BOOKS.

PROFESSOR SELLAR'S "POETS OF THE AUGUSTAN AGE."*

PROFESSOR SELLAR published his first volume, The Roman Poets of the Republic, in 1863, bringing out an enlarged edition ten years afterwards. His Virgil, the first instalment of a work on The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age, appeared in 1877. In the volume now before us, we have the remainder of

what he wrote upon this subject. Unfortunately, it is not complete. Horace is fully treated, and the essays on Tibullus and Propertius are adequate ; but Ovid, the most voluminous and the most versatile of Roman poets, has less than forty pages allotted to him. Professor W. P. Ker, under whose editorial care the volume has appeared, tells us that these represent "the notes made by Mr. Sellar for chapters on the same scale as the others." We have nothing about the poet's life, including the unsolved and perpetually interesting

problem of his exile, and only one or two sentences about the poems of his later life, the Tristia and the Ppistohe as Ponto.

Professor Sellar also contributed some articles on later Roman poets to the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. These, we hope, will in due time be col- lected and separately published. The total result may not seem much for the leisure—ample to the eyes of less- favoured persons—of a Scotch Professor. But the work is

admirable in quality, and indicates throughout the unstinted pains, the fastidious care which the author gave to it. The author is perhaps seen at his best in the volume on Virgil, a volume which simply leaves nothing to he said about the poet—excepting, indeed, literary criticism, which must of course be inexhaustible—and in the six chapters which treat of Horace in the book now under review.

Professor Sellar remarks with much felicity about the great lyric poet, that he was born just at the right time, and that his "character was formed to independence before the freedom of thought and action, enjoyed under the Republic, was lost." "Had he been born a few years earlier, he might have been too far committed to the Republican cause ever to .become reconciled to the new government. Had the date of his birth been somewhat later, he would probably have been as little

interested in the national fortunes, as little braced to manli- ness in thought and feeling, as Tibullus and Propertius."

That there was a decline in the poet's standard of feeling, is acknowledged. The " Saviour of Society," whom the world had welcomed with a genuine gratitude, has become the

absolute monarch who must be addressed in language of almost servile adulation:— "During the twenty years over which the national lyrics of Horace extend, there is a great change in the aspect of the world, and a corresponding change in the public feeling of which Horace is the exponent. In the earlier Odes, Caesar is the hope of the • The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age. By W. Y. Sellar, M.A., LL.D. Horace and the .Elegiac Poets. With a Memoir by Andrew Lang, M.A. Oxford : The Clarendon Press. 1892. Roman world in its hour of danger and distress. In the Odes of the third book he is the true representative of an ideal Rome, why is called upon, with the aid of Heaven, by the inspiration of his genius and his devotion to duty, to transform the actual Roman world, torn in pieces by civil wars, corrupted by private vices, false to the standard of national honour and manliness, to this new ideal, in which the great qualities of the past should be revived. The feeling expressed in these Odes is genuine and spontaneous. In the Odes of the fourth book the ideal is supposed to be realised ; but there is less perhaps of the ring of genuine sincerity in the celebration of its triumph. The tone of the poet is more distinctly imperial than national. It is not Rome that is glorified, but the Emperor and the members of the imperial family. Even past history is pressed into this service, and it is as a glory of the Clandian family that the battle of the Metaurus is celebrated (iv. 4). The adulation which was the bane of the next century begins to be heard in such lines as

Quo nihil mains meliusve terris Fats donavere bonique Divi. (iv. 2.)"

Another among the happy remarks on the poet's attitude of mind is that " no one, of whom we know so much, seems to have combined in the same degree the capacity of being happy alone, with aptitude for and enjoyment of social life." This combination accounts satisfactorily for some of the most pro- minent characteristics of his poetry, his love of Nature, and his genially social temper. He gives us some of the very rare touches of landscape to be found in classical verse, the pro- spect of Thrace in winter, as the Bacchanal sees it, covered with the sparkling snow, the scenery of the Sabine hills, Acherontia nestling among the mountains, and the shining cascades of the Anio. As for his temper towards his fellow-men, we may say that he contrived to make friends not only of all who were worth knowing among his contem- poraries, but of almost every tasteful and sympathetic reader in later times.

But it is impossible to follow in detail a writer so full of suggestion, and who crowds his pages with results so abundant of observation and thought, as Mr. Sellar. We can but mention his estimate of Horace as a literary critic

(chap. iv., specially dealing with the Second Book of the Epistles and the Ars Poetica), the discriminating analysis of

the Odes (chap. v.), and a particularly able discussion of the characteristics of his various lyrical metres (chap. vi., sec. 6).

We are inclined to doubt whether the epithet " stately " can ever be rightly applied to the sapphic metre, which has a certain " trip " about it hardly consistent with this charac- teristic. What Professor Sellar writes about the alcaic is altogether admirable, not the least subtle of his criticisms being the remark that while Horace in his later work associates this rhythm " with the grave or solemn movement of his spirit," yet, " whether from the desire to show the versatility of his

instrument, or to avoid the impression of monotony of effect," he continued from time to time to employ it, as did the great

poet from whom he borrowed it, for lighter themes. The peculiar force of the less-known metres is given with much discrimination ; nor does the writer fail to remark how " the secret of their music was lost with their inventor." The

epithet numerosus which Ovid applies to him, indicates

that his contemporaries appreciated his singular mastery of rhythmical effects. To imitate him is an act of daring which has been reserved for the moderns.

The chapters on Tibullus and Propertius will be, perhaps, less generally interesting—for Horace has ten readers where the minor elegiac poets have one—but they are well worth study. As one would have expected from his tone of thought, Mr. Sellar is inclined to prefer the earlier poet. He states the case thus :—

" In the present day the comparative novelty of Properties, his irregular and daring force of conception and expression, and the ardour of his temperament, have altered the balance of admiration in his favour ; still, among scholars and lovers of literature there may yet be found those who would say of themselves `aunt qui Tibullum =lint.' In elegiac poetry, the most subjective of all the forms of poetry, it is impossible to separate sharply the im- pression produced by qualities of heart and character in the writer from the effect produced by his art. The personality of Tibullus is much the most attractive, much the most admirable of the three. In his art he is the most faultless, the most perfectly harmonious."

He prefers, indeed, the " tender " Tibullus even to Ovid, fol- lowing therein the judgment of Quintilian ; but as has been said, his estimate of the latter poet has not been fully worked out.

Here, again, it is impossible to give any idea of the detailed criticism which Professor Sellar brings to bear upon his sub- ject. One of the happiest specimens of it is to be found on pp. 312-14, where he compares Propertius's elegy on Pa3tus, a young friend lost at sea, with Milton's Lycidas. We can but quote the end :— " But the truest note of difference between the modern and the ancient poet is struck in the last lines of their respective poems; in the sense of pastoral peacefulness and the thought of the con- sistent dignity of life, in the close of Lycidas- To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new—

and the sense of almost heartless levity, and the thought of a marred and restless life, which are left on us by Propertius :-

At to, saeve Aquilo, numquam mea vela videbis : Ante fores dominne eondar oportet iners.

Milton's great saying, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem,' never received more confirmation than in the art and life of Propertius. What prevented him from bringing his great powers of genius into perfect harmony so as to realise his great aspirations, was that he could not harmonise his life."

We cannot conclude this article without a few words of thanks to Mr. Andrew Lang for his admirable memoir. He

writes as a kinsman, a pupil, and a friend; while at the same time he brings to his work the keenly appreciative judgment of a scholar and a critic. The man and his work could not have been more felicitously described. The memoir has but twenty-four pages ; but " quot bona tam parvo claudit in orbe " !