Homer. What could Virgil care for a tussle between two stout
men-at-arms, for the clash of contending war-chariots, driven each on
each, like wave against wave in the sea? All that tide had passed over,
all the story of the "AEneid" is mere borrowed antiquity, like the Middle
Ages of Sir Walter Scott; but the borrower had none of Scott's joy in the
noise and motion of war, none of the Homeric "delight in battle."

Virgil, in writing the "AEneid," executed an imperial commission, and an
ungrateful commission; it is the sublime of hack-work, and the legend may
be true which declares that, on his death-bed, he wished his poem burned.
He could only be himself here and there, as in that earliest picture of
romantic love, as some have called the story of "Dido," not remembering,
perhaps, that even here Virgil had before his mind a Greek model, that he
was thinking of Apollonius Rhodius, and of Jason and Medea. He could be
himself, too, in passages of reflection and description, as in the
beautiful sixth book, with its picture of the under world, and its hints
of mystical philosophy.

Could we choose our own heavens, there in that Elysian world might Virgil
be well content to dwell, in the shadow of that fragrant laurel grove,
with them who were "priests pure of life, while life was theirs, and holy
singers, whose songs were worthy of Apollo." There he might muse on his
own religion and on the Divinity that dwells in, that breathes in, that
is, all things and more than all. Who could wish Virgil to be one of the
spirits that

_Lethaeum ad flumen Dues evocat agmine magno_,

that are called once more to the Lethean stream, and that once more,
forgetful of their home, "into the world and wave of men depart?"