The works of Horace : with English notes, critical and ... - Cristo Raul

I LIl'E OF HOKACK
perienoed a total change. It was not till the Roman constitutMMi
approached, or had arrived at a monarchical form, that letters wers
generally or successfully cultivated. It was partly, indeed, her con
^uest of the world which brought Rome the literature and philoso-
phy, as well as the other spoils of foreign nations. The distinction,
nevertheless, must not be lost sight of; the genuine Roman character,
even under the Grecian forms, might and did appear in her
literary language, and in all the works of her greater writers ; and
in the didactie or common-life poetry, she could dare to be complete-
ly original.
In none was this more manifest than in Horace ; he was, after all,
in most respects, a true Roman poet. His idiom, in the first place,
was more vernacular (in all the better parts of his poetry he departed
less from common language, they were " sermoni jffopioira") . In
the lyric poems we may sometimes detect the forms of Greek ex-
pression; he has imitated the turn of language, as well ais the cast
of thought and mechanism of verse. The satires and epistles have
throughout tbe vigor and raciness of originality; they speak, no
doubt, the language of the better orders of Rome, in all their strength
and point. But these works are not merely Roman in their idiomatic
expression, they are so throughout. The masculine and practical
common sense, the natural but, not undignified urbanity, the stronger
if not sounder moral tone, the greater solidity, in short, of the whple
style of thought and observation, compensate for the more lively
imagination, the greater quickness and fluency, and more easy elegance
of the Greek. Of the latgr Grecian comedy, for which the
poetry of Horace, as we have observed^was the substitute, we have
less than of almost any other part of his literature ; yet, if we compare
the fragments which we possess, we shall perceive the difference
on one side the grace and lightness of touch, the exquisite and unstudied
harmony, the translucent perspicuity, the truth and the simplicity
; on the other, the rader but more vigorous shrewdness, the
more condensed and emphatic justness of observation, the serious
thought, which is always at the bottom of the playful expression.
Horace is addressing men aecustomed to deal with men—^men formed
in the vigorous school of public life ; and though now reposing,
perhaps, from those more solid and important cares, maintaining that
practical energy of character by which they bqjd forced their way to
eminence. That sterner practical genius of the Roman people survived
the free institutions of Rome ; the Romans seemed, as it were,
in their idlest moods, to condescend to amusement, not to consider it,
like the Greek, one of the common necessities, the ordinary occupa-
tions of life. Horace, therefore, has been, and ever will be, the
familiar companion, the delight, not of the mere elegant scholal
alone or the imaginative reWer, but, we had ahuost written, the
manual of the statesman and the study of the moral philosopher.
Of Rome or of the Roman mind, no one can know any thing who is
not profoundly versed in Horace ; and whoever really understands.
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