antiquity between men of letters and their powerful friends. The empire did not create a particular kind of literature, but found it existing, and the men of letters who accepted the empire did so, not in a servile or cowardly spirit, but from a genuine political conviction. Still it is not to be denied that the poetry usually called Augustan has a different characIter from that of the troubled period which preceded the fall of the republic. The style and the thoughts of Vergil and Horace, the style and, to a certain extent, the thoughts of Ovid, are different from those of Lucretius and Catullus. It is remarkable that in the \ matter of style each of these three poets established a classical form; a form, that is, which was accepted by the literary world of the Roman Empire as unsurpassable, and as a model for all subsequent writers to follow. They had improved the style of the epic, lyric, , and elegiac poetry which they found existing; but no one ever thought of improving upon the hexameter of Vergil, or the stanza of Horace, or the couplet of • Ovid. With this perfection of form there is united, in the case of Vergil and Horace, a certain artificiality of writing, which sometimes prefers inversion to directness, and elaboration to simplicity. This quality, which distinguishes the poets in question from Lucretius and Catullus, is sometimes regarded as the result of the artificial conditions upon which literature was now entering. It is supposed that the freedom of the republic encouraged openness and directness of utterance, and that the patronage given to literary men by the court of Augustus fostered an unhealthy and dependent tone of mind, which was reflected in a degenerate style. The truth seems to be that this change of style had begun some time before the establishment of the new régime. In prose, Sallust anticipates in many respects the manner of the first century of the empire ; and, if a few fragments may be trusted, Varro of Atax must have nearly anticipated the technical form of Vergil's hexameter. The school represented by Vergil and Horace differed from that of Lucretius and

Catullus mainly on literary grounds. Vergil and Horace aimed at a more perfect form of expression for Ro-. man poetry, based upon a more careful manipulation • of the Latin language, and above all on a profounder❖ study of the great Greek models, than had yet been known. Hence the artificiality and elaboration which is, so to speak, the defect of their excellence; hence also the fact that their style unites all the best elements of Latin expression with much of the beauty and life-like grace of the Greek masterpieces. The style of Vergil and Horace represents a literary, not a political, tendency; it exemplifies the principles of a new poetic guild which was conscious of new powers, and aware of undiscovered capabilities in the Latin language. For the first time in the history of Italian literature they practically laid down the principle that no amount of labour could be too great to expend upon poetical expression; that genius, power, freedom of utterance, were not enough to make a perfect poet. Like Cicero in the sphere of oratorical prose, Vergil and Horace are never satisfied with the form of their work; they know no end to the striving for perfection. And it is perhaps from the comparative want of this feeling that the splendid genius of Ovidhas failed on the whole to produce an impression ➡ adequate to its luxuriant power and inventive capacity. It is possible that had Propertius lived longer he might have worked himself clear of the obscurity and tortuousness of expression which disfigures so much of his writing, and given, as he certainly could have given, a touch of greater depth and dignity to the classical form of the Latin elegiac.

If again we compare the subjects chosen by Vergil and Horace with those treated by Lucretius and Catullus, we are struck by a difference. Lucretius devoted himself to expounding in Latin poetry the doctrines of the Epicurean school. Few things in literature are more wonderful than the power and pathos with which he performed his task: but with all this his poem remains the expression of a particular

phase of thought, not of the representative ideas of an age. The lyrics of Catullus, when they are not stiff translations from the Greek, are purely personal, the expression of his own loves and hatreds. Horace certainly, and probably Vergil, wrote in youth poems of purely personal interest, but their riper work bears the mark of a wider aspiration, and is the exponent of greater thoughts. Neither of them would submit to attach himself, definitely and permanently, to any one of the current philosophical systems. The thoughts which they aim at expressing are of universal application. In this way also, as well as in their style,. Horace and Vergil are more classical, more truly representative, than Catullus and Lucretius. It was true in their case as in so many others that the utmost endeavour after perfection of form went hand in hand with comparative disengagement of thought. They seldom touch a subject without idealizing it, and prefer idealization to bare representation or description. The subjects which they chose are typical of the same tendency. Though Vergil at one time intended to write on the exploits of Pollio, and at another on those of Augustus, he never carried out his intention at all in the one case, or more than indirectly in the other. The limits of such themes he seems to have felt to be inconsistent with his notions of what

poetry should be. His Eclogues or Pastorals, the first productions of the kind in Roman poetry, are imaginary or allegorical pictures. The best thing in his Georgics, or poem on agriculture, is the exuberant enjoyment which pervades it of the fertility of the earth and the kindness of the sky. The theme of the Aeneid is the greatness of Rome as seen through the halo of legend. Turning to Horace, we find that many of his Odes are an attempt to reproduce in a Roman form the great manner of Pindar, which enshrines in the celebration of warlike or athletic achievements the thoughts and traditions of older days. His Satires and Epistles embody maxims, usually of the kindlier sort, on the ways of human life. But he declined or evaded any

direct celebration of the exploits of Augustus, natural as such a theme might have seemed to a poet in his somewhat dependent position. Both Horace and Vergil ■ preferred suggestion to direct statement, and general ideas to the description of particular scenes.

A marked feature of the literary feeling of this period is the tendency to fix upon the history and antiquities of Rome as a subject for poetry. Since the time of Ennius the Roman poets, at least the most eminent of them, appear to have given up this theme; but Vergil in his Aeneid, Propertius in many of his elegies, and Ovid in his Fasti, did much to revive the interest of their countrymen in it, and there are many passages in Horace which show that though he did not concern himself with the details of the subject, his mind was in full sympathy with the line of thought which his brother poets were working out. The revival of this interest is so far connected with the political circumstances of the time, as the consolidation of authority in the hands of the Caesar, and the sense of security which was growing up hand in hand with it, gave to men of letters the leisure and inclination to look back to the beginnings of the Roman system of law and religion, and to contemplate the process by which it had increased to its present greatness. After the agony and bloodshed of two generations, the restoration of peace and the renewal of power to the city of Romulus might well appear to her patriotic children the beginning of a new national life, enriched by the consciousness of a great past which deserved the earnest study of historians and poets.

It may be said then in general of the literature of this period that its style was more perfect, and its ideas wider and less personal, than those of the preceding era. I am speaking of its representative writers; for there was an opposition party among the literary men of this age, in which Asinius Pollio was a notable figure. But the views of this opposition may be said to have been fairly beaten out of

the field by the school of Vergil and Horace, who, whatever their faults, unquestionably caught and represented the living spirit of their time. Like all great writers, they had the creative sense which enabled them to see instinctively what was the next step to be taken by those who would influence the thought and language of Italy. This step once taken, reaction was impossible, and the style of Vergil, Horace, and Ovid became the model for all subsequent writers in the same branches of literature.

III.

AUTHORITIES FOR THE LIFE OF VERGIL.

Memoirs

OUR authorities for the life of Vergil reach, indirectly, as far back as the times of the poet himself. were written of him by the poet Varius, and by other friends, one of whom was Melissus, a freedman of Maecenas. From these memoirs it is probable that Suetonius, who wrote the history of the first twelve Caesars, compiled a Life of Vergil, of which much. undoubtedly remains in the interpolated memoir attributed to Aelius Donatus, the celebrated grammarian of the fourth century after Christ. Much genuine information is contained in this biography, but in all probability much is lost and something added. A few anecdotes and some fragments of correspondence, probably all taken from the contemporary sources mentioned above, are preserved by Gellius and Macrobius, who wrote respectively in the second and the fifth centuries A.D. There is also a short life prefixed to the commentary by Valerius Probus, a celebrated scholar of the first century. The biography prefixed to the commentary of Servius is, as I have shown elsewhere,1 mostly a mere compilation from Suetonius. Something can be gleaned from the works of Vergil himself, and from those of contemporary poets.

1 Ancient Lives of Vergil, p. 21.