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I cannot quite understand the grounds of the high admiration which the ancients expressed for Propertius, and I own that Tibullus is rather insipid to me. Lucan was a man of great powers; but what was to be made of such a shapeless fragment of party warfare, and so recent too! He had fancy rather than imagination, and passion rather than fancy. His taste was wretched, to be sure; still the Pharsalia is in my judgment a very wonderful work for such a youth as Lucan[1] was.
I think Statius a truer poet than Lucan, though he is very extravagant sometimes. Valerius Flaccus is very pretty in particular passages. I am ashamed to say, I have never read Silius Italicus. Claudian I recommend to your careful perusal, in respect of his being properly the first of the moderns, or at least the transitional link between the Classic and the Gothic mode of thought.
I call Persius hard—not obscure. He had a bad style; but I dare say, if he had lived[2], he would have learned to express himself in easier language. There are many passages in him of exquisite felicity, and his vein of thought is manly and pathetic.
Prudentius[3] is curious for this,—that you see how Christianity forced allegory into the place of mythology. Mr. Frere [Greek: ho philokalos, ho kalokagathos] used to esteem the Latin Christian poets of Italy very highly, and no man in our times was a more competent judge than he.
[Footnote 1:
Lucan died by the command of Nero, A.D. 65, in his twenty-sixth year. I
think this should be printed at the beginning of every book of the
Pharsalia.—ED.]
[Footnote 2:
Aulus Persius Flaccus died in the 30th year of his age, A.D. 62.—ED.]
[Footnote 3:
Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was born A.D. 348, in Spain.—ED.]
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How very pretty are those lines of Hermesianax in Athenaeus about the poets and poetesses of Greece![1]