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may not unfairly be said, that to Æneas the sea was but a toilsome and dangerous expanse, not to be described, but to be hurriedly got over and escaped from. His experiences of it are not to be compared with the long ocean combat of Ulysses, still Juno used it as her chief instrument of persecution. All the winds had been hurled against him on it; he had suffered shipwreck; his pilot was fated to be drowned in it. There is room for a plea of dramatic propriety. But at the point we have now reached Eneas's narrative ends; for the rest Virgil is himself the speaker. Let us see if there is any change.

Towards the close of the Fourth Book, after the dallying at Carthage with Dido, comes the hurried night embarkation. It is thus described: "The sea is hidden beneath the fleet. Hurrying, they dash up the foam, and sweep the azure sea

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latet sub classibus æquor.

Adnixi torquent spumas, et cærula verrunt.-B. IV. lines 582-3.

It will be admitted that this is no description. poet's eyes are still closed to the actual scene. this: "And now Aurora, leaving the saffron scattered upon the world fresh light

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When day comes the What he says of it is bed of Tithonus, first

Et jam prima novo spargebat lumine terras

Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile.—B. IV. lines 584–5.

Dido, looking out from her watch-tower, beholds the fleet moving on with level sails; she notes that the shores and the harbours are quite deserted by the mariners; but she, like all the other Virgilian personages, does not catch a glimpse of the sea. She was in no mood to watch its glories, but, at least, she might have bethought herself of the waves as ministers of her prayed-for vengeance. At the commencement of the Fifth Book, Eneas is well out at sea, the description giving just one particle of detail he is "cutting through the dark waves, ruffled by the north wind," which would have whitened their tops, if it darkened their sides. There must have been miles of them between the fleet and the land, where the smoke of Dido's pyre arose, but the tossing expanse was only so much distance to be looked across. Soon a storm comes on, and, in describing it, Virgil positively uses over again two lines from Book III. He relieves himself of all trouble by having a formula for storms. Once more he tells us that "a rain cloud stands over Æneas's head, bearing storm and gloom, and the wave ruffled beneath the darkness"

Olli cæruleus supra caput adstitit imber,

Noctem hiememque ferens; et inhorruit unda tenebris.

B. V. lines 10-11.

The whole passage makes, we think, the weakest description of a seastorm ever given. They yield to the storm, and once more turn towards Sicily. Acestes, from the top of a hill, beholds the ships coming, but he sees nothing more. The ocean is also invisible to him. Not far on in this book we have the sea races, part of the games in honour VOL. XXX.-No. 178.

23.

of Anchises's memory. All is leisure now; the sea is not made odious by over-much toil. If water had had any charms for the poet they would have won a glance from him. The competing vessels are described particularly; in speaking of the rock where was the goal of the race, we have the phrase "foamy beach" (spumantia littora). But, in the account of the races, again the water goes for nothing. We are prosaically told that the sea was turned up and lashed into foam (adductis spumant freta versa lacertis); and, two lines further on, that all the surface of the water was opened.

Subsequently in this Book occurs the setting fire to the fleet by the women. The passage has much pathos from the contrast between the women's occupation and that of the men. They are far away on the lonely beach weeping for the loss of Anchises, while the men are celebrating the same regret by games. The poet says the "women all together were ever gazing on the main, and still weeping." They say "Alas, what seas and how much ocean still remain for us weary women!" A line showing the endless heaving of the watery expanse before them, with a murmur of the unsympathising wind foretelling perils, would have heightened the touching scene greatly. There is no such line. When Iris, disguised as Beroe, has persuaded the women to fire the ships, and Eneas, in despair, appeals to Jove, the storm which comes to quench the flames has no relation to the sea. The steep hills tremble with the thunder, so do the level plains. But Virgil's fancy will not glance towards the sea. Not a single peal bellows on that side, the whole waste of waters is left unused, and a land-shower puts out the flames.

Here the weariest of the matrons, and some of the men, equally sick at heart of the sea, are left, the rest starting on the last voyage prior to reaching Italy. Then we come upon the splendid picture of Neptune and his watery retinue. Fine as is the account of the god in his chariot, with the group of huge ancient and lovely attendants surrounding him in his progress, the sea itself reckons for nothing in the picture. It forms a road for the glittering procession, and that is all; Neptune's car shines azure; the waves are not of any colour. Not a spot of hue, not a scintillation of reflected light, is visible from them. This whole scene is a crucial one; it directly proves that the waves had no beauty in the Latin poet's eyes, and that when he wished to make the sea interesting, the only way, in his judgment, of doing so was to people it with personifications. Apart from these feigned inhabitants of the water, Virgil saw nothing in it to describe.

One more sea incident happens ere Italy is reached; it is again a night scene; the fleet is running before favouring breezes, with the stars visible, but, as it would seem, no moon. The god Sleep, disguised as Phorbas, descends and appears at the elbow of the watchful Palinurus, sitting at the helm, the only one awake. Pointing out to him that all is calm, the god urges him to close his eyes, offering to take his post for him. Palinurus's reply is in every way worthy of a pilot who is not a poet. He

says, "Would you have me believe in such a monster? Why should I trust Æneas to the treacherous gales, having been so often deceived by the frauds of the serene sky?"

mene huic confidere monstro?

Eneam credam quid enim fallacibus austris,

Et cœli toties deceptus fraude sereni ?—B. V. lines 849–51.

Palinurus is plunged overboard by the god. It is worth noting that afterwards, when Eneas meets Palinurus's ghost among the shades, Virgil, with strictest dramatic propriety, makes him use a pilot's form of oath, "By the savage seas I swear," &c. After Palinurus's fatal tumble, the ships pass the cliffs of the Sirens, where we are told, "hoarsely roared the rocks resounding with the restless sea," perhaps the best sea line in all Virgil:

Tum rauca assiduo longe sale saxa sonabant.-B. V. line 866.

Eneas awakens and guides the vessel for the rest of the night. In the morning they gain the Italian shore, anchor the ships, and land at Cumæ. Then follows the descent of Æneas into the other world, guided by the Sibyl.

The same fate of ill-success whenever the scene is not dry pursues Virgil even there. In the Sixth Book he has to describe Cocytus. То ask for exact local particulars would be unreasonable, but it is clear that the poet did not conceive it as a scene anywhere. He uses words as they come. There is a jumble of banks and coasts, pools and streams, floods and marshes. It is right to say that the other subterranean stream, Lethe, fares no better at Virgil's hands. He describes it, or rather speaks of it, as flowing in a retired vale, past woods with rustling brakes; and a stream of considerable size it must have been, since about it unnumbered tribes and nations (innumera gentes populique) hover, like humming bees in the fields; Eneas, says the poet, was startled at the sudden sight of the stream; no glimpse of it do we get in any of the lines. Of what hue was its desirable wave no hint is given.

Now we near the ending of the search for the fated Hesperian land. When Æneas has built his old nurse's mound (Caieta) on the shore where the ships had been awaiting him, they sail again. One natural touch. must be noted. Throughout nearly a whole line he makes "the sea sparkle underneath the moon

splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus.-B. VII. line 9.

Such a stroke, from the wonder of its rarity, tells upon a reader with more than its proper effect. Neptune having taken care to save the fleet from the Circean shores, we have the last dawn at sea. Alas, it is Aurora in her rosy chariot again! This is the description of the last glorious morning of Æneas's sea-wanderings: "And now the sea began to blush with rays, and in the lofty sky saffron Aurora shone in her rosy car"—

Jamque rubescebat radiis mare et æthere ab alto

Aurora in roseis fulgebat lutea bigis.-B. VII. lines 25-6.

They gain the Tibur's mouth and shelter in the river. Once in contact with the land the great poet's imagination is free again. His little picture of the river entrance shaded with groves, the air musical from fluttering birds of various plumage, is delightful.

In order to make our instances complete, we must not overlook Eneas's subsequent return by sea from his Etrurian allies, with Pallas on board his own ship (Book X.). One line we may note in the description of Aulestes's vessel, with its figure-head of Triton: "The foaming billow," we are told, "gurgled beneath the monstrous breast" (spumea semifero sub pectore murmurat unda). It is not an achievement to go into special raptures over, as being an addition to description in this kind; still the gurgle of the water does tell upon the ear; it is a detail of actual observation, and as such comes most welcome. There follows the artificial meeting in mid-voyage with the sea-nymphs, into which the vessels left near the camp, and, threatened by the Rutulians, had been changed. When Cymodocea, their spokeswoman, concluding her warning, pushed Æneas's tall ship, the poet tells us, it flew swifter than dart or arrow that rivals the wind in speed. No doubt, it would do so. The scene is one of which the modern imagination cannot make anything. The voyage ends in the opposed, confused landing on the shore, involving the wreck of Tarcho's vessel. In the same Book (X.) Juno offers to Turnus the bait of Æneas's wraith, and draws him on board the ship, which so conveniently had a plank gangway laid ready from a ledge of the rock. The whirling tide bears him and it far out to sea, on his magic voyage to his father's city. Beyond the ship gliding, and waves and tide both pushing it on, we are told nothing of this most wondrous voyage. Book XI. ends with a sunset at sea, beheld from the land: "Rosy Phoebus was bathing his -weary horses in the Iberian flood".

roseus fessos jam gurgite Phoebus Ibero Tingat equos.-B. XI. lines 913–14.

It matches the dawn with which that book opens: "In the meantime, Aurora, rising, leaves the ocean" (Oceanum interea surgens Aurora reliquit). One last partial glimpse we get of the sea in the closing book of the poem: "The horses of the sun are arising from the flood, and from uplifted nostrils breathe forth the day"

primum alto se gurgite tollunt

Solis equi, lucemque elatis naribus efflant.-B. XII. lines 114-15.

Artificial to the very

last.

In this sketch we have exhausted the sea-allusions of the great story. This is absolutely all that Virgil makes of the ocean in the whole of Eneas's sea wanderings, either as described by the hero or by the mouth of the poet himself. There is scarcely any possible marine effect which he has not the opportunity of picturing, yet in no single passage is it possible to detect any spark of true feeling for the water, beyond that of a dreary discontent at its power and savageness. It might be thought

that he knew nothing of the sea-that he had never seen it. But Horace's famous ode, praying for fair weather for him, is evidence that he made at least one voyage. Still further is the puzzle heightened, when we remember that he is understood to have lived long at Naples, with its glorious bay.

But let us turn for a moment to the minor poems. In the Eclogues the sea is mentioned in some dozen lines, of course by way of illustrative reference. Towards the close of Eclogue IV. Virgil speaks of "plains of sea" (tractus maris). This does bring the object before the mind. And in the Fifth Eclogue occurs the only line anywhere which shows that Virgil had perceived the music of the sea, apart from its mere roaring, its hoarseness, its moaning. Mopsus, in extolling the song of Menalcas, asks, "What gifts are there that I can give you in return for such a lay? For neither the whistling of the south wind as it comes, nor billow beaten shores (percussa fluctu littora) delight me so," &c. The phrase itself may not be of the best, but there is the feeling of delight coupled with the sea. We eagerly hail the fact, and wish it were not unavoidable to mention that this Eclogue is known to have been modelled on Theocritus. Next, as to the Georgics; they have some thirty lines in which the sea occurs. From the nature of the work, the passages are for the most part only allusive; but of all Virgil's writings, it is here that we find the seaphrases strongest, the descriptions truest. Some of the best lines, it is true, describe the coast rather than the ocean; as, for instance, the striking lines in the First Georgic, giving the signs of a coming tempest. There is also the passage a little further on, where the various water fowl are wantonly disporting themselves in the joy of their salt bath. The sketches show that Virgil's observation, if it fails utterly as to the sea itself, had gone to the very edge of the land-to the verge where it and the water mingle, and even a few inches beyond. In Book III. he catches sight for a moment of colour on the evening ocean; but it is far away in Scythia, and the sun-god is again descending in his chariot, to bathe it in the flaming water. Nor is "red surface of the ocean" (oceani rubro... æquore) a pearl of poetical description. It must be mentioned that in the Georgics occur two or three touches of reality of a very grotesque kind in reference to the sea. If in the Eneid, Virgil, in sketching Neptune and his train, gives a picture too artificially elegant for the modern fancy, in the Fourth Georgic he describes Proteus and his attendants in a style which is a trifle too realistic for us. "Monstrous herds and misshapen sea-calves" (immania armenta et turpes phocas) this watery shepherd has under his charge; and they come out of the flood, and sleep around him on the hot shore. At any rate, the passage has a rough power, as of a goblin story of the sea.

The question may be asked, What epithets does Virgil apply to the sea? For it will go hard with a poet, if he has any genuine emotion stirred in him by an object, if it does not flash out in a name, even should he find himself, for some reason, debarred from a detailed

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