Did the Romans possess any distinguished Poets?
Yes; among the epic poets were Ovid and Tibullus; among dramatists, Plautus and Terence; of didactic and philosophic poets, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, and Silius Italicus. All these were so many miracles of human genius; and their works afford the models of their respective species of composition. Most of the works of the ancients have in sentiment, if not in spirit, been translated into English.
Miracles, wonders.
Genius, natural talent.
Respective, particular.
Sentiment, thought, meaning.
Did not the same revolution which undermined the Greek and Roman empires, and destroyed learning, the arts and sciences, and the taste for elegance and luxury, also prove fatal to Poetry?
It did; the hordes of barbarians who overran Europe wiped out civilization in their progress, and literature, art, and science fled before the wild conquerors to find a refuge in the monastery and the convent. Here knowledge was fostered with the love and ardor which religion alone can impart. Finally, when the rude barbarians were converted, it was to the religious Orders that the world turned for the establishment of schools, and it is to the Church alone, in the person of her popes, her bishops, and her monks that we are indebted for the preservation of learning, and its revival in the fifteenth century.
What celebrated Poets marked this revival?
In Italy, Dante, Ariosto, Petrarch and Tasso. These were followed, in France, by Racine, Corneille, Boileau, Voltaire, La Fontaine and Delille; in England, by Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Young, Collins, Gray, Byron, Coleridge, &c; in Scotland, by Sir Walter Scott; in Ireland, by Thomas Moore; in Germany, Klopstock, Goethe and Schiller.