The moral character of the poet rises in dignity and decency; he has cast off the coarseness and indelicacy which defile some of his earliest pieces; in his Odes he sings to maidens and to youths. The two or three of the Epodes which offend in this manner, I scruple not to assign to the first year after the return of the poet to Rome. But not merely has he risen above, and refined himself from, the grosser licentiousness, his bitter and truculent invective has gradually softened into more playful satire. Notwithstanding his protestation, some of his earlier Iambics have much of the spirit as well as the numbers of Archilochus.

The book of Epodes was manifestly completed not long after the last war between Octavius and Antony. The dominant feeling in the mind of Horace seems now to have been a horror of civil war. The war of Perugia, two years after Philippi, called forth his first indignant remonstrance against the wickedness of taking up arms, not for the destruction of Carthage, the subjugation of Britain, but to fulfil the vows of the Parthians, for the destruction of Rome by her own hands.(53) Both written when he was thirty-two or thirty-three years old; hardly "annis juvenilibus." The fourteenth bears date after the intimacy was formed with Mæcenas.

(53) Read the seventh Epode:

"Quo quo scelesti ruitis? aut cur dexteris
Aptantur enses conditi?

Non ut superbas invidæ Carthaginis

Romanus arces ureret:

Intactus aut Britannus ut descenderet

Sacrâ catenatus viâ:

at that time and several years later likewise, just before the war of Actium, the date of the first Epode, the most ardent lover of liberty might deprecate the guilt and evil of civil war. It was not for freedom, but for the choice of masters between the subtle Octavius and the profligate Antony, that the world was again to be deluged with blood. The strongest republican, even if he retained the utmost jealousy and aversion for Octavius, might prefer his cause to that of an Eastern despot, so Antony appeared, and so he was represented at Rome, supported by the arms of a Barbarian Queen.(5) It might seem that the fearful and disastrous times had broken up the careless social circle, for whose amusement and instruction the Satires were written, and that the poet was thrown back by force into a more grave and solemn strain. Mæcenas himself is summoned to

Sed ut, secundum vota Parthorum, suâ
Urbs hæc periret dexterâ.”

The tone of this poem agrees better with the entirely independent situation of Horace at the time of the war of Perugia, than later, when he was at least (although he was yet unfavoured by Octavius) the friend of the friend of Octavius. The seventeenth Ode, in which he poetically urges the migration of the Roman people to some happier and secluded land, seems likewise to belong to that period.

(54) "Interque signa, turpe, militaria

So Virgil

Sol aspicit conopium."—Epod. ix. 15.

"Hinc ope barbaricâ, variisque Antonius armis,
Victor ab Aurora populis et litore rubro
Ægyptum, viresque Orientis, et ultima secum
Bactra trahit, sequiturque (nefas) Egyptia conjux."

Eneid, VIII. 685.

HORACE A LYRIC WRITER-ORIGINALITY OF HIS ODES-DATE

OF COMPOSITION-MERITS OF THE ODES-EPISTLES

GENERAL
POETRY.

COMPOSITION

CHARACTER OF HORATIAN

ORACE now became a lyric poet, or rather devoted himself entirely to the cultivation of that kind of poetry. The nine or ten years of his life after the battle of Actium (U. c. 724 to 734, v. H. 35 to 45) were em

ployed in the composition, or the completion, of the

three first books of Odes.

The Odes bear the character of the poet's life during this long period. He has reverted to his peaceful enjoyment of society. The sword of civil

war is sheathed; one of his earliest and noblest bursts is the song of triumph for Actium, with the description of the death of Cleopatra. There is just excitement enough of foreign warfare on the remote frontiers in Spain, in Britain, in Arabia, to give an opportunity for asserting the Roman's proud consciousness of universal sovereignty. Parthia consents to restore the standards of Crassus; or at all events, has sent a submissive embassy to Rome; the only enemies are the remotest barbarians of the north and east, with harsh sounding names:

"Urbi solicitus times

Quid Seres, et regnata Cyro

Bactra parent, Tanaisque discors."

C. III. xxix. 27.

Octavius has assumed the name of Augustus; the poet has acquiesced in his sole dominion; and introduces him for the first time into his poetry under this, his imperial title. Public affairs, and private friendships the manners of the city -the delights

of the country-all the incidents of an easy and honourable literary life suggest the short poem, which embodies the feelings and sentiments of Horace. His philosophical views, and his tender attachments, enable him to transport into Rome such of the more pleasing and beautiful lyrics of Greece, as could appear with advantage in a Latin dress. Horace not only nationalizes the metres, but many of the poems of