superior in elegance of language and purity of taste. He was the first to substitute delicacy of sentiment for vulgarity, and knew how to touch the heart as well as gratify the intellect. Cæcilius Statius, the venerable and auspicious friend of Terence, referred to above, was himself an emancipated slave, born at Milan, and who rose to the head of comic poetry at Rome. Greece was the ordinary fountain to him, as to others; but he excelled most of his fellow-imitators in dignity, pathos, and the conduct of his plot. In the estimation of Cicero, Statius excelled in comedy, as Ennius did in epic poetry, and Pacuvius in tragedy. Roman comedy possessed some claims to originality, though to no exalted degree; but Roman tragedy was derived from Athens almost entire, and had not the merit of either literal translation or clever imitation. Ennius, born B.C. 239, was the transition link between the old school and the new. Originating in the wild and mountainous Calabria, he began life in a military career, and rose to the rank of a centurion. It is said that Cato, in his voyage from Africa to Rome, visited Sardinia, and finding Ennius in that island, took him home with him. He enjoyed the esteem of the leading literary societies at Rome; and at his death, when seventy years old, he was buried in the tomb of the Scipios, at the request of the great conqueror of Hannibal, whose fame, embalmed in his verse, he transmitted to posterity. It indicates the progressive condition of literature in the metropolis, that Ennius, who was evidently a gentleman, was the first writer of the time who achieved for himself the enviable privileges of a citizen, to which Livius had not aspired, and Nævius, the freedman, could never attain. Enjoying the friendship of Cato the Censor, and Scipio Africanus the elder, when aristocratic wealth was beginning to be greatly revered, the republican poet, cleaving to his lowly hut on the Aventine, still lived the life of the Cincinnati, the Curii, and the Fabricii of the good old heroic times. Under the auspices of Pacuvius, and simultaneously with the best comedy, tragedy reached the highest degree of excellence. He was born at Brundusium, B.C. 220, and was nearly related to the poet Ennius. Pacuvius resided at Rome till after his eightieth year, and formed one of that literary circle of which Lælius was the chief ornament. In the evening of life he retired to Tarentum, where he died ninety years old. His tragedies were chiefly adaptations of Greek originals to the Roman stage; the plots being entirely borrowed, but the treatment and language were his own.