Ovid, and the brevity of Tacitus. Thus standing in the epoch between two literary periods, he, as far as the humble nature of his walk admits, unites the excellencies of both. Between the age of Horace and Juvenal, Cicero and Tacitus, there was a gap, and a long one, not less than half a century: it was a period in which Roman genius was slumbering. Phædrus proves that that sleep was not the sleep of death. Tacitus has partially accounted for this cold and dark interval. He tells us1—“that although the affairs of the ancient Roman republic, whether in prosperity or in adversity, were related by illustrious writersand even the times of Augustus were not deficient in historians of talent and genius-nevertheless the gradual growth of a spirit of adulation deterred all who were qualified for the task from attempting it. Fear, during the life-time of Tiberius, Caius, Claudius, and Nero, and hatred, still fresh after their deaths, rendered all accounts of their reigns false." It was thus, according to him, fear and hatred, and a spirit of flattery, that silenced the voice of history. Doubtless what he says of history applies with equal force to poetry, and oratory likewise. The same cause which crushed political liberty rendered the truthfulness of the historian fraught with danger, and all poetry, except it spoke the language of adulation, treason; a' crime which was no longer one against the majesty of the people, but was transferred to the person of the emperor. The very term ларрηia (boldness of speech) was a word, the utterance of which was as perilous as to speak of liberty. The danger had scarcely passed away when Juvenal, notwithstanding his fearless spirit, wrote: Unde illa priorum Scribendi quodcunque animo flagrante liberet, Juv. i. 153. Where the plain times, the simple, when our sires And gave the public sin to public shame, 1 Tac. Ann. I. i. Gifford. 2 Vide Suet. Vit. Calig. 27. CAUSES UNFAVOURABLE TO LITERATURE. 401 But there was a negative as well as a positive cause, the withdrawal of patronage. Literature, in order to flourish, requires the genial sunshine of human sympathy: it needs either the patronage of the great or the favour of the people. In Greece it enjoyed the latter in the highest possible degree; in Rome, from the time of the Scipios to that of Augustus, it was fostered by the former. Immediately after his death patronage was withdrawn, and there was not public support to supply its place. Tiberius was first a soldier; then a dark and reserved politician; lastly, a blood-thirsty and superstitious sensualist. The enjoyments of Caius Caligula were the extravagancies of a madman, although he was responsible for his moral insanity, because he had, by vicious indulgence, been the destroyer of his moral principle; and not only did he not encourage literature, but he even hated Homer and Virgil. Lastly, the stupid and dozing Claudius wrote books' as stupid as himself, and was at once the butt and tool of his courtiers. It was not, therefore, until the reign of Nero that literature revived; for, though the bloodiest of tyrants, he had an ambition to excel in refinement, and had a taste for art and poetry. In the construction of his fables, Phædrus displays observation and ingenuity. Nothing escapes his watchful eye which can be turned to account in his little poems. A rude sketch in charcoal on the wall of a low tavern2 suggested to him the idea of the Battle between the Rats and the Weasels. His animals are grouped, and put in attitudes, just as a painter would arrange them. His accurate eye has noted and registered the habits of the brute creation, and he has adapted them to the delivery of noble and wise sentiments with the utmost ingenuity. But there his genius stops. He is deficient in imagination. He makes his animals the vehicles of his wisdom; but he does not throw himself into them, or indentify himself with them. The true poet is lost in his characters: carried away by the enthusiasm of an inspired imagination, his spirit is transfused into his heroes;you forget his existence. The characters of Phædrus look and 'Suet. Claud. 42. 2 Lib. iv. 6. act like animals, but talk like human beings: the moralist and the philosopher can always be detected speaking under their mask and in their disguise. In this consists the great superiority of Æsop to his Roman imitator. His brutes are a superior race, but they are still brutes. The reader could almost fancy that the fabulist had lived amongst them as one of themselves-had adopted their modes of life, and had conversed with them in their own language. In Phædrus we have human sentiments translated into the language of beasts-in Æsop we have beasts giving utterance to such sentiments as would be naturally theirs, if they were placed in the position of men. Skilful adaptation and happy delineation are the triumphs of ingenuity and observation: the creative power is that of the imagination. of The style of Phædrus, notwithstanding a few provincialisms,' is pure and classical. He does not often indulge in the use of metaphors, but the few which are met with are striking and appropriate. He is not entirely free from some of that far-fetched affectation which characterizes the decline of Roman literature. But his fault is exaggerated conciseness, and the concentration many ideas within a brief space, rather than the rhetorical ornament which now began to be admired and popular. His endeavour after brevity led him to use abstract substantives far more profusely than is consistent with the practice of the best classical writers. These faults, however, do not interfere with that clearness and simplicity, which, quite as much as the subjects, have rendered the fables of Phædrus a popular book for the young student, and please even those who have the opportunity of comparing his iambics with the liveliness of Gay, the politeness of Florian, the philosophy of Lessing, the sweetness of Cowper, and the unequalled versatility of La Fontaine. See lib. i. 2, 9; ii. 7, 8; iii. 6, 9. DRAMATIC LITERATURE. 403 CHAPTER II. DRAMATIC LITERATURE IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE-REVIVAL UNDER NERO-DEFECTS OF THE TRAGEDIES ATTRIBUTED TO SENECA-INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THEIR AUTHORSHIP-SENECA THE PHILOSOPHER A STOIC-INCONSISTENT AND UNSTABLE-THE SENTIMENTS OF HIS PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS FOUND IN HIS TRAGEDIES-PARALLEL PASSAGES COMPARED-FRENCH SCHOOL OF TRAGIC POETS. OF Roman tragedy in its earliest period, so far as the fragments of it which remain allow a judgment to be formed, an account has already been given; and if circumstances forbade it to flourish then, still less can it be expected that the boldness and independence of Greek tragedy would be found under the empire. Nevertheless, there were not wanting some imitators of Greece in this noblest branch of Greek poetry, however unsuitable it was to the genius of the Roman people, and unlikely to be appreciated by them. But their productions were rather literary than dramatic; they were intended to be read, not acted. They were poems composed in a dramatic form, because Athens had set the example of that form to her devoted imitators. Although, therefore, they contain noble philosophical sentiments, lively descriptions, vigorous conceptions and delineations of character, and passages full of tenderness and pathos, they are deficient in dramatic effect, and positively offend against those laws of good taste, which, not arbitrarily assumed, but founded on the principles of the human mind, regulated the Athenian stage. We have seen that, in the Augustan age, a few writers attained some excellence in tragedy, at least in the opinion of ancient critics. Besides Ovid and Varius, whose tragedies have been already mentioned, Asinius Pollio acquired a high reputation as a tragic poet, and Virgil' declares that he is the only one worthy of being compared with Sophocles:- 'Ecl. viii. 10. Sola Sophocleo tua carmina digna cothurno. On the revival of letters under that professor of a love of poetry,' the tyrant Nero, dramatic literature reappeared, and per. fect specimens are extant in the ten tragedies attributed to Seneca. Various and opposite opinions have been entertained respecting their merits; but there can be no doubt that the genius of the author never can grasp in their wholeness the characters which he attempts to copy; they are distorted images of the Greek originals; the awful and shadowy grandeur of the god-like heroes of Eschylus stand forth in corporeal vastness, and appear childish and unnatural, like the giants of a story-book. The marvels of Greek tragedy and Greek mythology, though merely the unreal conceptions of the imagination, do not appear exaggerated, because the connexion between the theory and the result, the causes and the effects, is so skilfully maintained; but in these Roman tragedies the legends of Greece appear extravagant and absurd: they are as unreal, and therefore seem as affected, as the classical garb in which English poetry was arrayed in the age of Anne. The Greeks believed in the gods and heroes whose agency and exploits constituted the machinery of tragedy—the Romans did not; and thus we cannot sympathize with them, because we see that they are insincere. The style, moreover, of the tragedies, which bear the name of Seneca, is spoiled by that inflated language and redundancy of ornament, the constant effect of which is, as Aristotle observes, frigidity. They bear the visible marks of an age in which genius had given place to an artificial and scholastic rhetoric; and the author seems to have been striving not for tragic pathos so much as brilliant declamation. In the female characters, especially, the Roman tragic poet fails; for, although he can understand heroism, he is unable to accomplish that most difficult of all tasks, the combining it with feminine delicacy. Perhaps the best and noblest of his countrywomen did not furnish him with such ideals. The Roman matron was the counterpart of her warlike lord. The Lucretias, Porcias, Cornelias, Arrias, though devoted and affectionate, were of sterner mould than Antigone and Deianira. 1 Tac. Ann. xiv. 52. |