the last hundred and fifty lines of the twelfth, where Virgil rises
perhaps to his very greatest manner--we shall not find that the
splendour of the poem depends on detached passages, but far more on the
great manner and movement which, interfused with the unique Virgilian
tenderness, sustains the whole structure through and through.

In merely technical quality the supremacy of Virgil's art has never been
disputed. The Latin hexameter, "the stateliest measure ever moulded by
the lips of man," was brought by him to a perfection which made any
further development impossible. Up to the last it kept taking in his
hands new refinements of rhythm and movement which make the later books
of the _Aeneid_ (the least successful part of the poem in general
estimation) an even more fascinating study to the lovers of language than
the more formally perfect work of the _Georgics,_ or the earlier books of
the _Aeneid_ itself. A brilliant modern critic has noted this in words
which deserve careful study. "The innovations are individually hardly
perceptible, but taken together they alter the character of the hexameter
line in a way more easily felt than described. Among the more definite
changes we may note that there are more full stops in the middle of
lines, there are more elisions, there is a larger proportion of short
words, there are more words repeated, more assonances, and a freer use of
the emphasis gained by the recurrence of verbs in the same or cognate
tenses. Where passages thus characterised have come down to us still in
the making, the effect is forced and fragmentary; where they succeed,
they combine in a novel manner the rushing freedom of the old trochaics
with the majesty which is the distinguishing feature of Virgil's style.
The poet's last words suggest to us possibilities in the Latin tongue
which no successor has been able to realise." In these later books
likewise, the psychological interest and insight which keep perpetually
growing throughout Virgil's work result in an almost unequalled power of