It was natural that this excessive deference to their authority should be impaired both by the ampler recognition of the claims of modern poetry, and by a more intimate familiarity with Greek literature. They have suffered, in the estimation of literary critics, from the change in poetical taste which commenced about the beginning of the present century, and, in that of scholars, from the superior attractions of the great epic, dramatic, and lyrical poets of Greece. They have thus, for some time, been exposed to undue disparagement rather than to undue admiration. The perception of the debt which they owed to their Greek masters, has led to some forgetfulness of their original merits. Their Roman character and Italian feeling have been partially obscured by the foreign forms and metres in which these are expressed. It is said, with some appearance of plausibility, that Roman poetry is not only much inferior in interest to the poetry of Greece, but that it is a work of cultivated imitation, not of creative art; that other forms of literature were the true expression of the genius of the Roman people; that their poets brought nothing new into the world; that they have enriched the life of after times with no pure vein of native feeling, nor any impressive record of national experience. It is, indeed, impossible to claim for Roman poetry the unborrowed glory or the varied inspiration of the earlier art of Greece. To the genius of Greece alone can the words of the bard in the Odyssey be applied, αὐτοδίδακτος δ᾽ εἰμί, θεὸς δέ μοι ἐν φρεσὶν οἴμας παντοίας ἐνέφυσεν.[1]