History of Roman Literature from its Earliest Period to the Augustan Volume I Part 21

"Praeterea, gigni pariter c.u.m corpore, et una Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere, mentem.

Nam, velut infirmo pueri, teneroque, vagantur Corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenuis; Inde, ubi robustis adolevit viribus aetas, Consilium quoque majus, et auctior est animi vis.

Post, ubi jam validis qua.s.satum est viribus aevi Corpus, et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus, Claudicat ingenium, delirat linguaque mensque; Omnia deficiunt, atque uno tempore desunt: Ergo, dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animai Naturam, ceu fumus in altas aeris auras; Quandoquidem gigni pariter, pariterque videmus Crescere; et, ut docui, simul, aevo fessa, fatisci."-III. 446.

Lucretius having, by many arguments, endeavoured to establish the mortality of the soul, proceeds to exhort against a dread of death. The fear of that "last tremendous blow," appears to have hara.s.sed, and sometimes overwhelmed, the minds of the Romans(453). To them, life presented a scene of high duties and honourable labours; and they contemplated, in a long futurity, the distant completion of their serious and lofty aims. They were not yet habituated to regard life as a banquet or recreation, from which they were cheerfully to rise, in due time, sated with the feast prepared for them; nor had they been accustomed to a.s.sociate death with those softening ideas of indolence and slumber, with which it was the design of Lucretius to connect it. He accordingly represents it as a privation of all sense,-as undisturbed by tumult or terror, by grief or pain,-as a tranquil sleep, and an everlasting repose.

How sublime is the following pa.s.sage, in which, to ill.u.s.trate his argument, that the long night of the grave can be no more painful than the eternity before our birth, he introduces the war with Carthage; and what a picture does it convey of the energy and might of the combatants!

"Nil igitur Mors est, ad nos neque pertinet hilum, Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.

Et, velut ante acto nil tempore sensimus aegri, Ad confligundum venientibus undique Pnis; Omnia quum, belli trepido concussa tumultu, Horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris auris: In dubioque fuere, utrorum ad regna cadundum Omnibus humanis esset, terraque, marique.

Sic, ubi non erimus, quum corporis atque animai Discidium fuerit, quibus e sumus uniter apti; Scilicet haud n.o.bis quidquam, qui non erimus tum, Accidere omnino poterit, sensumque movere: Non si terra mari miscebitur, et mare clo."-III, 842.

From this admirable pa.s.sage till the close of the third book there is an union of philosophy, of majesty, and pathos, which hardly ever has been equalled. The incapacity of the highest power and wisdom, as exhibited in so many instances, to exempt from the common lot of man, the farewell which we must bid to the sweetest domestic enjoyments, and the magnificent _prosopopia_ of Nature to her children, rebuking their regrets, and the injustice of their complaints, are altogether exceedingly solemn, and affecting, and sublime.

The two leading tenets of Epicurus concerning the formation of the world and the mortality of the soul, are established by Lucretius in the first three books. A great proportion of the fourth book may be considered as episodical. Having explained the nature of primordial atoms, and of the soul, which is formed from the finest of them, he announces, that there are certain images (_rerum simulacra_,) or effluvia, which are constantly thrown off from the surface of whatever exists. On this hypothesis he accounts for all our external senses; and he applies it also to the theory of dreams, in which whatever images have amused the senses during day most readily recur. Mankind being p.r.o.ne to love, of all the phantoms which rush on our imagination during night, none return so frequently as the forms of the fair. This leads Lucretius to enlarge on the mischievous effects of illicit love; and nothing can be finer than the various moral considerations which he enforces, to warn us against the snares of guilty pa.s.sion. It must, however, be confessed, that his description of what he seems to consider as the physical evils and imperfect fruition of sensual love, forms the most glowing picture ever presented of its delights. But he has atoned for his violation of decorum, by a few beautiful lines on connubial happiness at the conclusion of the book:

"Nam facit ipsa suis interdum femina factis, Morigerisque modis et mundo corpore culta, Ut facile a.s.suescat sec.u.m vir degere vitam.

Quod super est, consuetudo concinnat amorem; Nam, leviter quamvis, quod crebro tunditur ictu, Vincitur id longo spatio tamen, atque labascit: Nonne vides, etiam guttas, in saxa cadenteis, Humoris longo in s.p.a.cio pertundere saxa?"-IV. 1273.

The princ.i.p.al subject of the fifth book-a composition unrivalled in energy and richness of language, in full and genuine sublimity-is the origin and laws of the visible world, with those of its inhabitants. The poet presents us with a grand picture of Chaos, and the most magnificent account of the creation that ever flowed from human pen. In his representation of primeval life and manners, he exhibits the discomfort of this early stage of society by a single pa.s.sage of most wild and powerful imagery,-in which he describes a savage, in the early ages of the world, when men were yet contending with beasts for possession of the earth, flying through the woods, with loud shrieks, in a stormy night, from the pursuit of some ravenous animal, which had invaded the cavern where he sought a temporary shelter and repose:

-- "Saecla ferarum Infestam miseris faciebant saepe quietem; Ejecteique domo, fugiebant saxea tecta Setigeri suis adventu, validique leonis; Atque intempesta cedebant nocte, paventes, Hospitibus saevis instrata cubilia fronde."-V. 980.

One is naturally led to compare the whole of Lucretius' description of primeval society, and the origin of man, with Ovid's _Four Ages of the World_, which commence his _Metamorphoses_, and which, philosophically considered, certainly exhibit the most wonderful of all metamorphoses. In his sketch of the Golden Age, he has selected the favourable circ.u.mstances alluded to by Lucretius-exemption from war and sea voyages, and spontaneous production of fruits by the earth. There is also a beautiful view of early life and manners in one of the elegies of Tibullus(454); and Thomson, in his picture of what he calls the "prime of days," has combined the descriptions of Ovid and the elegiac bard. Most of the poets, however, who have painted the Golden Age, and Ovid in particular, have represented mankind as growing more vicious and unhappy with advance of time-Lucretius, more philosophically, as constantly improving. He has fixed on connubial love as the first great softener of the human breast; and neither Thomson nor Milton has described with more tenderness, truth, and purity, the joys of domestic union. He follows the progressive improvement of mankind occasioned by their subjection to the bonds of civil society and government; and the book concludes with an account of the origin of the fine arts, particularly music, in the course of which many impressive descriptions occur, and many delicious scenes are unfolded:

"At liquidas avium voces imitarier ore Ante fuit multo, quam laevia carmina cantu Concelebrare homines possent, aureisque juvare.

Et zephyri, cava per calamorum, sibila primum Agrestes docuere cavas inflare cicutas.

Inde minutatim dulces didicere querelas Tibia quas fundit, digitis pulsata canentum, Avia per nemora ac sylvas saltusque reperta, Per loca pastorum deserta, atque otia dia."-V. 1378.

In consequence of their ignorance and superst.i.tions, the Roman people were rendered perpetual slaves of the most idle and unfounded terrors. In order to counteract these popular prejudices, and to heal the constant disquietudes that accompanied them, Lucretius proceeds, in the sixth book, to account for a variety of extraordinary phaenomena both in the heavens and on the earth, which, at first view, seemed to deviate from the usual laws of nature:-

"Sunt tempestates et fulmina clara canenda."

Having discussed the various theories formed to account for electricity, water-spouts, hurricanes, the rainbow, and volcanoes, he lastly considers the origin of pestilential and endemic disorders. This introduces the celebrated account of the plague, which ravaged Athens during the Peloponnesian war, with which Lucretius concludes this book, and his magnificent poem. "In this narrative," says a late translator of Lucretius, "the true genius of poetry is perhaps more powerfully and triumphantly exhibited than in any other poem that was ever written.

Lucretius has ventured upon one of the most uncouth and repressing subjects to the muses that can possibly be brought forward-the history and symptoms of a disease, and this disease accompanied with circ.u.mstances naturally the most nauseating and indelicate. It was a subject altogether new to numerical composition; and he had to strive with all the pedantry of technical terms, and all the abstruseness of a science in which he does not appear to have been professionally initiated. He strove, however, and he conquered. In language the most captivating and nervous, and with ideas the most precise and appropriate, he has given us the entire history of this tremendous pestilence. There is not, perhaps, a symptom omitted, yet there is not a verse with which the most scrupulous can be offended. The description of the symptoms, and also the various circ.u.mstances of horror and distress attending this dreadful scourge, have been derived from Thucydides, who furnished the facts with great accuracy, having been himself a spectator and a sufferer under this calamity. His narrative is esteemed an elaborate and complete performance; and to the faithful yet elegant detail of the Greek historian, the Roman bard has added all that was necessary to convert the description into poetry."

In the whole history of Roman taste and criticism, nothing appears to us so extraordinary as the slight mention that is made of Lucretius by succeeding Latin authors; and, when mentioned, the coldness with which he is spoken of by all Roman critics and poets, with the exception of Ovid.

Perhaps the spirit of free-thinking which pervaded his writings, rendered it unsuitable or unsafe to extol even his poetical talents. There was a time, when, in this country, it was thought scarcely decorous or becoming to express high admiration of the genius of Rousseau or Voltaire.

The doctrines of Lucretius, particularly that which impugns the superintending care of Providence, were first formally opposed by the Stoic Manilius in his Astronomic poem. In modern times, his whole philosophical system has been refuted in the long and elaborate poem of the Cardinal Polignac, ent.i.tled, _Anti-Lucretius, sive de Deo et Natura_.

This enormous work, though incomplete, consists of nine books, of about 1300 lines each, and the whole is addressed to Quintius, an atheist, who corresponds to the Lorenzo of the _Night Thoughts_. Descartes is the Epicurus of the poem, and the subject of many heavy panegyrics. In the philosophical part of his subject, the Cardinal has sometimes refuted, at too great length, propositions which are manifestly absurd-at others, he has impugned demonstrated truths-and the moral system of Lucretius he throughout has grossly misunderstood. But he has rendered ample justice to his poetical merit; and, in giving a compendium of the subject of his great antagonist's poem, he has caught some share of the poetical spirit with which his predecessor was inspired:-

"Hic agitare velit Cytheriam inglorius artem: Hic myrtum floresque legat, quos tinxit Adonis Sanguine, dilectus Veneri puer; aut Heliconem, Et colles Baccho, partim, Phboque sacratos Incolat. Hic, placidi latebris in mollibus antri, Silenum recubantem, et amico nectare venas Inflatum stupeat t.i.tubanti voce canentem; Et juvenum caecos ignes, et vulnera dicat, Et vacuae, pulsis terroribus, otia vitae, Fcundosque greges, et amaeni gaudia ruris: Haec et plura canens, avide bibat ore diserto Pegaseos latices; et nomen grande Poetae, Non Sapientis, amet. Lauro insignire poetam Quis dubitet? Primus viridanteis ipse coronas Imponam capiti, et meritas pro carmine laudes Ante alios dicam." --(455)

Entertaining this just admiration of his opponent, the Cardinal has been studious, while refuting his principles, to imitate as closely as possible the poetic style of Lucretius; and, accordingly, we find many n.o.ble and beautiful pa.s.sages interspersed amid the dry discussions of the _Anti-Lucretius_. In the first book, there is an elegant comparison, something like that by Wolsey in _Henry VIII._, of a man who had wantoned in the sunshine of prosperity, and was unprepared for the storms of adversity, to the tender buds of the fruit-tree blighted by the north-wind. The whole poem, indeed, is full of many beautiful and appropriate similes. I have not room to transcribe them, but may refer the reader to those in the first book, of a sick man turning to every side for rest, to a traveller following an _ignis fatuus_; in the second, motes dancing in the sun-beam to the atoms of Epicurus floating in the immensity of s.p.a.ce; in the third, the whole philosophy of Epicurus to the infinite variety of splendid but fallacious appearances produced by the shifting of scenery in our theatres, (line 90,) and the ident.i.ty of matter amid the various shapes it a.s.sumes, to the transformations of _Proteus_. The fourth book commences with a beautiful image of a traveller on a steep, looking back on his journey; immediately followed by a fine picture of the unhallowed triumph of Epicurus, and Religion weeping during the festival of youths to his honour. In the same book, there is a n.o.ble description of the river Anio, (line 1459,) and a comparison of the rising of sap in trees during spring to a fountain playing and falling back on itself (780845). We have in the fifth book a beautiful argument, that the soul is not to be thought material, because affected by the body, ill.u.s.trated by musical instruments (745). In the sixth book there occurs a charming description of the sensitive plant; and, finally, of a bird singing to his mate, to solace her while brooding over her young:-

"Haud secus in sylvis, ac frondes inter opacas, Ingenitum carmen modulatur musicus ales," &c.

Almost all modern didactic poems, whether treating of theology or physics, are composed in obvious imitation of the style and manner of Lucretius.

The poem of Aonius Palearius, _De Animi Immortalitate_, though written in contradiction to the system of Lucretius, concerning the mortality of the soul, is almost a _cento_ made up from lines or half lines of the Roman bard; and the same may be said of that extensive cla.s.s of Latin poems, in which the French Jesuits of the seventeenth century have ill.u.s.trated the various phaenomena of nature(456).

Others have attempted to explain the philosophy of Newton in Latin verse; but the Newtonian system is better calculated to be demonstrated than sung-

"Ornari res ipsa negat-contenta doceri."

It is a philosophy founded on the most sublime calculations; and it is in other lines and numbers than those of poetry, that the book of nature must now be written. If we attempt to express arithmetical or algebraical figures in verse, circ.u.mlocution is always required; more frequently they cannot be expressed at all; and if they could, the lines would have no advantage over prose: nay, would have considerable disadvantage, from obscurity and prolixity. All this is fully confirmed by an examination of the writings of those who have attempted to embellish the sublime system of Newton with the charms of poetry. If we look, for example, into the poem of Boscovich on Eclipses, or still more, into the work of Benedict Stay, we shall see, notwithstanding the advantage they possessed of writing in a language so flexible as the Latin, and so capable of inversion,

"The shifts and turns, The expedients and inventions multiform, To which the mind resorts in search of terms(457)."

The latter of these writers employs 36 lines in expressing the law of Kepler, "that the squares of the periodical times of the revolutions of the planets, are as the cubes of their mean distances from the sun." These lines, too, which are considered by Stay himself, and by Boscovich, his annotator, as the triumph of the philosophic muse, are so obscure as to need a long commentary. Indeed, the poems of both these eminent men consist of a string of enigmas, whereas the princ.i.p.al and almost only ornament of philosophy is perspicuity. After all, only what are called the round numbers can be expressed in verse, and this is necessarily done in a manner so obscure and perplexed as ever to need a prose explanation.

With Lucretius and his subject it was totally the reverse. From the incorrectness of his philosophical views, or rather those of his age, much of his labour has been employed, so to speak, in embodying straws in amber. Yet, with all its defects, this ancient philosophy, if it deserve the name, had the advantage, that its indefinite nature rendered it highly susceptible of an embellishment, which can never be bestowed on a more precise and accurate system. Hence, perhaps, it may be safely foretold, that the philosophical poem of Lucretius will remain unrivalled; and also, that the prediction of Ovid concerning it will be verified-

"Carmina sublimis, tunc sunt peritura Lucreti Exitio terras c.u.m dabit una dies."

The refutations and imitations of Lucretius, contained in modern didactic poems, have led me away from what may be considered as my proper subject, and I therefore return to those poets who were coeval with that author, with whose works we have been so long occupied. Of these the most distinguished was

CAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS,

who was nearly contemporary with Lucretius, having come into the world a few years after him, and having survived him but a short period.

In every part of our survey of Latin Literature, we have had occasion to remark the imitative spirit of Roman poetry, and the constant a.n.a.logy and resemblance of all the productions of the Latian muse to some Greek original. None of his poetical predecessors was more versed in Greek literature than Catullus; and his extensive knowledge of its beauties procured for him the appellation of _Doctus_(458). He translated many of the shorter and more delicate pieces of the Greeks; an attempt which hitherto had been thought impossible, though the broad humour of their comedies, the vehement pathos of their tragedies, and the romantic interest of the Odyssey, had stood the transformation. His stay in Bithynia, though little advantageous to his fortune, rendered him better acquainted than he might otherwise have been with the productions of Greece, and he was therefore, in a great degree, indebted to this expedition (on which he always appears to have looked back with mortification and disappointment) for those felicitous turns of expression, that grace, simplicity, and purity, which are the characteristics of his poems, and of which hitherto Greece alone had afforded models. Indeed, in all his verses, whether elegiac or heroic, we perceive his imitation of the Greeks, and it must be admitted that he has drawn from them his choicest stores. His h.e.l.lenisms are frequent-his images, similes, metaphors, and addresses to himself, are all Greek; and even in the versification of his odes we see visible traces of their origin. Nevertheless, he was the founder of a new school of _Latin_ poetry; and as he was the first who used such variety of measures, and perhaps himself invented some(459), he was amply ent.i.tled to call the poetical volume which he presented to Cornelius Nepos, _Lepidum Novum Libellum_. The beautiful expressions, too, and idioms of the Greek language, which he has so carefully selected, are woven with such art into the texture of his composition, and so aptly figure the impa.s.sioned ideas of his amorous muse, that they have all the fresh and untarnished hues of originality.

This elegant poet was born of respectable parents, in the territory of Verona, but whether at the town so called, or on the peninsula of Sirmio, which projects into the Lake Benacus, has been a subject of much controversy. The former opinion has been maintained by Maffei and Bayle(460), and the latter by Gyraldus(461), Schoell(462), Fuhrmann(463), and most modern writers.

The precise period, as well as place, of the birth of Catullus, is a topic of debate and uncertainty. According to the Eusebian Chronicle, he was born in 666, but, according to other authorities, in 667(464) or 668. In consequence of an invitation from Manlius Torquatus, one of the n.o.blest patricians of the state, he proceeded in early youth to Rome, where he appears to have kept but indifferent company, at least in point of moral character. He impaired his fortune so much by extravagance, that he had no one, as he complains,

"Fractum qui veteris pedem grabati In collo sibi collocare possit."

This, however, must partly have been written in jest, as his finances were always sufficient to allow him to keep up a delicious villa, on the peninsula of Sirmio, and an expensive residence at Tibur. With a view of improving his pecuniary circ.u.mstances, he adopted the usual Roman mode of re-establishing a diminished fortune, and accompanied Caius Memmius, the celebrated patron of Lucretius, to Bithynia, when he was appointed Praetor of that province. His situation, however, was but little meliorated by this expedition, and, in the course of it, he lost a beloved brother, who was along with him, and whose death he has lamented in verses never surpa.s.sed in delicacy or pathos. He came back to Rome with a shattered const.i.tution, and a lacerated heart. From the period of his return to Italy till his decease, his time appears to have been chiefly occupied with the prosecution of licentious amours, in the capital or among the solitudes of Sirmio. The Eusebian Chronicle places his death in 696, and some writers fix it in 705. It is evident, however, that he must have survived at least till 708, as Cicero, in his Letters, talks of his verses against Caesar and Mamurra as newly written, and first seen by Caesar in that year(465). The distracted and unhappy state of his country, and his disgust at the treatment which he had received from Memmius, were perhaps sufficient excuse for shunning political employments(466); but when we consider his taste and genius, we cannot help regretting that he was merely an idler, and a debauchee. He loved Clodia, (supposed to have been the sister of the infamous Clodius,) a beautiful but shameless woman, whom he has celebrated under the name of Lesbia(467), as comparing her to the Lesbian Sappho, her prototype in total abandonment to guilty love. He also numbered among his mistresses, Hypsithilla and Aufilena, ladies of Verona.

Among his friends, he ranked not only most men of pleasure and fashion in Rome, but many of her eminent literary and political characters, as Cornelius Nepos, Cicero, and Asinius Pollio. His enmities seem to have been as numerous as his loves or friendships, and compet.i.tion in poetry, or rivalship in gallantry, appears always to have been a sufficient cause for his dislike; and where an antipathy was once conceived, he was unable to put any restraint on the expression of his hostile feelings. His poems are chiefly employed in the indulgence and commemoration of these various pa.s.sions. They are now given to us without any order or attempt at arrangement: They were distributed, indeed, by Petrus Crinitus, into three cla.s.ses, lyric, elegiac, and epigrammatic,-a division which has been adopted in a few of the earlier editions; but there is no such separation in the best MSS., nor is it probable that they were originally thus cla.s.sed by the author, as he calls his book _Libellum Singularem_; and they cannot now be conveniently reduced under these heads, since several poems, as the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, are written in hexameter measure. To others, which may be termed occasional poems expressing to his friends a simple idea, or relating the occurrences of the day, in iambic or phalangian verse, it would be difficult to a.s.sign any place in a systematic arrangement. Under what cla.s.s, for instance, could we bring the poem giving a detail of his visit to the house of the courtezan, and the conversation which pa.s.sed there concerning Bithynia? The order, therefore, in which the poems have been arbitrarily placed by the latest editors and commentators, however immethodical, is the only one which can be followed, in giving an account of the miscellaneous productions of Catullus.

1. Is a modest and not inelegant dedication, by the poet, of the whole volume, to Cornelius Nepos, whom he compliments on having written a general history, in three books, an undertaking which had not previously been attempted by any Roman-

-- "Ausus es unus Italorum Omne aevum tribus explicare chartis."

2. _Ad Pa.s.serem Lesbiae_. This address of Catullus to the favourite sparrow of his mistress, Lesbia, is well known, and, has been always celebrated as a model of grace and elegance. Politian(468), Turnebus, and others, have discovered in this little poem an allegorical signification, which idea has been founded on a line in an epigram of Martial, _Ad Romam et Dindymum_-

"Quae si tot fuerint, quot ille dixit, _Donabo tibi pa.s.serem Catulli_(469)."

That by the _pa.s.ser Catulli_, however, Martial meant nothing more than an agreeable little epigram, in the style of Catullus, which he would address to Dindymus as his reward, is evident from another epigram, where it is obviously used in this sense-

"Sic forsan tener ausus est Catullus Magno mittere pa.s.serem Maroni(470)."

and also from that in which he compares a favourite whelp of Publius to the sparrow of Lesbia(471). That a real and _feathered_ sparrow was in the view of Catullus, is also evinced by the following ode, in which he laments the death of this favourite of his mistress. The erroneous notion taken up by Politian, has been happily enough ridiculed by Sannazzarius, in an epigram ent.i.tled _Ad Pulicianum_-