pretences, whilst Balatro supplies the jokes: then, you return, O Nasidienus, with countenance quite cheery, as one who meant to mend his fortune by his skill: him followed servants bearing on mighty dish crane already cut up, and plentifully sprinkled with salt, and meal besides; also the liver of a white goose fattened on rich figs, and hares' wings torn off and served by themselves; "For thus," said he, "they are a much greater delicacy than if you eat them with the loins:" next we beheld placed on the table blackbirds with their breasts browned, and pigeons without their hinder parts. All these were delicacies; but the master of the feast would tell us the history of their natures and qualities; and we escaped from him, and our vengeance was not to taste a bit of them, just as if Canidia had tainted them with breath more venomous than that of the serpents of Africa.

INTRODUCTION TO THE EPISTLES.

HORACE'S Epistles may be said to be a continuation of his Satires in the form of letters. As many of the Satires contain little that can be called satirical in the modern sense of the word, so too but few of the Epistles are letters except in form. They do indeed comprise one excellent specimen of a letter of introduction, the ninth of the first Book; one, the fourteenth of the same Book, is a piece of playful banter; the third, fourth, and fifth are in the light style of friendly correspondence; while the twentieth, which is inscribed "To his Book," forms a sort of epilogue to the Epistles he had then written; but, as a rule, they are compositions like those which Pope, following the manner of Horace, has made familiar to us as Moral Essays.

In the first of all these Epistles, which possesses many points in common with most of its successors in the same Book, Horace begs his friend Mæcenas not to press him to write more odes, since he has abandoned poetry now that he is growing old, and means to devote himself entirely to the study of philosophy. For, compared with the Odes, Horace does not look upon the Epistles as poetry at all; just as he had spoken of "the prosaic Muse" of satire. The rhythm. of the Epistles is, however, considerably more harmonious than that of the Satires, and the thoughts are generally expressed in a more poetical style. Though the writer does not affect to aim at anything like the grandeur and varied music of the Epic hexameter, or of such a poem as the Georgics, yet there is a mellowness and evenness in the flow of the verse, which accords well with the more sedate manner of the poet as he is now advancing in years, and with the terseness and felicity of the form in which he conveys his thoughts.

The main principle of the philosophy which Horace preaches in this first Epistle (as he does in the others, and elsewhere in his writings) is this: "Moderation is wisdom." Horace professes with truth not to attach himself implicitly to any particular school of philosophy. This principle, however, he probably adopted from a well-known passage in the second book of Aristotle's Ethics, where it is said that virtue is midway between the vices of excess and defect. Cicero in his work on Orators, entitled "Brutus," tells us that it was a maxim of the old Academy that virtue is a mean. Horace repro

duces this maxim in the eighteenth Epistle of the first Book, where he says: "Virtue is a mean between vices." But indeed the principle colours the whole of his writings, and he is never tired of returning to it. Whether he pronounces that a miser is ever in want, or exhorts us to wonder at nothing, or sings of the happiness of him who makes the golden mean his choice, or proclaims that the moderate man is the genuine king, the feeling is ever the same. There is little enthusiasm in Horace's moral philosophy. And yet his love and admiration of virtue are evidently sincere and strong, as also is his patriotism. There is much earnestness in the tone of the second ode of the third Book, where the poet declares that "to die for fatherland is sweet and seemly;" and the same spirit is equally shewn in the sixth and twenty-fourth odes of the same Book, and in many other passages. So too the morality taught by Horace in the Epistles sometimes rises almost to enthusiasm, as in the fine passage in the first of the Epistles, where he exclaims: "Be this our wall of brass; to feel no guilt within, no fault to turn us pale:" and in the sixteenth Epistle: "Through love of virtue good men shrink from sin." But, for the most part, Horace maintains in his precepts a practical and moderate tone, and gently exposes and rebukes the weakness and folly, rather than the wickedness of vice. In this, as has often been observed, his manner forms a strong contrast to the indignant declamation of Juvenal. If Juvenal is the opposite of Horace in his vehemence, so too is Juvenal's energy unlike Horace's pensiveness. For throughout the writings of Horace, notwithstanding all his humour and wit, an almost sorrowful tone may not unfrequently be traced. Pensiveness has indeed always formed a feature in the characters of humorous men; and perhaps in the case of Horace the constitutional feebleness of his health may have also been one of the causes of this occasional depression of spirits. The passages in which he speaks of death are gloomy, and not relieved by hopefulness. Though the fear of death is mentioned, in the charming verses that conclude the last of the Epistles (which are very successfully paraphrased by Pope), as a frailty from which the wise should be free, yet the poet fails in his own case to exemplify this ideal wisdom. His lament addressed to Virgil on the death of Quinctilius', his condolence with his friend Valgius2, his famous lines addressed to Postumus3, and the ode of tender sympathy in which he assures Mæcenas of his devoted faithfulness, all alike breathe the spirit of dreary mournfulness. Juvenal, on the contrary, in the wellknown lines at the end of his tenth Satire, which have been translated by Dryden into verses which perhaps surpass his original in excellence, speaks hopefully and cheerfully of the end of life. Of the gods

he says,

"In goodness, as in greatness, they excel;
Ah, that we loved ourselves but half so well!"

1 I. 24.

3 II. 14.

2 II. 9.

4 II. 17.

And presently he mentions, as the highest blessing for which we can pray to Heaven,

"A soul that can securely death defy,

And count it Nature's privilege to die."

At the same time, there is no doubt that the tinge of sadness which now and then pervades the poems, and indeed some of the most popular poems, of Horace, has added not a little to the fascination of his writings, and especially of his Odes.

"Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought."

In the two Epistles of the second Book, and also in the Art of Poetry, which is written in the form of a letter, and should properly have been included among the Epistles, Horace appears as a literary critic, a character in which he had appeared on other occasions before, as in the tenth Satire of the first Book. In the first of the two Epistles which form the second book, Horace compares the older Latin poets with those of his own time. He gives the praise of superior merit to the later writers, and assigns the more complete knowledge of Greek literature as the principal cause of this superiority. He evidently thinks that the earlier poets of Rome may fairly be charged with a want of polish and refinement, a fault which he had in his satires more particularly imputed to Lucilius. At the same time, he complains that praise is given to authors of a past age on account of their antiquity only, and without a due consideration of their actual merits.

Lucretius and Catullus are undoubtedly the two foremost of the poets of Rome who wrote previously to the time of Horace. Yet Horace never mentions Lucretius at all; and his single allusion to Catullus (in the 10th Satire of the 1st Book) is almost contemptuous, as of a writer of trifling pieces, to be sung by third-rate musicians. It seems wonderful that Horace should have been unable to discern, not only the splendid genius of Catullus, but also his distinguished skill as an artist. It is possible that Horace may have felt some jealousy of the poetical merit and fame of Catullus, as of one who had, in fact, before himself "adapted to Italian measures the Æolian lay;" but, most probably, the marked difference in the schools of poetry, to which they may be said to have severally attached themselves, was that which, most of all, made Horace blind to the genuine excellence of both Catullus and Lucretius. For although these two poets resembled Virgil and Horace, in so far as they drew from the Greek the sources of their poetry, and often closely imitated their originals, yet in the form and style of their compositions they both differ greatly. Lucretius is most plainly a writer whose verses are generally rough and unpolished; and Catullus, though a real artist, and one who sometimes manages his metre with dexterity, (as he does in a high degree indeed in his Atys,) yet is he more often careless and diffuse; he will not spend the time and trouble which must have been spent by Virgil and Horace in giving to their verses that subtle and exquisite variety, that conciseness and

HOR.

II

happiness of expression. Authors who possess this latter excellence, 66 correctness of style,” as it is sometimes called, have always been intolerant of its absence in other writers. It was not without a certain self-complacence that Pope wrote the couplet,

"Ev'n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,

The last and greatest art, the art to blot."

This intolerance has extended to the admirers of "correct" poets: so Lord Byron (though he certainly did not himself follow the style of that school which he deeply venerated,) was so extravagant in his admiration of Pope that he evidently thought him a greater poet than Shakespeare, though he does not venture actually to say so; however, he goes so far as to call Shakespeare, on account of his want of correctness, "the barbarian ;" and he constantly reviles and disparages the poets of his own day for their deficiency in those merits of style which are characteristic of the so-called "Augustan” age of English poetry. "Depend upon it," he says, "it is all Horace then, and Claudian now, among us." In Roman literature too, and at Rome in the time of Horace, there existed two schools of poetry; that of the severe, restrained, and finished style of Virgil and Horace, and that of the florid and grandiloquent versification which Horace so often blames. It is abundantly clear in the satires of Persius, that these two opposite schools of poetry existed at the time he

wrote.

The second Epistle is in some points like the first Epistle of the first Book. Horace says that he has now resigned the functions of a poet, and devoted himself to philosophy; he takes the opportunity of attacking the superficial and showy compositions of many poets of his own day, and lays down more correct and true principles of the art of poetry.

Horace in his Epistles fascinates us more than in his Satires, possibly even more than in his Odes. Though the Odes contain most of the poetry, strictly speaking, which Horace has left us, yet the Epistles perhaps give us a more complete idea of those points in his character which have made him the familiar friend of so many generations. We can realise, as we read these Epistles, the warmth and sincerity of his friendship, the good-natured humour and delicate sympathy which he shows as an observer of the characters of men, the unfailing tact and tenderness with which he hints at the faults of his friends, and the undoubted genuineness and earnest tone of his morality. Horace is certainly the author who has been chiefly followed by the didactic writers of later times; and it is not extravagant to say that the Epistles, the most mature and excellent of his didactic works, have exercised, in no small degree, a beneficial influence on the manners and civilization of modern Europe.