little care; if you would fill with books [the library you have erected], an offering worthy of Apollo, and add an incentive to the poets, that with greater eagerness they may apply to verdant Helicon.
We poets, it is true (that I may hew down my own vineyards), often do ourselves many mischiefs, when we present a work to you while thoughtful or fatigued; when we are pained, if my friend has dared to find fault with one line; when, unasked, we read over again passages already repeated: when we lament that our labors do not appear, and war poems, spun out in a fine thread: when we hope the thing will come to this, that as soon as you are apprised we are penning verses, you will kindly of yourself send for us and secure us from want, and oblige us to write. But yet it is worth while to know, who shall be the priests[1] of your virtue signalized in war and at home, which is not to be trusted to an unworthy poet. A favorite of king Alexander the Great[2] was that Chœrilus, who to his uncouth and ill-formed verses owed the many pieces he received of Philip’s royal
- ↑ Ædituos. Since the time that Augustus had received divine honors, our poet looked upon his actions as things sacred. His virtue is now become a goddess, and hath a temple consecrated to her, and poets are the guardians of it and of its mysteries. Such is the meaning of Ædituos. Fran.
- ↑ This praise of Augustus, arising from the comparison of his character with that of Alexander, is extremely fine. It has been observed of the Macedonian, by his historians and panegyrists, that to the stern virtues of the conqueror, he had joined the softer accomplishments of the virtuoso, in a just discernment and love of poetry and of the elegant arts. The one was thought clear, from his admiration and study of Homer; and the other, from his famous edict concerning Apelles and Lysippus, could not be denied. Horace finds means to turn both these circumstances in his story to the advantage of his prince.
From his extravagant pay of such a wretched versifier as Chœrilus, he would insinuate that Alexander’s love of the muse was, in fact, but a blind, unintelligent impulse toward glory. And, from his greater skill in the arts of sculpture and of painting than of verse, he represents him as more concerned about the drawing of his figure than the portraiture of his manners and mind. Whereas Augustus, by his liberalities to Varius and Virgil, had discovered the truest taste in the art from which he expected immortality; and, in trusting to that as the chief instrument of his fame, had confessed a prior regard to those mental virtues which are the real ornament of humanity, before that look of terror, and air and attitude of victory, in which the brute violence of Alexander most delighted to be shown. Hurd.
