1 62 HORACE of his country, and to have applied as much wisdom to the theory of his own art as to that of a right life. But his critical Epistles&cQ chiefly devoted to a controversial attack on the older writers and to the exposition of the lavrs of dramatic poetry, on which his own powers had never been exercised, and for which either the genius or circumstances of the Romans were unsuited. The same subordination of imagination and enthusiasm to good sense and sober judg ment characterizes his opinions on poetry as on morals. He died somewhat suddenly in the November of the year 8 B.O., within a few weeks of the death of Maecenas, thus strangely confirming the declaration made by him in one of his Odes (ii. 17). Though not an old man, he had reached the full maturity of his faculties, and fully accom plished the work he was fitted to do in the world. He lived longer than any of the illustrious poets immediately contemporary with him or belonging to the preceding generation ; and his works show a mature character and a mellow wisdom in striking contrast to the tone of the only other great lyrical poet of Rome, " the young Catullus." Horace is one of the few writers, ancient or modern, who hive written a great deal about themselves without laying themselves open to the charge of weakness or egotism. His chief claim to literary originality is not that on which ha himself rested his hopes of immortality, that of being the first to adapt certain lyrical metres to the Latin tongue, but rather that of being the first of those whose works have reached us who establishes a personal relation with his reader, speaks to him as a familiar friend, gives him good advice, tells him the story of his life, and shares with him his private tastes and pleasures, and all this without any loss of self-respect, any want of modesty or breach of good manners, and in a style so lively and natural that each new generation of readers might fancy that he was addressing them personally and speaking to them on sub jects of everyday modern interest. In his self-portraiture, so far from wishing to make himself out better or greater than he was, he seems to write under the influence of an ironical restraint which checks him in the utterance of his highest moral teaching and of his poetical enthusiasm. He affords us some indications of his personal appearance, as where he speaks of the " nigros angusta f route capillos " of his youth, and describes himself after he had completed his forty -fourth December as of small stature, prematurely grey, and fond of basking in the sun (Epist. i. 20, 24). In his later years his health became weaker or more un certain, and this caused a considerable change in his habits, tastes, and places of residence. It inclined him more to a life of retirement and simplicity, and also it stimulated his tendency to self-introspection and self-culture. In his more vigorous year?, when he Jived much in Roman society, he claims to have acted in all his relations to others in accord ance with the standard recognized among men of honour in every age, to have been charitably indulgent to the weakness of his friends, and to have been exempt from petty jealousies and the spirit of detraction. If ever he deviates from his or dinary vein of irony and quiet sense into earnest indignation, it is in denouning conduct involving treachery or malice in the relations of friends as in the lines (Sat. i. 4, 81, &c.) " Absentem qui rodit amicum, Qui non defeiulit alio cul[ranto, solutos Qui captat risus hominum famamque dicacis, Fingere qui non visa potest, commissa tacere Qui nequit, hie niger est, hunc tu, Romane, caveto." 1 He who maligns an absent friend s fair fame, Who says no word for him when others blame, Who courts a reckless laugh by random hits, Just for the sake of ranking among wits, Who feigns what he ne er saw, a secret blabs, Beware him, Roman ! that man steals or stabs. " Conington. He claims to be and evidently aims at being independent of fortune, superior to luxury, exempt both from the sordid cares of avarice and the coarser forms of profligacy. At the same time he makes a frank confession of indolence and of occasional failure in the pursuit of his ideal self-mastery. He admits his irascibility, his love of pleasure, his sensitive ness to opinion, and some touch of vanity or at least of gratified ambition arising out of the favour which through all his life he had enjoyed from those much above him in social station, " Me primis urbis belli placuisse dorniq^ue " (Epist. i. 20, 23). Yet there appears no trace of any un worthy deference in Horace s feelings to the great. Even towards Augustus he maintained his attitude of independ ence, by declining the office of private secretary which the emperor wished to force upon him ; and he did so with such tact as neither to give offence nor to forfeit the regard of his superior. His feeling towards Maecenas is more like that which Pope entertained to Bolingbroke than that which a client in ancient or modern times entertains towards his patron. He felt pride in his protection and in the intel lectual sympathy which united him with one whose personal qualities had enabled him to play so prominent and beneficent a part in public affairs. Their friendship was slowly formed, but when once established continued unshaken through their lives. Many passages in the Odes and the Epistles show how perfect the confidence was between them, how completely Horace remained his own master, how certainly the bond that united them was one of mutual affection and esteem, not of vanity and interest. There is indeed nothing more remarkable in Horace than the independence, or rather the self-dependence, of his character. This saved him from the danger to which his genial qualities exposed him of becoming, like Moore or Burns, the slave of society or the slave of passion. The enjoyment which he drew from his Sabine farm consisted partly in the refreshment to his spirit from the familiar beauty of the place, partly in the " otia liberrima " from the claims of business and society which it afforded him. His love poems, when compared with those of Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius, show that he never, in his mature years at least, allowed his peace of mind to be at the mercy of any one. They are the expressions of a fine and subtle and often a humorous observation rather than of ardent feeling. There is perhaps a touch of pathos in his reference in the Odes to the early death of Ciuara, but the epithet he applies to her in the Epistles, " Quern scis immunem Cinarae placuisse rapaci," shows that the pain of thinking of her could not have been very heart-felt. Even when the Odes addressed to real or imaginary beauties are most genuine in feeling, they are more the artistic rekindling of extinct fires than the utter ance of recent passion. In his friendships he had not the self- forgetful devotion which is the most attractive side of the character of Catullus ; but he studied how to gain and keep the regard of those whose society he valued, and he repaid this regard by a fine courtesy and by a delicate appreciation of their higher gifts and qualities, whether proved in literature, or war, or affairs of state, or the ordi nary dealings of men. He ma de life more pleasant to himself and others by restraining the propensities which give pain to others, as well as by active good offices and the expression of kindly feelings. He enjoyed the great world, and it treated him well ; but he resolutely main tained his personal independence and the equipoise of his feelings and judgment. The mention of Virgil and Maecenas elicits from him warmer expressions of affection and appreciation than that of any of the other famous men of the time ; but there is no strain of exaggeration in the language which he applies even to them. If it is thought
that in attributing a divine function to Augustus he has gone
