(_β_) Among the Romans lyric poetry finds a soil no doubt fashioned for it in various ways, but of less original productive qualities. The period of its splendour is limited mainly to the age of Augustus, in which it is cultivated as the elaborate expression and relaxation of cultured society; or indeed, to a considerable degree, it is rather an affair of the clever translator or copyist, and the fruit of taste and research, than that of spontaneous feeling and really original conception. At the same time it must be admitted that, despite the learning and an alien mythology, to say nothing of the preferred imitation of Alexandrine models, where the warmth of life is least apparent, yet as a rule the characteristics of Roman personality no less than the individual genius of particular poets, do assert an independent position, and, so long as we put entirely on one side the most intimate soul and expression of the art of poetry, have accomplished sterling and consummate results, not merely in the province of the ode, but also in that of epistles, satires, and elegy. On the other hand, the later type of satire, which follows as a kind of supplement, in its bitterness toward the decadence of the times, its goaded indignation and virtuous declamation, fails to represent the genuine sphere of an unperturbed poetical vision just in the degree that it possesses nothing whatever to oppose to its picture of a demoralized present save this very indignation and abstract rhetoric of virtuous excitement. (_c_) For this reason, consequently, it is only after more modern nationalities have appeared that a really original content and spirit are communicated to lyrical composition, as we have previously seen, was the case, too, with the Epic. This is due to the German, Romance, and Slavonic peoples, which already, in their previous pagan days, but principally after their conversion to Christianity, both in the Middle Ages and in more recent times, have brought into being, and continuously elaborated in various ways, a _third_ fundamental revival of lyrical creation in what we may generally characterize as the _romantic_ art-type.