Despite the fact that there were three well marked periods in the history of classical Latin literature, there are, nevertheless, certain characteristics which appertain to that literature considered as a whole. To say this is not to maintain that all Latin writers are monotonously alike. Enough has been said already to demonstrate the contrary. It is only meant that, taking writer after writer, and department of literature after department, we can discover certain traits common to the majority of them, and that these traits give a national character to the total body of production. In the case of the Greeks the characteristic was the clear-cut presentation of genuine thought or feeling at first-hand. In the case of the Latins the case can hardly be stated so simply. Yet the following observations may assist towards a fair generalization. In the first place Latin literature is for the most part confessedly imitative. It sets itself foreign models. Its standard of excellence does not so much lie in the consciousness of having given a completely truthful expression to a thought or emotion, as in the supposed success with which a writer reproduces or transplants some Greek exemplar, modifying it to what is believed to be unavoidably required by conditions of the Roman tongue and Roman culture. It is in this spirit that the comedians, the tragedians, the epic, lyric, and elegiac poets—Plautus, Terence, Seneca, Virgil, Horace, Ovid—set about their work. It is in this spirit that historians like Sallust, literary critics like Horace, philosophic writers like Cicero, set about theirs. They are all avowedly adapting Greek thoughts, Greek plots, Greek rhythms, and Greek expressions, so far as the Latin can be made to admit them with elegance. And in this secondary kind of work they were eminently successful. They contrived somehow to make the Latin tongue do the work which they asked of it. Horace and Virgil are consummate masters in this tasteful but unoriginal labour. Thanks to them the forms and metres of Sappho and Alcaeus, of Homer and Theocritus, were reproduced with only just so much difference as the nature of the Latin tongue rendered unavoidable. The result was verse of perfect polish and ease, and of splendid harmony. But creators in any large sense they were not. They were magnificent technical artists, of the kind who can reproduce an original picture as a perfect etching with modifications, or who can carve and elaborate artistic decorations if they are supplied with a portfolio of designs. Possibly in this proceeding they worked some injustice to Latin capabilities. It is conceivable that a number of Latin writers might have left us work of much more essential strength if they had allowed their own creative genius freer play. It was well that they should learn from the Greeks, but not so well that they should mimic them. It is somewhat as if the Germans, instead of writing from the full nature of a Goethe,