Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil 



tics which were not always at one. He had a native 

 love of observation and he had a young man's passion 

 for the beautiful language of the Greek pastoral 

 poets. 



His power of observation may well have been 

 inherited, and we can hardly doubt that it was 

 encouraged by the parents who made a push to give 

 him a gentleman's education. It was not driven out 

 of him by the training in bad rhetoric which poisoned 

 for him the last days of his school life. He saw 

 natural objects with a clearness which in later days 

 sometimes deserted him when he came to describe 

 the scenes and incidents of an epic poem. We do 

 well to call the Aeneid his greatest work, but its 

 greatness is other than that of the Georgics. 



Martyn calls attention to the exactness with which 

 his poet characterizes a group of willows, ' glauca 

 canentia fronde salicta.' 'The leaves,' as he says, 

 1 are of a bluish green, and the under side of them 

 is covered with white down.' This is not true of all 

 willows, but is true of the species which Virgil had 

 in mind. For a more detailed description and an 

 attempt to create an exact vocabulary reference may 

 be made to the article on ' Amellus.' For an attempt 

 to give on the authority of authors a clear account 

 of a tree of which he can have seen only the fruit we 

 may refer to the article on the citron. 



Beside this power of observation, there is in Virgil's 

 earliest work the literary strain which is not always 

 in accord with it. Wordsworth has told us that 

 English poetry published between the years 1668 



2 



