co-operating with another, when the vital principle of true poetry was withheld from developing itself; and when, at the same time, the ineradicable love of distinction, in some shape or other, still continued to actuate men of literary talent; though it might not, perhaps, be quite easy, even under such circumstances, for men to persuade themselves that excellence was really to be attained by clever copying, the temptation was easy and obvious, to impose, by such methods, on an audience of vitiated taste and feeble sensibility-an audience already prepared to take appearances for realities. And thus poetry became a lifeless piece of mechanism, an ingenious juggle played off by a scholar in his closet. This change, however, even before it took place in Greece itself, had been anticipated and prepared by the erection of the Alexandrian school of literature. In that colony, Grecian indeed in its origin, but governed by a series of liberal despots, the process above described had in a great measure taken place, and the result was the production of the first artificial race of writers— the prototype of those which, at different periods, have arisen in the various literary countries of Europe. Among the earliest and most distinguished writers of this epoch was the poet Apollonius Rhodius; who, as the oldest remaining example of the application of this species of writing to the forms of heroic song, and as constituting the intermediate step between the Homeric and the Roman epic, demands from us a brief notice. To deny considerable merit, both natural and acquired, to Apollonius, would be idle. That he possessed extensive learning, and much acquaintance with the rules of criticism, is evident from his work itself. He has much pathos, though not of the highest order; his powers of description are far from contemptible, and his pictures of scenery, more especially, have a reality and a freshness at times, such as make us wish that his powers had found a better soil to expand themselves in. But this is all: as in other such cases, a few minor faculties alone are seen in operation, while the grand energies of poetry are nowhere exerted. Where are the fire, the freedom, the overflowing. exuberance of Homer? Where his manners, his passions, his dramatic and life-breathing characters, his magnificent imaginations? Where, in fine, that air of ease and confidence which mark the great poet; fearless of doing wrong, because guided, not by a set of rules which lie on his desk beside him, but by his own inward sense of truth and beauty?-Apollonius's language is a modification of that of Homer, whom he follows almost as closely as Silius does Virgil; but it is too evidently that of a grammarian. If some of our readers should think that we have been unjust to Apollonius, we must request their favorable interpretation. There is another and a much later writer of this school, whom some rank among the epic poets, but whose extreme irregularity of plan must exclude him from the class-we mean Nonnus of Panopolis, the author of the Dionysiaca, a poem bearing some resemblance to the Metamorphoses of Ovid, though inferior in merit; containing much romantic beauty, and much brilliant though diffuse description, and reminding us, in the luscious smoothness and balanced stateliness of its versification, of the author's countryman and contemporary, Claudian,-the last refiner of the Roman, as the later Alexandrians were of the Greek hexameter. But we must hasten to our more immediate subject. Whether the Romans ever possessed an epic poem, in what we conceive to be the true sense of the term, is a question which, we believe, has been of late much agitated among the erudite and speculative critics of Germany: the first impulse having been given by the historian Niebuhr, who, as is well known, maintains the existence of several such in the early ages of Rome; and more especially of a poem, or rather cyclus of poems, comprehending the whole Tarquinian story, from the arrival of the first Tarquin at Rome to the battle of the Regillus; and which, as he thinks, (and most justly, as regards the incidents, which still remain, aud of which alone he can be understood as speaking,)" in depth and brilliance of imagination, leaves every thing produced by Romans in later times far behind it." On a subject on which so much thought and research have been expended by such men, it would argue levity and presumption to form a conclusion with such insufficient means as we are capable of commanding: nor is it necessary; since the only epic poetry of which we are now treating is that which the Romans borrowed from the Greeks, and of which specimens remain. It is sufficient for us that, if the first-mentioned species ever existed, it was effectually supplanted by the latter. What is more generally acknowleged, as capable of proof from ancient testimony, is the existence of certain historical songs, whether epic or otherwise, as late and even later than the time of Ennius, who employed them in part as materials for his national poem. Of this remarkable man, the first' who introduced Greek models into Rome, and the founder of a line of poets which, stretching through the times of the republic and of the empire, loses itself at last in the darkness of the middle ages, nothing now remains but a collection of fragments, numerous indeed, but without exception very short, the longest not exceeding twenty lines. From these remains, however, from the general testimony of antiquity, and from the influence exercised by his writings on later men of We do not forget the prior attempts of Livius Andronicus; but the great genius of the Calabrian poet, and the wider field which his labors embraced, entitle him to the honor of completing and establishing the work which the other had only imperfectly begun. VOL. XL. CI. JI. NO. LXXIX. B 66 genius, we are led to conclude that the sentence of Quintilian, (lib. x. c. 1.) Ennium sicut sacros vetustate lucos adoremus, in quibus grandia et antiqua robora jam non tantam habent speciem, quantam religionem," is a little too much in the spirit of a rhetorician of the days of Domitian; and that Ennius was, not indeed a Homer or a Chaucer, but a man of commanding talent, fitted for great enterprises, and not unworthy of the place he held in the calendar of Roman genius. The most remarkable peculiarity in his literary character is, that being qualified by nature as well as incited by ambition to become the founder of a new literature, he should have endeavored to effect this, not by developing the hidden riches of his own language, not by refining the rude forms already in use, or creating others in harmony with the genius of the language and the spirit of the people; but by engrafting the young plant on a foreign stock, and attempting to produce a second age of Grecian literature, thinly disguised in a Roman exterior. This appears, as far as we can judge, to have been a signal error. It was certainly fatal, not indeed altogether, but in a very great degree, to Roman originality. The language of conversation, the language which comes fresh from the heart and the mind,— was no longer allied to that of composition; they were no longer two modes of the same thing, differing only in refinement, correctness, and some other accidental attributes, but they were things of different kinds. Hence the Roman poet could scarcely be said to meditate and imagine in Latin, in the same sense as the Greek poet did in Greek; and thus his conceptions were paralysed, and the flow of his fancy impeded. Habit, indeed, might do much : great powers would sometimes surmount these barriers; and where, as in the instance of satire (we believe in that instance alone), the field of Italy was left unvisited by the Grecian scythe, the native growth shot up vigorously and luxuriantly but the general effect was such as we have described it. In justice to Ennius, however, we must observe that it is not easy for a modern critic to estimate the difficulties under which he labored, or to determine how far the roughness and scantiness of his materials might justify him in adopting that course, which many great men have been betrayed into under circumstances of less excuse. And it must be admitted that, having chosen his part, he performed it well and effectually. He hollowed out the channel in which the current of Roman imagination was thenceforward to flow. He refined the language; he gave to the Latin hexameter that character which, though with considerable alterations, continued substantially to the last. He invented a new poetical instrument, and consecrated it to the glory of Italy, and the celebration of the great and good deeds of her ancient heroes; in the words of his own simple and appropriate epitaph : Aspicite, o ceiveis, senis Ennii imaginis formam: The structure of his poem, however, like its language and rhythm, was still in a great measure rude and imperfect. Instead of a single action, like that of the Eneid, or even a system of actions, as in Niebuhr's supposed Lay of the Tarquins, it embraces the entire history of the Roman people; resembling in this respect the Shah-Nameh of Ferdousi, rather than any of the canonical epics of the West. It is remarkable, however, that in the Life of Virgil, published under the name of Donatus, that poet is said in his youth to have entertained a similar design. After the impulse given by Ennius and his immediate followers, the poetry of Rome advanced with a rapidity resembling that of the spring, when winter is fairly broken through. A want of sensibility, and a poorness and narrowness of imagination, appear to have been besetting defects of the Romans: yet in spite of these hindrances, and of the unfortunate turn which had been early given to it, the literary talent of the nation was awakened, and exerted itself with the spirit and vigor of youth. Much was done in appearance, but much also was done in reality. Indeed it is remarkable, that the very best of the Roman poets all florished before the Augustan age. To say nothing of Plautus and Terence, Lucretius and Catullus were succeeded by no equals. Epic poetry, for a long period, appears to have been cultivated, not indeed with less assiduity, but with less success. Yet, as the canons of Greek criticism became more generally known, it was natural that more wieldy subjects should be chosen, (as in the once celebrated Argonautics of Varro,1) greater skill employed in the construction of the fable, and a more ornate and solemn manner in the diction and the versification. At length however, as if to make amends for the unusual delay, the orb of Virgil arose; and never, out of the legitimate planetary system of high and pure poetry, did any luminary arise with so splendid and imposing a brilliancy. In the late controversies on the literary character of Pope, it was somewhat hastily assumed by the partisans of that writer, that in rejecting the claim set up on his behalf to the title of a great poet, their opponents virtually denied him to be a man of genius or of talent. We wish to guard against a similar preconception with regard to ourselves, when we refuse to the poet of Mantua the high place which custom has assigned him. To couple contempt with the name of Virgil, we readily agree would argue 1 Varronem primamque ratem quæ nesciat ætas, Ov. Amor. lib. i. el. xv. 21. nothing more than mere insensibility, or the wildest prejudice, on the part of the contemner. Such contempt, like Southey's curses, would return to roost. And even in expressing our present qualified opinion of his merits, we feel a kind of compunction-a misgiving that we are doing something not quite right-as if we were denouncing the errors of an early friend. For we can well remember the days when the worship of Virgil was with us an idolatry; when his pathos, his delicacy, the exquisite harmony and variety of his numbers, and the stately march of his language, appeared to us the perfection of human genius and art. His name, too, is associated with the recollection of those school distinctions for which we once so earnestly, and not altogether unsuccessfully, labored, and which were our secret pride and our consolation amidst a world of youthful troubles: for it was, as we remember, on an assiduous imitation of the style and versification of the Æneid that our boyish hopes of renown were especially founded. And though these things are long gone by, and this idolatry, like so many other of the idolatries of our youth, is past away, the spell has not wholly lost its power; and in recollecting what once charmed us, we cannot suppress a wish that our old habits of delight and admiration could be reconciled with our subsequently acquired judgment. Virgil was, in truth, the most gifted of his own peculiar class. His talents were great, and versatile, and improved to the utmost. He could combine, vary, embellish; he could reflect what others had created; but he could not create himself. He gave a new character to several species of composition, by imparting to them an ornamental and an elaborate symmetry unknown before; and had he pleased, he might have been equally successful in as many others. But he could not have infused a principle of real poetical life into these specious and many-colored forms. We will not say that he attempted to reproduce an Iliad: we have, in truth, too good an opinion of his judgment to believe that he could have contemplated this as possible; but he attempted, less probably from ill-directed ambition than in compliance with the judgment of those whom he was not allowed to refuse, to construct a work which should be regarded by his fellow-countrymen as rivalling Homer. And what has been the result? What, of all that really delights us in the Iliad and the Odyssey, is found in the Æneid? There are, it is true, battles and sieges and wanderings, gods and goddesses, prophecies and descents into Hades; speeches and episodes and epithets and similes. But what is the effect on the reader? Does he believe in these things, even with a poetical belief? Can he regard Jupiter as Zeus, or Æneas as Achilles? Does he recognise any of the characteristics of the old bard-that hearty belief in tradition, that spirit of rude religious faith, those living reflections of external |