Read it through once

I should like first to rehearse the characteristics which I have already attributed to the classic, with special application to Virgil, to his language, his civilisation, and the particular moment in the history of that language and civilisation at which he arrived. Maturity of mind: this needs history, and the consciousness of history. Consciousness of history cannot be fully awake, except where there is other history than the history of the poet's own people: we need this in order to see our own place in history. There must be the knowledge of the history of at least one other highly civilised people, and of a people whose civilisation is sufficiently cognate to have influenced and entered into our own. This is a consciousness which the Romans had, and which the Greeks, however much more highly we may estimate their achievement—and indeed, we may respect it all the more on this account—could not possess. It was a consciousness, certainly, which Virgil himself did much to develop.