284 THE DECLINE AND FALL we fairly balance his merits and his defects, we shall acknow- ledge that Claudian does not either satisfy or silence our reason. It would not be easy to produce a passage that deserves the epithet of sublime or pathetic ; to select a verse that melts the heart or enlarges the imagination. We should vainly seek, in the poems of Claudian, the happy invention and artificial conduct of an interesting fable, or the just and lively representation of the characters and situations of real life. For the service of his patron he published occasional panegyrics and invectives ; and the design of these slavish compositions encour- aged his propensity to exceed the limits of truth and nature. These imperfections, however, are compensated in some degree by the poetical virtues of Claudian. He was endowed with the rare and precious talent of raising the meanest, of adorning the most barren, and of diversifying the most similar topics ; his colouring, more especially in descriptive poetry, is soft and splendid ; and he seldom fails to display, and even to abuse, the advantages of a cultivated understanding, a copious fancy, an easy, and sometimes forcible, expression, and a perpetual flow of harmonious versifications. To these commendations, indepen- dent of any accidents of time and place, we must add the pecu- liar merit which Claudian derived from the unfavourable circum- stances of his birth. In the decline of arts and of empire a native of Egypt,^-'^ who had received the education of a Greek, assumed, in a mature age, the familiar use and absolute com- mand of the Latin language,^-^ soared above the heads of his feeble contemporaries, and placed himself, atler an interval of three hundred years, among the poets of ancient Rome.^--' 1'-^ National vanity has made him a Florentine, or a Spaniard. But tlie first epistle of Claudian proves him a native of .Alexandria (Fabricius, Bibliot. Latin, torn. iii. p. 191-202, edit. Ernest). 121 His first Latin verses were composed during the consulship of Probinus, A.D. 395. Romanos bibimus primum, te consule, fontes, Et Latias cessit Graia Thalia togae. Besides some Greek epigrams, which are still extant, the Latin poet had composed, in Greek, the antiquities of Tarsus, Anazarbus, Berytus, Nice, &c. It is more easy to supply the loss of good poetry than of authentic history. i"~Strada (Prolusion v. vi.) allows him to contend with the five heroic poets, Lucre- tius, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius. His patron is the accomplished courtier Balthazar Castiglione. His admirers are numerous and passionate. Yet the rigid critics reproach the exotic weeds, or flowers, which spring too luxuriantly in his Latian soil.
