OK LITERATURE. 



XXlii 



hard to believe that such a literature, if it exist- 

 ed, or if it possessed any features of excellence, 

 tould have been utterly swept away by the 

 ravages of the Gauls : and the fact undoubtedly 

 is, that the few poetical remnants of the earlier 

 ages which still survive, verses of a religious or 

 triumphal character, display rudeness unredeem- 

 ed by traces of a hopeful and exuberant sim- 

 plicity. They are far inferior to the songs of 

 many savage tribes with which modern enter- 

 prise has made us acquainted. Nor is it pro- 

 bable that the coarseness of these Saturnian lays 

 was much improved by the first dramatic attempts 

 which were made at Rome, on the Tuscan or 

 Campanian model. 



Suddenly a Greek slave, brought, after the 

 final subjugation of southern Italy, to the capital 

 of Latium, gave the Romans an insight into the 

 real nature of epic and dramatic poetry. LIVIUS 

 ANDRONICUS* translated into Latin verse the 

 Odyssey of Homer. By a version of only one 

 other poem could he have conferred a nobler 

 boon upon a people, now at last awakening to 

 the charms of intellectual cultivation. But per- 

 haps he judged well in his selection. The more 

 elaborate plan and severer graces of the Iliad 

 might not at once have engaged so much general 

 attention as the romantic rambles of Ulysses : 

 whereas the wondrous tale of those immortal 

 wanderings was sure to arouse that appetite 

 which "grows with what it feeds on." Previous- 

 ly to thus laying the foundations of the Roman 

 epos, the same author had introduced upon the 

 stage, hitherto occupied by buffoonery and ex- 

 temporaneous sarcasm, specimens of the regular 

 drama, translated from Greek tragedy and 

 comedy. That the more grave of these exotic 

 productions never struck a deep root into the 

 soil of Rome, is a fact sufficiently notorious. 

 Nor is it difficult to discover the cause. Precisely 

 as the Odyssey was fitted, by its amusing and 

 often homely narrative, to captivate the affections 

 of a semi-barbarous nation, even before they 

 could appreciate its higher beauties, so the 

 broader attractions of comedy were certain to 

 take precedence of that appeal to the more re- 

 fined sensibilities of our nature, which is made 

 by the tragic muse. And when taste was finally 

 matured among the admirers of Cicero and Virgil, 

 political causes prevented that resistance to the 

 growing passion of the populace for show and 

 spectacle, which tragedy, under other circumstan- 

 ces, might have effectually offered. But comedy, 

 though her legitimate forms were ultimately 

 forced away by the same rage for gladiatorial 



combats, and gorgeous pageants, enjoyed a season 

 of triumph which will claim for it especial notice 

 as we proceed to review the successive stages of 

 Roman literature. 



The chronological position of Livius, and the 

 striking effects which resulted from his la- 

 bours, give importance to his name, though the 

 fragments ascribed to his pen are few in number, 

 and of these the most polished are evidently 

 spurious. But the next memorable author may 

 rest his claim to the high title of the Father of 

 Roman Song upon something better than mere 

 antiquity. ENNIUS * not only naturalized, by a 

 work of some extent, hexameter verse in Italy ; 

 he not only conveyed into his own tongue the 

 genuine spirit of Homer along with that measure 

 which was most favourable to such a transfusion ; 

 but he was, in every sense of the word, a true 

 poet. Of the Greeks he was indeed, to the very 

 letter, a devout imitator ; but holding, as he had 

 a fair right to do, the perfect models bequeathed 

 by them steadily before his eyes, and adopting 

 much of their expression as frankly as late* 

 Latin writers adopted much of his own, he yet 

 displayed an original, and a Roman spirit, in 

 the choice and treatment of some of his principal 

 subjects. It was thus that he got such possession 

 of the national mind, as to justify a philosopher, 

 posterior by nearly three centuries to himself, 

 in speaking of his countrymen as an Ennian 

 people. Something or other, it must be observ- 

 ed, from the hand of Ennius, encountered them 

 in almost every branch of composition. Even 

 in prose the versatility of his powers found scope 

 for exertion. But poetry, throughout its chief 

 varieties, was his favourite field. His poems were 

 by turns epic, tragic, satiric, epigrammatic, and 

 didactic. Perhaps, among them all, to judge by 

 the surviving specimens, we have most reason to 

 regret the loss of those versified chronicles of 

 Rome, whose plan, as the reader instantly per- 

 ceives, was too naked and simple, but whose 

 defects of arrangement seem to have been com- 

 pensated by the feeling which dictated the theme, 

 and the vigour with which it was sustained. 

 Here we are still able to detect indications of 

 that which pleases an unsophisticated taste in all 

 early literature ; that seizure of minute traits and 

 circumstances, and that graphic manner of por- 

 traying them, which charm so much in the 

 poetry of Homer and Chaucer, and would have 

 no less charmed in the poetry of Ennius, had his 

 productions reached us in a state of equal pre- 

 servation. 



We are by no means puzzled to assign a rea 



B. c. 240. 



B. C. 239 Iffll. 



