39 



most marked features of Oppian's style. His sentiments and moral 

 reflections are well-timed and judicious. No poet has treated with 

 more effect of the loves and antipathies of the brute tribes, of jea- 

 lousy and love, the pains of parturition, the rage of famine, the ad- 

 mirable powers of the human mind, and the mutual affection of 

 parents and their offspring, both in the human and irrational crea- 

 tion. His account of the love of the wild goat for her kids con- 

 tains a noble specimen of his powers in the pathetic. In description, 

 the great province of the poet, he is exceedingly animated. He 

 draws with a pencil so bold and discriminating, and with a colour- 

 ing so, vivid, as to place the object before the eyes of the spectator 

 nr^o ofi,fAccT<uii woiii to Tg^ctyf^a, ;* and, at the same time with an accu- 

 racy which the best naturalists might be proud to imitate. What 

 ichthyologist has not admired and quoted his beautiful account of 

 the Nautilus ? The noise and rage of his bull-fight, which shrinks 

 not from a comparison with Virgil's, are nobly enhanced by the 

 original simile of two war-ships engaging in battle. The attack on 

 the stag by an army of serpents, and the efforts of the animal to 

 extricate himself from their folds, are fearfiilly descriptive. The 

 influence of spring on the animal creation would be worthy of 

 Lucretius, nor is there in the whole range of Greek poetry a more 

 spirited apostrophe than that to love. 



Tiiough Oppian sought and found untasted springs, he did not 

 disdain to quaff of the fomitains which had been discovered by his 

 predecessors ; yet he is no servile imitator. Possessed of powers 

 to shine as an original, he reads nature for himself, not only with 

 the eye of a poet, but the discriminating judgment of a naturalist. 

 Homer, in his comparison of the cranes bringing war and death on 



* Vide " Rittershusii de Vita Oppiani." 



