The satires of Lucilius extended to not fewer than thirty books; but whether they were so divided by the poet himself, or by some grammarian who lived shortly after him, seems uncertain: He was a voluminous author, and has been satirized by Horace for his hurried copiousness and facility:—
“Nam fuit hoc vitiosus: In horâ sæpe ducentos,
Ut magnum, versus dictabat, stans pede in uno:
Garrulus, atque piger scribendi ferre laborem;
Scribendi recte: nam ut multum, nil moror[404].”
Of the thirty books there are only fragments extant; but these are so numerous, that though they do not capacitate us to catch the full spirit of the poet, we perceive something of his manner. His merits, too, have been so much canvassed by ancient writers, who judged of them while his works were yet entire, that their discussions in some measure enable us to appreciate his poetical claims. It would appear that he had great vivacity and humour, uncommon command of language, intimate knowledge of life and manners, and considerable acquaintance with the Grecian masters. Virtue appeared in his draughts in native dignity, and he exhibited his distinguished friends, Scipio and Lælius, in the most amiable light. At the same time it was impossible to portray [pg 241]anything more powerful than the sketches of his vicious characters. His rogue, glutton, and courtezan, are drawn in strong, not to say coarse colours. He had, however, much of the old Roman humour, that celebrated but undefined urbanitas, which indeed he possessed in so eminent a degree, that Pliny says it began with Lucilius in composition[405], while Cicero declares that he carried it to the highest perfection[406], and that it almost expired with him[407]. But the chief characteristic of Lucilius was his vehement and cutting satire. Macrobius calls him “Acer et violentus poeta[408];” and the well-known lines of Juvenal, who relates how he made the guilty tremble by his pen, as much as if he had pursued them sword in hand, have fixed his character as a determined and inexorable persecutor of vice. His Latin is admitted on all hands to have been sufficiently pure[409]; but his versification was rugged and prosaic. Horace, while he allows that he was more polished that his predecessors, calls his muse “pedestris,” talks repeatedly of the looseness of his measure, “Incomposito pede currere versus,” and compares his whole poetry to a muddy and troubled stream:—
“Cum flueret lutulentus erat quod tollere velles.”
Quintilian does not entirely coincide with this opinion of Horace; for, while blaming those who considered him as the greatest of poets, which some persons still did in the age of Domitian, he says, “Ego quantum ab illis, tantum ab Horatio dissentio, qui Lucilium fluere lutulentum, et esse aliquid quod tollere possis, putat[410].” The author of the books Rhetoricorum, addressed to Herennius, and which were at one time attributed to Cicero, mentions, as a singular awkwardness in the construction of his lines, the disjunction of words, which, according to proper and natural arrangement, ought to have been placed together, as—
“Has res ad te scriptas Luci misimus Æli.”
Nay, what is still worse, it would appear from Ausonius, that [pg 242]he had sometimes barbarously separated the syllables of a word—