But these passages are simple, direct, and clear, compared with many of the single lines or longer passages, already quoted in illustration of the substance of his satire. These leave an impression not only of a total want of the 'limae labor,' but of an abnormal harshness and difficulty, beyond what we find in the fragments of Pacuvius, Accius, or Ennius. The fragments of his trochaics and iambics are much simpler, 'much less depart from the natural order of the words,' than those of his hexameters: a fact which reminds us of the great advance made by Horace in adapting the heroic measure to the familiar experience of life. Lucilius is moreover a great offender against not only the graces but the decencies of language. Lines are found in his fragments as coarse as the coarsest in Catullus or Juvenal: nor could he urge the extenuating plea of having forgotten the respect due to his readers from the necessity of relieving his wounded feelings or of vindicating morality.
Yet it is undoubted that, notwithstanding the most glaring faults and defects in form and style, he was one of the most popular among the Roman poets. The testimony of Cicero, Persius, Juvenal, Quintilian, Tacitus, and Gellius, confirm on this point the more ample testimony of Horace. If, as Mr. Munro thinks, Horace may have expressed, in deference to the prevailing taste of his time, a less qualified admiration for him than he really felt, this only shows how strong a hold his writings had over the reading public in the Augustan age. But Horace shows by no means the same deference to the admirers of Plautus and Ennius. To Lucilius he pays also the sincerer tribute of frequent imitation. He made him his model, in regard both to form and substance, in his satires; and even in his epistles he still acknowledges the guidance of his earliest master. In reading both the Satires and Epistles we are continually coming upon vestiges of Lucilius, in some turn of expression, some personal or illustrative allusion. Similar vestiges are found, imbedded in the harsh and jagged diction of Persius, and though not to the same extent, in the polished rhetoric of Juvenal. Nor was his literary influence confined to Roman satirists. Lucretius, Catullus, and even Virgil, have not disdained to adopt his thoughts or imitate his manner[329].
But if we cannot altogether account for, we may yet partially understand the admiration which his countrymen felt for Lucilius. In every great literature, while there are some works which appeal to the imagination of the whole world, there are others which seem to hit some particular mood of the nation to which their author belongs, and are all the more valued from the prominence they give to this idiosyncracy. Every nation which has had a literature seems to have valued itself on some peculiar humour or vein of observation and feeling, which it regards as specially allotted to itself, over and above its common inheritance of the sense of the ludicrous, which it shares with other races. Those writers who have this last in unusual measure become the favourite humourists of the world. But their own countrymen often prefer those endowed with the narrower domestic type; and of this type Lucilius seems to have been a true representative. The 'antiqua et vernacula festivitas,' attributed to him, seems to have been more combative and aggressive than genial and sympathetic. The 'Italum acetum' was employed by the Romans as a weapon of controversy with the view of damaging an adversary and making either himself or the cause he represented appear ridiculous and contemptible. The dictum of a modern humourist, that to laugh at a man properly you must first love him, would have seemed to an ancient Roman a contradiction in terms. When Horace writes—
Ridiculum acri
Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res,
he means that men are more likely to be made better by the fear of contempt than of moral reprobation.
But Lucilius had much more than this power of personal raillery, exercised with the force supplied and under the restraints imposed by an energetic social and political life. He is spoken of not only as 'comis et urbanus,' but also as 'doctus' and 'sapiens.' Even his fragments indicate that he was a man of large knowledge of 'books and men.' Horace testifies to the use which he made of the old comic poets of Athens:—
Hinc omnis pendet Lucilius, hosce secutus.
His fragments show familiarity with Homer, with the works of the Greek physical and ethical philosophers, with the systems of the rhetoricians, and some acquaintance with the writings of Plato, Archilochus, Euripides, and Aesop. His habit of building up his Latin lines with the help of Greek phrases illustrates the first powerful influence of the new learning before the Roman mind was able thoroughly to assimilate it, but when it was in the highest degree stimulated and fascinated by it. The mind of Lucilius was susceptible to the novelty of the new thoughts and new impressions, but like that of his contemporaries was insensible to the grace and symmetry of Greek art. Terence is the only writer in the ante-Ciceronian period who had the sense of artistic form. But all this foreign learning was, in the mind of Lucilius, subsidiary to the freshest observation and most discerning criticism of his own age. He was a spectator of life more than an actor in it, but he yet had been present at one of the most important military events of the time, and he had lived in the closest intimacy with the greatest soldier and most prudent statesman of his age. His satire had thus none of the limitation and unreality which attaches to the work of a student and recluse, such as Persius was. To the writings of Lucilius more perhaps than to those of any other Roman would the words of Martial apply—
Hominem pagina nostra sapit.