still farther in his assertion of the poet's valour:
"Horace could not have called up the remembrance
of the hero (Brutus), by whom he was beloved, with-
out reproaching himself for having yielded to the
instinct of personal safety, instead of dying with him;
and, according to my feeling, the non bene is a sigh
of regret, which he offers to the memory of that great
man, and an expression of that shame, of which a
noble spirit alone is capable."(2) The foolish and fatal
precipitancy with which Brutus and Cassius, upon the
first news of defeat, instead of attempting to rally
their broken troops, and to maintain the conflict for
liberty, took refuge in suicide, might appear to the
shrewd good sense of Horace, very different from the
death of Cato, of which he has expressed his admira-
tion. And Wieland had forgotten that Horace fairly
confesses his fears, and attributes his escape to Mer-
cury, the god of letters. (2) Lessing is no doubt right,
that the playful allusion of the poet to his throwing
away
his shield, has been taken much more in earnest
than was intended; and the passage, after all, is an
imitation, if not a translation, from Alcæus. In its
most literal sense, it amounts to no more than that
Horace fled with the rest of the defeated army, not
that he showed any want of valour during the battle.
He abandoned the cause of Brutus, when it was not
merely desperate but extinct. Messala had refused
to take the command of the broken troops, and had

(21) Wieland, Horazens Briefe, t. ii. p. 161.
(22) "Sed me per hostes Mercurius celer,

Denso paventem sustulit aëre."—C. 11. vii. 13.

passed over to the other side; a few only, among whom was the friend of Horace, Pompeius Varus, threw themselves into the fleet of Sex. Pompeius, a pirate rather than a political leader.(23) Liberty may be said to have deserted Horace, rather than Horace liberty; and, happily for mankind, he felt that his calling was to more peaceful pursuits.

Horace found his way back, it is uncertain in what manner, to Rome. (23) But his estate was confiscated; some new coactor was collecting the price of his native fields, which his father had, perhaps, acquired through former confiscations; for Venusia was one of the eighteen cities assigned by the victorious Triumvirate to their soldiers.(24) On his return to Rome, nothing can have been well more dark or hopeless than the condition of our poet. He was too obscure to be marked by proscription, or may have found security in some general act of amnesty to the inferior followers of Brutus. But the friends which he had already made

(23) "Necdum finis erat, restabant Actia bella

Fœmineum sortita jugum cum pompa pependit,
Atque ipsa Isiaco certarunt fulmina sistro.

Restabant profugo servilia milite bella,
Cum, patrios armis imitatus filius hostes,
Equora Pompeius cepit defensa parenti.
Manilius, i., 859, et seqq.

(23) It is difficult to place the peril of shipwreck off Cape Palinurus, on the western coast of Lucania, Carm. III. iv. 28, in any part of the poet's life. It is not impossible that, by the accident of finding a more ready passage that way, or even for concealment, he may have made the more circuitous voyage towards Rome, and so encountered this danger.

(21) Appian. B. C. iv. 3.

were on the wrong side in politics; he had no family connections, no birth to gild his poverty. It was probably at this period of his life that he purchased the place of scribe in the Quæstor's office; but from what source he derived the purchase-money-the wreck of his fortunes, old debts, or the liberality of his friends-we can only conjecture.(25) On the profits of this place he managed to live, with the utmost frugality. His ordinary fare was but a vegetable diet; his household stuff of the meanest ware. He was still poor, and his poverty emboldened and urged him to be a poet.

66

Sueton. in vit.

(25) Scriptum Quæstorium comparavit.” There is only one passage in his poetry which can be construed into an allusion to this occupation, unless the "hated business" (invisa negotia) which compelled him to go, at times, to Rome, related to the duties of his office. The college of scribes seem to have thought that they had a claim to his support in something which concerned their common interest:

"De re communi scribæ magnâ atque novâ te

Orabant hodie meminisses, Quinte, reverti."-Sat. II. vi. 36-7. But in the account which he gives of the manner in which he usually spent his day, Sat. 1. vi. 120, there is no allusion to official business.

STATE OF ROMAN POETRY-THEORY OF EARLY ROMAN POETRY -CAUSES OF ITS TOTAL LOSS-ENNIUS-INTRODUCTION OF HEXAMETER VERSE-GREEK INFLUENCES-DRAMALUCRETIUS-CATULLUS-HORACE THE FRIEND OF VIRGIL AND OF VARIUS-POVERTY MAKES HIM A POET-INTRODUCTION TO MECENAS INTIMACY WITH MECENAS CIRCLE OF MEN OF LETTERS-FIRST BOOK OF SATIRES.

HE state of Roman poetry, and its history, up to the time when Horace began to devote himself to it, is indispensable to a just estimate of his place among the poets of Rome. Rome, according to the modern theory, had

her mythic and Homeric age: her early history is but

her epic cycle transmuted into prose.

The probability that Rome possessed this older poetry, and the internal evidence for its existence, is strong, if not conclusive.

If from the steppes of Tartary to the shores of Peru-if in various degrees of excellence from the inimitable epics of Homer to the wild ditties of the South Sea islanders-scarcely any nation or tribe is without its popular songs, is it likely that Rome alone should have been barren, unimaginative, unmusical, without its sacred bards, or-if its bards were not invested in religious sanctity-without its popular minstrels; Rome, with so much to kindle the imagination and stir the heart; Rome, peopled by a race necessarily involved in adventurous warfare, and instinct with nationality, and with the rivalry of contending orders? In Rome everything seems to conspire, which in all other countries, in all other races, has kindled the song of the bard. When, therefore, we find the history as it is handed down to us, though obviously having passed through the chill and unimaginative older chronicle, still nevertheless instinct with infelt poetry, can we doubt where it had its origin?

"The early history of Rome," observes Mr. Macaulay," is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and the God of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's cabin, the recognition, the fratricide, the rape of the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, the fall of Hostus Hostilius,