Conington bounces higher

[Martin50]

I'm sure I won't be able to keep up these bouncing headlines for much
longer - however, one more may do no harm.
I've now finished Conington's Eclogues and made my way into the
Georgics, finishing Book 1.
There's a memoir quoted by the editor of the Bristol version which
mentions how Conington had to be won over to his subject - 'to all
lovers of V it is pleasant to see how the beauties of the poet, though
they grew on him only gradually, proved irresistible in the end'. The
unrealism or anti-literalism, one of the things we might most
appreciate, of the pastoral poetry was clearly very painful to
Conington and his generation. He looks for reality wherever he can,
quoting a colleague who had visited the Mantua region, seeking the
scenery of E9, and had (in the company of local 'sportsmen') swept the
countryside with 'powerful opera glasses' - what mid-Victorian fun. I
don't know if anyone is even now working on an article on 'Google
Earth and the Lands of Menalcas'.
I can see how the Georgics might have begun the winning-over process,
since there is far more show of scientific realism. On G1/87 'omne
per ignem excoquitur vitium' he comments, with clearly growing
affection for V, that his 'words would be a good statement of the
salutary effects' of burning away the turf. He doesn't comment on any
possible political or theological meaning. He does comment extensively
on the relationship with Lucretius but without entertaining the idea
that V is less interested in science for science's sake than in
science for the literary purpose of maintaining continuity with and
replying to the ideas of L - and Hesiod.
On the moral side - and (maybe unlike Leofranc) I think that poetry
and its reception has a place in moral as well as literary history -
Conington is persuaded that the main purpose of G is 'the
glorification of labour', a reminder that Conington, the Victorian
high churchman, breathed the same air as did Marx. As to V himself my
reaction, for what it's worth, to my latest reading of G1, with
Conington's aid, is that the main advice of the Book is the extreme
importance of preparation and caution - 'we got into a civil war
because we did not read the signs' - and thus to an emphasis on the
importance of (if not glorification of) the intellectual as well as of
the working class.