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general, the manners of Athens or of Asia Minor, rather than those of Italy.

Still, however, in those less poetic departments of poetry, if we may so speak, which the Greeks had cultivated only in the later and less creative periods of their literature, the Romans seized the unoccupied ground, and asserted a distinct superiority. Wherever poetry would not disdain to become an art-wherever lofty sentiment, majestic, if elaborate, verse, unrivalled vigour in condensing and expressing moral truth, dignity, strength, solidity, as it were, of thought and language, not without wonderful richness and variety, could compensate for the chastened fertility of invention, the life and distinctness of conception, and the pure and translucent language, in which the Greek stands alone there the Latin surpasses all poetry. In what is commonly called didactic poetry, whether it would convey in verse philosophical opinions, the principles of art, descriptions of scenery, or observations on life and manners, the Latin poets are of unrivalled excellence. The poem of Lucretius, the Georgics of Virgil, the Satires and Epistles of Horace, and the works of Juvenal were, no doubt, as much superior even to the poem of Empedocles-(of which,

imitations of the Greek drama, but historical tragedies like those of Shakespeare. III. The Eneada, or Decius of Accius. IV. The Marcellus of Accius is doubtful. V. The Iter ad Lentulum, by Balbus, acted at Gades, represented a passage in the author's own life. (Cicero ad Fam. x. 32.) The later prætextatæ were, VI. The Cato; and, VII. The Domitius Nero of Maternus, in the reign of Vespasian. VIII. The Vescio of Persius; and, IX. The Octavia in the works of Seneca, probably of the time of Trajan.

nevertheless, there are some very fine fragments),-or to any other Greek poems to which they can fairly be compared, as the Latin tragedians were inferior to Eschylus and Sophocles, or Terence to Menander.

If it

Ennius, in all points, if he did not commence, completed the denaturalization of Roman poetry. He was in every respect a Greek; the fine old Roman legends spoke not in their full grandeur to his ear. The fragments of the Annals, which relate the exploits of Roman valour, are by no means his most poetic passages; in almost all his loftier flights we trace Grecian inspiration, or more than inspiration. be true that the earliest annalists of Rome turned the old poetry into prose, Ennius seems to have versified their tame history, and left it almost as prosaic as before. It may be doubted, notwithstanding the fame of Varius, whether there was any fine Roman narrative poetry till the appearance of the Æneid. But Lucretius had shown of what the rich and copious, and, in his hands, flexible Latin language was capable; how it could paint as well as describe, and whenever his theme would allow, give full utterance to human emotion. It is astonishing how Lucretius has triumphed over the difficulties of an unpromising subject, and the cold and unpoetic tone of his own philosophy. His nobler bursts are not surpassed in Latin poetry. Notwithstanding the disrepute in which Cicero's poetic talents have been held, there are lines, especially in his translation of Aratus, which, by their bold descriptive felicity and picturesque epithets, rise above the original. Lucretius was dead before Horace

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all show vigour and felicity of expression, some great beauty.(") The Eclogues of Virgil appeared in their collective form about the same time with the earliest publication of Horace, his first book of Satires. But Virgil had already acquired fame; some of his shorter poems had excited great admiration and greater hope; a few of his Eclogues must have been already known among his friends; he had the expectation, at least, of recovering his forfeited lands through the friendship of Asinius Pollio;(5) he was already honoured with the intimate acquaintance of Mæcenas.

The introduction of Horace to Mæcenas was the turning-point of his fortunes; but some time (at least. two or three years) must have intervened between his return to Rome and even his first presentation to his future patron, during which he must have obtained some reputation for poetic talent, and so recommended himself to the friendship of kindred spirits like Varius and Virgil. Poverty, in his own words, was the inspiration of his verse.

"Paupertas impulit audax

Ut versus facerem."-Epist. II. ii. 51.

The interpretation of this line is the difficult problem in the early history of Horace. What was this poetry? Did the author expect to make money or friends by it? Or did he write merely to disburthen himself of his resentment and his indignation, at that crisis of desperation and destitution, when the world was not his friend, nor the world's law, and so to revenge (37) See in the Personæ Horatianæ : Poets: Varius. (38) Compare Personæ Horatianæ: Virgilius.

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himself upon that world by a stern and unsparing exposure of its vices? Did the defeated partizan of Brutus and of liberty boldly hold up to scorn many of the followers and friends of the Triumvir; whose follies and vices might offer strong temptation to a youth ambitious of wielding the scourge of Lucilius? Did he even venture to ridicule the all-powerful Mæcenas himself? This theory, probable in itself, is supported by many recent writers, and is perhaps not altogether without foundation.(39) In the second. Satire, one unquestionably of his earliest compositions, most of the persons held up to ridicule belonged to the Cæsarian party. The old Scholiast asserts, that, under the name of Malchinus, the poet glanced at the effeminate habit of Mæcenas, of wearing his robes trailing on the ground; while more malicious scandal added, that this was a trick in order to conceal his bad legs and straddling gait. To judge of the probability of this, we must look forward to the minute account of his first interview with Mæcenas. If Horace was conscious of having libelled Mæcenas, it must have been more than modesty, something rather of shame and confusion, which overpowered him, and made his words few and broken.("")

The dry and rather abrupt manner of Mæcenas, though habitual to him, might perhaps be alleged as rather in favour of the notion, that he had been in

(39) Walkenaer, Histoire de la Vie d' Horace, i. p. 88.

(40) "Ut veni coram, singultim pauca locutus.

(Infans namque pudor prohibebat plura profari.")

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