lorarai-was true of the divine company' of poets in the Age of Augustus. And the sincere and appreciative interest which they took in one another was not only a source of great happiness in their lives, but was able to fulfil the function of an enlightened and generous criticism. Poets were in the habit of reading their works to their friends before submitting them to the public. It is characteristic of the modesty of Virgil and of his unceasing aim at perfection that he was in the habit of reading to his friends chiefly those passages in his works of which he was himself distrustful. The fastidious taste of Horace sometimes rebelled against the importunity of those who desired to hear him read his own compositions. Yet he describes himself as 'nobilium scriptorum auditor et ultor1;' and the well-known testimony of Ovid proves that he was not averse to gratify an appreciative listener :— Et tenuit nostras numerosus Horatius aures, The appreciation and criticism of cultivated friends, themselves authors as well as critics, must have stimulated and corrected the taste of the poets of the age. That kind of genius which is most purely original in its activity, and which communicates an altogether novel impulse to the world, seems to rely absolutely on itself, and may indeed be little stimulated by sympathy or affected by criticism. Of such a type Lucretius in ancient and Wordsworth in modern times are probably the best examples, though Dante and Milton seem to approach nearer to it than to the type of those whose genius is equally great in receiving from, as in giving to, the world-the type of genius of Homer, Sophocles, Shakspeare, and Goethe. The great qualities of writers of the first type are force, independence, boldness of invention and speculation, absolute sincerity. They are at the same time liable to the defects of incompleteness, one-sidedness, disregard of the true proportion of things. Their works do not produce the impression 1 Ep. i. 19. 39. of that all-pervading, perfectly-balanced sanity of genius, which the Greeks meant when they applied the word ropol to their poets, and which makes the great men of the second type not only powerful movers but also the wisest teachers of the world. The best poetry of the Augustan Age, if wanting in the highest mode of creative energy, is eminently free from the defects which sometimes result from the intenser form of imagination; it is in a remarkable degree pervaded and controlled by this sanity of genius. This excellence of the Augustan literature may be partly, as was said before, attributed to the familiar intercourse which men of letters enjoyed with men of action and large social influence; partly, and probably to a greater degree, to the cultivated and generous criticism which men of genius and fine accomplishment imparted to and received from one another. Outside of this friendly circle of men eminent in letters and social position, there were other literary and critical coteries hostile to them, who seem to have chosen the merits of the old writers as the battle-ground on which they engaged the new school of poetry and criticism. These critical coteries Horace treats, as Catullus treats the 'Saecli incommoda pessimi poetae,' and as Pope treated Dennis and the other poetasters of his time :— Demetri, teque, Tigelli, Discipularum inter iubeo plorare cathedras1; and again : Non ego nobilium scriptorum auditor et ultor Horace was evidently sensitive to the envy excited by his genius and by the favour of Maecenas, and in his later years it afforded him pleasure to be less exposed than he had been to carping criticism : Romae principis urbium Dignatur soboles inter amabiles Vatum ponere me choros, Et iam dente minus mordeor invido3. 1 Sat. i. 10. 91-92. 2 Ep. xix. 31-32. 3 Od. iv. 3. 12-15. But with the final establishment of his reputation his fastidiousness suffered more from the pedantry and importunities of admirers and imitators : O imitatores, servum pecus, ut mihi saepe Bilem, saepe iocum vestri movere tumultus1. Even the 'mitis sapientia' of Virgil has condescended to immortalise the names of Bavius and Maevius, as Pope has immortalised the heroes of the Dunciad. The often quoted line of Horace, Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim3, marks the beginning of that 'cacoethes scribendi' which continued to prevail till the days of Juvenal as a symptom of the 'strenua inertia' of life under the Empire. VI. Causes of the special devotion to Poetry in the The almost exclusive devotion to poetry on the part of the meanest as well as the greatest writers of the Augustan Age seems to demand some explanation. The natural genius of Rome was more adapted to oratory, history, and didactic exposition than to any of the great forms of poetry. In the previous generation prose literaturehad reached the highest degree of perfection. The style of Cicero is one of the most admirable and effective vehicles for the varied purposes of passionate invective or persuasive oratory, of familiar correspondence, and of popularising the results of ethical, political, and religious reflection. In Caesar and Sallust the record of great events in the national life had at last found a power of clear, terse, and chastened diction, superior as a vehicle of simple narrative to the style of the two great historians of later times, if not so rich and varied in colouring and in poetical and reflective suggestion. Of the prose literature of the Augustan Age we possess only one great monument, the extant parts of 'the colossal 2 Ep. ii. 1. 117. 1 Ep. i. 19. 19-20. master-work of Livy;' and that was the product of the later and least brilliant period of this epoch. The cause of the sudden and permanent decline of Roman oratory was the extinction of political life. Public speech could no longer be, as it had been for nearly two centuries, a great power in the commonwealth. Under the vigilant and judicious administration of Augustus there was not scope even for that kind of oratory which flourished under his successors, and became a very formidable weapon in the hands of the 'delatores,'—that, namely, which is employed in the prosecution and defence of men charged with grave offences against the State. Neither was there scope or inclination for philosophical or historical composition. Such freedom of enquiry as Cicero allowed himself in his treatises De Legibus and De Republica would scarcely have been tolerated under the monarchy; and the world was in no mood for any severe strain of thought or any questioning of the first principles of things. The new era desired ease, an escape from care and the perplexities of thought, as well as peace and material well-being. The spirit of the age was announced in the pastoral strain, which celebrated its commencement in the apotheosis of Julius Caesar,' amat bonus otia Daphnis.' Again, it would have been impossible for any one to have composed or at least to have published a candid history of the times, and it may have been the discovery of this impossibility that induced Asinius Pollio to leave his work unfinished. It would indeed have been a gain for all time had a Roman Thucydides recorded the 'movement in the State' from the Consulship of Metellus till the battle of Actium with the accuracy and impartiality, the graphic condensation, the sober dignity, the sensitive perception of the varying phases of passion and character in states and individuals, the philosophical discernment of great political principles destined to act in the same way 'so long as the nature of man remains the same,' and the deep tragic pathos which make, even at the present day, the record of 'the twentyseven years' war of the Peloponnesians and Athenians' the most vividly interesting and permanently instructive historical work which the world possesses. But even had the genius of Rome been capable of producing a Thucydides, the circumstances of the time would have reduced him to silence. Tacitus regards the establishment of the Empire as equally fatal to the genius of the historian, as it was to the genius of the orator :- Postquam bellatum apud Actium atque omnem potentiam ad unum conferri pacis interfuit, magna illa ingenia cessere. Simul veritas pluribus modis infracta, primum inscitia rei publicae ut alienae, mox libidine assentandi'.' On the other hand, many circumstances contributed to give a great stimulus to poetical literature in its most trivial and transitory as well as its noblest and most enduring manifestations. It is remarked by a recent French writer2, that poetry is the last form of literature to wither under a despotism. But it suffers from it most irretrievably in the end. The poetic imagination is able to deceive itself by turning away from what is painful and repulsive in the world, and appearing to extract the element of good, of vivid life, or impressive grandeur out of things evil and fatal in their ultimate effects. Thus it is able to glorify the pomp and state of imperialism, just as it is able to glorify the charm to the senses or the attraction to the social nature afforded by the life of pleasure. But, in the long run, the decay in the higher energies arising either from the loss of liberty or the loss of self-control is more fatal to the nobler forms of art and poetry than to any other products of intelligence. Again, the mechanical difficulties of the art had been to a great extent overcome in the previous age. The discovery of the new and rich ore of the Latin language, revealed and wrought into shapes of massive beauty and delicate grace by Lucretius and Catullus, awakened and kept alive in the great writers of this age the desire to perfect the work commenced by their predecessors, and to develope all |