OF LITERATURE. 



XXIX 



more to after times, for the muteness of oratory 

 in the forum and the senate-house. 



Forced out of that sphere of exertion, which 

 could not co-exist with Imperial despotism, how- 

 ever mild, Roman intellect now devoted itself, 

 more exclusively than before, to the cultivation 

 of the poetical faculty. Now too, a species of 

 poetry least congenial to the ancient manliness 

 and iron nerves of the Roman character, came 

 to be peculiarly distinguished. To the elegiac 

 verses of Catullus, allusion has already been 

 made ; but the plaintive and amorous TIBUHUS* 

 may more truly be regarded as the leader of this 

 race of poets, the votaries of melancholy and of 

 love. The impress of the Augustan epoch is 

 deeply marked upon their writings, as it was 

 upon their souls. They had ceased to struggle 

 or to wish for liberty, and in their pleasure or 

 their sorrow, they forgot the impulses of nobler 

 sensations. Such is the tone of the Latin elegy, 

 as it flowed from Tibullus. He has sensibility, 

 tenderness, even enthusiasm, but an enthusiasm 

 that dreams itself away in reveries of passionate 

 fondness. His language is beautiful, but it has 

 the feminine beauty of weakness : the rural land- 

 scapes, which he delights to draw, breathe an 

 air of languor and repose. There is truth, in- 

 deed, in every line of his composition. How 

 could it be otherwise, when Jhe made his poems 

 a chronicle of his life, and wrote from personal 

 experience ? This is the secret of that superior 

 originality, when compared with his elegiac 

 rivals, for which he has been so often praised. 

 It is the originality which must arise from the 

 study and the portraiture of self: for in mere 

 mental vigour and ability he was unquestionably 

 surpassed by PROPERTIUS.-J- Had the latter 

 poet trusted more to his own resources, and less 

 to acquired knowledge and foreign models ; had 

 he been more Propertius and less Callimachus, 

 more a Roman and less an Alexandrian Greek ; 

 he must have gained a high reputation for truth 

 and feeling, instead of that lower fame which at- 

 tends ingenuity and learning, The erudition, 

 the fruitful fancy, the unexampled fluency and 

 ease, which distinguish OviD,J would not have 

 advanced him, in this case, to a rank above Pro- 

 pertius, since the piny of imagination without 

 genuine sentiment, or the monotonous accents 

 of a voluble but solitary grief, too often make 

 up the sum and substance of his elegiac compo- 

 sitions. Ovid, however, has other, and perhaps 

 stronger claims to admiration, as a writer of 

 hexameter verse. His metamorphoses, though 

 the epigrammatic spirit is too prominent in them 



B. C. 58. t B. C. 51. { B.C. 43 A. D. 18. 



for a work of that extent, must without question 

 be esteemed a production of great ai't, wit, and 

 splendour. Pity that the art is frequently dis- 

 played at the expense of nature ; that false wit 

 is largely mingled with the true ; that mere 

 glitter seems to have satisfied the mind of Ovid 

 as much as real brilliancy ; and that, notwith- 

 standing all his genius, he contributed, in no 

 small degree, to hasten that decay of taste, which 

 from this date becomes the leading characteristic 

 of Latin literature. 



In satirical composition alone, some may be 

 inclined to dispute the fact of this decay. We 

 no longer find, indeed, that intimate knowledge 

 of human nature, that mitigated gall, and that 

 agreeable variety, which adorn the satires of 

 Horace. But no poet has grander conceptions 

 or finer bursts of occasional tenderness, as well 

 as majesty, than the too often depreciated PER- 

 sius.* He must have ranked higher in general 

 estimation, had he not, with a mind of a very 

 different cast, plodded too closely in the steps of 

 Horace. His own sincere stoicism could not 

 well put on the air of the Horatian worldly 

 philosophy ; and his fierce censm-e of obscure 

 persons and things is not a happy substitute for 

 the delicate irony which Horace caused to play 

 around all that was most prominent and brilliant 

 in society. From such dark allusions, and from 

 the crude metaphors in which Persius frequently 

 conveys them, JUVENAL t is almost entirely free ; 

 and it may reasonably be made a question 

 whether his powers of indignant invective, his 

 noble declamation, and his poetic fire, do not 

 place him at the head of all the satirists. He is 

 least indebted to Greek models ; a true Roman 

 of the purest strain in his subjects, his senti- 

 ments, his diction, and his manner. 



But with this exception, if it be allowed to be 

 one, the palmy days of Roman literature had 

 now expired. In prose and poetry, the symptoms 

 of its rapid decline are equally manifest, as we 

 pass in review those authors who followed the 

 last years of Augustus. Into the former branch 

 of composition a new and artificial taste was in- 

 troduced by SENECA,J who was not so much a 

 philosopher as a rhetorician, making display of 

 his false eloquence upon philosophical subjects. 

 The elder PLINY, in drawing his scientific 

 knowledge from the Greeks, seems to have for- 

 gotten that a style of good Latinity would have 

 been the best vehicle for conveying it to his 

 countrymen. His manner of writing is not only 

 laboured, but deformed with barbarous expres- 



* A. D. 34-62. 



t A. D. 38 119. JA. D. 2 v>. 

 A, T). 23 7<J. 



