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 tumours 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 violence 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 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. Spence.

56. His Description of the Sea-fight off Marseilles.

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 misfor tunes 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 ene mies 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 both his eyes. The violent dash of the

blow,

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 Balista: 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 more, how Lucan can be so wise as he is in some parts of his poem. Indeed his sentences are more solid than one could otherwise expect from so young a writer, had he 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.

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$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 virtuous; but not very poetical. His great fault is obscurity. Several have endeavoured to ex

may

cuse 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 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 VALERIUS 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. He was a great lover and collector of pictures and statues; some of which he worshipped; 2 A 2 especially

especially one he had of Virgil. He used to offer sacrifices too at his tomb near Naples. It is a pity that he could not get more of his spirit in his writings: for he had scarce enough to make his offerings acceptable to the genius of that great poet. -Statius had more of spirit, with a less share of prudence: for his Thebaid is certainly ill-conducted, and scarcely well written. By the little we have of his Achilleid, that would probably have been a much better poem, at least as to the writing part, had he lived to finish it. As it is, his deAs it is, his description of Achilles's behaviour at the feast which Lycomedes makes for the Grecian ambassadors, and some other parts of it, read more pleasingly to me than any part of the Thebaid. I cannot help thinking, that the passage quoted so often from Juvenal, as an encomium on Statius, was meant as a satire on him. Martial seems to strike at him too, under the borrowed name of Sabellus. As he did not finish his Achilleid, he may deserve more reputation perhaps as a miscellaneous than as an epic writer; for though the odes and the other copies of verses in his Sylvæ are not without their faults, they are not so faulty as his Thebaid. The chief faults of Statius, in his Sylvæ and Thebaid, are said to have proceeded from very different causes: the former, from their having been written in correctly and in a great deal of haste; and the other, from its being over corrected and hard. Perhaps his greatest fault of all or rather the greatest sign of his bad judgment, is his admiring Lucan so extravagantly as he does. It is remarkable, that poetry run more lineally in Statius's family, than perhaps in any other. He received it from his father; who had been an eminent poet in his time, and lived to see his son obtain the laurel-crown at the Alban games: as he had formerly done himself. Valerius Flaccus wrote a little before Statius. He died young, and left his poem unfinished. We have but seven books of his Argonautics, and part of the eighth, in which the Argonauts are left on the sea, in their return homewards. Se veral of the modern critics, who have been some way or other concerned in publishing Flaccus's works, make no scruple of placing him next to Virgil, of all the Roman epic poets; and I own I am a good deal inclined to be seriously of their opinion: for he seems to me to have more fire than Silius, and to be more correct than Statius;

and as for Lucan, I cannot help looking upon him as quite out of the question. He imitates Virgil's language much better than Silius, or even Statius; and his plan, or rather his story, is certainly less embar rassed and confused than the Thebaid. Some of the ancients themselves speak of Flaccus with a great deal of respect; and particularly Quinctilian; who says nothing at all of Silius or Statius; unless the latter is to be included in that general expression of several others,' whom he leaves to be celebrated by posterity.

As to the dramatic writers of this time, we have not any one comedy, and only ten tragedies, all published under the name of Lucius Annæus Seneca. They are proba bly the work of different hands; and might be a collection of favourite plays, put to gether by some bad grammarian; for either the Roman tragedies of this age were very indifferent, or these are not their best. They have been attributed to authors as far distant as the reigns of Augustus and Trajan. It is true, the person who is so positive that one of them in particular must be of the Augustan age, says this of a piece that he seems resolved to cry up at all rates: and I believe one should do no injury to any one of them, in supposing them all to have been written in this third age, under the decline of the Roman poetry.

Of all the other poets under this period there are none whose works remain to us, except Martial and Juvenal. The former flourished under Domitian; and the latter under Nerva, Trajan, and Adrian. Spence.

$59. Of MARTIAL.

Martial is a dealer only in a little kind of writing: for Epigram is certainly (what it is called by Dryden) the lowest step of poetry. He is at the very bottom of the hill; but he diverts himself there, in ga thering flowers and playing with insects, prettily enough. If Martial made a newyear's gift, he was sure to send a distich with it: if a friend died, he made a few verses to put on his tomb-stone: if a sta tue was set up, they came to him for an inscription. These were the common of fices of his muse. If he struck a fault in life, he marked it down in a few lines; and if he had a mind to please a friend, or to get the favour of the great, his style was turned to panegyric: and these were his highest employments. He was, how ever, a good writer in his way; and there

are