a journey, performed by Lucilius, along the rich coast of Campania, to
Capua and Naples, and thence all the way to Rhegium and the Straits of
Messina. He appears particularly to have described a combat of gladiators,
and the manifold distresses he experienced from the badness of the roads—
“Præterea omne iter hoc est labosum atque lutosum.”
Horace, in the fifth satire of his first book, has, in imitation of
Lucilius, comically described a journey from Rome to Brundusium, and like
him has introduced a gladiatorial combat. The fourth satire of Lucilius
stigmatizes the luxury and vices of the rich, and has been imitated by
Persius in his third book. Aulus Gellius informs us, that in part of his
fifth satire he exposed, with great wit and power of ridicule, those
literary affectations of using such words in one sentence as terminate
with a similar jingle, or consist of an equal number of syllables. He has
shown how childish such affectations are, in that passage wherein he
complains to a friend that he had neglected to visit him while sick. In
the ninth satire he ridicules the blunders in orthography, committed by
the transcribers of MSS., and gives rules for greater accuracy. Of the
tenth book little remains; but it is said to have been the perusal of it
which first inflamed Persius with the rage of writing satires. The
eleventh seems to have consisted chiefly of personal invectives against
Quintus Opimius, Lucius Cotta, and others of his contemporaries, whose
vices, or rivalship with his patron Scipio, exposed them to his enmity and
vengeance. The sixteenth was entitled _Collyra_, having been chiefly
devoted to the celebration of the praises of Collyra, the poet’s
mistress(420). Of many of the other books, as the 12th, 13th, 18th, 21st,
and four following, so small fragments remain, that it is impossible to
conjecture the subject; for although we may see the scope of insulated
lines, their matter may have been some incidental illustration, and not
the principal subject of the satire. Even in those books, of which there
are a greater number of fragments extant, they are so disjoined that it is
as difficult to put them legibly together as the scattered leaves of the
Sibyl; and the labour of Douza, who has been the most successful in
arranging the broken lines, so as to make a connected sense, is by many
considered as but a conjectural and philological sport. Those few
passages, however, which are in any degree entire, show great force of
satire; as for example, the following account of the life led by the
Romans:—
“Nunc vero a mane ad noctem, festo atque profesto,
Totus item pariterque dies, populusque patresque
Jactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam,
Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti;
Verba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose,
Blanditia certare, bonum simulare virum se,
Insidias facere, ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes.”
The verses in which our poet bitterly ridicules the superstition of those
who adored idols, and mistook them for true gods, are written in something
of the same spirit—
“Terricolas Lamias, Fauni quas, Pompiliique
Instituere Numæ, tremit has, his omnia ponit:
Ut pueri infantes credunt signa omnia ahena
Vivere, et esse homines; et sic isti omnia ficta
Vera putant: credunt signis cor inesse ahenis—
Pergula pictorum, veri nihil, omnia ficta(421).”
On this passage Lactantius remarks, that such superstitious fools are much
more absurd than the children to whom the satirist compares them, as the
latter only mistake statues for men, the former for gods. There are two
lines in the 26th book, which every nation should remember in the hour of
disaster—
“Ut populus Romanus victus vi, et superatus præliis
Sæpe est multis; bello vero nunquam, in quo sunt omnia(422).”
But the most celebrated and longest passage we now have from Lucilius, is
his definition of _Virtus_—
“Virtus, Albine, est, pretium persolvere verum,
Queis in versamur, queis vivimus rebus, potesse:
Virtus est homini, scire id quod quæque habeat res;
Virtus, scire homini rectum, utile, quid sit honestum,
Quæ bona, quæ mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inhonestum;
Virtus, quærendæ rei finem scire modumque:
Virtus, divitiis precium persolvere posse:
Virtus, id dare quod re ipsa debetur honori;
Hostem esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorum,
Contra, defensorem hominum morumque bonorum,
Magnificare hos, his bene velle, his vivere amicum:
Commoda præterea patriæ sibi prima putare,
Deinde parentûm, tertia jam postremaque nostra(423).”
Lactantius has cavilled at the different heads of this definition(424),
and perhaps some of them are more applicable to what we call wisdom, than
to our term virtue, which, as is well known, does not precisely correspond
to the Latin _Virtus_.
If we possessed a larger portion of the writings of Lucilius, I have no
doubt it would be found that subsequent Latin poets, particularly the
satirists, have not only copied various passages, but adopted the plan and
subjects of many of his satires. It has already been mentioned, that
Horace’s journey to Brundusium is imitated from that of Lucilius to Capua.
His severity recommended him to Persius and Juvenal, who both mention him
with respect. Persius, indeed, professes to follow him, but Juvenal seems
a closer imitator of his manner. The jingle in the two following lines,
from an uncertain book of Lucilius—
“Ut me scire volo mihi conscius sum, ne
Damnum faciam. Scire hoc se nescit, nisi alios id scire scierit,”
seems to have suggested Persius’ line—
“Scire tuum nihil, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter.”
The verses, “Cujus non audeo dicere nomen,” &c. quoted above, are copied
by Juvenal in his first satire, but with evident allusion to the works of
his predecessor. A line in the first book—
“Quis leget hæc? mîn’ tu istud ais? nemo, Hercule, nemo,”
has been imitated by Persius in the very commencement of his satires—
“O curas hominum! O quantum est in rebus inane!
Quis leget hæc? mîn’ tu istud ais? nemo, Hercule, nemo.”
Virgil’s phrase, so often quoted, “Non omnia possumus omnes,” is in the
fifth book of Lucilius—
“Major erat natu; non omnia possumus omnes.”
Were the whole works of Lucilius extant, many more such imitations might
be discovered and pointed out. It is not on this account, however, that
their loss is chiefly to be deplored. Had they remained entire, they would
have been highly serviceable to philological learning. They would have
informed us also of many incidents of Roman history, and would have
presented us with the most complete draught of ancient Roman manners, and
genuine Roman originals, which were painted from life, and at length
became the model of the inimitable satires of imperial Rome.
Besides satirizing the wicked, under which category he probably classed
all his enemies, Lucilius also employed his pen in praise of the brave and
virtuous. He wrote, as we learn from Horace, a panegyric on Scipio
Africanus, but whether the elder or younger is not certain:—
“Attamen et justum poteras et scribere fortem
Scipiadam, ut sapiens Lucilius(425).”
Lucilius was also author of a comedy entitled _Nummularia_, of which only
one line remains; but we are informed by Porphyrion, the scholiast on
Horace, that the plot turned on Pythias, a female slave, tricking her
master, Simo, out of a sum of money, with which to portion his daughter.
Lucilius was followed in his satiric career by Sævius Nicanor, the
grammarian, who was the freedman of one Marcius, as we learn from the only
line of his poetry which is extant, and which has been preserved by
Suetonius, or whoever was the author of the work _De Illustribus
Grammaticis_:—
“Sævius Nicanor Marci libertus negabit.”
Publius Terentius Varro, sirnamed Atacinus, from the place of his birth,
also attempted the Lucilian satire, but with no great success as we learn
from Horace:—
“Hoc erat, experto frustra Varrone Atacino.”
He was more fortunate, it is said, in his geographical poems, and in that
_De Bello Sequanico_(426).
We may range among the satires of this period, the _Diræ_ of the
grammarian, Valerius Cato, who, being despoiled of his patrimony,
especially his favourite villa at Tusculum, during the civil wars of
Marius and Sylla, in order to make way for the soldiery, avenged himself,
by writing poetical imprecations on his lost property. This poem is
sometimes inscribed _Diræ in Battarum_, which is inaccurate, as it gives
an idea that Battarus is the name of the person who had got possession of
the villa, and on whom the imprecations were uttered. There is not,
however, a word of execration against any of those who had obtained his
lands, except in so far as he curses the lands themselves, praying that
they may become barren—that they may be inundated with rain—blasted with
pestiferous breezes, and, in short, laid waste by every species of
agricultural calamity. Joseph Scaliger thinks that Battarus was a river,
and Nic. Heinsius that it was a hill. It seems evident enough from the
poem itself, that Battarus was some well known satiric or invective bard,
whom the author invokes, in order to excite himself to reiterated
imprecations(427):—
“Rursus et hoc iterum repetamus, Battare, carmen.”
The concluding part of the _Diræ_, as edited by Wernsdorff(428), is a
lamentation for the loss of a mistress, called Lydia, of whom the
unfortunate poet had likewise been deprived. This, however, has been
regarded by others as a separate poem from the _Diræ_. Cato was also
author of a poem called _Diana_, and a prose work entitled _Indignatio_,
in which he related the history of his misfortunes. He lived to an
advanced age, but was oppressed by extreme poverty, and afflicted with a
painful disease, as seems to be implied in the lines of his friend Furius
Bibaculus, preserved in the treatise _De Illustribus Grammaticis_:—
“Quem tres calculi, et selibra farris,
Racemi duo, tegula sub unâ,
Ad summam prope nutriunt senectam(429).”
The stream of Roman poetry appears to have suffered a temporary stagnation
during the period that elapsed from the destruction of Carthage, which
fell in 607, till the death of Sylla, in 674. Lucilius, with whose
writings we have been engaged, was the only poet who flourished in this
long interval. The satirical compositions which he introduced were not
very generally nor successfully imitated. The race of dramatists had
become almost extinct, and even the fondness for regular comedy and
tragedy had greatly diminished. This was a pause, (though for a shorter
period,) like that which was made in modern Italy, from the death of
Petrarch till the rise of its bright constellation of poets, at the end of
the 15th century. But the taste for literature which had been excited, and
the luminous events which occurred, prevented either nation from being
again enveloped in darkness. The ancient Romans could not be electrified
by the fall of Carthage as their descendants were by the capture of
Constantinople. But even the total subjugation of Greece, and extended
dominion in Asia, were slower, at least in their influence on the efforts
of poetry, than might have been anticipated from what was experienced
immediately after the conquest of Magna Græcia. Any retrograde movement,
however, was prevented by the more close and frequent intercourse which
was opened with Greece. There, Athens and Rhodes were the chief allies of
the Roman republic. These states had renounced their freedom, for the
security which flattery and subservience obtained for them; but while they
ceased to be considerable in power, they still continued pre eminent in
learning. A number of military officers and civil functionaries, whom
their respective employments carried to Greece—a number of citizens, whom
commercial speculations attracted to its towns, became acquainted with and
cherished Grecian literature. That contempt which the ancient and severe
republicans had affected for its charms, gave place to the warmest
enthusiasm. The Roman youth were instructed by Greeks, or by Romans who
had studied in Greece. A literary tour in that country was regarded as
forming an essential part in the education of a young patrician. Rhodes,
Mitylene, and Athens, were chiefly resorted to, as the purest fountains
from which the inspiring draughts of literature could be imbibed. This
constant intercourse led to a knowledge of the philosophy and finest
classical productions of Greece. It was thus that Lucretius was enabled to
embody in Roman verse the whole Epicurean system, and Catullus to imitate
or translate the lighter amatory and epigrammatic compositions of the
Greeks. Both these poets flourished during the period on which we are now
entering, and which extended from the death of Sylla to the accession of
Augustus. The former of them,
TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS,
was the most remarkable of the Roman writers, as he united the precision
of the philosopher to the fire and fancy of the poet; and, while he seems
to have had no perfect model among the Greeks, has left a production
unrivalled, (perhaps not to be rivalled,) by any of the same kind in later
ages.
Of the life of Lucretius very little is known: He lived at a period
abounding with great political actors, and full of portentous events—a
period when every bosom was agitated with terror or hope, and when it must
have been the chief study of a prudent man, especially if a votary of
philosophy and the Muses, to hide himself as much as possible amid the
shades. The year of his birth is uncertain. According to the chronicle of
Eusebius, he was born in 658, being thus nine years younger than Cicero,
and two or three younger than Cæsar. To judge from his style, he might be
supposed older than either: but this, as appears from the example of
Sallust, is no certain test, as his archaisms may have arisen from the
imitation of ancient writers; and we know that he was a fond admirer of
Ennius.
A taste for Greek philosophy had been excited at Rome for a considerable
time before this era, and Lucretius was sent, with other young Romans of
rank, to study at Athens. The different schools of philosophy in that city
seem, about this period, to have been frequented according as they
received a temporary fashion from the comparative abilities of the
professors who presided in them. Cicero, for example, who had attended the
Epicurean school at Athens, and became himself an Academic, intrusted his
son to the care of Cratippus, a peripatetic philosopher. After the death
of its great founder, the school of Epicurus had for some time declined in
Greece: but at the period when Lucretius was sent to Athens, it had again
revived under the patronage of L. Memmius, whose son was a fellow-student
of Lucretius; as were also Cicero, his brother Quintus, Cassius, and
Pomponius Atticus. At the time when frequented by these illustrious
youths, the Gardens of Epicurus were superintended by Zeno and Phædrus,
both of whom, but particularly the latter, have been honoured with the
panegyric of Cicero. “We formerly, when we were boys,” says he, in a
letter to Caius Memmius, “knew him as a profound philosopher, and we still
recollect him as a kind and worthy man, ever solicitous for our
improvement(430).”
One of the dearest, perhaps the dearest friend of Lucretius, was this
Memmius, who had been his school-fellow, and whom, it is supposed, he
accompanied to Bithynia, when appointed to the government of that
province(431). The poem _De Rerum Natura_, if not undertaken at the
request of Memmius, was doubtless much encouraged by him; and Lucretius,
in a dedication expressed in terms of manly and elegant courtesy, very
different from the servile adulation of some of his great successors,
tells him, that the much desired pleasure of his friendship, was what
enabled him to endure any toil or vigils—
“Sed tua me virtus tamen, et sperata voluptas
Suavis amicitiæ, quemvis ecferre laborem
Suadet, et inducit nocteis vigilare serenas.”
The life of the poet was short, but happily was sufficiently prolonged to
enable him to complete his poem, though, perhaps, not to give some
portions of it their last polish. According to Eusebius, he died in the
44th year of his age, by his own hands, in a paroxysm of insanity,
produced by a philtre, which Lucilia, his wife or mistress, had given him,
with no design of depriving him of life or reason, but to renew or
increase his passion. Others suppose that his mental alienation proceeded
from melancholy, on account of the calamities of his country, and the
exile of Memmius,—circumstances which were calculated deeply to affect his
mind(432). There seems no reason to doubt the melancholy fact, that he
perished by his own hand.
The poem of Lucretius, _De Rerum Natura_, which he composed during the
lucid intervals of his malady, is, as the name imports, philosophic and
didactic, in the strictest acceptation of these terms. Poetry, I think,
may chiefly be considered as occupied in three ways.—1. As describing the
passions of men, with the circumstances which give birth to them.—2. As
painting images or scenery.—3. As communicating truth. Of these classes of
poetry, the most interesting is the first, in which we follow the hero
placed at short intervals in different situations, calculated to excite
various sympathies in our heart, while our imagination is at the same time
amused or astonished by the singularity of the incidents which such
situations produce. Those poems, therefore, are the most attractive, in
which, as in the _Odyssey_ and _Orlando_, knights or warriors plough
unknown seas, and wander in strange lands—where, at every new horizon
which opens, we look for countries inhabited by giants, or monsters, or
wizards of supernatural powers—where, whether sailing on the deep, or
anchoring on the shore, the hero dreads—
“Lest Gorgons, rising from infernal lakes,
With horrors armed, and curls of hissing snakes,
Should fix him, stiffened at the monstrous sight,
A stony image in eternal night.”
These are the themes of surest and most powerful effect: It is by these
that we are most truely moved; and it is the choice of such subjects, if
ably conducted, which chiefly stamps the poet—
“Humanæ Dominum mentis, cordisque Tyrannum.”
So strongly, indeed, and so universally, has this been felt, that in the
second species of poetry, the _Descriptive_, our sympathy must be
occasionally awakened by the actions or passions of human beings; and, to
ensure success, the poet must describe the effects of the appearance of
nature on our sensations. “In the poem of the _Shipwreck_,” says Lord
Byron, “is it the storm or the ship which most interests?—Both much,
undoubtedly; but without the vessel, what should we care for the
tempest(433)?” Virgil had early felt, that without Lycoris, the _gelidi
fontes_ and _mollia prata_ would seem less refreshing and less smooth—he
had found that the grass and the groves withered at the departure, but
revived at the return of Phyllis. The most soothing and picturesque of the
incidents of a woodland landscape,—the blue smoke curling upwards from a
cottage concealed by the trees, derives half its softening charm, by
reminding us—
“That in the same did wonne some living wight.”
Of all the three species above enumerated, _Philosophical_ poetry, which
occupies the mind with minute portions of external nature, is the least
attractive. Mankind will always prefer books which move to those which
instruct—_ennui_ being more burdensome than ignorance. In philosophic
poetry, our imagination cannot be gratified by the desert isles, the
boundless floods, or entangled forests, with all the marvels they conceal,
which rise in such rapid and rich succession in the fascinating narrative
of the sea tost Ulysses(434); nor can we there have our curiosity roused,
and our emotions excited, by such lines as those with which Ariosto
awakens the attention of his readers—
“Non furo iti duo miglia, che sonare
Odon la selva, che gli cinge intorno,
Con tal rumor et strepito che pare
Che tremi la foresta d’ogni intorno.”
Besides, as has been observed by Montesquieu, reason is sufficiently
chained, though we fetter her not with rhyme; and, on the other hand,
poetry loses much of its freedom and lightness, if clogged with the bonds
of reason. The great object of poetry (according to a trite remark,) is to
afford pleasure; but philosophic poetry affords less pleasure than epic,
descriptive, or dramatic. The versifier of philosophic subjects is in
danger of producing a work neither interesting enough for the admirers of
sentiment and imagination, nor sufficiently profound for philosophers. He
will sometimes soar into regions where many of his readers are unable to
follow him, and, at other times, he will lose the suffrage of a few, by
interweaving fictions amid the severe and simple truth.
It is the business of the philosopher to analyze the objects of nature. He
must pay least attention to those which chiefly affect the sense and
imagination, while he minutely considers others, which, though less
striking, are more useful for classification, and the chief purposes he
has in view. The poet, on the other hand, avoiding dry and abstract
definitions, rather combines than analyzes, and dwells more on the
sensible phænomena of nature, than her mysterious and scientific workings.
Thus, what the botanist considers is the number of _stamina_, and their
situation in a flower, while the Muse describes only its colours, and the
influence of its odours—
“She loves the rose, by rivers loves to dream,
Nor heeds why blooms the rose, why flows the stream—
She loves its colours, though she may not know,
Why sun-born Iris paints the showery bow.”
But though philosophic poetry be, of all others, the most unfavourable for
the exertion of poetical genius, its degree of beauty and interest will,
in a great measure, depend on what parts of his subject the poet selects,
and on the extent and number of digressions of which it admits. It is
evident, that the philosophic poet should pass over as lightly as may be,
all dry and recondite doctrines, and enlarge on the topics most
susceptible of poetical ornament. “Le Tableau de la Nature Physique,” says
Voltaire, “est lui seule d’une richesse, d’une varieté, d’une etendue à
occuper des siécles d’étude; mais tous les details ne sont pas favorable à
la poésie. On n’ exige pas du poete les meditations du physicien et les
calculs de l’astronomie: c’est à l’observateur à déterminer l’attraction
et les mouvemens des corps celestes; c’est au poete à peindre leur
balancement, leur harmonie, et leurs immuables révolutions. L’un
distinguera les classes nombreuses d’etres organisés qui peuplent les
elémens divers; l’autre décririra d’un trait hardi, lumineux et rapide
cette echelle immense et continue, ou les limites des regnes se
confondent. Que le confident de la nature develope le prodige de la greffe
des arbres—c’est assez pour Virgile de l’exprimer en deux beaux vers—
“Exiit ad cœlum ramis felicibus arbos,
Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma(435).”