MARCUS ANNEUS, a Latin poet, born at Corduba in Spain, about A.C. 39. He was the son of Anneus Mela, the youngest brother of Seneca; and was conveyed to Rome from the place of his nativity at the age of eight months; a circumstance, as his more indulgent critics observe, which sufficiently refutes the censure of those who consider his language as provincial. At Rome he was educated under the Stoic Cornutus, so warmly celebrated by his disciple Persius the satirist, who was the intimate friend of our poet. In the close of his education, Lucan is said to have passed some time at Athens. On his return to Rome he rose to the office of quaestor, before he had attained the legal age. He was afterwards enrolled among the augurs; and married a lady of noble birth, and of a most amiable character. Lucan had for some time been admitted to familiarity with Nero, when the emperor chose to contend for poetical honours by the public recital of a poem he had composed on Niobe; and some verses of his imperial production are supposed to be preserved in the first satire of Persius. Lucan had the hardiness to repeat a poem on Orpheus, in competition with that of Nero; and, what is more remarkable, the judges of the contest were just and bold enough to decide against the emperor. From hence Nero became the persecutor of his successful rival, and forbade him to produce any poetry in public. The well-known conspiracy of Piso against the tyrant soon followed; and, Tacitus, with his usual sarcastic severity, concludes that Lucan engaged in the enterprise from the poetical injuries he had received: "a remark (says Mr Hayley*, who has endeavoured to refute the imputation) which does little credit to the candour of the historian; who might have found a much nobler, and, I will add, a more probable motive for his conduct in the generous ardour of his character, and his passionate adoration of freedom. In the sequel of his narration, Tacitus alleges a charge against our poet, which, if it were true, must lead us to detest him as the most abject of mankind. The historian affirms, that Lucan, when accused of the conspiracy, for some time denied the charge; but corrupted at last by a promise of impunity, and furious to atone for the tardiness of his confession, accused his mother Attila as his accomplice. This circumstance is so improbable in itself, and so little consonant to the general character of Lucan, that some writers have treated it with contempt, as a calumny invented by Nero, to vilify the object of his envious abhorrence. But the name of Tacitus has given such an air of authority to the story, that it may seem to deserve a more serious discussion, particularly as there are two subsequent events related by the same historian, which have a tendency to invalidate the accusation so injurious to our poet. The events I mean are, the fate of Annius, and the escape of Attila, the two parents of Lucan. The former died in consequence of an accusation brought against him, after the death of his son, by Fabius Romanus, who had been an intimate with Lucan, and forged some letters in his name, with the design of proving his father concerned in the conspiracy. These letters were produced to Nero, who sent them to Annius, from an eager desire, says Tacitus, to get possession of his wealth. From this fact two inferences may be drawn, according to the different lights in which it may be considered:—If the accusation against Annius was just, it is clear that Lucan had not betrayed his father, and he appears the less likely to have endangered by his confession the life of a parent, to whom he owed a still tenderer regard.—If Annius was not involved in the conspiracy, and merely put to death by Nero for the sake of his treasure, we may the more readily believe, that the tyrant who murdered the father from avarice, might calumniate the son from envy. But the escape of Attila affords us the strongest reason to conclude that Lucan was perfectly innocent of the abject and unnatural treachery of which Tacitus has supposed him guilty. Had the poet really named his mother as an accomplice, would the vindictive and sanguinary Nero have spared the life of a woman whose family he detested, particularly when other females were put to death for their share in the conspiracy? That Attila was not in that number, the historian himself informs us in the following remarkable sentence, "Atilla mater Annai Lucani, fine ablutione, fine supplicio, disfumata;" thus translated by Gordon: "The information against Attila, the mother of Lucan, was dissembled; and, without being cleared, she escaped unpunished."

The preceding remarks will, our author hopes, vindicate to every candid mind the honour of Lucan, whose firmness and intrepidity of character are indeed very forcibly displayed in that picture of his death which Tacitus himself has given us. He was condemned to have his veins cut, as his uncle Seneca had before him. Lucan, "while his blood flowed in streams, perceiving his feet and hands to grow cold and stiffen, and life to retire by little and little from the extremities, while his heart was still beating with vital warmth, and his faculties nowise impaired, recollected some lines of his own, which described a wounded soldier expiring in a manner that resembled this. The lines themselves he rehearsed; and they were the last words he..." Lucanus, he ever uttered." The critics differ concerning the verses of the Pharsalia which the author quoted in so memorable a manner. The two passages he is supposed to have repeated are the following; of which Lupius contends for the latter.

Sanguis erant lachrymae: quaecunque foramina nova Humor, ab his largus manat crutor: ora redundant, Et patula nares: tudor rubet: omnia plenis Membra fluunt venis: totum est pro vulnere corpus.

Lib. ix. v. 814.

Now the warm blood at once, from every part Ran purple poison down, and drain'd the fainting heart. Blood falls for tears; and o'er his mournful face The ruddy drops their tainted passage trace. Where'er the liquid juices find a way, There streams of blood, there crimson rivers stray, His mouth and gushing nostrils pour a flood, And e'en the pores ooze out the trickling blood; In the red deluge all the parts lie drowned, And the whole body seems one bleeding wound.

Scinditur avulfsus; nec ficut vulnere fanguis Emicuit lentus; ruptis cadit undique venis, Difcurufque animae, diversa in membra meantis, Interceptus aquis.

Lib. iii. v. 638.

No single wound the gaping rupture seems, Where trickling crimson wells in flender streams; But, from an op'ning horrible and wide, A thousand vessels pour the bursting tide:

At once the winding channel's course was broke, Where wand'ring like her maze journey took; At once the currents all forgot their way, And lost their purple in the azure sea.

Such was the death of Lucan before he had completed his 27th year.—His wife, Polla Argentaria, is said to have transcribed and corrected the three first books of the Pharsalia after his death. It is much to be regretted (Mr Hayley observes) that we possess not the poem which he wrote on the merits of this amiable and accomplished woman; but her name is immortalized by two surviving poets of that age. The veneration which he paid to the memory of her husband is recorded by Martial; and more poetically described in that pleasing and elegant little production of Statius, Genethliacaon Lucani, a poem said to have been written at the request of Argentaria. The author, after invoking the poetical deities to attend the ceremony, touches with great delicacy and spirit on the compositions of Lucan's childhood, which are lost, and the Pharsalia, the production of his early youth; he then pays a short compliment to the beauty and talents of Argentaria; laments the cruel fate which deprived her so immutably of domestic happiness; and concludes with an address to the shade of Lucan, which, with Mr Hayley's translation, we shall subjoin in a Note, as it seems to furnish a strong presumption of Lucan's innocence in regard to one of the accusations mentioned above (A). "Had he been really guilty of basely endangering

(Where mightier souls new life assume) And mock the confines of the tomb; Or whether in Elysium blest You grace the groves of sacred rest, Where the Pharsalian heroes dwell; And, as you strike your epic shell, The Pompeys and the Catos throng To catch the animating song; Of Tartarus the dread control Binds not your high and hallow'd soul: Diffant you hear that wailing coast, And see the guilty Nero's ghost Grow pale with anguish and affright, His mother flashing on his sight. Be present to your Polla's vows, While to your honour'd name she bows! One day let your entreaties gain From those who rule the shadowy train! Their gates have op'd to blest a wife, And given a husband back to life. In you the tender fair invites No fancied god with frantic rites: You are the object of her prayers, You in her inmost heart she bears: And stampt on mimic gold, your head Adorns the faithful mourner's bed, And foots her eyes before they close, The guardian of her chaste repose. Away with all funereal state! From hence his nobler life we date: Let mourning change the pang severe, To fond devotion's grateful tear! And fatal grief, its anguish o'er, What it lamented, now adore!" endangering the life of his mother (says Mr Hayley), it is not probable that his wife would have honoured his memory with such enthusiastic veneration; or that Statius, in verse, designed to do him honour, would have alluded to the mother of Nero. If his character as a man has been injured by the historian (continues Mr Hayley), his poetical reputation has been treated not less injuriously by the critics. Quintilian, by a frivolous distinction, disputes his title to be clasped among the poets; and Scaliger says, with a brutality of language disgraceful only to himself, that he seems rather to bark than to sing. But these insults may appear amply compensated, when we remember, that in the most polished nations of modern Europe, the most elevated and poetical spirits have been his warmest admirers; that in France he was idolized by Corneille, and in England translated by Rowe.—The severest censures on Lucan have proceeded "from those who have unfairly compared his language to that of Virgil: but how unjust and absurd is such a comparison! it is comparing an uneven block of porphyry, taken rough from the quarry, to the most beautiful superficies of polished marble. How differently should we think of Virgil as a poet, if we possessed only the verses which he wrote at that period of life when Lucan composed his Pharsalia! In the disposition of his subject, in the propriety and elegance of diction, he is undoubtedly far inferior to Virgil; but if we attend to the bold originality of his design, and to the vigour of his sentiments; if we consider the Pharsalia as the rapid and uncorrected sketch of a young poet, executed in an age when the spirit of his countrymen was broken, and their taste in literature corrupted; it may justly be esteemed as one of the most noble and most wonderful productions of the human mind."—Lucan wrote several poems; but we have none remaining beside his Pharsalia, of which an excellent English version has been given by Mr Nicholas Rowe.