hat 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 patulae, recubans sub tegmine fagi,
Sylvestrem tenui musam meditaris avena;
Nos patriae 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 _AEneid_ to what he conceived epic poetry should be, that he desired
that poem to be thrown into the flames after his death