THAT what is called the history of the kings and early consuls of Rome is to a great extent fabulous, few scholars have, since the time of Beaufort, ventured to deny. It is certain that, more than three hundred and sixty years after the date ordinarily assigned for the foundation of the city, the public records were, with scarcely an exception, destroyed by the Gauls. It is certain that the oldest annals of the commonwealth were compiled more than a century and a half after the destruction of the records. It is certain, therefore, that the great Latin writers of a later period did not possess those materials, without which a trustworthy account of the infancy of the republic could not possibly be framed. They own, indeed, that the chronicles to which they had access were filled with battles that were never fought and consuls that were never inaugurated; and we have abundant proof that, in those chroni cles, events of the greatest importance, such as the issue of the war with Porsena, and the issue of the war with Brennus were grossly misrepresented. Under these circumstances a wise man will look with great suspicion on the rend which has come down to us. He will, Jerhaps, be inclined to regard the princes who are said to have founded the civil and religious institutions of Rome, the son of Mars, and the husband of Egeria, as mere mythological personages, of the same class with Perseus and Ixion. As he draws nearer and nearer to the confines of authentic history, he will become less and less hard of belief. He will admit that the most important parts of the narrative have some foundation in truth. But he will distrust almost all the details, not only because they seldom rest on any solid evidence, but also because he will constantly detect in them, even when they are within the limits of physical possibility, that peculiar character, more easily understood than defined, which distinguishes the creations of the imagination from the realities of the world in which we live. in the sacred grove, the fight of the three Romans and the three Albans, the purchase of the Sibyline books, the crime of Tullia, the simulated madness of Brutus, the ambiguous reply of the Delphian oracle to the Tarquins, the wrongs of Lucretia, the heroic actions of Horatius Cocles, of Scævola, and of Clolia, the battle of Regillus won by the aid of Castor and Pollux, the fall of Cremera, the touching story of Coriolanus, the still more touching story of Virginia, the wild legion about the draining of the Alban lake, the combat between Valerius Corvus and the gigantic Gaul, are among the many instances, which will at once suggest themselves to every reader. In the narrative of Livy, who was a man of fine imagination, these stories retain much of their genuine character. Nor could even the tasteless Dionysius distort and mutilate them into mere prose. The poetry shines, in spite of him, through the dreary pedantry of his eleven books. It is discernible in the most tedious and in the most superficial modern works on the early times of Rome. It enlivens the dulness of the Universal History, and gives a charm to the most meager abridgments of Goldsmith. Eyen in the age of Plutarch there were discerning men who rejected the popular account of the foundation of Rome, because that account appeared to them to have the air, not of a history, but of a romance or a drama. Plutarch, who was displeased at their incredulity, had nothing better to say in reply to their ar guments than that chance sometimes turns poet, and produces trains of events not to be distinguished from the most elaborate plots which are constructed by art. But though the existence of a poetical element in the early history of the Great City was detected so many ages ago, the first critic who distinctly saw from what source that poetical element had been derived was James Perizonius, one of the Imost acute and learned critics of the sevenThe early history of Rome is indeed far teenth century. His theory, which, in his own more poetical than any thing else in Latin lite-age, attracted little or no notice, was revived in rature. The loves of the Vestal and the God the present generation by Niebuhr, a man who of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's des o dei de direiv, The Tuxny as we * Ὕποπτον μὲν ἐνίοις ἐστὶ τὸ δραματικὸν καὶ πλασμα cabin, the recognition, the fratricide, the rapety nμLoys T.-Plut. Rom. viii. This remarkof the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, the fall of Hostus Hostilius, the struggle of Mettus Curtius through the marsh, the women rushing with torn raiment and dishevelled hair between their fathers and their husbands, the nightly ama and the Nymph by the well able passage has been more grossly misinterpreted than would have been the first writer of his time, | through many revolutions, minstrelsy retained if his talent for communicating truths had its influence over both the Teutonic and the borne any proportion to his talent for investi- Celtic race. The vengeance exacted by the gating them. It has been adopted by several spouse of Attila for the murder of Siegfried eminent scholars of our own country, particu- was celebrated in rhymes, of which Germany larly by the Bishop of St. David's, by Professor is still justly proud. The exploits of Athelstane Malden, and by the lamented Arnold. It ap were commemorated by the Anglo-Saxons, and pears to be now generally received by men those of Canute by the Danes, in rude poems, conversant with classical antiquity; and in- of which a few fragments have come down to deed it rests on such strong proofs, both in- us. The chants of the Welsh harpers preternal and external, that it will not be easily served, through ages of darkness, a faint and subverted. A popular exposition of this theory doubtful memory of Arthur. In the highlands and of the evidence by which it is supported of Scotland may still be gleaned some reliques may not be without interest even for readers of the old songs about Cuthullin and Fingal who are unacquainted with the ancient lan- The long struggle of the Servians against the guages, Ottoman power was recorded in lays full of martial spirit. We learn from Herrera that, when a Peruvian Inca died, men of skill were appointed to celebrate him in verses which all the people learned by heart, and sang in public on days of festival. The feats of Kur roglou, the great freebooter of Turkistan, recounted in ballads composed by himself, are known in every village of Northern Persia Captain Beechey heard the bards of the Sandwich Islands recite the heroic achievements of Tamehameha, the most illustrious of their kings. Mungo Park found in the heart of Africa a class of singing men, the only annalists of their rude tribes, and heard them tell the story of the great victory which Damel, the negro prince of the Jaloffs, won over Abdulkader, the Mussulman tyrant of Foota Torra. This spe The Latin literature which has come down to us is of later date than the commencement of the second Punic war, and consists almost exclusively of words fashioned on Greek models. The Latin metres, heroic, elegiac, lyric, and dramatic, are of Greek origin. The best Latin epic poetry is the feeble echo of the Iliad and Odyssey. The best Latin eclogues are imitations of Theocritus. The plan of the most finished didactic poem in the Latin tongue was taken from Hesiod. The Latin tragedies are bad copies of the master-pieces of Sophocles and Euripides. The Latin comedies are free translations from Demophilus, Menander, and Apollodorus. The Latin philosophy was bor rowed, without alteration, from the Portico and the Academy; and the great Latin orators constantly proposed to themselves as patterns thecies of poetry attained a high degree of excelspeeches of Demosthenes and Lysias. lence among the Castilians, before they began to copy Tuscan patterns. It attained a still higher degree of excellence among the English and the Lowland Scotch, during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. But it reached its full perfection in ancient Greece; for there can be no doubt that the great Homeric poems are generically ballads, though widely indeed distinguished from all other ballads, and, indeed, from almost all other human compositions, by transcendant merit. But there was an earlier Latin literature, a literature truly Latin, which has wholly perished-which had, indeed, almost wholly perished long before those whom we are in the habit of regarding as the greatest Latin writers were born. That literature abounded with metrical romances, such as are found in every country where there is much curiosity and intelligence, but little reading and writing. All human beings, not utterly savage, long for some information about past times, and are As it is agreeable to general experience that, delighted by narratives which present pictures at a certain stage in the progress of society, to the eye of the mind. But it is only in very ballad-poetry should flourish, so is it also enlightened communities that books are readily agreeable to general experience that, at a subaccessible. Metrical composition, therefore, sequent stage in the progress of society, balladwhich, in a highly civilized nation, is a mere poetry should be undervalued and neglected. luxury, is, in nations imperfectly civilized, Knowledge advances: manners change: great almost a necessary of life, and is valued less foreign models of composition are studied and on account of the pleasure which it gives to imitated. The phraseology of the old minstrels the ear than on account of the help which it becomes obsolete. Their versification, which, gives to the memory. A man who can invent having received its laws only from the ear, or embellish an interesting story, and put it abounds in irregularities, seems licentious and into a form which others may easily retain in uncouth. Their simplicity appears beggarly their recollection, will always be highly esteem- when compared with the quaint forms and ed by a people eager for amusement and infor- gaudy colouring of such artists as Cowley and mation, but destitute of libraries. Such is the Gongora. The ancient lays, unjustly despised origin of ballad-poctry, a species of composi- by the learned and polite, linger for a time in tion which scarcely ever fails to spring up and the memory of the vulgar, and are at length too flourish in every society, at a certain point in often irretrievably lost. We cannot wonder e progress towards refinement. Tacitus in-that the ballads of Rome should have altogether rms us that songs were the only memorials disappeared, when we remember how very the past which the ancient Germans pos- narrowly, in spite of the invention of printing. ssed. We learn from Lucan Am-those of our own country and those of Spain anus Marcellinus, that the brains of escaped the same fate.There is, indeed, little a ancient Gauls were commemorated in the doubt that oblivion, govers many Englishsongs es of Bards. During many ages, and equal to any that were published by, D |