and he refers to several other poets, of whose works only fragments have been preserved.

The principal poems which occupied his early manhood were 'Epistles of the Heroines,' 'The Loves,' 'The Art of Love,' and 'Remedies for Love.' The first consists of Letters supposed to have been written by women famous in legends to their absent husbands or lovers. Thus Penelope writes to the wandering Ulysses; Phyllis complains of the long-delayed return of her lover Demophoon ; the deserted Ariadne reproaches Theseus; Medea seeks to turn Jason from his new marriage with Glauce; and Dido denounces the perfidy of Æneas. The characters, however, are all unreally drawn, and the subject-matter of the epistles is monotonous, although the poet has a wonderful gift of varying his expressions, and his language and versification are polished and melodious. The most elegant and pathetic is that from Laodamia to Protesilaus, the Greek chieftain who was the victim of the prophecy that the first to leap from the fleet to the Trojan shore must fall. After lamenting that all is happening so far away, she exclaims,—

'Ah! Trojan women, happier far than we,
Fain in your lot would I partaker be!
If ye must mourn o'er some dead hero's bier
And all the dangers of the war are near,
With you at least the fair and youthful bride
May arm her husband with becoming pride;
Lift the fierce helmet to his gallant brow,
And, with a trembling hand, his sword bestow;
With fingers all unused the weapon brace,
And gaze with fondest love upon his face.
And when equipped she leads him to the door,
Her fond commands how oft repeating o'er,-
Return victorious, and thine arms enshrine,
Return beloved to these arms of mine!
Amid the battle's din, and clashing swords,
He still will listen to her parting words;
And if more prudent, still, ah! not less brave,
One thought for her and for his home will save.'

Church.

The letter of Sappho to Thaon, a handsome youth, is founded on a less pleasing story, but has been beautifully

paraphrased by Pope. The Corinna who is celebrated in The Loves' is believed to have been Julia, the daughter of Augustus; and the following lines show how fashions. repeat themselves

'Now with new arts thou shalt thy friends amuse,
And curls, of German captives borrowed, use;
Drusus to Rome their vanquished nation sends,
And the fair slave to thee her tresses lends.'

The subject-matter generally is brilliant and witty, but coarse, and there is no other passage in them worth quoting. In better taste is a poem on his mistress's parrot; and an elegy on the death of the poet Tibullus is faultless in tone and pathos. The only readable portions of the Art of Love' are its sparkling episodes, especially the description of Ariadne deserted at Naxos, and the flight of Daedalus and Icarus with wings made of wax. There are also some sketches of Roman manners, and an explanation of several games of dice, in which ladies joined.

The 'Remedies for Love' are quite as objectionable, but they too contain some clever digressions, and a flattering panegyric on Caius, a grandson of Augustus. So disreputable were these works considered, that Ovid was banished by the emperor to a settlement on the western shore of the Black Sea, although he declares that it was for another cause which he dared not reveal.

Before he left Rome, he had written his more creditable poems, entitled 'Metamorphoses' and 'Fasti.' In the former he has arranged from the Greek mythology the various tales which turn on the change of men and women into animals, plants, or inanimate objects, interspersing them with creations of his own fancy.

Commencing with chaos and the creation of the world, the following is one of the poet's finest efforts :—

Something yet lacked, some holier being, dowered
With lofty soul, and capable of rule

And governance o'er all besides,—and Man
At last had birth; whether from seed divine
Of Him, the artificer of things, and cause
Of the amended world, or whether earth

Yet new, and late from ether separate, still
Retained some lingering germs of kindred heaven,
And, while all other creatures sought the ground
With downward aspect grovelling, gave to man
His port sublime, and bade him scan erect
The heavens, and front with upward gaze the stars;
And thus earth's substance, rude and shapeless erst,
Transmuted took the novel form of man.'

Church.

The re-peopling of the earth after the deluge, by Deucalion and Pyrrha, is another remarkable passage. They were commanded, he says,

'Behind you fling your mighty mother's bones,'

mother symbolizing the earth, and her bones the stones contained in it; upon which

'They descend

The mount, and, with veiled head and vest ungirt,

Behind them, as commanded, fling the stones.
And lo! a tale past credence, did not all
Antiquity attest it true, the stones

Their natural rigour lose, by slow degrees
Softening and shaping into form, and grow,
And swell with milder nature, and assume
Rude semblance of a human shape; not yet
Distinct, but like some statue new-conceived
And half-expressed in marble. What they had
Of moist or earthy in their substance turns
To flesh; what solid and inflexible

Forms into bone; their veins as veins remain ;
Till in brief time, and by the Immortal's grace,
The man-tossed pebbles live and stand up men,
And women from the woman's cast revive.'

Church.

More striking still is the description of Jupiter's palace :

'Sublime on lofty columns, bright with gold
And fiery carbuncle, its roof inlaid
With ivory, rose the palace of the sun,
Approached by golden gates with silver sheen
Radiant, material priceless; yet less prized
For its own worth than what the cunning head
Of Mulciber thereon had wrought-the globe
Of earth, the seas that wash it round, the skies
That overhang it. 'Mid the waters played

Their gods cærulean. Triton with his horn
Was there, and Proteus of the shifting shape,
And old Ægeon, curbing with firm hand
The monsters of the deep. Her Nereids there
Round Doris sported, seeming some to swim,
Some on the rocks their tresses green to dry,
Some dolphin-borne to ride; nor all in face
The same, nor different,- -so should sisters be.

Earth showed her men, and towns, and woods, and beasts,
And streams, and nymphs, and rural deities,
And over all the mimic heaven was bright
With the twelve Zodiac signs, on either valve
Of the great portal figured, six on each.'

Church.

The various stories and legends are linked together by a connecting thread of the poet's weaving, and the transitions. from one subject to another are very neatly managed. His detached descriptions, however, are the best specimens of his powers of composition. For instance,

'The looms were set, the webs

Were hung, beneath their fingers, nimbly plied,
The subtle fabrics grew; and warp and woof
Transverse, with shuttle and with stay compact,
Were pressed in order fair; and either girt
Her mantle close, and eager wrought, the toil
Itself was pleasure to the skilful hands

That knew so well their task.

With Tyrian hue
Of purple blushed the texture, and all shades
Of colour, blending imperceptibly

Each into each. So, when the wondrous bow,

What time some passing shower hath dashed the sun,
Spans with its mighty arch the vault of heaven;

A thousand colours deck it, different all,

Yet all so subtly interfused that each

Seems one with that which joins it, and the eye
But by the contrast of the extremes perceives
The intermediate change. And last, with thread
Of gold embroidery pictured on the web,
Life-like expressed, some antique fable glowed.'

Church.

One of the most admired of such episodes is the contest between Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of the dead Achilles, but it will not bear condensing. The picture also of Pygmalion's statue changing into flesh and blood is

drawn with great skill and delicacy. The last book contains an exposition of the Pythagorean philosophy, in which the slaughter of animals, either for sacrifice or for food, is deprecated on the ground that—

'All changes, nothing perishes; now here,
Now there, the vagrant spirit roves at will,
The shifting tenant of a thousand homes;
Now elevate, ascends from beast to man,
Now retrograde, descends from man to beast,
But never dies. Upon the tablet's page
Erased, and written fresh, the characters
Take various shapes, the wax remains the same;
So is it with the soul that, migrating

Through all the forms of breathing life, retains
Unchanged its essence.'

Church.

Altogether, the poem ranks next to the Æneid among the monuments of Roman genius. It has been translated into almost every modern language, and will, so Ovid himself predicts,

'While time shall last

Endure, and die but with the dying world.'

His other great work, the Fasti,' was probably suggested by the efforts of Augustus to revive the veneration for religious worship, which had been neglected during the civil wars, and may be described as a handbook of the Roman Calendar, giving the seasons and the reasons for every sacred service and ceremonial. Such is the general purpose of the poem; and it is marvellous with what apparent ease the poet converts the dry materials of the old annalists into smooth and graceful verses, and the beliefs and traditions of the past into pleasant reading for the present and future generations.

The poem commences with a dialogue between him and Janus, the divinity of the month of January, which was the first in the Roman Calendar, as revised by Julius Cæsar. The god explains to him several emblems and symbols, and also why his temple was open during war, and closed in time of peace. Alluding to some of the other festivals of the month, he makes a digression concerning