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We have an abundance of stone masons, but few Phidiases or Angelos; hundreds of organ grinders, but few Beethovens or Webers or Bachs; a full quota of men engrossed in the cold calculus of business, but a scarcity of Homers or Dantes or Virgils.
This my conception is no where better discerned than in the comparison betweene Virgils AEneidos and Orlando Furioso.
We now possessed, if not Homers, yet Virgils and Miltons; if not a Pindar, yet a Horace; of Theocrituses there was no lack: and thus they weighed themselves by comparisons from without; whilst the mass of poetical works always increased, so that at last there could be a comparison from within.
I do not speak of these, I do not speak of the Virgils and Alexander Popes, and who can say how many more whose names I dare not mention for fear of offending. They are as stuffed birds or beasts in a Museum, serviceable no doubt from a scientific standpoint, but with no vivid or vivifying hold upon us. They seem to be alive, but are not.
Gall, and of Florence. Perhaps a word about these ancient Virgils will not be unwelcome. They are cited in all the textbooks, it is true, but I think they are apt to be confused; at any rate it is easy to confuse them. They are five in number: three very fragmentary, two more or less complete. The surnames they go by are Sangallensis, Augusteus, Vaticanus, Romanus, Mediceus.
Our gardens cultivate flowers that are all the more charming because they are sterile; why is the double corolla of love held more infamous than the sterilized flowers of our gardens?" Tarde replies that the reason is that our politicians are merely ambitious persons thirsting for power and wealth, and even when they are lovers they are Don Juans rather than Virgils.
The two Virgils, the Vienna and the Cotton Genesis, the Homer at Milan, the Gospels of Rossano in Calabria and those of Sinope now at Paris, the Dioscorides at Vienna, the Pentateuch of Tours, the Joshua-roll at the Vatican these are the most famous, and there are very few beside them.
I do not speak of these, I do not speak of the Virgils and Alexander Popes, and who can say how many more whose names I dare not mention for fear of offending. They are as stuffed birds or beasts in a museum; serviceable no doubt from a scientific standpoint, but with no vivid or vivifying hold upon us. They seem to be alive, but are not.
I suppose those times, when Augustus was young, were very fiery and inspiring, but I am so glad I live in this very year. I would rather have you the chief poet of Rome than a hundred solemn Virgils, and surely life can never have been as lovely as it is now. Isn't Rome much finer and more finished?" Fidus smiled. "You are your father's own child," he said.
"The men who wrote your books," says my lady, "your Horaces, and Ovids, and Virgils, as far as I know of them, all thought ill of us, as all the heroes they wrote about used us basely. We were bred to be slaves always; and even of our own times, as you are still the only lawgivers, I think our sermons seem to say that the best woman is she who bears her master's chains most gracefully.
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