No More Learning

The snuff of a candle, or a mischievous dog, might in a
moment have deprived the world forever of any of those fine
compositions. Sir Walter Scott, who united to the fire of a great
poet the minute curiosity and patient diligence of a great
antiquary, was but just in time to save the precious relics of
the Minstrelsy of the Border. In Germany, the lay of the
Nibelungs had been long utterly forgotten, when, in the
eighteenth century, it was, for the first time, printed from a
manuscript in the old library of a noble family. In truth, the
only people who, through their whole passage from simplicity to
the highest civilization, never for a moment ceased to love and
admire their old ballads, were the Greeks.

That the early Romans should have had ballad-poetry, and that
this poetry should have perished, is therefore not strange. It
would, on the contrary, have been strange if these things had not
come to pass; and we should be justified in pronouncing them
highly probable even if we had no direct evidence on the subject.
But we have direct evidence of unquestionable authority.

Ennius, who flourished in the time of the Second Punic War, was
regarded in the Augustan age as the father of Latin poetry. He
was, in truth, the father of the second school of Latin poetry,
the only school of which the works have descended to us. But from
Ennius himself we learn that there were poets who stood to him in
the same relation in which the author of the romance of Count
Alarcos stood to Garcilaso, or the author of the Lytell Geste of
Robyn Hode to Lord Surrey. Ennius speaks of verses which the
Fauns and the Bards were wont to chant in the old time, when none
had yet studied the graces of speech, when none had yet climbed
the peaks sacred to the Goddesses of Grecian song. "Where,"
Cicero mournfully asks, "are those old verses now? "

Contemporary with Ennius was Quintus Fabius Pactor, the earliest
of the Roman annalists. His account of the infancy and youth of
Romulus and Remus has been preserved by Dionysius, and contains a
very remarkable reference to the ancient Latin poetry. Fabius
says that, in his time, his countrymen were still in the habit of
singing ballads about the Twins.
"Even in the hut of
Faustulus,"--so these old lays appear to have run,--"the
children of Rhea and Mars were, in port and in spirit, not like
unto swineherds or cowherds, but such that men might well guess
them to be of the blood of kings and gods. "

Cato the Censor, who also lived in the days of he Second Punic
War, mentioned this lost literature in his lost work on the
antiquities of his country. Many ages, he said, before his time,
there were ballads in praise of illustrious men; and these
ballads it was the fashion for the guests at banquets to sing in
turn while the piper played. "Would," exclaims Cicero, "that
we still had the old ballads of which Cato speaks! "

Valerius Maximus gives us exactly similar information, without
mentioning his authority, and observes that the ancient Roman
ballads were probably of more benefit to the young than all the
lectures of the Athenian schools, and that to the influence of
the national poetry were to be ascribed the virtues of such men
as Camillus and Fabricus.

Varro, whose authority on all questions connected with the
antiquities of his country is entitled to the greatest respect,
tells us that at banquets it was once the fashion for boys to
sing, sometimes with and sometimes without instrumental music,
ancient ballads in praise of men of former times. These young
performers, he observes, were of unblemished character, a
circumstance which he probably mentioned because, among the
Greeks, and indeed, in his time among the Romans also, the morals
of singing boys were in no high repute.

The testimony of Horace, though given incidentally, confirms the
statements of Cato, Valerius Maximus, and Varro. The poet
predicts that, under the peaceful administration of Augustus, the
Romans will, over their full goblets, sing to the pipe, after the
fashion of their fathers, the deeds of brave captains, and the
ancient legends touching the origin of the city.

The proposition, then, that Rome had ballad-poetry is not merely
in itself highly probable, but is fully proved by direct evidence
of the greatest weight.

This proposition being established, it becomes easy to understand
why the early history of the city is unlike almost everything
else in Latin literature, native where almost everything else is
borrowed, imaginative where almost everything else is prosaic. We
can scarcely hesitate to pronounce that the magnificent,
pathetic, and truly national legends, which present so striking a
contrast to all that surrounds them, are broken and defaced
fragments of that early poetry which, even in the age of Cato the
Censor, had become antiquated, and of which Tully had never heard
a line.

That this poetry should have been suffered to perish will not
appear strange when we consider how complete was the triumph of
the Greek genius over the public mind of Italy. It is probable
that, at an early period, Homer and Herodotus furnished some
hints to the Latin Minstrels; but it was not till after the war
with Pyrrhus that the poetry of Rome began to put off its old
Ausonian character. The transformation was soon consummated. The
conquered, says Horace, led captive the conquerors.