epic poem, composed by Lucan on the civil war between Pompey and Caesar, and particularly on the victory of the latter over the former, of which we have given an account in the preceding article. It is a poem universally acknowledged to have great beauties and great defects; but we are the less capable of estimating its merit as a whole, that either time has deprived us of the last books, or its author has left it incomplete. "The subject of the Pharsalia (says an excellent critic) carries undoubtedly all the Lucan's epic grandeur and dignity: neither does it want unity of object, viz. the triumph of Caesar over the Roman liberty. In the choice of that subject, he thinks, however, that the author was not happy. The civil wars were too recent to admit in the description of them the embellishments of fiction and machinery. The fables of the gods mixed with the exploits of Caesar and Pompey, instead of raising, would have diminished, the dignity of such well known facts." Another objection to the subject, perhaps more forcible than this, arises from the success of the war and the abilities of the generals. Lucan was a friend to liberty, and wished to raise the character of Pompey and Cato; but in spite of his utmost efforts, they are always eclipsed by the superior talents and consequent success of Caesar. All his characters, however, are drawn with spirit, and with uncommon regard to truth; and some of the speeches which he puts into the mouths of his heroes are equal for moral sublimity to any thing that is to be found in all antiquity.

"There are in the Pharsalia (continues the critic already quoted) several very poetical and spirited descriptions. But the author's chief strength does not lie either in narration or description. His narration is often dry and harsh; his descriptions are often overwrought, and employed too upon disagreeable objects. His principal merit consists in his sentiments, which are generally noble and striking, and expressed in that glowing and ardent manner which peculiarly distinguishes him. Lucan is the most philosophical and the most public-spirited poet of all antiquity. He was the nephew of the famous Senecca the philosopher; was himself a Stoic; and the spirit of that philosophy breathes throughout his poem. We must observe, too, that he is the only ancient epic poet whom the subject of his poem really and deeply interested. Lucan recounted no fiction. He was a Roman, and had felt all the direful effects of the Roman civil wars, and of that severe despotism which succeeded the loss of liberty. His high and bold spirit made him enter deeply into this subject, and kindle, on many occasions, into the most real warmth. Hence, he abounds in exclamations and apostrophes, which are almost always well-timed, and supported with a vivacity and fire that do him no small honour.

"But it is the fate of this poet, that his beauties can never be mentioned, without their suggesting his blemishes also. As his principal excellency is a lively and glowing..." glowing genius, which appears sometimes in his descriptions, and very often in his sentiments, his great defect in both is want of moderation. He carries everything to an extreme. He knows not where to stop. From an effort to aggrandize his objects, he becomes timid and unnatural; and it frequently happens, that where the second line of one of his descriptions is sublime, the third, in which he meant to rise still higher, is perfectly bombast. Lucan lived in an age when the schools of the declaimers had begun to corrupt the eloquence and taste of Rome. He was not free from the infection; and too often, instead of showing the genius of the poet, betrays the spirit of the declaimer; but he is, on the whole, an author of lively and original genius."