in which elegant lines he artfully diminishes the plausibility of her pretence by heightening the beauties of the city; but throwing off the mask with a start of sudden anger, he exclaims abruptly,

Falleris!-ista tui furtum via monstrat amoris;

Non urbem, demens! lumina nostra,
fugis.
(Ibid. 17.)

Thou mock'st thyself!-thy road detects thee: fly!

But not from Rome, fond wretch !-'tis from this searching eye.

I have no hesitation in challenging a finer example of bantering resentment and irrepressible jealousy, not in Tibullus only, but in every poet of antiquity, be he who he may.

With what spirit, yet with what elegance, he pours his execrations on the jewels with which he supposes his mistress to have been corrupted!

Sed quascumque tibi vestes, quoscumque smaragdos,

Quósve dedit flavo lumine chrysolithos, Hæc videam rapidas in vanum ferre procellas,

Quæ tibi terra, velim, quæ tibi fiat aqua. (El. 16, 43, b. 2.) But may his gifts, vest, emerald, chrysolite Of yellow lustre, in thy very sight

Be whirl'd on storms along the void of skies, Be changed to clay or water in thine eyes: and with how much of the true feeling of a poet he takes advantage of a passing thunder storm!

Vidistín' toto sonitus percurrere cœlo ?

Fulmináque æthereâ desiluisse domo ? Non hæc Pleiades faciunt neque aquosus

Orion,

Et posuit castâ turpia visa domo ; Illa puellarum ingenuos corrupit ocellos, Nequitiæque suæ noluit esse rudes; Ah! gemat in terris, istâ qui protulit arte Jurgia sub tacità condita lætitiâ. Non istis oli variabant tecta figuris.

Tum paries nullo crimine pictus erat. Sed non immeritò velavit aranea fanum, Et mala desertos occupat herba Deos. (El. 6, 27, b. 2.)

The hand that traced on tablets wanton flames,

And blazon'd modest roofs with pictured shames,

That hand made artless minds too dearly wise,

And sear'd th' ingenuous shame of virgin. eyes.

Be sorrow on his head! whose painted snare Hid with mute joys the ravings of despair! Not thus were checker'd our ancestral halls, Nor crime was imaged on the blushing walls. Thus then the spider weaves in heaven's abode,

And the rank herbage choaks the courts of

God.

I need scarcely observe that, in the the sentiment is fully equal to the above extract, the moral dignity of force and delicacy of the expression: yet this is the writer in whom the critic of the Reflector can see only «abominable obscenity." For the occasional prostitution of his powers to the adorning of vulgar profligacy and sensual enslavement of mind I offer no defence: but why is this unhappy imputation on gentile genius to rest individually on Propertius? It was the reproach of the manners, rather than the man; and the virulence of censure does not seem very consistent in the mouth of that critic, who in the same breath gives vent to lamentations that any thing of Catullus should have been lost.

The ideas in his prophecy of immortality were cominon to the Roman writers, but I question whether either Ovid or Horace approaches so nearly to sublimity as the despised and reviled Propertius.

Fortunata, meo si qua es celebrata libello; Carmina erunt formæ tot monumenta tuæ. Nam neque Pyramidum sumtus ad sidera ducti,

Nec Jovis Elæi cœlum imitata domus, Nec Mausolei dives fortuna sepulcri,

Mortis ab extremâ conditione vacant :

duce innumerable passages of the softest delicacy and tenderness from Homer," is just nothing to the purpose. Such passages are only incidental to epic poetry; they do not form its essential character. So in

nores;

Annorum aut ictu pondera victa ruent; At non, ingenio quæsitum, nomen ab ævo Excidet: ingenio stat sinè morte decus (El. 2, 17, b. 3.)

O happy nymph! to whom my page is lent, Each verse shall be thy beauty's monu

ment:

The pyramid star-crown'd, the fane of Jove Whose dome expanding mocks heav'n's arch above,

The mausoleum's sumptuous pile-yea, all
One lot awaits, one common funeral.
Lightnings shall strike; rains wash their
pomp away;

Ages in dust the ponderous ruin lay;
But genius drops not from the roll of time,
Stands o'er the wrecks of death, and shares
th' eternal prime.

We may now, I think, appreciate the justice of the Reflector's observation, that the reported recommendation of Mæcenas, the undertaking of an epic poem, was too ridiculous to be any thing but a mauvaise plaisanterie and that if Propertius had attempted the epopea, he would have "furnished a consolation for modern genius, in enabling them to say, that a Roman nobleman could write as

sillily as an English knight." (Sir Richard Blackmore.) The Reflector supposes a line in Propertius, implying that "in love a single verse of Mimnermus avails more than the whole of Homer," was the "real origin of the opinion that Propertius would have been an excellent epic poet; his disclaiming epic verse, as unsuitable to amatory purposes, leading to the idea that he could have employed it had he chosen. I think I have already shown that a much better ground might be laid in the power of thought, the splendour of fancy, and the vehemence of expression, which are continually breaking out in the love-elegies of this poet.

On this sentiment of Propertius, the critic in the Reflector falls rather testily, but it is surely very true, allowing for poetic hyperbole. What he says of "the utter falsity of the idea," inasmuch as he could "pro

in Gravina, who speaks of Tibullus as "replete with sweetness, grace, tenderness, passion, purity, and elegance," and assigns to Propertius "novelty of expression, a truly lyrical fancy, and a fitness for great subjects," he smartly rejoins," he would have been an excellent epic poet, because it is an understood thing that in this higher species of poetry we never look for grace, or tenderness, or passion, or purity, or any such minor and trivial ornaments." To this it is obvious to reply, that the sweetness and grace of a love-elegy are not the sweetness and grace appropriate to an epic

poem.

The critic seems to imagine that "novelty of expression can only mean either new words or new combinations: this is to limit the phrase, and contract the encomium: I understand by the words, that colouring which diction imbibes from the conceptions of an original mind. Though the Reflector is utterly at a loss to discover whence a critic of

the present day can determine whether the expressions of any particular author were new or customarywhether they were part of the vulgar currency of poetical phraseology, or were produced fresh from the mint of the poet's genius," I confess, without pretending to peculiar sagacity, that I do not feel myself thus utterly at a loss, so long as the poets contemporary with Propertius are open to my perusal. Who can doubt whe ther the expressions of the following exquisite passage were peculiar to the poet?

-Ferâ Galatea sub Etnâ

Ad tua rorantes carmina flexit equos.

(El. 2. 7, b. 3.)

Beneath wild Ætna to thy warbling reeds The sea-nymph hush'd rein'd back her dripping steeds.

But this critic, equally unhappy when he praises as when he censures, selects as the "only merit" which Propertius possesses, (and this he

takes care to tell us was "the merit of his age" rather than his own) the "correctness and even harmony of his versification:" whereas to even harmony few poets have less pretensions: few have more to richness and selectness of diction. To the charge of obscurity I shall say nothing; for every writer remarkable for originality and boldness of language is taunted with obscurity. When the imputation is extended to entire elegies, however, it is proper to remind the objector of the confusion of the copies, and the frequent ingraftment of one elegy on another; and as to the "desultory manner," objected by Dr. Jortin, (who, we are told, "wrote himself excellent Latin verses," as if the writing Latin verses constituted a man a judge of Latin poetry, or as if the best modern Latin verses might not have been indited by the valet of Propertius) the passionate transitions, which I have before instanced, are among the most striking beauties of this author.

Chez lui un beau desordre est un effet de

l'art.

His grand disorder speaks his matchless art.

The Reflector is, however, most angry with Gravina's observation; "perhaps there is more nature in Tibullus;" and I am about to stand convicted in his eyes of " being either a man of wretched taste, or an ignorant one, who presumes to talk of what he does not understand," by doubting the fact. This remark brings me at once to what might, after all, be considered as the only proper point of comparison between Propertius and Tibullus; the expression of tender sentiment.

The pedantry of Propertius is always taken for granted; and is adduced as incontrovertible proof of his deficiency in the description of natural passion. "Open Propertius in any place," remarks this critic, "and you will find that he cannot pay a common compliment to his mistress, except, like a lawyer, he ransack antiquity for some precedent or case in point. Is she yellow-haired, and are her hands long?' Such was Minerva. Is she six feet high without her shoes?' (a burlesque parody of the common characteristic of Greek and Roman beauty, maxima toto corpore,) so was Ischomache Lapi

the genus heroine. See Elegy 2, book 2. Is he jealous of his mistress, because her mother or sister kissed her, or for some reason equally substantial? Why then he is as mad not as a March hare, or a dog in July-but precisely as the furious Centaurs were, who flourished some dozen centuries before his time." El. 6, b. 2.

Whether the simile of a "dog in July" would have been more poetical than a comparison which brings before the imagination one of the wild adventures of heroic fable, I shall not stay to inquire; and it is scarcely worth while to notice the inaccuracy of this statement; for the poet is not comparing his own madness to that of a Centaur, but illustrating the ill effects of female inconstancy by the height of frenzy to which it is capable of inflaming the passions. The proper answer to all this ludicrous style of cavil is, that to call such "allusions to ancient fable" "futile and superfluous," is not to prove them so. This is to criticise an ancient author by modern rules, and to forget that what in a modern writer might be pedantic, would be natural and becoming in a Roman poet. We might as well say of the graceful comparison of Dido to Diana, on the banks of the Erimanthus-(which Virgil, by the bye, from whom Propertius is accused of stealing, stole from Homer), " Did Dido look six feet in her stockings? So did Diana, when dancing a quadrille with her nymphs."

The pedantic and unnatural manner of Propertius is argued from his mythological learning, as if his poems contained nothing else; whereas it is merely the ornament of his style; his source of illustration; his machinery. Does Tibullus himself, of whose nature and unaffected ease we hear so much, confine his invention within the limits of every-day incident? certainly not. On most occa sions he has recourse to pastoral occupations, and takes care to remind us, that the "beautiful Apollo fed the bulls of Admetus." El. 3, b. 2. I, for one, perceive more spirit and variety in the diversified illustrations of Propertius, who manages his store of legendary tradition with much poetic effect, and strikes the fancy with surprising or affecting incidents,

many of which have formed the subject of Grecian tragedy, and which are ingeniously conceived to warn his mistress of the dangers of cruelty or faithlessness, and to paint the consequences of amorous despair. The everlasting pastoralities of Tibullus, I am free to say, are somewhat tiresome; and it is a rather trying exercise of my credulity to suppose a Roman gentleman goading oxen, and trimming vines like a vin tager. In this particular, Propertius, who is accused of being forced, and stiff, and affected, is really more natural; and his beautiful elegy on Cynthia's retiring into the country, while abounding with fresh and wellselected images of rural scenery, has no allusion but to employments which a lady of Rome and her lover might consistently adopt. El. 19, b. 2.

Sheep and goats, however, supply an inadequate topic of allusion for the sort of passion which Propertius is usually occupied with describing. If he has less amenity in his style than Tibullus, he has also less softness in his sentiments; and as the harsh and disconnected manner which has been charged upon him is but the natural dress of jealous irritation, and the fits and starts of contending emotions, so the field of adventure opened to him in heroic fable formed a more appropriate machinery for his powers than the scenes of pastoral life. The sensitiveness and excitabili ty of his temperament are powerfully drawn in his own confession. The passage is also a master-piece of graphical painting, exercised on the familiar subject of a lady sitting in

the theatre:

Let me to farthest realms and oceans fly, Where none of that false sex may track me with her eye.

If this be not nature, I must suppose it to be meant that nature consists in tame and obvious sentiments, conveyed in common-place language.

In the 13th elegy, v. 43, second book, there occurs a double allusion to historic and mythological tradition. Let the reader judge how far these allusions are unnatural in a Roman poet, and how far they interfere with the genuine expression of feeling and melancholy tenderness. Atque utinam primis animam me ponere

cunis

Jussisset quævis de tribus una soror !