and Greek literature was to crown Latin, that he, like his friend Mæcenas, might be learned in both tongues. How Horace's father obtained the means to send his son to Athens we may well wonder, when we consider the expense of an education at that fashionable University. Horace, at the time he left Italy for Greece, must have taken leave of the good father, whom he was never to see again.

At Athens Horace became familiar with Greek literature, he was a seeker after truth in the groves of Academus, he tried his hand at Greek verses, Greek Iambics perhaps, or Greek Elegiacs, or Greek Lyrics, till, as he playfully imagines, one night when he was sleeping, behold, the divine founder of Rome, who recognised in him a true son of Italy, no mere imitator or translator of Greek poetry, appeared in a dream that issued after midnight from the gate of horn, and forbade his attempting such a superfluous work. Thus, as the scenery of the Apennines, the liberality of his father, his early residence at Rome, the teaching of severe Orbilius, all tended to make Horace what he was destined to be, so did Athens contribute its share towards this end, both directly and indirectly; directly by teaching him Greek literature and philosophy, indirectly by the circumstances into which he was thrown owing to the public events which were then taking place. There is hardly any one in whose case it is more plainly to be seen how all kinds of different things concur in training a man to be what he is meant to be. Walckenaer and Rigault both remark, that while Horace was a student at Athens the news came of the assassination of Julius Cæsar, that at that time Cicero sent his treatise on the Offices to his son, who then was also a student at Athens, in which treatise Cicero expresses his admiration of the act of the conspirators; that the students were many of them the sons of senators, that the statues of Brutus and Cassius were crowned with flowers together with those of Harmodius and Aristogiton. Horace would be carried away by this enthusiasm. Youth is the age for republican impulses. When Brutus, Cato's son-in-law, came there, he would appear to the young Horace the true representative of republican principles. Even supposing that Horace was at that time an Epicurean, of which however we cannot be certain, his zeal for republicanism would prevent his taking offence at the Stoic opinions of Brutus. How Horace, so young and of such lowly origin, became a military tribune in the army of Brutus is as difficult to understand as many points in history must always be. That in the service of Brutus, in the midst of his military life, he had those

natural spirits and love of fun which were characteristic of his joyous nature, is plain from the seventh Satire of the first book, which is interesting, as being in all probability the earliest remaining production of the poet. The military career of Horace and his republican enthusiasm were soon terminated by the decisive defeat of Philippi, after which, as Tacitus says, the republic, as republic, fought no battles. To Horace the day was not fatal, as to many others: like the lyric poet of Lesbos, the future lyric poet of Italy threw away his shield, which was not well, as he himself confesses. But this short portion of the life of Horace, forming such a contrast to his earlier and latter days, contributed its part towards making him the writer he became. Three times has he mentioned Cato, the father-in-law of Brutus, speaking in one place of his unconquered spirit, in another of his virtue, in a third of his glorious death. The exploits of republican Rome are dear to the poet. The worthies of the ancient commonwealth, Regulus, Æmilius Paullus, Camillus and Fabricius, are not unsung by him. He has a feeling for the ancient simplicity, and a belief in the morality, of the days of old. No one sets forth more strongly than he does the madness and impiety of civil war. Had he not seen the evil with his own eyes, himself a part of it? patriotic poet.

A courtier he became afterwards, but still a

After the battle of Philippi he returned to Italy, with farm lost, humbled in hopes, like a bird whose wings are clipped. These were his dark days. He says that bold poverty drove him to write verses. To poverty we owe Rasselas and the Vicar of Wakefield. The same necessity gave the impulse to the genius of Smollett as a novelist. But of what verses does Horace speak? Indeed it is probable that he is half jesting. This is the opinion of August Arnold in his Life of Horace. Certainly the Epistle in which Horace speaks of these verses drawn forth by poverty is an Epistle full of jests and pleasant irony. It will not do to interpret Horace literally always. The same August Arnold thinks that it was then he enrolled himself in the company or guild of clerks: and Suetonius says that he obtained the place of secretary to a quæstor. With what means, whether the remains of his fortune, or borrowed money, or by some interest, is unknown. Arnold says that it is to his credit that he did not then take up the life of a parasite. A man of his natural wit might have got a livelihood more or less agreeable in this way and been not unlike the parasites Vibidius and Balatro,

whom he himself so graphically describes in the last of the Satires. From the days of his poverty and obscurity he no doubt learnt something, as all wise men do. The remembrance of them would make him more grateful to the friend, who raised him from difficulties to competence and ease. Some of the sterner and more manly passages of his poetry, and those which recommend a spirit undisturbed by all the changes of fortune, owe something to his having known the hardships of adversity. However, the iron never entered deeply into his joyous soul. If it had, it might have crushed the poetic spirit and light heart within him. The evil days were few. Whether he knew Virgil in earlier days, or had met him at Athens, or whether Virgil, his elder by five years, had seen some of his youthful poems, he found in him and Varius friends in the hour of need. This was the turning-point of his life. Horace tells us shortly how he appeared before the great man on that eventful day so full of fate to Horace, to Mæcenas himself, to literature. He was diffident and shy, and his speech was broken and stammering. He told the simple truth of himself, his father, his means. Few were the words of the patron in reply. Mæcenas did not give his friendship lightly: but, nine months after, Horace became his friend. What Walter Scott imagines in Kenilworth when describing the meeting of Shakespeare and Leicester, may be applied here: the son of a freedman was honoured with an interview with the Emperor's great minister, so that age would have told the tale; in ours we should say, the immortal had done homage to the mortal. However, Horace owed not only the happiness of his life, but his fame as a poet and writer, to this interview with Mæcenas. Some poets, like Dante and Milton, may have been made greater by adversity, when the indignant Muse has drawn spirit and fire from misfortune, but such was not the case of Horace. Indignation could never make verses of the kind he wrote. The one or two Epodes which he probably wrote in the days of his adversity are not to be compared with the happy outpourings of his soul in the days of his prosperity. Juvenal was right, when he says that Horace was comfortable on the day that he burst out in the praises of the God Bacchus. A joyous, not a bitter spirit, was needed for the writer of the Satires and Epistles of Horace. His Sabine farm and his quiet valley inspired those of the Odes which breathe contentment and joy. The times of his adversity lasted about three years; the bright sun of prosperity shone upon him for full thirty years, and few and light were the

clouds that passed over it, till the hour of his last illness, when death came swiftly upon him. Few men ever had a more pleasant life than the poet; he had a good father, a liberal education, genius, a Muse ready to his call, popularity, independence, contentment, honour, troops of friends. Against this are to be set troubles and difficulties soon over, a certain amount of rivalry and jealousy, and health that was not robust. Though he had not all the conditions of a happy life, which Martial enumerates, yet he had a goodly share of them.

Horace tells us that he wrote for his friends, not for the public. But we are all his friends now. The works of Varius are lost, and there was no opportunity for Virgil in his poems to mention his brother poet. Horace's name does not appear in the verses of Propertius or Tibullus, though to Tibullus Horace has written an Ode and an Epistle. Ovid is the only one of the contemporary poets who mentions him, saying that tuneful Horace charmed his ears by his finished odes sung to the Italian lyre. It is odd that Martial, enumerating the birth-places of famous Latin poets, has omitted Horace, for the Flaccus there spoken of is Valerius Flaccus, a very inferior Flaccus. However, in other places Martial joins Horace's name with Virgil; and it is plain from Persius, who lived only about sixty years after Horace, and from Juvenal and Quintilian, that Horace had soon become a standard author. In the middle ages his fame fell far short of that of Virgil, probably it did not equal even that of Lucan; but since the revival of classical literature Horace has been without comparison the most popular of Latin authors; indeed there is no Greek so popular, hardly any modern one. Dr Douglas, an eminent physician in the days of George II., collected even then no fewer than 400 editions of Horace. Mr Yonge, in his edition of Horace, says that the list of these editions given 50 years ago by Mitscherlich extends over a hundred pages. Great has been the learning and ingenuity devoted to the elucidation of the text and meaning of Horace. Bentley's famous edition is in its way the most remarkable of all editions of Horace. None of the productions of Bentley display greater merits and greater faults than his edition of Horace, never were his ability and his arrogance more clearly seen; but scholars have said that almost as much is to be learnt from the mistakes of Bentley as from the careful judgment of other editors. The edition appeared on the 8th of December, the birthday of Horace, 1777 years after that event. Mr Yonge says that he

has lived at Eton in a Horatian atmosphere, and Eton men seem to regard Horace as an Etonian, an opinion in which other schools can hardly be expected to agree. Many who have little liking for the classics, and have an unpleasant recollection of their early drudgery in them, make an exception in favour of Horace, the one author in Greek and Latin whom they still read. And many scholars, who have not a few favourites among the ancient writers, give their dearest affection to Horace. With some men, as with the Abbé de Chaupy, and with the witty Galiani, this love has risen to a passion of enthusiasm. The latter went so far as to write a treatise on the principles of the Laws of Nature and Nations, deduced from the poems of Horace. The Abbé de Chaupy, says Rigault, used to thank those who spoke well of Horace. Old women that he disliked were to him so many Canidias; a young lady that pleased him was a Lalage. Malherbe said that he made Horace his breviary. If Horace's wit endears him to Frenchmen, his strong common sense no less recommends him to Englishmen. And German editions of the poet are almost innumerable. Horace is especially the poet of the man of the world, of the gentleman: but on so many points do his writings touch, that they have an interest for those whose life is more laborious and eventful. Condorcet had a Horace with him in the dungeon at Paris where he died; De Witt, the Pensionary of Holland, a man of capacity and integrity, is said, when the mob were about to murder him and his brother, to have repeated the verses of the Ode of Horace, which in Stoic style describe the righteous and resolute man as unshaken from his purpose by the fury of citizens who bid him do what is wrong. Lessing counted Horace as one of those spirits to whose name he, like the Abbé de Chaupy, was unwilling that any taint of dishonour should attach. Hooker, as Yonge tells us from Walton's Life, in the preface to his edition of Horace, was found in the fields tending his few sheep with a Horace in his hand. Many can remember with what enthusiasm Dr Butler at Shrewsbury and Dr Keate at Eton used to teach Horace. Yonge in his notes gives us many passages in modern writers suggested by Horace. It is true that Niebuhr, lecturing in the year 1827, speaks as if the admiration of Horace was a feeling that then wavered; and Niebuhr himself does scanty justice to his poetry, and still less to his character. A writer who is so singular in his views as to account Catullus the greatest poet of Rome, would not estimate Horace fairly; the wild and impulsive Catullus, with the