nate verses sung by the labourers, in a strain of coarse merriment and raillery. This shows a dawning of the drama. 2. About the 390th year of Rome, on occasion of a pestilence, Ludiones (drolls or stage dancers) were brought from Etruria, "who dancing to the music of a flute, performed graceful movements in the Tuscan manner." Livy tells us that the Roman youth imitated these performances, and added to them rude and jocular verses, probably the Fescennine dialogues. It was not, however, till the year 514 A.U.C. that the regular drama was introduced at Rome from Greece by Livius Andronicus. The earliest Roman plays were therefore, we may presume, translations from the Greek. "After the Punic wars the quiet times began to inquire what Sophocles, Thespis and Eschylus might offer that was useful." 3. Of the early Roman drama, Ennius was a great ornament, and from his time the art made rapid advancement. The comedies of Plautus, the contemporary of Ennius, with great strength and spirit of dialogue, display a considerable knowledge of human nature, and are read at this day with pleasure. 4. Cæcilius improved so much on the comedy of Plautus, that he is mentioned by Cicero as perhaps the best of the Roman comic writers. Of his compositions we have no remains. His patronage fostered the rising genius of Terence, whose first comedy, the Andría, was performed A.U.C. 587. The merit of the comedies of Terence lies in that nature and simplicity which are observable alike in the structure of his fables, in the delineation of his characters, and in the delicacy and purity of the sentiments of his pieces. They are deficient, however, in comic energy; they are not calculated to excite ludicrous emotions. They are chiefly borrowed from the Greek of Menander and Apollodorus. 5. The Roman comedy was of four different species; the Comedia Togata or Prætextata, the Comedia Taber naria, the Atellana, and the Mimi. The first admitted serious scenes and personages, and was of the nature of the modern sentimental comedy. The second was a representation of ordinary life and manners. The Atellane were pieces where the dialogue was not committed to writing, but the subject of the scene was prescribed, and the dialogue filled up by the talents of the actors. The H Mimi were pieces of comedy of the lowest species, farces, or entertainments of buffoonery, though sometimes admitting the serious and even the pathetic. 6. The Roman tragedy kept pace in its advancement with the comedy. The best of the Roman tragic poets were Actius and Pacuvius, of whom we have no remains. The tragedies published under the name of Seneca are generally esteemed the work of different hands They are none of them of superlative merit. 7. Velleius Paterculus remarks, that the era of the perfection of Roman literature was the age of Cicero, comprehending all of the preceding times whom Cicero might have seen, and all of the succeeding who might have seen him. Cicero, Quintilian, and Pliny, celebrate, in high terms, the writings of the elder Cato, whose principal works were historical, and have entirely perished. We have his fragments, de Re Rustica, in which he was imitated by Varro, one of the earliest of the good writers among the Romans, and a man of universal erudition. Of the variety of his talents we may judge, not only from the splendid eulogium of Cicero, but from the circumstances of Pliny having recourse to his authority in every book of his Natural History. 8. Sallust, in order of time, comes next to Varro. This writer introduced an important improvement in history, as treated by the Greek historians, by applying (as Dionysius of Halicarnassus says) the science of philosophy to the study of facts. Sallust is therefore to be considered as the father of philosophic history; a species of writing which has been so successfully cultivated in modern times. He is an admirable writer for the matter of his compositions, which evince great judgment and knowledge of human nature; but by no means commendable for his style and manner of writing. He affects singularity of expression, an antiquated phraseology, and a petulant brevity and sententiousness, which has nothing of the dignity of the historical style. 9 Cæsar has much more purity of style, and more correctness and simplicity of expression, but his commentaries, wanting that amplitude of diction and fulness of illustration which is essential to history, are rather of the nature of annals. 10. In all the requisites of an historian, Livy stands unrivalled among the Romans; possessing consummate judgment in the selection of facts, perspicuity of arrangement, sagacious reflection, sound views of policy, with the most copious, pure, and eloquent expression. It has been objected, that his speeches derogate from the truth of history; but this was a prevalent taste with the ancient writers; and as those speeches are always known to be the composition of the historian, the reader is not deceived. As to the style of Livy, though in general excellent, we sometimes perceive in it, and most commonly in the speeches, an affectation of the pointed sentences (the vibrantes sententiole) and obscurity of the declaimers, which evinces the pernicious influence acquired by those teachers at Rome since the time of Cicero and Sallust. 11. In the decline of Roman Literature, Tacitus is an historian of no common merit. He successfully cultivated the method pointed out by Sallust, of applying philosophy to history. In this he displays great knowledge of human nature, and penetrates, with singular acuteness, into the secret springs of policy, and the motives of actions. But his fault is, that he is too much of a politician, drawing his characters after the model of his own mind; ever assigning actions and events to preconceived scheme and design, and allowing too little for the operation of accidental causes, which often have the greatest influence on human affairs. Tacitus, in his style, professedly imitated that of Sallust; adopting all the ancient phraseology, as well as the new idioms introduced into the Roman language by that writer. To his brevity and abruptness, he added most of the faults of the declaiming school. His expression, therefore, though extremely forcible, is often enigmatically obscure; the very worst property style can possess. 12. Among the eminent Roman poets (after the dramatic) Lucretius deserves first to be noticed. He has great inequality, being at some times verbose, rugged, and perplexed, and at others displaying all the elegance as well as the fire of poetry. This may be in great part attributed to his subject. Philosophical disquisition is unsuitable to poetry. It demands a dry precision of thought and expression, rejecting all excursive fancy and ornament of diction. That luxuriance of imagery, which is the soul of poetry, is raving and impertinence when applied to philosophy. ia. Catullus, the cotemporary of Lucretius, is the earli est of the Roman lyric poets. His epigrams are pointed and satirical, but too licentious; his Idyllia tender, natural, and picturesque. He flourished in the age of Julius Cæsar. 14. In the succeeding age of Augustus, poetry attained to its highest elevation among the Romans. Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Tibullus, were all cotemporaries. Virgil is allowed the same rank among the Roman poets as Homer among the Greek. If Homer excels him in the sublime, he surpasses the Greek in the elegant. The transcendent merits of Homer are sullied by occasional defects; Virgil is the model of a correct taste. The dif ference of manner in the Bucolics, the Georgics, and the Eneid, shows that Virgil was capable of excelling in various departments of poetry; and such is the opinion of Martial, who affirms, that he could have surpassed Horace in lyric poetry, and Varius in tragedy. 15. Horace excels as a lyric poet, a satirist, and a critic. In his Odes there is more variety than those of either Anacreon or Pindar; and he can alternately display the sublimity of the one, and the jocose vein of the other. His satires have that characteristic slyness and obliquity of censure, associated with humour and pleasantry which strongly distinguish them from the stern and cutting sarcasm of Juvenal. As a critic, his rules are taken chiefly from Aristotle; but they contain the elements of a just taste in poetical composition, and therefore do not admit of variation. The satires of Juvenal, compared with those of Horace, are deficient in facetiousness and urbanity; but they are superior in acuteness of thought, and in manly vigour of sentiment. 16. In variety of talent, without supreme excellence, and ease and elegance of numbers, no Roman poet has excelled Ovid. In his Metamorphoses particularly, with great fancy, we have specimens of the pathetic, the descriptive, the eloquent, and even the sublime. His Elegies have more of nature and of real passion than those of either Tibullus or Propertius. His amatory verses have much tenderness, but are two frequently loose, and even grossly licentious. 17. There is nothing more elegant than the compositions of Tibullus, nothing more delicate than the turn of his expression; but it is not the language of passion. The sentiments are tender. but their power of affecting the heart is weakened by the visible care and solicitude of the poet for refined phraseology and polished numbers; nor is there either much fancy or variety of thought. A single elegy exhibits the sentiments of the whole. 18. Martial is the last of the Roman poets who can be mentioned with high approbation. His Epigrams, independent of their art and ingenuity, are valuable as throwing light upon the Roman manners. He possesses, above every other poet, a naïveté of expression, which is chiefly observable in his serious Epigrams. He is well characterized by the younger Pliny," ingenious and severe, and displaying in his writings much wit and satire tempered with candour." (Epist. 3. 21.) 19. Luxuriance of ornament, and the fondness for point and brilliancy of thought and expression, are certain indications of the decline of good taste. These characters strongly mark the Latin poets of the succeeding ages. Lucan has some scattered examples of genuine poetic imagery, and Persius some happy strokes of animated satire; but they scarcely compensate the affected obscurity of the one, and the bombast of the other. The succeeding poets, Statius, Silius Italicus, and Valerius Flaccus, in their attempts at the most difficult of all species of poetry, the Epic, have only more signally displayed the inferiority of their genius, and the manifest decay of the art. XXXVII.-State of Philosophy among the Romans. 1. The Romans, in the earlier periods of the republic, had little leisure to bestow on the cultivation of the sciences, and had no idea of philosophical speculation. It was not till the end of the 6th century from the building of the city, and in the interval between the war with Perseus and the third Punic war, that philosophy made its first appearance at Rome. A few learned Achæans, banished from their country, had settled in various parts of Italy, and, applying themselves to the cultivation of literature and the education of youth, diffused a taste for those studies hitherto unknown to the Romans. The elder citizens regarded these pursuits with an unfavourable eye. Jealous of the introduction of foreign manners with foreign studies, the senate banished the Greek philosophers from Rome. But an Athenian embassy arriving Leon after, brought thither Carneades and Critolaus, who |