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This shows that for a long tune a certain refinement and elaboration was compatible with the style of Mime writing. The Pantomimi have been confused with the Mimi; but they differed in being dancers, not actors; they represent the inevitable development of the mimic art, which, as Ovid says in his Tristia, even in its earlier manifestations, enlisted the eye as much as the ear.
In the long melancholy wail of Ovid's "Tristia;" in the bitter and heart-rending complaints of Cicero's "Epistles," we may see something of that intense absorption in the life of Rome which to most of her eminent citizens made a permanent separation from the city and its interests a thought almost as terrible as death itself.
His "Tristia" were more highly praised than his "Amores" or his "Metamorphoses," a fact which shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit. His poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste which marked the Greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. He had great advantages, but was banished by Augustus for his description of licentious love.
They were with Colonel Boyce a long time, and Harry grew very sick of the Tristia, and had to drink more beer over it than was his habit of a morning. They came out at last singly, and yet with very short intervals between them. They all turned the same way across Leicester Fields. There seemed to Harry something so uncommon in this that he was moved to follow.
"So here is the source of your inspiration? said he. An Ovid? How it brings up old school-days At Winchester old swishings, too, General, hey?" He held the book open and studied the Ariadne on the wall. "The source of my inspiration indeed, M. le Commissaire! But you will not find Ariadne in that text, which contains only the Tristia."
The five books of the Tristia, written during the earlier years of his banishment, still retain, through the monotony of their subject, and the abject humility of their attitude to Augustus, much of the old dexterity. In the four books of Epistles from Pontus, which continue the lamentation over his calamities, the failure of power is evident.
The ostensible reason assigned by Augustus for banishing Ovid, was his corrupting the Roman youth by lascivious publications; but it is evident, from various passages in the poet's productions after this period, that there was, besides, some secret reason, which would not admit of being divulged. He says in his Tristia, Lib. ii. 1 Perdiderent cum me duo crimina, carmen et errors.
Indeed, he read and re-read with an almost morbid interest both the Tristia and the Ex Ponto. Ovid's images seemed applicable to himself. "I, too," he said, "am a neglected book gnawed by the moth," "a stream dammed up with mud," "a Phalaris, clapped, for nothing in particular, into the belly of a brazen bull."
His "Tristia" were more admired by the Romans than his "Amores" or "Metamorphoses," probably from the doleful description of his exile, a fact which shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit. His poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste which marked the Greeks, and are immoral in their tendency.
All that day he strove with the fluency of Ovid, and to this hour his labours, much flaccid verse, survive in a decent obscurity. It was late in the afternoon before he yielded to his growing disgust with the whinings of the Tristia and sought relief in the open air. There was not much movement in the air of Long Acre.
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