literary form that gave sufficient scope. More and more he was turning
from nature to man and human life, and to the contemplation of human
destiny. The growth of the psychological instinct in the _Georgics_ is
curiously visible in the episode of Aristaeus, with which the poem now
ends. According to a well-authenticated tradition, the last two hundred
and fifty lines of the fourth _Georgic_ were written several years after
the rest of the poem, to replace the original conclusion, which had
contained the praises of his early friend, Cornelius Gallus, now dead in
disgrace and proscribed from court poetry. In the story of Orpheus and
Eurydice, in the later version, Virgil shows a new method and a new
power. It stands between the idyl and the epic, but it is the epic method
towards which it tends. No return upon the earlier manner was thenceforth
possible; with many searchings of heart, with much occasional
despondency and dissatisfaction, he addressed himself to the composition
of the _Aeneid_.

The earlier national epics of Naevius and Ennius had framed certain lines
for Roman epic poetry, which it was almost bound to follow. They had
established the mythical connection of Rome with Troy and with the great
cycle of Greek legend, and had originated the idea of making Rome itself
--that _Fortuna Urbis_ which later stood in the form of a golden statue
in the imperial bedchamber--the central interest, one might almost say
the central figure, of the story. To adapt the Homeric methods to this
new purpose, and at the same time to make his epic the vehicle for all
his own inward broodings over life and fate, for his subtle and delicate
psychology, and for that philosophic passion in which all the other
motives and springs of life were becoming included, was a task incapable
of perfect solution. On his death-bed Virgil made it his last desire that
the _Aeneid_ should be destroyed, nominally on the ground that it still
wanted three years' work to bring it to perfection, but one can hardly