giac writers of this age; and is more loose and incorrect than either of the other. As Propertius followed too many masters. Ovid endeavoured to shine in too many different kinds of writing at the same time. Besides, he had a redundant genius; and almost always chose rather to indulge, than to give any restraint to it. If one was to give any opinion of the different merits of his several works, one should not perhaps be much beside the truth, in saying, that he excels most in his Fasti; then perhaps in his love-verses; next in his heroic epistles and lastly in his Metamorphoses. As for the verses he wrote after his misfortunes, he has quite lost his spirit in them; and though you may discover some difference in his manner after

his banishment came to sit a little lighter on him, his genius never shines out fairly after that fatal stroke. His very love of being witty had forsaken him; though before it seems to have grown upon him when it was least becoming, towards his old age: for his Metamorphoses (which was the last poem he wrote at Rome, and which indeed was not quite finished when he was sent into banishinent) has more instances of false wit in it, than perhaps all his former writings put together. One of the things I have heard him most cried up for, in that piece, is his transitions from one story to another. The ancients thought differently of this point; and Quinctilian, where he is speaking of them, endeavours rather to excuse than to commend him on that head. We have a considerable loss in the latter half of this Fasti; and in his Medea, which is much commended. Dramatic poetry. seems not to have flourished, in proportion to the other sorts of poetry, in the Augustan age. We scarce hear any thing of the comic poets of that time; and if tragedy had been much cultivated then, the Roman writers would certainly produce some names from it, to oppose to the Greeks, without going so far back as to those of Actius and Pacuvius. Indeed, their own critics, in speaking of the dramatic writings of this age, boast rather of single pieces, than of authors: and the two particular tragedies, which they talk of in the highest strain, are the Medea of of Ovid, and Varius's Thyestes. However, if it was not the age for plays, it was certainly the age in which almost all the other kinds of poetry were in their greatest excellence at Rome. Spence.

51. Of PHÆDRUS.

Under this period of the best writing, I should be inclined to insert Phædrus. For though he published after the good manner of writing was in general on the decline, he flourished and formed his style under Augustus: and his book, though it did not appear until the reign of Tiberius, deserves on all accounts, to be reckoned among the works of the Augustan age, Fabulæ Æsopeæ, was probably the title which he gave his fables. He professedly follows Esop in them: and declares, that he keeps to his manner, even where the subject is of his own invention. By this it appears, that Esop's way of telling stories was very short and plain: for the distinguishing beauty of Phædrus's fables is, their conciseness and simplicity. The taste was so much fallen, at the time when he published them, that both these were objected to him as faults. He used those critics as they deserved. He tells a long, tedious story to those who objected against the conciseness of his style; and answers some others, who condemned the plainness of it, with a run of bombast verses, that have a great many noisy elevated words in them, without any sense at the bottom. Ibid.

$ 52. Of MANILIUS.

Manilius can scarce be allowed a place in this list of the Augustan poets; his poetry is inferior to a great many of the Latin poets, who have wrote in these lower ages, so long since Latin has ceased to be a living language. There is at least, I believe, no instance in any one poct of the flourishing ages, of such language, of such versification, as we meet with in Manilius; and there is not any one ancient writer that speaks one word of any such poet about those times. I doubt not there were bad poets enough in the Augustan age; but I question whether Manilius may deserve the honour of being reckoned even among the bad poets of that time. What must be said, then, to the many passages in the poem, which relate to the times in which the author lived, and which all have a regard to the Augustan age? If the whole be not a modern forgery, "I do not see how one can deny his being of that age; and if it be a modern forgery, it is very lucky that it should agree so exactly, in so many little particulars, with the ancient globe of the heavens, in the Farnese palace. Al

lowing

lowing Manilius's poem to pass for what it pretends to be, there is nothing remains to us of the poetical works of this Augustan age, besides what I have mentioned: except the garden poem of Columella; the little hunting piece of Gratius; and, perhaps, an elegy or two of Gallus. .

Spence.

53. Of the Poets whose Works have not come down to us.

These are but small remains for an age in which poetry was so well cultivated and followed by very great numbers, taking the good and the bad together. It is probable, most of the best have come down to us.

As for the others, we only hear of the elegies of Capella and Montanus; that Proculus imitated Callimachus; and Rufus,

Pindar: that Fontanus wrote a sort of piscatory eclogues; and Macer, a poem on the nature of birds, beasts, and plants. That the same Macer, and Rabirinus, and Marsus, and Ponticus, and Pedo Albinovanus, and several others, were epic writers in that time (which, by the way, seems to have signified little more, than that they wrote in hexameter verse): that Fundanius was the best comic poet then,

and Melissus no bad one: that Varius was

the most esteemed for epic poetry, before the Eneid appeared; and one of the most esteemed for tragedy always: that Pollia (besides his other excellencies at the bar, in the camp, and in affairs of state) is much commended for tragedy; and Varius, either for tragedy or epic poetry; for it does not quite appear which of the two he wrote. These last are great names; but there remain some of still higher dig nity, who are, or at least desired to be thought poets in that time. In the former part of Augustus's reign, his first minister for home affairs, Maecenas; and in the latter part, his grandson Germanicus, were of this number. Germanicus in particular translated Aratus; and there are some (I do not well know on what grounds) who pretend to have met with a considerable part of his translation. The emperor himself seems to have been both a good critic, and a good author. He wrote chiefly in prose; but some things in verse too; and particularly good part of a tragedy, called Ajax.

It is no wonder, under such encouragements, and so great examples, that poetry should arise to a higher pitch than it had

ever

done among the Romans. They had been gradually improving it for above

two centuries; and in Augustus found a prince, whose own inclinations, the tem, per of whose reign, and whose very politics, led him to nurse all the arts; and poetry, in a more particular manner. The wonder is, when they had got so far toward perfection, that they should fall as it were all at once; and from their greatest purity and simplicity, 'should degenerate so immediately into a lower and more affected manner of writing, than had been ever known among them. Ibid.

54. Of the Fall of Poetry among the

Romans.

There are some who assert, that the great age of the Roman eloquence I have been speaking of, began to decline a little It certainly fell very much under Tiberius; even in the latter part of Augustus's reign.

and
grew every day weaker and weaker,
Hence therefore we may date the third
till it was wholly changed under Caligula.
age, or the fall of the Roman poetry.
Augustus, whatever his natural temper
was, put on at least a mildness, that gave
a calm to the state during his time: the
succeeding emperors flung off the mask;
be, rather monsters than men.
and not only were, but openly appeared to
We need

not go to their historians for proofs of their
tion the bare names of Tiberius, Caligula,
prodigious vileness: it is enough to men-
Nero. Under such heads, every thing that
was good run to ruin. All discipline in
war, all domestic virtues, the very love of
liberty, and all the taste for sound elo-
quence and good poetry, sunk gradually;
together. Instead of the sensible, chaste,
and faded away, as they had nourished,
and manly way of writing, that had been
in use in the former age, there now rose
up a desire of writing smartly, and an af-
fectation of shining in every thing they
and luxuriance of ornaments, was what
said. A certain prettiness and glitter,
distinguished their most applauded writers

in

prose; and their poetry was quite lost in high flights and obscurity. Seneca, the Petronius Arbiter, so great a favourite favourite prose writer of those times; and with many of our own; afford too many proofs of this. As to the prose in Nero's time; and as to the poets, it is enough to say, that they had then Lucan and Persius, instead of Virgil and Horace. Ibid.

themselves under the vallies at their feet. And these disturbances in nature were universal: for that day, every single Roman, in whatever part of the world he was, felt a strange gloom spread all over his mind, on a sudden; and was ready to cry, though he did not know why or wherefore.

Marseilles.

Spence.

faults I just mentioned, one of the swelling, and the other of the obscure style, then in fashion. Lucan's manner in general runs too much into fustian and bombast. His muse was a kind of dropsy, and looks like the soldier described in his own Pharsalia, who in passing the desert sands of Africa, was bit by a serpent, and swelled to such an immoderate size," that he was lost (as he expresses it) in the tu- 56. His Description of the Sea-fight off mours of his own body" Some critics have been in too great haste to make Quinctilian say some good things of Lucan, which he never meant to do. What this poet has been admired for, and what he will ever deserve to be admired for, are the several philosophical passages that abound in his works; and his generous sentiments, particularly on the love of liberty and the contempt of death. In his calm hours, he is very wise; but he is often in his rants, and never more so than when he is got into a battle, or a storm at sea; but it is remarkable, that even on those occasions, it is not so much a viỏlence of rage, as a madness of affectation, that appears most strongly in him. To give a few instances of it, out of many: In the very beginning of Lucan's storm, when Cæsar ventured to cross the sea in so small a vessel: "the fixt stars themselves seem to be put in motion." Then "the waves rise over the mountains, and carry away the tops of them." Their next step is to heaven; where they catch the rain "in the clouds:" I suppose, to increase their force. The sea opens in several places, and leaves its bottom dry land. All the foundations of the universe are shaken; and nature is afraid of a second chaos. His little skiff, in the mean time, sometimes cuts along the clouds with her sails; and sometimes seems in danger of being stranded on the sands at the bottom of the sea; and must inevitably have been lost, had not the storm (by good fortune) been so strong from every quarter, that she did not know on which side to bulge first.

When the two armies are going to join battle in the plains of Pharsalia, we are told, that all the soldiers were incapable of any fear for themselves, because they were wholly taken up with their concern for the danger which threatened Pompey and the commonwealth. On this great occasion, the hills about them, according to his account, seem to be more afraid than the men; for some of the mountains looked as if they would thrust their heads into the clouds; and others, as if they wanted to hide

The sea-fight off Marseilles, is a thing that might divert one, full as well as Erasmus's Naufragium Joculare; and what is still stranger, the poet chuses to be most diverting in the wounds he gives the poor soldier. The first person killed in it is pierced at the same instant by two spears; one in his back, and the other in his breast; so nicely, that both their points meet together in the middle of his body. They each, I suppose, had a right to kill him; and his soul was for some time doubtful which it should obey. At last, it compounds the matter; drives out each of the spears before it, at the same instant; and whips out of his body, half at one wound, and half at the other. A little after this, there is an honest Greek, who has his right hand cut off, and fights on with his left, till he can leap into the sea to recover the former; but there (as misfortunes seldom come single) he has his left arm chopt off too: after which, like the hero in one of our ancient ballads, he fights on with the trunk of his body, and performs actions greater than any Witherington that ever was.-When the battle grows warmer, there are many who have the same misfortune with this Greek. In endeavouring to climb up the enemies ships, several have their arms struck off; fall into the sea; leave their hands behind them! Some of these swimming combatants encounter their enemies in the water; some supply their friends ships with arms; some, that had no arms, entangle themselves with their enemies; cling to them, and sink together to the bottom of the sea; others stick their bodies against the beaks of their enemies ships and scarce a man of them flung away the use of his carcase, even when he should be dead.

:

But among all the contrivances of these posthumous warriors, the thing most to be admired, is the sagacity of the great Tyrrhenus. Tyrrhenus was standing at the head of one of the vessels, when a ball of lead, flung by an artful slinger, struck

out

out both his eyes. The violent dash of the blow, and the deep darkness that was spread over him all at once, made him at first conclude that he was dead: but when he had recovered his senses a little, and found he could advance one foot before the other, he desired his fellow soldiers to plant him just as they plant their Ballista: he hopes he can still fight as well as a machine and seems mightily pleased to think how he shall cheat the enemy, who will fling away darts at him, that might have killed people who were alive.

Such strange things as these, make me always wonder the inore, how Lucan can be so wise as he is in some parts of his poem. Indeed his sentences are more so lid than one could otherwise expect from so young a writer, had be wanted such an uncle as Seneca, and such a master as Cornutus. The swellings in the other parts of his poem may be partly accounted for, perhaps, from his being born in Spain, and in that part of it which was the farthest removed from Greece and Rome; nay, of that very city, which is marked by Cicero as particularly overrun with a bad taste. After all, what I most dislike him for, is a blot in his moral character. He was at first pretty high in the favour of Nero. On the discovery of his being concerned in a plot against him, this philosopher (who had written so much, and so gallantly, about the pleasure of dying) behaved himself in the most despicable manner. He named his own mother as guilty of the conspiracy, in hopes of saving himself. After this, he added several of his friends to his former confession; and thus continued labouring for a pardon, by making sacrifices to the tyrant of such lives, as any one, much less of a philosopher than he seems to have been, ought to think dearer than their own. All this baseness was of no use to him: for in the end, Nero ordered him to execution too. His veins were opened: and the last words he spoke, were some verses of his own.

$57. Of PERSIUS.

Spence.

Persius is said to have been Lucan's school-fellow under Cornutus; and, like him, was bred up more a philosopher than a poet. He has the character of a good man; but scarce deserves that of a good writer, in any other than the moral sense of the word, for his writings are very vir tuous; but not very poetical. His great

fault is obscurity. Several have endeavoured to excuse or palliate this fault in him, from the danger of the times he lived in; and the necessity a satirist then lay under, of writing so, for his own security. This may hold as to some passages in him; but to say the truth, he seems to have a tendency and love to obscurity in himself: for it is not only to be found where he may speak of the emperor or the state; but in the general course of his satires. So that in my conscience, I must give him up for an obscure writer; as I should Lucan for a tumid and swelling one.

Such was the Roman poetry under Nero. The three emperors after him were made in an hurry, and had short tumultuous reigns. Then the Flavian family came in. Vespasian, the first emperor of that line, endeavoured to recover something of the good taste that had formerly flourished in Rome; his son Titus, the delight of mankind, in his short reign, encouraged poetry by his example, as well as by his liberalities; and even Domitian loved to be thought a patron of the muses. After him, there was a succession of good emperors, from Nerva to the Antonines. And this extraordinary good fortune (for indeed, if one considers the general run of the Roman emperors, it would have been such, to have had any two good ones only together) gave a new spirit to the arts, that had long been in so languishing a condition, and made poetry revive, and raise up its head again, once more among them.' Not that there were very good poets even now: but they were better, at least, than they had been under the reign of Nero.

Ibid.

$58. Of SILIUS, STATIUS, and VA

LERIUS FLACCUS.

This period produced three epic poets, whose works remain to us; Silius, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus. Silius, as if he had been frightened at the high flight of Lucan, keeps almost always on the ground, and scarce once attempts to soar throughout his whole work. It is plain, however, though it is low; and if he has but little of the spirit of poetry, he is free at least from the affectation, and obscurity, and bombast, which prevailed so much among his immediate predecessors. Silius was honoured with the consulate; and lived to see his son in the same high office. was a great lover and collector of pictures and statues; some of which he worshipped;

He

especially