though the Roman is a far greater poet, in this instance the advantage
is by no means on his side, for, as Professor Gilbert Murray has so
well said, 'the Medea and Jason of the _Argonautica_ are at once more
interesting and more natural than their copies, the Dido and Aeneas
of the _Aeneid_. The wild love of the witch-maiden sits curiously
on the queen and organizer of industrial Carthage; and the two
qualities which form an essential part of Jason--the weakness which
makes him a traitor, and the deliberate gentleness which contrasts
him with Medea--seem incongruous in the father of Rome.' But though
Virgil turned to the Greek epics for the general framework and many
of the details of his poem, he always remains master of his materials,
and stamps them with the impress of his own genius. The spirit which
inspires the _Aeneid_ is wholly Roman, and the deep faith in the
National Destiny, and stern sense of duty to which it gives
expression, its profoundly religious character and stately and
melodious verse, have always caused it to be recognized as the
loftiest expression of the dignity and greatness of Rome at her best.
But the sympathetic reader will be conscious of a deeper and more
abiding charm in the poetry of Virgil. Even in his most splendid
passages his verses thrill us with a strange pathos, and his
sensitiveness to unseen things--things beautiful and sad--has
caused a great writer, himself a master of English prose, to speak
of 'his single words and phrases, his pathetic half lines, giving
utterance as the voice of Nature herself to that pain and weariness,
yet hope of better things, which is the experience of her children
in every age.'

The task of translating such a writer at all adequately may well seem
to be an almost impossible one; and how far any of the numerous
attempts to do so have succeeded, is a difficult question. For not