Virgil is not, indeed, the only epic poet of Rome, although immeasurably the greatest. Lucan, in the silver age, composed an epic poem of the “great action” of Julius Caesar in crushing Pompey. Like most of the productions of that period of the second best, the _Pharsalia_ is full of epigrammatic sayings, deliberate _tours de force_ and brilliant rhetoric, together with much unreal sentiment, false taste, and grotesque or repellent detail. According to Quintilian Lucan is “more fit to be ranked amongst orators than poets.” Soon afterwards comes Statius with his _Thebaid_, or epic of Thebes, a work of great pains and little life, here and there beautified with those rather morbid colours which have been known to suggest the dying dolphin, but incapable of sustaining any natural interest. If he was called “Virgil’s ape,” the censure is hardly too severe. To us, however, the poem is of some account as having formed a portion of the staple reading in the days of Chaucer, who refers to “Stace” with avowed admiration. The tale of _Palamon and Arcite_, which Chaucer so admirably transformed from Boccaccio, owes its origin to this somewhat insipid epic of the Roman. Meanwhile the world has been content to forget the partial versions of Statius essayed by Pope or Gray. In Lyric poetry, apart from the elegiac style, there are two names, and two only, which stand out upon the chart of Roman history. One is Catullus, the other Horace, and both are of the golden age, although of different halves of that epoch. Catullus flourished under the republic about 60 B.C., Horace under Augustus a generation later. It is curious to observe how the verdict of taste is reversing the positions once held in the general estimation by these two exquisite writers. Time was, and not so long ago, when Horace was more read and quoted than any other poet of antiquity. He was quoted at dinners, in literature, in parliament. It was taken for granted that he represented the _ne plus ultra_ of lyric quality. Catullus, it is true, was praised, but comparatively neglected withal. But those who love literature as much for its substance as its form, who seek for inward warmth and for stimulation of the pulses as well as for pleasure of the palate, and who are attracted by the sterling rather than by the elaborated—these set Catullus on a plane to which Horace never reaches. Horace has been called “the poet of the man of the world,” and the phrase, while fairly true, is manifestly not the highest commendation. Those who read him without prepossession discover that under all his gracefulness he is naturally unimaginative; that, feeling little, he has little power over the heart; and, furthermore, that he is prone to a peculiar inconsequence. Among his virtues is included the characteristic Roman virtue of sound practical sense; but lyric poetry is hardly to be satisfied with that merit. As a man of letters he takes his rank from the perfection of his expression, from his consummate