The Roman poets of the Augustan age : Virgil
Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897. Excerpt: ... gives way to manly sorrow for the mute companion of his warfare,' indicative of a bolder invention than that which is usually ascribed to Virgil. It is remarkable that poets whose spirit is...
MoreThis historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897. Excerpt: ... gives way to manly sorrow for the mute companion of his warfare,' indicative of a bolder invention than that which is usually ascribed to Virgil. It is remarkable that poets whose spirit is most purely religious,--both in the strength of conviction and the limitation of sympathy produced by the religious spirit--Aeschylus, Virgil, and Milton--seem to be moved to their most energetic creativeness by the idea of antagonism to the supreme will on the part of a human, or superhuman but limited will: and that they cannot help raising in their readers a glow of admiration as well as a sense of awe in their embodiment of this clash between finite and infinite power. The sketch of Mezentius cannot indeed be compared with two of the most daring conceptions and perfected creations of human genius,--the Prometheus of Aeschylus and the Satan of Milton,--yet, if it does not enlist our ethical sympathies like the former of these, like the second it receives the tribute of that involuntary admiration, which is given to courage, even when allied with moral evil, so long as it is not absolutely divorced from the capability of sympathetic and elevated emotion. In the part which Dido plays in the poem, Virgil finds a source of interest in which he had not been anticipated by Homer. And although the passion of love, unreturned or betrayed, had supplied a motive to the later Greek tragedy and to the Alexandrine epic, it was still not impossible for a new poet to represent this phase of modern life with more power and pathos than any of his predecessors. It was comparatively easy to produce a more noble and vital impersonation than the Medea of Apollonius. But the Dido of Virgil may compare favourably with the creations of greater masters,--with the Deianeira of Sophocles, wit...
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