And over and above this, as the selections have been carefully made or revised, and are graduated in length, the volume-consisting entirely, as it does, of choice passages of Latin elegiac verse-may, it is thought, be useful for "repetition." It is traditionally supposed that he who wishes to write. English prose with elegance must give his days and nights to Addison. So, if any one wishes to excel in Latin elegiac verse composition, he must first commit to memory large portions of Ovid, as the great master in this branch of poetry. PERCIVAL FROST. Rumburgh Vicarage, SHORT ACCOUNT OF OVID AND TIBULLUS. PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO was born at Sulmo, a town of the Peligni, A.U.C. 711. His family was of equestrian rank, and possessed a liberal fortune. His father, who wished to educate him for the bar, sent him at an early age to Rome, to learn the liberal arts and sciences: he began to plead in the Forum, agreeably to the wishes of his father, and acquired both reputation and public employment; but he was born a poet, and the laborious profession of the law did not suit his taste; accordingly, as soon as his father died, he gave himself up entirely to the Muses. His amatory works were his first productions; he then wrote his books of Metamorphoses, which he left imperfect, and his tragedy of Medea, which is lost. These works raised his reputation to a great height at Rome. Falling under the suspicion of Augustus, either because he expressed a passion for his daughter Julia in some of his poems, or because he was a witness of some dark crime of the prince, or for some other cause (for nothing certain is known on this head), he was banished, a 3 viii SHORT ACCOUNT OF OVID AND TIBULLUS. on the fictitious charge of being a corruptor of youth, to Tomos, on the borders of the Euxine; it was here, amid the hardships of war, barbarity, and an inclement atmosphere, he wrote his Fasti, of which only six books have come down to us: his Tristia and most of his Epistles were also written during his exile. He had the happiness of reckoning amongst his friends and correspondents the poets Virgil, Horace, Propertius, and Tibullus. He died at Tomos, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and the eighth of his banishment. Tibullus Aulus Albius was one of the Augustan writers. He served under Messala Corvinus, but soon left soldiering, and returned to Rome. He was an elegant elegiac writer; a friend of Horace, Ovid, and other literary men of the day. He lost his possessions when the triumvirate (second) rewarded their soldiery with lands. He died at an early age, about 20 B.C. |