Tyrrell's Latin Poetry

THE fascination of Latin poetry is to many inexplicable. Its detects as literature have been often pointed out. It has been pronounced an exotic from first to last; its forms, subjects, and much of its thoughts and expressions being copied from Greek. Some critics have shown that the great Latin prose writers from Cicero to Tacitus offer a more fertile field for study of language or history; and others have wondered that time should be wasted on Roman literature at all, when the great stores of Hellenic authors in all their varied originality are open. Nor are there wanting many now to declare that the ever growing riches of modern tongues are all-sufficient for literary work or literary play. Yet still hardly a year passes without some addition to the commentaries, translations, and discussions of the Latin poets. No one of the giants of Grecian literature, with the exception of Homer, and possibly of Sophocles, finds his way so directly into men’s hearts as their Latin rivals, from Plautus to Juvenal.

The work before us ¹ bears on its very title-page a testimony to this strange charm. Professor Tyrrell holds at Dublin University the chair of Greek, which position, if the Hellenists say true, ought to raise him above the jejune attractions of Latin poetry; yet here we find him, as ardent in its illustration as though there were no Æschylus or Theocritus in the world.

These chapters, of which a portion HAS already appeared in our pages, were originally delivered as lectures at the Johns Hopkins University, and elsewhere in the United States. Of American audiences there is most kindly mention in the preface, and there is prefixed a singularly sympathetic sonnet in honor of Baltimore.

The book is avowedly devoted to literary analysis and criticism. The poets are grouped by periods and subjects, and discussed in connection and contrast rather than individually. The early dramatists have their meagre fragments done justice to : but it is hard to get much out of such scraps, preserved chiefly in the driest pages of grammarians, to illustrate some archaism. In the short mention of the adaptations of Greek comedy by Plautus and Terence, Professor Tyrrell rightly apprehends the sadness underlying all the apparent gayety of the heartless and unprincipled civilization of Macedonian days ; but it is hard to agree when he attributes to Plautus a tone of severe indignation, akin to that of Juvenal. The feeling of genial fun generally ascribed to him seems nearer the correct estimate.

Professor Tyrrell points out that the Baconian theory of Shakespeare’s plays (duly credited to “ certain ingenious American writers ”) finds its likeness in the charges made against Terence, that lie was indebted for some of his best things to his illustrious Roman friends, like Scipio and Lætius. But the poet’s denial does not read quite so straightforward as Professor Tyrrell seems to think it: —

It is a great satisfaction to find a competent critic doing justice to the poetic talents of Cicero; the notion that he was a miserable poetaster being chiefly founded on a few unfortunate lines picked out by Juvenal and others, whereas the great hulk of Cicero’s poems, particularly his translations from the Greek tragedians, are eminently nervous and sonorous. In the construction of his verse he made vast advances on the uncouth rhythm of Ennius, and exercised great influence on Lucretius. Moreover, he is the real creator of national literature, the one under whom both prose and verse first took the bent which controlled them to the last. The frequent introduction of rhetorical passages, fit to have been spoken in the Senate, which are not wanting in Lucretius, and come with steadily increasing frequency in Virgil and Ovid, which form the staple of Lucan’s poetry and underlie all Juvenal’s satire, is due to his giving full literary form to the natural debating instinct of Rome. The merit of these passages Professor Tyrrell seems hardly to appreciate. They may not suit modern taste ; but they have the true Roman sap. The phrase sanctum senatum may be spurious in the first book of the Æneid, but it was never absent from any Roman heart.

The chapter on Lucretius having already appeared in our pages, we may pass to that on Catullus, the other great poet of the transition. For him Professor Tyrrell has the same warm admiration which his poems have excited in minds so widely apart as Fénelon and Macaulay, by the intensity of his loves and hates, the vividness of his phrases, and the sometimes unequaled melody of his verse. A loyal follower of the late Professor Munro, whom it was always hard to differ from, owing to the weight of metal and skill of fence that spared no antagonist, our author seems to set Catullus in the very front rank, and wholly denies the inferior estimate set by Conington on his poetic art. And indeed, if we will surrender our ears and hearts to the song of Catullus at his best, we shall be almost sure to fall into unchecked admiration. But herein two dangers must be guarded against: first, that of ignoring a mass of absolutely revolting matter, violating the rules not merely of morality, but of art, yet lying in immediate neighborhood of the choicest beauties. These strains, like similar strains in Burns, show a want of poetic Conscience, which we have a right to demand, because found in the real masters ; in Sophocles, for instance, in Virgil, and in Milton. It exists notably in Lord Tennyson, who is clearly Professor Tyrrell’s supreme favorite, and who has won a rank above what his natural gifts entitle him to, largely through his determined self-examination and regulation.

The other danger, when we discuss an ancient poet, is reading into him modern meanings, which the literal equivalents of the same words in a modern language would undoubtedly convey to our ears, whereas those words to a Roman were symbols of other ideas, often more passionate and vivid, but always less profound and sentimental. Professor Tyrrell rightly says the Æneid is not a romance. It is as true that such poems as Acme and Septimius have not an atom of romance in them ; they are as alien from any feelings of Romeo or Sir Philip Sidney as the rout of Comus from the lady.

Of the other elegiac poets, our author, in strict accordance with current views, accords the first place to Propertius, for his masculine and intense strains ; but he seems to cast Ovid aside with scant measure either of space or approval. Yet Ovid’s control over the resources of Latin finds no rival hut in Cicero ; and the vividness with which he makes mythological characters into men and women is not surpassed by Euripides.

The chapter on Virgil is excellent. It affords another sign that the preposterous dictum of Niebuhr as to Virgil’s inferiority, which once threw English and German critics off the basis of common sosense, — if so anti-burschisch a quality may be ascribed to a Teutonic scholar, — is losing its hold. As Professor Tyrrell says, the French have always stood by the ancient creed of the supreme excellence of Virgil; and there have been lately in England several tender and thoughtful spirits, like Professor Sellar, Mr. Myers, and Frederic Harrison, to uphold the same standard. It does no credit to Mr. Gladstone’s taste or discernment to have written on the other side ; and it speaks volumes for the same qualities in Lord Tennyson that he took every opportunity of testifying to the profound respect and love due to him whom the first great English poet hailed as a guiding light. The sources of Virgil ’s power over the hearts of men defy analysis like the enchantments which the Middle Ages assigned to him.

Our author’s estimate of Horace he allows to be novel and unorthodox. It deserves to be read, and would suffer by extraction or condensation. Perhaps one who retains the old love and admiration may best criticise it by showing that all the hard things that Professor Tyrrell says of Horace may be and have been said of Latin poetry as a whole. That it lacks originality and spontanity, that it struggles with the effort to adapt the varied music of Greek to a less fertile and pliant tongue, that it has throughout a bookish rather than a popular strain, are assertions hard to disprove ; yet somehow men persist in reading, in studying, and in loving the Latin poets, and Horace in exceptional measure. He is not, as he tells us, a swooping eagle or a soaring swan ; but as a modest bee, he manages to extract from flowers that eagle or swan would disdain more sweet honey, more pliant wax, more tenacious glue, and not a little venom into the bargain, than any winged rover of them all.

Professor Tyrrell’s discussion of the Latin satirists is vigorous and perspicuous, and he does full justice to the fire and force of Juvenal. His estimate of what we may call the morale of that great writer is less favorable, giving him credit for little more than bitter cynicism in his attacks on the vices of his time, and scarcely for the loftier purposes of the true reformer. But in fact, the purest reformer — and we estimate Juvenal much higher in this regard than does our author — could do little more in the age of the emperors than pull down the existing structure of society. A moral fire akin to that of Nero was needed to purge Rome; and all the precepts of Epictetus, all the example of Antoninus, were unavailing to regenerate her from within.

Professor Tyrrell has taken great pains with his handling of the Satyricon of Petronius, a work which can only by courtesy be introduced into an analysis of Latin poetry; and which, as it has come down to us, is so fragmentary and so outrageously realistic that one grudges it the space which he accords it, even while one allows its amazing genius.

In dealing with the poets of the decline, Professor Tyrrell is evidently tinctured with the dislike of “ rhetoric ” which is widespread among English critics of the present age ; a notion that careful training in language and argument for use in the senate and the courts, such as was extensively cultivated in the period from Cicero to Tacitus, is alien to true poetry, whether in feeling, in thought, or in expression. This idea is eminently one-sided. In all ages some of the greatest poets that ever awakened the fancy or elevated the soul have used the rhetorical method to kindle the emotions. The ninth Iliad, the Hecuba of Euripides, the eleventh iEneid, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Dryden’s Fables, do not lose a single poetic attribute, because they are instinct with the same pungent and antithetic force which animates the Oration for Archias or the Reply to Hayne. The greatest orators have always been devoted students of poetry; and any criticism that denies true poetic genius to Ovid, to Lucan, or even to Statius, on the ground of “rhetoric,” stands selfcondemned.

Professor Tyrrell appends to his book an interesting analysis of recent English translations of Virgil, supplementary to a lecture by the late lamented Professor Conington; his entire volume may be commended as in the highest degree scholarly, graceful, and suggestive.