error of most ancient criticism. He has, as scarcely any other ancient writer has, formulated the great critical question, “L’ouvrage est-il bon ou est-il mauvais?” And if he had chosen to write a _De Arte Poetica_, I am bound, shocking as the confession may seem, to say that I think it would have been superior to that of Horace, while he has provided no unimportant _progymnasmata_ towards one as it is. From “the mixed and subtle Martial,” as Gavin Douglas excellently [Sidenote: _Statius._] calls him, we may pass to the poet, perhaps the rival, whom he never mentions[348]—the author of that only adequate Roman description of Lucretius which has been referred to above.[349] The precise sources of the popularity of Statius in the Middle Ages have never yet, I think, been thoroughly investigated. It is, however, not difficult to discern them afar off, and to include among them a certain touch of that uncritical quality which, as we shall see, was one of the main notes of the Middle Ages themselves. Yet the author of the words _furor arduus Lucreti_[350] must have been able at least to appreciate. And the poem which contains that phrase, as well as the prose prefaces of the _Sylvæ_ where it occurs, will yield something more bearing on our subject. The first of these prefaces is a curious if not particularly felicitous plea for the legitimacy—indeed, for the necessity—of a poet’s indulging in lighter work in the intervals of _Thebaids_ and _Achilleids_. This is something like the view of Pliny: the poet must be a Jack-of-all-poetical-trades. Martial knew better. But it is a noteworthy thing (and Martial himself would have been pungent on it) that Statius cannot make his trifles brief. Domitian’s horse has nearly three hundred lines. I do not think that there is a single poem in the five books of the _Sylvæ_ which falls short of several scores, whatever its metre. In the preface of the second he apologises to his friend Melior for some of the pieces, as _libellos quasi epigrammatic loco scriptos_, and here again Martial might have had something to say about epigrams seventy-seven lines long. That Statius had not cleared up his own mind about criticism appears from the touching and attractive, though not quite consummate, _Ad Claudiam Uxorem_, where the poet, beaten in the public competitions where he had long triumphed, proposes that Naples, and his wife’s caresses, shall console him for the loss of tasteless and thankless Rome. But the _Genethliacon Lucani_, a commemorative birth-day poem on Lucan (which would have been a little more effective if we could forget that this tribute to the victim of Nero was written by a flatterer of Domitian), contains the central utterance of Statius about other poets. It is, as nearly everything of Statius has been said to be, too long and too much improvised, though also, like most things, if not everything, of his, it contains fine touches, especially that of Lucan in the shades:—