Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

The poem on the joint Consulship of the brothers Olybrius and Probinus, which stands first in the editions of Barthius, Heinsius, and Gesner, is appropriately placed at the threshold, whether by way of dissuasion or encouragement to the reader, being of a moderate length, and containing on the whole a fair average specimen of Claudian's characteristic merits and defects; excepting that its subject is less interesting than that of many others, and that it contains none of his finer passages of description or sentiment. The mixed style of Claudian's diction is exemplified in the very outset.

Sol, qui flammigeris mundum complexus habenis
Volvis inexhausto redeuntia sæcula cursu,
Sparge diem meliore coma, crinemque repexi
Blandius elato surgant temone jugales,

Efflantes roseum frenis spumantibus ignem.

The two first lines, though too high-strained for an exordium, are in themselves good, and the second even majestic; but in the third he gives way to his love of conceits, and the fourth and fifth are mere bombast. After a magnificent eulogy on the ancestry of the consuls, the poet proceeds to the main subject of his poem, their elevation to the supreme magistracy, which he accounts for by one of those awkward and uncalled-for pieces of machinery so frequent in his poems. The goddess Rome, desirous of doing honor to the representatives of a family by which she had so long been illustrated, descends for the purpose of supplicating the Emperor Theodosius to this effect. The description of the goddess is copied, not very successfully, from the common representations of Minerva; one of the circumstances, however, is poetical, and worthy of Claudian.

Dextrum nuda latus, niveos exserta lacertos,

Audacem retegit mammam

nodus, qui sublevat ensem,

Album puniceo pectus discriminat ostro.

In the same passage we have an instance of the futility of attempting to improve what is unimprovable. Homer had said, in describing the descent of Neptune,

Τρὶς μὲν ὀρέξατ' ἰὼν, τὸ δὲ τέτρατον ἵκετο τέκμωρ.

Claudian was not satisfied with this.

Nec traxere moras, [equi sc.] sed lapsu protinus uno
Quem poscunt tetigere locum.

wholly from the Prolegomena of Gesner and others, and from the poet's own works.

Now the very beauty of Homer's conception consists in the comparison it suggests. Neptune passes from one place to another by steps, as a man would do, but with swiftness immensely greater; and it is in this image of human power, increased to a preternatural degree, that the sublimity of the passage consists. But in Claudian there is no comparison; his coursers do not clear the aerial space by successive bounds, though fleeter than the rush of a storm, or the leap of a cataract; they are in heaven and on earth in the same moment, and by this utter want of proportion disturb the unity of the scene, the magnificence of which is merely earthly magnificence, exalted so as to suit a celestial subject. It is true that this conception of Deity is not the sublimest imaginable; but if a writer will represent his gods as magnified men, he ought at least to be consistent in his representations. He must not confound two opposite systems.-The goddess presents her request to the hero in the moment of his victory over the rebel Eugenius. The picture of the field of battle is another example of a beginning of faultless beauty and elegance, marred in its effect by a turgid conclusion.

tetigere locum, qua fine sub imo

Angustant aditum curvis anfractibus Alpes,
Claustraque conjectis scopulis durissima tendunt -
Semirutæ turres, avulsaque moœnia fumant.

Crescunt in cumulum strages, vallemque profundam
Equavere jugis:' staguant immersa cruore

Corpora: turbantur permisto funere manes.

The goddess prefers her desire in good set terms of panegyric on the conqueror and on the subjects of her petition: the monarch graciously consents: the joy of Rome, and the preparations for the solemnity, are described. And here we have one of those pleasing touches by which Claudian sometimes relieves the glaring monotony of his pictures. The mother of the consuls elect is introduced as embroidering with her own hands the robes of office which her sons are to wear on the day of their inauguration. The piece concludes with a congratulatory oration from Father Tiber, and a meeting of the rivers, from which

'Cowley, whose vast poetical superiority, and extraordinary ruggedness of versification, equally combine to place him in a strong antithesis with Claudian, whom he resembles only in his love for conceits, improves upon this: Slaughter the wearied Riphaim's bosom fills;

Dead corps imboss the vale with little hills. Davideis.

Pope borrowed the parallel description in his Windsor Forest.
The different rivers are happily characterised.

Indigenas fluvios, Italis quicunque suberrant
Montibus, Alpinasque bibunt de more pruinas :
Vulturnusque rapax, et Nar vitiatus odoro
Sulphure, tardatusque suis erroribus Ufens:
Et Phaethonteæ perpessus damna ruinæ
Eridanus, flavæque terens querceta Marica
Liris, et Ebaliæ qui temperat arva Galesus.

We have been the more particular in our notice of this poem, as we wished to afford such of our readers as may be unacquainted with Claudian a clearer notion of his manner, both of plan and execution, than could be collected from a mere general description. The succeeding ones will not detain us at much length.

The next in order is the Rufinus, the most vigorous of all Claudian's writings, and, with the exception of the Rape of Proserpine, the most chaste and elegant in point of diction. It appears to have been written at two several times, like Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel; and the two parts may be considered as two separate poems, each embracing a separate series of action. The boldness of Rufinus's atrocities, the entire and perfect blackness of his character, as delineated by the poet, unqualified, as in the case of Gildo or Eutropius, by any ludicrous or contemptible attributes; the strikingly contrasted figure of Stilicho, and the heroic cast of the story (at least in the latter parts), give an imposing brilliancy to this poem, which is generally wanting in our author's narrative poems. It opens with the celebrated passage,

Sæpe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem, &c.

which we could never regard otherwise than as a poetical hyperbole, intended to aggrandise his subject, and as much a fiction, in a different way, as the machinations of Alecto which immediately follow, or the

and the

jam respirantibus astris,

Infernos gravat umbra lacus

Tollite de mediis animarum dedecus umbris,
Et Ditis purgate doinos

at the end of the second book.

The other remarkable passages

in this poem are the description of the infernal senate, imitated

from Virgil; the beautiful, though misplaced, eulogy on a country life (i. 196.); the animated picture of Stilicho's preparations for battle, and of his and his army's indignation at their recall (ii. 171 sqq.); Rufinus's dream, and the well-told story of his assassination (ib. 324 sqq.); and the concluding scene, which, in spite of the unfortunate simile of the bees, is superior to any of the Tartarean descriptions in the Rape of Proserpine.

The short poem in honor of the Third Consulship of Honorius is remarkable for nothing but the celebrated lines “O nimium dilecte Deo, &c." debased as usual (and indeed more than usual) by a lame and impotent sequel. That on the Fourth Consulship of the same emperor is worthy of much more notice; the introductory and concluding portions of the poem are a mere farrago of monotonous and extravagant adulation, relieved only by the poet's unfailing copiousness of allusion and illustration, and by the lusciousness of his versification. We are repaid, however, in the body of the poem, by an address of Theodosius to his son, containing an exhortation to the public and private virtues, founded on the dictates of philosophy and the example of the old Roman worthies; a passage, for sustained moral beauty, superior to any thing in Claudian, and not often paralleled in any of the later Roman poets. (V. 214-352, and again, 396-418.) This, and such passages as this, serve to account for, and in a great measure excuse, the exaggerated opinion which Claudian's contemporaries (to say nothing of many later critics) entertained of his merits. Claudian's style naturally rises with his subject, and it is here more than usually good.

In the Nuptials of Honorius and Maria, which have been made the model of innumerable epithalamia by the modern Latin poets, Claudian has attempted a new style, and we think unsuccessfully. With the exception of the inimitable Catullus, and perhaps one or two others, the Roman poets have uniformly failed in attempting the lighter graces. Their language was as little susceptible of the subtler beauties of diction, as they themselves were of the minute refinements of sentiment. Its very stateliness and ponderousness makes it unwieldy and unfit for the purpose. This defect may be traced in almost all their love-poetry. Venus is an inferior copy of Aphrodite. Claudian's general habits of style were also against him. What pomp and circumstance could do, he has done; but of graceful levity he was utterly incapable; the recondite delicacies and lesser shades of thought are lost in his coarse and glaring delineations. There is however much splendor and much play of

fancy in his descriptions; and his Palace of Venus deservedly holds not the lowest place among the many similar pictures in ancient and modern poets. We cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of quoting the description of Maria and her mother.

Cunctatur stupefacta Venus. Nunc ora puellæ,
Nunc flavo niveam miratur vertice matrem.
Hæc modo crescenti, plenæ pars altera Lunæ.
Assurgit ceu forte minor sub matre virenti
Laurus, et ingentes ramos, olimque futuras
Promittit jam parva comas: vel flore sub uno
Ceu geminæ Pæstana rósæ per jugera regnant;
Hæc largo matura die, saturataque vernis
Roribus, indulget spatio; latet altera nodo,
Nec teneris audet foliis admittere soles.

The poem concludes with a well-wrought panegyric on Stilicho. The "Fescennina," which follow, are rather ingenious than playful. Claudian's writings are in general unexceptionably pure, but "the custom of the country" has here betrayed him into occasional licentiousness, and accordingly into grossness; for the Romans had not the art of being indecent with a grace.

The poem on the Gildonic war is a fragment. It is almost entirely occupied with inartificial machinery and long speeches, which bring us to the beginning of the action; like a splendid archway we could name, which leads to nothing. It possesses however considerable historical interest.

The next is on the Consulship of Mallius Theodorus; the most uniformly beautiful, and, with the exception perhaps of the Epithalamium, the most pleasing of all Claudian's occasional poems. This is owing to the nature of the subject. The pursuits of his friend were in a great measure congenial to his own, and his peaceful virtues and love of science are the subject of the panegyric. Claudian evidently felt more at home than usual, and his praises of philosophy, though accompanied perhaps with a little human ostentation of knowledge, contrast very agreeably with the uninteresting bustle and cumbrous pomp of his state poems. Its fault is a want of variety. The description of the consular games, at the end, would have been better omitted; they are however curious in an antiquarian view. Some of the illustrative similes are highly majestic. The line,

laceris morientes crinibus hydri

Lambunt invalido Furiarum vincla veneno

and the expression, "crebrisque micantem Urbibus Italiam,”

« ForrigeFortsett »