is felt to be the supreme instance of the anima naturaliter Christiana; the articulate voice of a whole creation groaning and travailing in pain together, subject to vanity not willingly but in hope, waiting in earnest expectation for the manifestation of the Sons of God.

At this point must be mentioned three poems which at one time or another passed under Virgil's name, and are now printed, together with the scraps of juvenile verse to which reference has already been made, under the general heading of Vergiliana, either as a separate volume or as an appendix to complete editions of Virgil's works. All these were, beyond reasonable doubt, written in his lifetime and are products of the literary circle to which he belonged. But the problems of authorship which they raise are complex and to some extent perhaps insoluble.

The first of these, the Ciris, is the most interesting of the three, both from the real, though crude and undisciplined genius which it discloses and from the light it throws on the origins of Virgilianism and the technique of Virgil's own art. It is a romantic idyl of between five and six hundred lines in length, full

of beauties of rhythm and felicities of language, but almost as full of weaknesses or absurdities. It is saturated throughout with Virgilian phrases; yet it is quite certainly an original poem, not a Virgilian cento like those which flooded the world at the time of the decay of Latin literature. For long it was an enigma; it is only some twenty years ago that one of the most brilliant and acute of modern German scholars, the late Professor Skutsch of Breslau, established it, by a study which is a model of analysis, as the work of Gallus in the early time when he and Virgil were studying and writing poetry in the closest intimacy, and in some sense therefore their joint work. In the Sixth and also in the Tenth Eclogue, Virgil has adroitly interwoven fragments of his friend's poetry. Likewise, whole lines and whole passages of the Ciris, besides almost countless phrases and turns of language, recur in the Eclogues and Georgics and even in the Aeneid. Whether, or where, or to what extent these in fact originated from Virgil's own hand it is impossible to determine. What Virgil lent, he had the right to resume. But what he borrowed and he borrowed freely, as is well known, from his contemporaries no less than from his

predecessors he made his

act of deigning to take it.

own by the mere

Such is the way

of genius, and the prerogative, in poetry as in other arts, of supreme artists.

The other two pieces are of much maturer and more accomplished workmanship, but poetically of less interest. They belong to a somewhat later date, when the mechanism of the hexameter had been more fully mastered, and its structure and handling reduced to system. In both, the versification is undistinguishable from Virgil's; but the actual authorship remains, and is likely to remain, matter of inconclusive debate. The shorter but more masterly of the two, the Moretum, is a highlyfinished idyl of farm-life. It is said to be closely copied from a Greek original, which however is not extant. On the internal evidence alone, were that supported by any adequate external testimony, it could be accepted without hesitation as Virgil's work; as a sort of cabinet-picture from his hand, one of the many exercises produced by him while he was practising for the Georgics which he did not leave a mere sketch, but wrought out to elaborate completeness. But the only external testimony that we possess is the worth

less ascription of this poem to Virgil, in a collection made in the sixth century.12 That so fine a piece of work, known or believed to be by Virgil's own hand, should be left unmentioned by all his early biographers and commentators is almost incredible. It is just possible however that it had for long wholly disappeared and was not known to exist.

The third piece, the Culex, presents an equally perplexing problem. That Virgil wrote a poem so named is as certain as anything well can be. It is repeatedly mentioned by writers of the first century A.D., and mentioned as his without any doubt or qualification. Among those writers is the poet Statius, who in such a matter could hardly be mistaken; for he was both a poet and a scholar, and studied Virgil with nothing short of worship.13 That this was not the poem which has come down to us, there is no reason at all for supposing. But it is not (or so we think) good enough to be Virgil's; it has no touch of the Virgilian magic.

There seem to be only two possible solutions of the puzzle. One is that we have here the work of some unknown contemporary, belonging to the same school or circle, who had caught Virgil's manner, and whose verbal and

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metrical technique can hardly be distinguished from his: the other is that the Culex is a carefully finished exercise by Virgil himself which, though he did not publish it or acknowledge it himself, somehow got into circulation. If we accept this latter theory, it will be one more instance of the general truth that the work even of the greatest artists of Virgil, as of Phidias or Mozart or Raphael - has its mechanical side, and that it may sometimes be little more than skilful mechanism. To realize this does not make us value their genius less, but more. The work of genius grows more wonderful as we come to understand the labour that goes with it, the steady exercise of mere craftsmanship, the patient pursuit of a daily profession. It is only thus that we realize how laborious the artist's life is, and how much of his hand and brain is necessarily spent on the tasks of a common workman. After reading the Culex we can pass with higher and with more intelligent admiration to the miracle of the Georgics.