icism is indorsed by all scholars,--_Lyricorum Horatius fere solus
legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax_. No poetry was ever more
severely elaborated than that of Horace, and the melody of the language
imparts to it a peculiar fascination. If inferior to Pindar in passion
and loftiness, it glows with a more genial humanity and with purer wit.
It cannot be enjoyed fully except by those versed in the experiences of
life, who perceive in it a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober
enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the
masters of human thought.

It is the fashion to depreciate the original merits of this poet, as
well as those of Virgil, Plautus, and Terence, because they derived so
much assistance from the Greeks. But the Greeks also borrowed from one
another. Pure originality is impossible. It is the mission of art to add
to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the whole realm. Even
Shakspeare, the most original of modern poets, was vastly indebted to
those who went before him, and he has not escaped the hypercriticism of
minute observers.

In this mention of lyrical poetry I have not spoken of Catullus,
unrivalled in tender lyric, the greatest poet before the Augustan era.
He was born 87 B.C., and enjoyed the friendship of the most celebrated
characters. One hundred and sixteen of his poems have come down to us,
most of which are short, and many of them defiled by great coarseness
and sensuality. Critics say, however, that whatever he touched he
adorned; that his vigorous simplicity, pungent wit, startling invective,
and felicity of expression make him one of the great poets of the
Latin language.

In didactic poetry Lucretius was pre-eminent, and is regarded by
Schlegel as the first of Roman poets in native genius. He was born 95
B.C., and died at the age of forty-two by his own hand. His principal
poem "De Rerum Natura" is a delineation of the Epicurean philosophy, and
treats of all the great subjects of thought with which his age was
conversant. Somewhat resembling Pope's "Essay on Man" in style and
subject, it is immeasurably superior in poetical genius. It is a
lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, upon the
great phenomena of the outward world. As a painter and worshipper of
Nature, Lucretius was superior to all the poets of antiquity. His skill
in presenting abstruse speculations is marvellous, and his outbursts of
poetic genius are matchless in