With Lucretius, indeed, he deals fully, and this portion of his work leaves little to be desired. But a reference to the lines to Sirmio and one illustration from the _Peleus and Thetis_ exhaust his examples from Catullus. We should have expected the picture of the stream leaping from the mossy rock into the valley beneath, in the Epistle to Manlius, of the morning chasing away the shadows in the _Attis_, and the lovely flower pictures in the Epithalamia. In dealing with Virgil most of Mr. Palgrave’s citations are practically irrelevant; scarcely any of the passages which best illustrate Virgil’s power of landscape painting being even referred to. “The _Æneid_,” says Mr. Palgrave, “may be briefly dismissed. Natural description can have but little place in an epic.” And yet what are the passages to which any one, who wishes to illustrate the charm and power of Virgil’s pictures of scenery, would naturally turn? Surely to these: the description of the rocky recess which sheltered Æneas’s ships (_Æneid_, i. 159-168), a picture worthy of Salvator; the picture of Ætna (iii. 570-582), which rivals the picture of it given by Pindar, a picture praised so justly by Mr. Palgrave himself; the description of a calm night (iv. 522-527); the wave-buffeted, gull-haunted rock (v. 124-128); and, above all, the scenery at the mouth of the Tiber, bathed in the rays of the morning sun, a picture unexcelled even by Tennyson. Nor even in the _Georgics_ is any reference made to the superb description of a storm in harvest time (i. 216-334), or to the magnificent winter piece (iii. 349-370). The remarks about the indifference of Propertius to natural scenery are most unjust. What a charming picture is this!-- “Grata domus Nymphis humida Thyniasin, Quam supra nullæ pendebant debita curæ Roscida desertis poma sub arboribus; Et circum irriguo surgebant lilia prato Candida purpureis mixta papaveribus.” _El._, I. xx. 35-39. It may be conceded that Ovid is conventional and commonplace in his treatment of nature; but why is Valerius Flaccus, with his bold, vivid touches, left unnoticed? Why does one citation suffice for the many exquisite cameos which ought to have been given from Statius? Another inexplicable omission in Mr. Palgrave’s work is the poem entitled _Rosæ_, attributed to Ausonius--a lovely poem, infinitely more beautiful than the epigram quoted by Mr. Palgrave from the Latin Anthology, and rivalling the fragment given by him from Tiberianus. Most readers would agree with him in his estimate of Claudian, but he might have added the fine description of Olympus in the _De Consulatu Theodori_, 200-210: “Ut altus Olympi Vertex, qui spatio ventos hiemesque relinquit, Perpetuum nullâ temeratus nube serenum Celsior exsurgit pluviis, auditque ruentes Sub pedibus nimbos, et rauca tonitrua calcat;”