, iterum quae digna legi sint
Scripturus.--Sat. i. x.

Would you a reader's just esteem engage?
Correct with frequent care the blotted page.--Francis.

--------Vos, O
Pompilius sanguis, carmen reprehendite, quod non
Multa dies et multa litura coercuit, atque
Perfectum decies non castigavit ad uuguem.
De. Art. Poet.

Sons of Pompilius, with contempt receive,
Nor let the hardy poem hope to live,
Where time and full correction don't refine
The finished work, and polish every line.--Francis.

To the several causes above enumerated, as concurring to form the great
superiority of the Augustan age, as respects the productions of
literature, one more is to be subjoined, of a nature the most essential:
the liberal and unparalleled encouragement given to distinguished talents
by the emperor and his minister. This was a principle of the most
powerful energy: it fanned the flame of genius, invigorated every
exertion; and the poets who basked in the rays of imperial favour, and
the animating patronage of Mecaenas, experienced a poetic enthusiasm
which approached to real inspiration.

Having now finished the proposed explanation, relative to the celebrity
of the Augustan age, we shall conclude with recapitulating in a few words
the causes of this extraordinary occurrence.

The models, then, which the Romans derived from Grecian poetry, were the
finest productions of human genius; their incentives to emulation were
the strongest that could actuate the heart. With ardour, therefore, and
industry in composing, and with unwearied patience in polishing their
compositions, they attained to that glorious distinction in literature,
which no succeeding age has ever rivalled.

TIBERIUS NERO CAESAR.

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I. The patrician family of the Claudii (for there was a plebeian family
of the same name, no way inferior to the other either in power or
dignity) came originally from Regilli, a town of the Sabines. They
removed thence to Rome soon after the building of the city, with a great
body of their dependants, under Titus Tatius, who reigned jointly with
Romulus in the kingdom; or, perhaps, what is related upon better
authority, under Atta Claudius, the head of the family, who was admitted
by the senate into the patrician order six years after the expulsion of
the Tarquins. They likewise received from the state,