second Alcæus on the strength of his vote; who is he in my judgment? Why, nothing short of Callimachus; or if that contents him not, he rises to Mimnermus, and waxes greater through the name of his own choosing. Much do I endure to appease the irritable race of bards, while I scribble verses myself, and as a suppliant canvass for the interest of the people: now that I have finished my poetic course, and recovered my wits, I would stop my ears, once open to those who read without requital.

106-125. Bad poets are happy in their vanity; the real poet is severe upon himself.

Ridicule attends bad poets; but then they delight in their own writings, and are venerable in their own eyes, and if one is silent, without waiting longer, they praise whatever they have written, a race happy in their own conceits. But he who would compose a poem that will fulfil the laws of his art, when he takes his tablets, will take also the spirit of an upright censor; he will not scruple to remove from their place all fine phrases lacking brilliancy, and regarded as wanting in dignity and as unworthy of honour, though reluctantly they depart, and still linger within the shrine of Vesta; he will kindly for the people's use bring forth words that have long lain in obscurity, once in vogue with ancient Cato and Cethegus, but now sunk in shapeless oblivion and dreary age: he will adopt new names produced by usage, the parent of language: though strong, yet clear, like a transparent stream, he will pour forth a wealth of words, and enrich Latium with the fulness of his eloquence: but what is luxuriant he will prune, what is rough he will refine by a sensible culture, what has no merit he will utterly take away: he will appear like an actor, and turn and twist his limbs, as one who dances now like a Satyr, now like a clownish Cyclops.

126-140. Yet the self-satisfied poet is the happiest, as may be illustrated by the story of the Argive.

But yet, better be thought a silly and dull poet, provided my own faults please me, or at least escape me, than to be ever so sensible, and to chafe in one's spirit. There lived one at Argos of no mean rank, who used to fancy that he was listening to admirable tragic actors; he would sit happy, and applaud in the empty theatre; yet meanwhile he could correctly discharge all the duties of life, an excellent neighbour, an amiable friend, civil to his wife; he could command himself so far as to forgive his servants, and was not quite a madman though the seal of a bottle were broken; he could avoid walking against a rock or into an open well. Him his relations with much labour and care cured, expelling the disease and bile by doses of pure hellebore; so he returns to his senses; whereupon he says, "By Pollux, my friends, you have been the death of me, not my deliverers, who have robbed me of my pleasure, and violently taken from me my soul's dearest illusion."

141-157. There is a time for all things, a time to give up versewriting, and to learn true wisdom, that we may free ourselves from avarice.

No doubt it is good to learn wisdom and cast aside trifles, and leave to boys the sport that suits their age, and not to be always hunting after words fit to be set to the music of the Latin lyre, but to master the harmonies and measures of the true life. Wherefore I hold converse with myself, and in meditation ponder such thoughts as these: If no draughts of water assuaged your thirst, you would tell the doctors; dare you not confess to any one, that the more you have acquired, the more you want? If a wound got no better by the use of the prescribed root or herb, you would cease to have it dressed by that which had no efficacy. You have been told, perhaps, that riches, Heaven's gift, deliver their possessor from depravity and folly; though, since you were richer, you find yourself no wiser, you still persist to follow the same counsellors. But if it were true that wealth could give you wisdom, contentment, moral courage, then surely you had reason to blush, if a greater miser than you could be found in the whole world.

158-179. But what do we mean by property? Is the word, property, applicable at all to such a state of things as is found in man's life?

If what a man buys by the forms of legal purchase is his property, there are some things, if you believe the lawyers, to which use gives a title. The farm is yours, on the produce of which you live; and Orbius' bailiff, harrowing the cornfields from which you are to get your bread, owns you as his true lord. For money paid you receive raisins, chickens, eggs, your cask of wine: why, this is your way of purchasing bit by bit a farm bought for three hundred thousand sesterces, or perchance for even more. What odds does it make, whether you live on what you paid for lately, or a long time ago? A man bought a farm at Aricia or Veii; he buys the vegetables at his dinner, though he may think he does not, he buys the logs with which he heats his copper pot in the cold evening: yet he calls all his own property, up to the poplar planted at the settled boundary to prevent a dispute with his neighbour: just as if anything were property, which at the point of every passing hour, by prayer, by purchase, by violence, by death the end of all things, changes its masters, and passes to the ownership of another. Thus to none is granted the use in perpetuity; and an heir comes after the heir of him who was heir to one before, as waves follow waves; what then avail rows of houses or granaries, or what avail Lucanian mountainpastures united to Calabrian, if great things and small alike are mown by the scythe of Death, a god not to be won by gold?

180-204. Various are the tastes and natures of men, as the Genius of each fashions them. Horace hopes that he may avoid extremes, and live contented with his lot.

Jewels, marble, ivory, Tuscan images, paintings, plate, garments dyed in African purple, there are who have not, here and there is one who does not care to have. One of two brothers prefers idling, playing, perfuming, to the unctuous palm-groves of Herod; another, rich and restless, from the dawn to the evening-shades reclaims the woodlands with fire and the iron plough; why so, is only known to the Genius-god, who, the companion of our existence, rules our natal star, the god of human nature, destined to die when each man dies, various of face, fair, or dark. I will enjoy my own, and take what need requires, from my moderate sum; I will not fear my heir's judgment of me, because he finds no more than I have bequeathed him and yet I would not be ignorant how much the cheerful giver differs from the spendthrift, how much the frugal from the miser. 'Tis one thing lavishly to waste, another not to grudge to spend, and not to strive to increase one's store; 'tis better, like a schoolboy in the holidays, to snatch a fleeting enjoyment of life. Far from my home be a mean squalor; let my vessel be large or small, I that sail in it am the same: I am not borne along with swelling sails and prosperous gales, yet I pass not my whole life midst adverse winds; in strength, genius, display, virtue, station, fortune, behind the foremost, ever before the last.

205-216. Many besides avarice are the faults of our nature. As we grow in years, may we grow in goodness, and be ready to leave life with a good grace.

So then you are no miser: go your way. What then? Are you free of all vices together with that one? Is your soul delivered from vain ambition? from the fear of death? from anger? Can you laugh at dreams, magic terrors, prodigies, witches, nightly phantoms, Thessalian portents? do you count your birthdays with a thankful mind? can you forgive a friend? do you grow a milder and better man as old age draws near? How are you relieved by pulling out one of many thorns? If you know not how to live aright, give place to the wise. You have played and eaten and drunk your fill; 'tis time you depart; lest, if you drink more deeply than is proper, you be jeered and driven from the feast by an age which is sprightly with a better grace.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ART OF POETRY.

LUCIUS CALPURNIUS PISO, to whom, with his sons, is addressed the last epistle in Horace's works, had gained victories in Thrace: but he is much better known as the friend of Horace. He is praised by Velleius Paterculus, Seneca, and Tacitus, for having executed the duties of the unpopular office of Prefect of the city with remarkable industry, gentleness, and wisdom. He lived to a great age, outliving Horace by thirty-nine years. Horace in this epistle speaks of the elder of the sons as likely to write verses. The epistle is rightly placed next to the epistles to Augustus and Florus. The subject of the three epistles is in the main the same. They are all written upon the literature of Rome and Greece. But the third epistle, being more general and somewhat more systematic, received even in early days the ambitious title of the "Art of Poetry." It is so called twice by Quintilian. Priscian, Terentius Scaurus, Symmachus, and others, give it the same name. This title has contributed at once to the reputation and to the disparagement of the epistle. Such an honourable name placed it almost in the same rank as Aristotle's treatise on poetry. Horace's lively letter has been naturally far more popular than Aristotle's dry discussion, and for one reader of the Poetics there have doubtless been hundreds of Horace's work. The epistle, dignified with such a name, has had several imitations in modern times. On the other hand, students of it, misled by this title, have expected more than they have found. They have forgotten that it was a letter, not a treatise. We may well suppose that no one would have been more surprised than Horace himself to have heard his letter called by so great a name, and may well imagine what a delightful epistle he could have written, disclaiming the doubtful honour. Horace writes for a particular object, his wish being, as it seems, to deter a certain young man from publishing his compositions rashly; and it has been made almost a matter of complaint, that he is as one who seeks to discourage the aspirations of genius. Perhaps Horace had read the youthful attempts of the elder son; he may have found them wanting in originality, or rough and incorrect; it is unreasonable to accuse Horace (as Scaliger, a great critic of an unamiable character, has done,) of dealing with the little points that concern grammar, rather than poetry. Horace writes as ideas occur to him, in the way in

which letters are usually written; and he has been reproached with a want of that very order and lucid arrangement on which he himself sets so high a value. He ends his epistle abruptly, in a humorous manner, after his usual happy way, just as we say it is well to leave a friend with a joke at the end of a conversation; and critics have spoken of the treatise as unfinished. Horace would have replied perhaps: "Unfinished, no doubt; but would you have me as longwinded as blear-eyed Crispinus? The gods forbid! I should bore my friends, young or old. For friends I write, not for critics."

Now, if it be true that Horace's friends, like many other young men, wanted warning rather than encouragement, it is natural that the general style of the treatise should be practical rather than enthusiastic. Here we have the "Art of Poetry" rather than the "Science of Poetry." Here are no high-flown rhapsodies, no metaphysical inquiries, no philosophical analysis. Abstract questions are not discussed here, as to the true theory of poetry, and the like; whether, for instance, Aristotle is right when he says that the aim of tragedy is to purify the passions by means of pity and terror, or whether the pleasure that tragedy gives arises "from its awakening in us the feeling of the dignity of human nature, or from the display of the mysteries of Providence and Fate." These questions to some are interesting, to others simply unintelligible. At any rate they have nothing to do with Horace's Art of Poetry. He had no taste for such vague and profound inquiries, little suited to the age he lived in, or to the practical turn of the Roman mind, or to the particular object of his epistle. Those who consider Aristotle's Poetics a shallow book, will be sure to think Horace's Art of Poetry still more shallow. Walckenaer1 in his account of Horace's treatise speaks of the eleven precepts of Horace on poetry: this division gives an idea of regularity not to be found in this book; and if we are to count precepts, we should find many more than eleven or twelve scattered up and down in the epistle. Horace throws together in a loose and lively way his pleasant pieces of advice to his friends. His Art of Poetry is an "art without an art ;" or, if there be art, it is art concealed. He is truly natural throughout. As Pope said of Homer, so may we say of him, "Horace and Nature are the same." He begins with a jest and ends with a jest. He laughs goodnaturedly at the pretty patches of a pompous poetry. He recommends modesty and diffidence. He claims liberty for himself, and his illustrious friends Virgil and Varius, to invent new words and expressions, but he does not look that these should have an immortality, which the most splendid material works of the Empire were not destined to enjoy. It is true that in the middle of the epistle the writer is more methodical, and speaks with an authority which he had earned by his success: but even here he is still unassuming, and mixes together various subjects; as of metre, feet, epic poetry, tragedy, comedy and satiric poems, of the characteristics of the various ages

1 Walckenaer, Vie d'Horace. Paris, 2nd edition, 1858.