Virgil too possessed this gift of vividly realising the objects which interested him; and his singularly receptive nature enabled him to feel a much larger number of interests than the other poets of his country. What his speculative system was to Lucretius in its power of concentrating on itself all his capacity of feeling; what 'Lesbia' and 'Sirmio' and the few objects associated with the happiness and pain of his life were to Catullus; what the valley in the Sabine hills was to Horace(136); what Cynthia in life and death was to Propertius; what the remembrance of past joy in the midst of sorrow was to Ovid; that the thought of Rome and the memories associated with it, the charm of the land and air of Italy, the strength and sanctity of human affection, the mystery of the unseen world, were to Virgil. The necessities of his art require him to introduce into his poem materials which touch his own nature less deeply, and which come to him through the reflex action of literary association; and these, though he always treats them gracefully, he does not invest with the same sense of reality. But when his imagination is moved by the thought of Rome, of Italy, of a remote antiquity, of human affection, of the unseen world, then his art becomes truly and vividly creative. The depth of feeling with which these things affect him reveals itself in the blended majesty and sweetness, the tenderness and pathos of his tones, occasionally in some more solemn cadence and a kind of mystic yearning.
If a return to the high admiration once felt for Virgil involved any detraction from the high admiration with which the great poets of Greece and of the modern world are regarded, anything like his claims to his old rank would generally be set aside. If for no other reason, yet because they have more in common with the general ideas and movement of the modern world, these last-named poets have a stronger hold on students of literature in the present day. But, happily, the 'sacrum litterarum studium'--to use a phrase of Macrobius--the religion of the world of letters, is not a jealous or intolerant faith. The object of that religion is to keep alive the sentiment of reverence for every kind of excellence which has appeared in the literature of the world. That Virgil was once the object of the greatest reverence is a reason for not lightly putting his claims aside now. In our study of the great writers of old, it is well to realise the true lesson taught in the sad beauty of the lines,--