PROFESSOR TYRRELL'S " LATIN POETRY." * IT would not be

easy to exaggerate the charm of Professor Tyrrell's volume. He delights us whether we agree or disagree. If his originality sometimes, as it seems to us, verges upon paradox, yet how refreshing it is to find such freshness, such novelty, in the fields so well worn by multi- tudes of plodding feet, of classical criticism !

In two conspicuous cases Professor Tyrrell seeks to reverse the commonly accepted verdict of praise and blame. He maintains that Cicero was a great poet. If he does not

exactly assert that Horace was mediocre—imagine Horace classed with the mediocres poetce whom he so emphati-

cally damns 1—he makes very large deductions from the usual estimate of his merits. As to Cicero, we venture to think that Professor Tyrrell does not give Plutarch's meaning with exactitude when he writes : " Plutarch describes Cicero as having been alike the first poet and the first orator of his age." What Plutarch says is that, after having com- posed a poem in his boyhood, as time went on, and he applied

himself more elaborately to this kind of literature, he seemed (iZe,Zsy) to be not only the first orator, but also the first poet of Rome; seemed, i.e., to his contemporaries. The biographer

adds that " his oratorical fame lasted, although many novelties in oratory had been introduced, but that, owing to a succes- sion of men of genius, his reputation as a poet had fallen into utter neglect." Still, the testimony is significant as far as it goes, and contradicts the contemptuous estimate which later critics, following Juvenal, have agreed in making. Professor

Teuffcl (Schwabe's edition) has nothing but contempt for what Professor Tyrrell describes, not, we think, without good

reason, as " splendid translations." The " eagle and snake " passage from the " Marine " is undoubtedly fine, and if its versification, as Mr. Simcox points out, is defective in variety of pause, this is nothing more than can be said even of the hexameters of Lucretius and Catullus as compared with Virgil's perfect verse. Professor Tyrrell boldly joins issue with Juvenal as to the lines which the satirist holds up to contempt. If Cicero deliberately chose to employ the assonance of " Fortunatam natarn," he must have known what, he was about. It would have been easy besides to say " 0 fortu- natam Romam me console natatu." There never was a more thorough master of rhythmical sound, and it is at least con- ceivable that his taste was better than Juvenal's.

To extol Cicero's poetry, possibly above its merits, is, how- ever, a small matter; to depreciate Horace is a far more serious

thing. Professor Tyrrell ventured to do something of the kind in a Quarterly article some years ago, and brought upon himself angry letters of remonstrance, not arguing the question, he tells us, but heaping on him personal abuse. He

was then, "fortunately for himself," as he says, anonymous ; now he has taken his life in his hands, and boldly given his name to a formidable indictment of the most popular of clasical poets. The first point, scarcely urged, however, as a matter of censure, is the large indebtedness of the Satires, and even of the Epistles, to the earlier work of

• Latin Poetry, By R. Y. Tyrrell. London : MaelnWan and Co.

Lucilius. "In his moral essays Horace seems to have used Lucilius in the same way as he himself and the English satirist Donne were afterwards used by Pope ; while in his descriptive pieces Horace treated Lncilins as Pope treated Chaucer." We cannot attempt to epitomise the argument, but must be content with commending it to our readers as an admirable piece of constructive criticism. When we come to the Odes, we find the critic conceding in the amplest way the perfection of their form. Whatever their faults, they must at least be allowed the merit that they have " defied imitation." But this perfection has, we are told, been dearly purchased. Professor Tyrrell does not scruple even to criti- cise Horace's Latinity. There is always a certain danger in doing this. So small a part of Latin literature has survived, that it is rash to condemn a phrase because it cannot be matched

elsewhere. We cannot quote an authority for the metaphor- ical use of iungere as uniting under one sway, yet it does not strike us as impossible, though Professor Tyrrell declares that " Libyam remotis G-adibus iungas," ought to mean " You may unite Africa to Spain by a bridge." Of the phrase by which the poet seeks to express the fact, " this is the birthday

of Maecenas,"— "ex bac Luce Maecenas meus affiuentes Ordinat annos,"

the critic declares that it should mean "from this day forth, Maecenas revises the calendar." Is this so P Might it not mean that the day is so important as to start a new ordo of years, as the birthday of the child in the "Pollio " starts a novas seclorunt ordo ? The charge of insincerity in his love-poems may be admitted. That he did not mean any one in particular by Lalage, and Chloe, and the rest of the fair company, is true enough. But when it is suggested that all are "mere experi- ments in Greek lyric metres," we rebel. Commentators have written much nonsense about the " 0 navis referent in mare to novi," and it is easy to make fun of the ingenuity that sees an allusion to Mithridates in the Pontica pinus and of other like inanities. Yet surely the ode may have

been an expression of genuine feeling belonging to a time when the "saviour of society" had not yet been discovered in Augustus. It is still harder to believe that Horace was no lover of the country, that he liked his Sabine farm only because it gave him leisure for writing. Still, Professor Tyrrell has not a few good things to say of Horace, though of the man rather than of the writer. He was an honest gentleman, who had a patron, but never flattered him. It is well said that Horace never has a word of praise for the verses of Maecenas. He knew that they were bad, and left them alone.

The chapter on Catalina is quite admirable, and that on Lucretius, as touching profounder questions of human feeling and thought, is even finer. We must quote the con- clusion of the latter, as a good specimen of Professor Tyrrell's style :-

" Lucretius has now won his place among the great poets A the world. He has survived the anathemas of pious zealots and the plaudits of the enemies of all faith and belief. We now see how religious is the irreligion of this Titan. We hear in his sombre strains not the sneers of the encyclopaedist, but the high words of Prometheus on the Caucasus. At last the world has learned that intrepid audacity combined with noble sincerity may have a beauty which is like the beauty of holiness. At last Lucretius-

' Lifts His golden feet on those empurpled stairs That climb into the windy halls of heaven.'

We see in him a sage who dwells on the lofty vantage-ground of science, and from his philosophic observatory looks down with disdain on the petty interests of the world. But he looks down on the world with a godly joy (diving voluptas) and a holy awe (horror). And we see in him an eager student of Nature, who has been raised by a naturally religions cast of mind, through cold and intangible abstractions to which he tried in vain to cling, —raised out of Nature and np to Nature's God."

Virgil—we are glad that the pedantic " Vergil " is rejected—

is discussed in a few pages—every one will wish them more— of sympathetic and felicitous criticism. A fine sentence in the introductory chapter strikes the key-note of what follows in the chapter specially devoted to the poet. " Virgil has borrowed much from Homer, but he has taken from him nothing that he has not made new. He is the cloud which receives the light of the sun, and gives it back with the colours of the rainbow."

The brilliancies of the volume are of many kinds. We have, for instance, a most attractive emendation of the "Lydiae

lacus undae " of Cat. xxxi., 12-14. Lydiae is a frigid cniceit, but ludiae (ludius, a " merry man" or " tumbler"), is excellent. "And you, ye wavelets, merrymen of the mere" is the suggested translation. The charge against Terence that he was inspired by Scipio and Laelius, is well compared to the fancy that discovers Bacon's hand in Shakespeare. Then there are some admirable translations, as that of Catalina viii. " Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire." (There is a good suggestion that the Lesbian poems of Catalina should be arranged in order. At present, the history of the passion is thoroughly confused.) We must venture on a word of protest against the inclusion of Claudian with Valerins Flaccus and Silius Italicus as poets of little worth. Later on, indeed, in the volume, Professor Tyrrell makes amends to the poet, who was a marvel of vigour in a feeble age, speaking of his eulogy of the Empire of Rome as "a splendid expression" of what ought to be a great nation's ambitions. Even of Statics we are inclined to think better than his very severe critic would allow. There are passages in the " Genethliacon Liman " where he rises above the level of the "court poet," notably in the picture of Nero in Tartarus.

The only poor thing in the volame is a lamentably in- sufficient index.