Elegiac poetry has an honorable place in Roman literature. To this school belongs Ovid, [Footnote: Born B.C. 43. Died A.D. 18.] whose "Metamorphoses" will always retain their interest. He, with that self- conscious genius common to poets, declares that his poem would be proof against sword, fire, thunder, and time,--a prediction, says Bayle, [Footnote: Bayle, _Dict._] which has not yet proved false. Niebuhr [Footnote: _Lect._, vol. ii. p. 166.] thinks that, next to Catullus, he was the most poetical of his countrymen. Milton thinks he could have surpassed Virgil had he attempted epic poetry. He was nearest to the romantic school of all the classical authors, and Chaucer, Ariosto, and Spenser owe to him great obligations. Like Pope, his verses flowed spontaneously. His "Tristia" were more admired by the Romans than his "Amores" or "Metamorphoses,"--probably from the doleful description of his exile,--a fact which shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit. His poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste which marked the Greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. He had great advantages, but was banished by Augustus for his description of licentious love, "Carmina per libidinosa." Nor did he support exile with dignity. He died of a broken heart, and languished, like Cicero, when doomed to a similar fate. But few intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from the scene of their glories, and without the stimulus of high society. Chrysostom is one of the few exceptions. Ovid, as an immoral man, was justly punished. [Sidenote: Tibullus.] Tibullus was also a famous elegiac poet, and was born the same year as Ovid, and was the friend of Horace. He lived in retirement, and was both gentle and amiable. At his beautiful country seat he soothed his soul with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the country. Niebuhr pronounces his elegies doleful, [Footnote: _Lect._, vol. iii. p. 143.] but Merivale [Footnote: _Hist_, vol. iv. p. 602.] thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of three inconstant paramours." "His spirit is eminently religious, though it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope. He alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the glitter of the Caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing despondency, in beholding the subjugation of his country." [Sidenote: Propertius.]