HORACE 1G5 those of Horace, to become rich too fast, and in the tendency to value men according to their wealth, and to sacrifice the ends of life to a superfluous care for the means of living. In the Satires ho dwells on the discontent of men with their actual condition as lie noticed the outward manifes tation of this spirit in the various callings of life ; in his Epistles he lays his finger on the real evil from which society was suffering. The cause of all this aimless restlessness ani unreasonable desire is summed up in the words " Strenua nos exercet inertia." In point of style the Epistles occupy a middle position between the "sermo pedestris" of the Satires, and the studied grace or the grave majesty of the Odes. It is the perfection of that kind of style which conceals much thought, insight, and character under a quiet and unpretending exterior. It combines two great excellences of manner both in writing and in conduct, .self-restraint with sincerity and simplicity. In his Satires and Epistles Horace shows himself a genuine moralist, a subtle observer and true painter of life, and an admirable writer. But for both of .these works he himself disclaims the title of poetry. He rests his claims us a poet on his Odes. They reveal an entirely different aspect of his genius, his spirit, and his culture. He is one among the few great writers of the world who have attained high excellence in two widely separated provinces of literature. If this division of his powers has been un favourable to the intensity and spontaneity of his lyrical >oetry, it has made him more interesting as a man, and
- mre complete as a representative of his age. Through all
lis life he was probably conscious of the " ingeni benigna ona," which in his youth made him the sympathetic student .ml imitator of the older lyrical poetry of Greece, and directed his latest efforts to poetic criticism. But it was in lie years that intervened between the publication of his Attires and Epistles that his lyrical genius asserted itself as .iis predominant faculty. At that time he had outlived the oarser pleasures and risen above the harassing cares of iis earlier career ; a fresh source of happiness and inspira- ion had been opened up to him in his beautiful Sabino etreat ; he had become not only reconciled to the rule of Vugustus, but a thoroughly convinced and, so far as his omperament admitted of enthusiasm, an enthusiastic eliever in its beneficence. But it was only after much ] ibour that his original vein of genius obtained a free and abundant outlet. He lays no claim to the " profuse strains nf unpremeditated art," with which other great lyrical poets of ancient and modern times have charmed the world. He recognizes with modest and truthful self-appreciation the .source of his power in the lines in which he contrasts his genius with that of Pindar : " Ego, apis Mat mm Morn modoque, Grata earpcntis thy ma pur lahorem riuriiimin, circa mnnus nvidique Tilmris ripas, operosa parvus Carnrina lingo." His first efforts were apparently imitative, and were directed to the attainment of perfect mastery over form, metro, and rhythm. The fir.st nine Odes of the first book are experiments in different kinds of metre. They and all the other metres employed by him are based on those employed by the older poets of Greece, Alcaeus, Sappho, Archilochus, Alcman, etc. He has built the structure of his lighter Odes also on their model, while in some of those in which the matter is more weighty, as in that in which he calls on Calliope " to dictate a long continuous strain," he has endeavoured to reproduce some thing of the intricate movement, the abrupt transitions, the interpenetration of narrative aud reflexion, which char- acUrize the art of Pindar. He frequently reproduces the language and some of the thoughts of his masters, but he gives to them new application, or stamps them with the impress of his own experience. He brought the metres which he has employed to such perfection that the art perished with him. A great proof of his mastery over rhythm is the skill with which he has varied his metres according to the sentiment which he wishes to express. He has impressed the stamp of his own individuality or of his race upon all of them. Thus his great metre, the Alcaic, has a character of stateliness and majesty in addition to the energy and impetus originally imparted to it by Alcseus. The Sapphic metre he employs with a peculiar lightness and vivacity which harmonize admirably with his gayer moods. In his combinations of the Asclepiadean we note the grave and thoughtful temperance of tone which pervades those in which the three Asclepiadean line are combined with one Glyconic as in the "Quis desiderio, &c.," " luclusam Danaen," &c., the " Divis orte bonis," &c., and the peculiar simplicity and grace, of a graver character than that of the Sapphic, in those Odes in which two Asclepiadean lines are combined with one
- Pherecratean and one Glyconic, as in the
" Quis mnlta gracilis te puer in rosa," " fons Bandnsire, splcndidior vitro." Again in regard to his diction, if Horace has learned his subtlety and moderation from his Greek masters, he has tempered those qualities with the masculine characteristics of his race. No writer is more Pioman in the stateliness and dignity, the terseness, occasionally even in the sobriety and bare literalness, of his diction. The individuality of the man is equally marked in his vivid and graphic con densation of phrase, whether employed in description of outward scenery or in moral portraiture, in the latent fervour or ironical reserve employed in the indication of personal feeling, and in the generalizing maxims which transmute the experience of some special occasion into a universal experience. While it is mainly owing to the extreme care which Horace gave to form, rhythm, and diction that his own prophecy " Usque pgo postera Crescam laude recens " has been so amply fulfilled, yet no greater injustice could be done to him than to rank him either as poet or critic with those who consider form everything in literature. Had he been a writer of that stamp he would probably have attached himself to the school of Alexandrian imitators ; and such excellence as he might have obtained would have been appreciated only by limited coteries, whose opinion and tastes do not long influence either the educited or uneducated world. With Horace the mastery over the vehicle of expression was merely an essential preliminary to making a worthy and serious use of that vehicle. He may have erred, in theory at least, rather in the other extreme of exaggerating the didactic office of poetry. If an explanation is to be sought for his disparaging reference to the lyrical art of his predecessor, Catullus, it is not necessary to find that explanation in jealousy, nor in any insensibility to a power of expression of which he has shown the sincerest admiration by attempting to imitate it. It is more likely that he was repelled by the purely personal and, as ho may have thought, trivial subjects, whether of love or hate, to which the art of his predecessor was almost exclusively limited. The poet, from Horace s point of view, was intended not merely to give refined pleasure to a few, but, above all things, to be " utilis urbi." Yet he is saved, in his practice, from the abuse of this theory by his admir
able sense, his ironical humour, his intolerance of pretension
