, and makes use of different instruments. This renders the subject much more difficult than it appears at first sight. And the commentators having been of different countries may probably have been biassed too much by their own fashions, and consequently must have mistaken Virgil in many places, for want of being better informed in the husbandry and particular usage of the country for which his system is calculated. In short, I look upon this piece as a fine old paysage which had grown dark and a little obscure by length of time; but has suffered much more by those who have attempted to clean it, and wipe off that little dust which it must unavoidably have contracted by age. Yet notwithstanding all this it still continues a fine piece; and by what remains well preserved, we may easily judge what the whole must have been in its original beauty; and when every part of it was well understood. Beside the delicacy of expression in the Georgics, we ought particularly to remark the transitions from one precept to another, which are managed with such exquisite art, notwithstanding the number of them, as not to break the thread of the poem. And to prevent the Reader's being tired with precepts, interludes and decorations at proper distances are judiciously interspersed, and those so well assorted, that though many of them are very foreign to the subject, they seem to belong to it, and flow from it; and produce an agreeable variety, at the same time that they serve to compose one entire regular piece. Lest the inculcating precept upon precept might prove tiresome to the reader, the poet takes care not to encumber his poem with too much business, but relieves the subject with some variety or transition. Mr. Addison admires Virgil's great art in his manner of treating his precepts; that they fall in after each other by a natural unforced method; and shew themselves in the best and most advantageous light. They are so finely wrought together in the same piece, that no coarse seam discovers where they join. As in a curious brede of needlework one colour falls away by such just degrees, and another rises so insensibly, that we see the variety without being able to distinguish the total vanishing of the one from the first appearance of the other. Democritus had given this title to a treatise on agriculture, as appears from Columella, lib. XI. c. iii. "Democritus in eo libro, quem Georgicon appellavit." The Georgics are the least read, and the least understood, of all Virgil's works.-How falsely has it been imagined, that the commentators have discovered more beauties than Virgil intended! The Georgic (to use the words of Terence) is, "Corpus "solidum et succi plenum." Mr. Addison concludes this poem to be the most complete, elaborate, and finished piece of all antiquity. 5 After this particular account of the beauties of the Georgics, I should, in the next place, endeavour to point out its imperfections, if it has any. But though I think there are some few parts in it not so beautiful as the rest, I shall not presume to name them, as rather suspecting my own judgment than I can believe a fault to be in that poem which lay so long under Virgil's correction, and had his last hand put to it. Mr. Pope, in the first note on the nineteenth book of the Odyssey, makes the following observation on the general characters of Homer and Virgil. Homer, says he, is like those painters of whom Apelles used to complain, that they left nothing to be imagined by the spectator, and made too accurate representations; but Virgil is like Timantes in Pliny. "manti plurimum adfuit ingenii, in omnibus operibus ejus intelligitur plus semper quam pingitur."-And again, "Ostendit "etiam quae occultat."-This character is particularly verified in his Georgics. 66 "Ti I have heard Mr. Holdsworth mention, in conversation, the following strictures, in relation to the Georgics. The style of each book of the Georgics is different from all the others. That of the First is plain; of the Second, various; of the Third, grand; and of the Fourth, pleasing. Columella's work is much the best comment on the Georgics. I wonder whence Seneca came to speak so slightly of Virgil's exactness in his Georgics; but this I am sure of, that the more I have looked into the manner of agriculture used at present in Italy, the more occasion I have had to admire the justice and force of his expressions; and his exactness even in the minutest particulars. Mr. Holdsworth here probably had an eye to the following passage in Seneca. "Virgilius noster, qui non quid verissimè, "sed quid decentissimè diceretur, aspexit; nec agricolas docere "voluit, sed legentes delectare." Lib. XIII. Ep. lxxxvii. Pliny also speaks but slightingly of Virgil. "Nos obliterata "quoque scrutabimur; nec deterrebit quarundam rerum "humilitas. Quanquam videmus Virgilium, praecellentissimum "vatem, eâ de causâ hortorum dotes fugisse: e tantisque quae "retulit, flores modò rerum decerpisse," etc. Lib. XIV. prooem. p. 67. The particular for which Pliny blames Virgil is the time for sowing millet; how unjustly, see Columell. II. ix. and Pliny himself, Nat. Hist. XVIII. vii. Columella talks of Virgil in a style very different from these Haec autem consequemur, si passages in Pliny and Seneca. "verissimo vati velut oraculo crediderimus." "Vir eruditissimus, ut mea fert opinio." c. iii. (of Virgil.) L. I. c. iv. "Ideoque Virgilius cum et alia, tum et hoc de seminibus praeclarè sic disseruit: "Vidi ego lecta diu," etc. Id. II. ix. 12. Sequeris autem novalia non solùm herbida, sed quae ple"rumque vidua sunt spinis; utamur enim saepius auctoritate "divini carminis: "Si tibi lanitium curae est," &c. (From Virgil's Georg. iii. 384.) Id. VII. iii. 9. "Sed Georgicum carmen affirmat nullam esse praestantiorem "medicinam, "Quam si quis ferro potuit rescindere summum "Itaque reserandum est, etc. Id. VII. v. 10. Et ne dece"damus ab optimo vate, "Vere novo terram," etc. Georg. I. 43. Id. II. 2. He never differs from Virgil, but in one single point, in which he says he and the old writers in agriculture in general were mistaken; "Virgilius, et Saserna, Stolonesque, et Catones." Id. IV. 11. 66 Speaking of bees, in particular, he says; “ Hyginus, veterum "auctorum placita secretis dispersa monumentis industriè col"legit; Virgilius, poeticis floribus illuminavit; Celsus utriusque "memorati adhibuit modum." Id. IX. ii. 1.-(Yet how reserved in his poetical excursions even on that subject! See ibid. III.) |