356 
Rore madens stygio morituram amplectitur 
urbem be 
Somnus, et implacido fundit gravia otia 
cornu, 
Secernitque viros. Lib. 5. 
The reader will recollect a similar de- 
Scription in the Aneid, in the night when 
Troy is sacked. The contest between 
the brothers, and indeed the whole of 
the eleventh book, may be considered the 
best part of the poem. 
Such is the occasional merit of Statius, 
in the exhibition of characters,machinery, 
and description. The passages we have 
selected will enable the student to form 
some judgment of an author little known 
to general readers, and concerning whom 
such variety of criticism has prevailed. 
Scaliger is immoderate in his praise. 
He calls him a most polite and ingenious 
poet. He asserts, that there are none, 
either. of the ancients or moderns, wha 
have so closely resembled Virgil, and 
that he would have come nearer to him 
in excellence, had he not affected to foi- 
low him too closely. Of a high and lofty 
nature; wherever he endeavours to exert 
himselt, he sometimes falls into expres- 
sions too swelling and turgid; but that, 
beyond dispute, unless it be that phoenix 
of his age, Virgil, there are none of the 
heroic poets, whether Greek or Latin, 
that can be compared with Statius, 
whose verses may be preferred to those 
of Homer. Rapin, on the other hand, 
charges him with the affectation of great 
words, and swelling expressions; with 
filling the ear, rather than touching the 
heart ; with an unbounded imagination, 
without the poise of judgment. He re- 
proaches him as fantastical in his ideas 
and expressions. He considers the two 
poems the Thebais and the Achilleis, as 
having nothing in them regular or plea- 
sing, the whole being vast and dispro- 
portionable. These opinions of two 
celebrated critics, so diametrically oppo- 
site, make it necessary that we should 
discriminate between them; and while 
we disclaim the gross exaggeration of 
the one, we should not be justified in 
subscribing altogether to the severity of 
the other. From the foregoing quota- 
tions, we may perceive, that Statius is 
not destitute either of energy or pathos ; 
that he mafntains a fire and spirit, equal 
to what we see in: poets of the greatest 
names. His sentiments are dignified, 
his conceptions lofty, and his descriptions 
magnificent. But his. predominant de- 
fect is, that he is-too’fiorid. His lan- 
guage is often too pompous for his mean- 
ing. HLis images are exaggerated, His 
Lycaum of Ancient Literaturéo—The Thebais. 
[Nov. 1, 
imagination, rioting in the most irregular 
profusion, perpetually throws him into 
false metaphor, and mistaken sublime. 
The impetuosity of his fancy is unre- 
strained, either by his own judgment, or 
the chastity of style and sentiment in 
the great poet he professed to imitate ; 
however we may be disposed to admire 
such a flow of mind, more suited to the 
ardour of youth than to the severity of 
age, we must confess, that it was the 
less excusable in Statius, who wrote at 
an advanced period of life. He lived to. 
finish his poem, and had begun another; 
he had ample time to polish, to curtail, 
and amend. The exuberance of his 
style, therefore, and the extravagance of 
his images, can be ascribed only to a de~ 
fective judgment, or to the decline of 
real taste, which so soon succeeded to 
the purity of the Augustan era. The 
remark of Longinus, that those who have 
been most eminent in the sublime, are 
subject to the most sudden falls, is in no 
one more exemplified than in Statius. 
Strada has supposed him seated on the. 
highest pinnacle of Parnassus, but so 
uneasy in his situation, as to be always 
in danger of falling to the bottom. He 
undoubtedly possessed invention, ability, 
and spirit; but his gigantic images, his 
tortured and hyperbolical expressions,too 
often offend the reader accustomed to 
the chastened grandeur and steady judg- 
ment of Virgil. It may be suspected that 
Juvenal, in the lines we have already | 
quoted, intended to satyrize, rather than 
to praise him. In these verses are'many 
expressions, which seem to hint obliquely 
that Statius was a favourite of the vuigar, 
who were easily captivated with a wild 
and inartificial tale, and with an empty 
magnificence of numbers ; the occasional 
harshness of which are perhaps alluded 
to in the expression of fregit subsellia 
VeErsu. 
If, ‘therefore, we have evinced a de- 
gree of respect for this writer, seldom 
entertained by former critics, it ismerely 
because we think he does not deserve 
the absolute neglect into which he has 
fallen. We are far from proposing him 
as a model for others; and recommend, 
that he should be perused rather than 
studied. It might be wished; indeed, 
that no youth of genius were suffered. to 
spend much time on Statius, Lucan, 
Claudian, or Seneca, allof them authors, 
who, by their forced conceits, violent 
metaphors, and swelling epithets, have a 
strong tendency to dazzle the mind, and 
mislead the judgment. : POU 
Of the Achilleis, the last work of 
Statius, 
