speaks of Andronicus and Ennius in particular, as themselves half Greeks, and of their works as mere translations from the Greek.* Horace indeed admits that there was, now and then, a graceful expression, and here and there a polished line; and as, in the few fragments remaining of these ancient poets, we may find some things to admire, and some even that have been imitated by their most celebrated snccessors, we may fairly give them credit for much more of the same kind; especially when it is considered that the shreds and patches we possess were not preserved as patterns of beauty or excellence, but (except in the case of Ennius) principally adduced by ancient grammarians as authorities for the signification of some single word. Senecat has applauded Nævius's sentiment, and Cicero repeatedly applied it, ‡ Virgil's 'Lætus sum Laudari abs te, pater, laudato viro.' 'Disce, puer, virtutem ex me, verumque laborem, was no doubt suggested by the less elegant but more pithy phrase of Attius 6 Virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris.'-ap. Macrob. 1. vi. c. 1. The celebrated tyrant's maxim, adopted by Caligula,§ declaimed on by Seneca, || and, as Erasmus says of it, a nemine scriptorum non usurpata, præcipue M. Tullio familiaris,' was that of Atreus in Attius- Öderint dum metuant.' ¶ Ovid (in Metamorph. xiii. 20) has copied the coarseness of Pacuvius, who (in Armorum Judicio) makes his hero say,— 'An quis est, qui te esse dignum quicum certetur putet?' instead of imitating the elegance of Attius on the same occasion'Nam trophæum ferre me a forti viro Pulchrum est: sin autem et vincar, vinci a tali nullum est probrum.' The first sentiment was not more appropriate to the temper and fate of Ajax, than the latter to the character of Ulysses. These specimens of the few fragments that remain may give some little idea of the style of writers called ancients by those whom we denominate the classic authors of Rome. Their versification was rude, though a great improvement on the harsh and irregular Saturnian; and Ennius in particular seems to have succeeded in completely establishing the hexameter introduced by Andronicus. * De Illustr. Grammat. c. i. This, however, could not have been just with regard to Ennius's most celebrated work-' The Annals.' + Epist. 102. § Sueton. Calig. 30. Tusc. 4. Ep. ad Div. 5, 12, and 15, 16. Pison. 7, &c. He, He, too, by refining and combining passages of the rude old popular poems with others from the Greek comic writers, gave commencement to the regular satire, in which alone the Roman literature can claim originality; though Ennius himself had no such pretension, not only borrowing, as we have said, from Greeks and Tuscans, but from his immediate predecessor, whom he affected to despise; a proceeding on which Cicero tells him'a Nævio vel sumsisti multa, si fateris; vel, si negas, surripuisti.'* When authors can obtain an easy celebrity by imitation, they will not be at the trouble of original composition: and at the time of the first Roman writers, as Mr. Dunlop has observed, the productions of Grecian literature were almost as new to the Romans as the most perfectly original compositions would have been.' And though, by these imitations, they made an earlier approach to the knowledge of the best models, they were, from the same cause, prevented from attaining equal excellence by efforts of their own ; quia nunquam par sit imitator auctori; hæc natura est rei semper citra veritatem est similitudo.' Of the Annals' of Ennius, there remains so much both of power and beauty, that Mr. Dunlop's designation of them as a 'versified newspaper,' however applicable to the inartificialness of the plan, is by no means a just description of the matter; and this much some of the critic's own citations may prove. For a like reason, the classing under such a description the Araucana of Ercilla and the Henriade of Voltaire, is equally indefensible. The latter especially had to contend with an unpoetical language, and, as far as the ancient style of epic is concerned, an unpoetic generation; the amantes mira Camoenæe' would only have been ridiculed in an age which Voltaire himself had unhappily taught to delight in sarcastic incredulity. The popularity which the genius of Ennius, and the vanity and patriotic enthusiasm of the nation gave to his historic poems, produced a long succession of similar works, (ceasing only with the decline of literature under the empire,) many of which have perished; but probably very favourable specimens remain in the regular and sustained poems of Lucan and Silius Italicus, and in the shorter flights of Claudian. Variety of composition cost Ennius nothing, for he was a borrower, and had the whole range of Greek literature whereon to levy contributions; and perhaps the work which had the greatest influence on society was a translation of the romantic story of Evemerus, who professed to have discovered an island where he found records of the births and deaths of the principal deities, and therefore asserted the whole generation of Olympus to have been *Brut. 19. mere mere mortals, deified by superstition. This soon became the general opinion among men of information; and, gradually spreading among the people, prepared the downfal of the elegant but sand-built structure of heathen mythology. From occasionally puerile conceits of alliteration, &c. in Ennius and his fraternity, Mr. Dunlop infers the error of those who 'suppose that false taste and jingle are peculiar to the latter ages of poetry, and that the early bards of a country are free from concetti; but the inference itself is erroneous, since, though the writers in question were the early bards of Rome, they were themselves Greeks, in the latter ages of Grecian literature; for, when not so by birth, they became so in the habits of education, and the consequent formation of their taste. Such was Plautus, a native of Umbria, the first Roman author of whom several productions have come down to us entire and as he may be presumed to be an improvement on his predecessors, his productions may afford a scale by which to estimate not only the earlier Roman writers, but the Grecian authors from whom they borrowed, and of whose writings there are now scarcely any remains. And considering that the subject of imitation, both by Plautus and Terence, was the latest or reformed comedy of the most refined period of Grecian literature, it is surprising to observe the great want of variety in their characters-the sameness in their plots-the frequent clumsiness in the conduct of them, and the rudeness of the verse, which has neither the ease of prose nor the musicalness of metre. In this last respect, no doubt, Plautus was a great improvement on Eunius, and Terence on Plautus; but all the learning and ingenuity of Scaliger, Erasmus, Fabricius, &c. with all the legerdemain of criticism-substituting, transposing, altering, and curtailing words at will-have failed to elicit anything like a regular system of versification-anything which might not be equally made out of any prose composition-for, nihil est prosa scriptum, quod non redigi possit in quædam versiculorum membra.'* And no marvel, when Quintilian could say of Terence's writings, plus adhuc habitura gratiæ, si intra versus trimetros stetissent; and when Cicero distinctly admits, in speaking, not of Terence only, but of his whole class, comicorum senarii propter similitudinem sermonis sic sæpe sunt abjecti, ut nonnunquam vix in his numerus et versus intelligi possint.' With regard, however, to sameness of plot and character, either in Greeks or Romans, we are not to attribute this so much to poverty of imagination, as to that comparatively simple structure of society, which admitted few of those complicated relations, and consequent variety of events and diversity of character, with which * Quintil. Instit. ix. 4. Id. ibid. x. 1. Orator. i. 55. modern modern life is checkered. Accordingly, in almost every play, we have a father whose indulgence is abused, or severity duped by a profligate son and his rapacious mistress, aided by a swindling slave, who, like the fox in the fable-books, instead of being reprobated for his knavery, is admired for his adroitness, which, however, is often of so poor a kind as to imply absolute fatuity in the party to be cheated. To these are sometimes added the bully and the parasite, and occasionally, it would seem, merely for variety, not contributing to the conduct of the plot. The gross contrivances of the poet, in stating by prologue the circumstances introductory to his story, are defended by Mr. Dunlop (i. 319); but the defence of the poet becomes the accusation of the audience, if their dulness made such explanations necessary; and though that might apologize for introductions similar to those we find in Shakspeare's Chorus, Rumour, &c. what shall be said of the clumsy avoidance of repetition by the question of ' Quomodo' being answered with 'Horum caussa hæc agitur spectatorum Fabula. Hi sciunt, qui hîc affuerunt; vobis post narravero.' -Plaut. Pseud. ii. 4. 30. In another passage we find the same contrivance, near the end of the play, the whole of which has been carried on in the public street; and the absurdity of this mode of preserving the unity of place is thus avowed with amusing simplicity— · Eutych. Eamus intro; non utibilis hic locus factis tuis; Dum memoramus arbitri ut sint qui prætereant per vias. The whole representation must have been very gross when passages could be tolerated so entirely destructive of even the momentary supposition of reality. As the Roman audience was probably not very conversant with either chronology or geography, the dramatists had no great occasion to be nice in their calculations, and we find the critics often very learnedly convicting them of aunihilating space and time to preserve the unities-performing journeys during the action which would have required months to accomplish; yet it is singular that the critics should have omitted to notice the most whimsical of anachronisms-Amphytrion swearing by Hercules! (Plaut. Amphytr. ii. 2. 104.) The same want of refinement in the poet or his audience, or both, so conspicuous in the inartificial conduct of his plots, appears also in the coarseness of the language and sentiment of the scenes. What a hideous idea is presented of the profligacy of the much lauded times of Cato the censor and Scipio Africanus, when we hear a hero, for whom the interest of the audience is claimed, claimed, wishing that news might be brought him of his father's death, that he might lavish the inheritance on his harlot ! Utinam meus nunc mortuus pater ad me nuncietur, Ut ego exhæredem meis bonis me faciam, atque hæc sit hæres.' And the poet, it seems, could confidently anticipate the toleration of such atrocity in a nation pretending to rank filial piety next to devotion of the gods! Yet, with all this, there is a frequent pithy sententiousness in Plautus, which proves his mind to have been imbued with higher things, and that his audience must have been capable of appreciating them. In truth such incongruities are the natural result of a national religion which afforded no standard of morality, but left each case to be adjudged by the good or bad feeling which chanced to be predominant; with this preponderance always acting in favour of evil, that there was no crime, however monstrous, which had not the sanction of some god's example. Though the style of Plautus is harsh in structure, its pure Latinity was much praised by ancient critics and grammarians. But Mr. Dunlop, in common with many other critics, has overrated this testimony in quoting the high authority of Varro for saying that If the Muses were to speak Latin, they would employ the diction of Plautus.' It is probable, indeed, that Varro eulogized his diction, but Quintilian, in the passage referred to by Mr. Dunlop, only mentions that Varro cites this as the opinion of Ælius Stolo. Cicero is frequent in his praise, and generally for his facetiousness; in which quality both have been often compared and lauded by ancient critics, and both censured by those of a more refined period. Horace seems to have been indignant at the estimation in which Plautus and his jokes were held.§ + Of the contemporaries and successors of Plautus on the stage, Terence is the only one of whom enough remains to enable us to institute a comparison. Whether from accident or individuality of character, their lots in life were cast in very different ranks, and this seems to have produced a difference in their writings, for which the mere interval of about eleven years between the death of Plautus and the performance of the Andria cannot account. A general amenity distinguishes Terence his style is easier and more polished, and the manners and sentiments of his characters more refined. Cicero describes him as Quicquid come loquens, ac omnia dulcia dicens';-(in Limen. frag.)—but this compliment is more than counterbalanced by Cæsar's reproach of want of vigor, which we must admit as a general defect, and which made that consummate master of taste characterize him as a 'dwarfish Menander' (dimidiate Menander).- Sueton. Terent. Vit. *Plaut. Mostel. i. 3. 76. Off. i. 29. Dunlop, i. 239, and Quintil. Institut. x. 1. § Epist. ii. 1, 170. Art. Poet. 53 and 270. We |