SOURCE: “Claudian,” in Life and Letters in the Fourth Century, Russell & Russell, 1901, pp. 216-48.

In the following excerpt, Glover examines the style, manner, and method of Claudian's panegyrics and invectives.

We've drunk to our English brother           (And we hope he'll understand). 

Kipling

It seems that both Virgil and Horace were invited to write a great epic on the deeds of Augustus, and both declined the task. Virgil, as we read in the third Georgic, thought of it, but he gave up the theme as unsuited to poetic treatment. Horace instead wrote the Emperor an epistle on literary criticism, though he would have preferred, he alleges, to have told of lands afar, of rivers, of tower-crowned peaks and barbarian realms, of wars waged the world over, and of peace with honour thence resulting. Probably he would not, and his true reason was as in Virgil's case the perception that...