Had Virgil given more prominence to the old heroic traditions and rural pursuits of his ancestors, he would have taken a stronger hold upon cotemporaries, and increased his influence with posterity. The enlargement of his epic scope would have added freedom to its treatment, and enhanced the value of its use. But, submitting to court artificialness, rendered more pernicious by his dependance thereon, the stiff arrangement of Virgil's greatest poem grows more and more formal as the plan proceeds. The Æneid opens with a copious use of early Greek inventions respecting the Trojan period, and the origin of the Romans. The further we leave these behind, the duller is the prospect; and when we have finished the greatest national poem of the Augustan age, really valuable as it is, we do not wonder that the author himself, in view of the nobler models he had copied, wished his own work were destroyed. Fine conceptions and careful finish Virgil doubtless possessed, but the corrupt Ovid was perhaps more of a spontaneous poet, and the careless Lucretius bore an intenser charm of nationality, impelled as he was by inspiration more truly Roman. He exhibited less art, and stalked forth with fewer airs of affected dignity; but whatever of strength and elegance he did employ, were more decidedly his own. The specific qualities of Roman writers are clearly marked. In Livy, it is the manner of telling a story; in Sallust, personal identification with the character; in Tacitus, the analysis of the deed into its motive; and in the style of Virgil, the intimation of rank is equally plain. He who was helped up out of abject dependance, in his pride of place shrunk from all contact with poverty. In the hut of a herdsman, or seated with a shepherd in the shade, he still wears the air of dignity, relaxing with difficulty into bucolics. He accepts a maple cup from a peasant, with the patronizing mien of a courtier, who is thinking all the while of the last amphora opened by the princely Mecænas. Nevertheless Virgil had in him a true and natural love for rural purity, which was so sadly perverted by the astute formalism of the imperial court. In the healthful old times of the Republic, the noblest citizens and most illustrious authors were agriculturists by habitual pursuit, or chosen recreation. This feeling remained in Virgil to the last, glowing in the Eclogues, and especially in the Georgics most happily expressed. If he had given undivided attention to this species of literature in his riper years, he might have been to a still higher degree the poet of his nation; but, like all the rest, he was drawn near the throne of despotic rule, and both lived and died the poet of the metropolis.