One notices already in the Satires an attitude of mind that became characteristic and was later both to limit his range and to widen his appeal as a lyric poet. He takes counsel of his head rather than of his heart, and distrusts enthusi asm, especially about ideas, as if warmth of feel ing, not held carefully in check by the reason, rendered impossible that equipoise through which alone one may hope to see things as they really are. This is true of even his friendship:. where he is tenderness and loyalty itself. But this studied moderation of thought and utterance is the fruit of experience and self-discipline. His earliest attempts in lyric verse show all the ar dent temper of youth, and are marked by an exuberance of phrase in striking contrast with the wonderful compression of his later work. In these iambi, as he called them. published about B.C. 30, Archilochus is his model, though not more than half of the seventeen poem: that llora•e deemed worthy of preservation show the personal animosity associated with the name of the Creek poet. With one exception, the sev enteenth. they are written in couplets, the second verse of which forms a refrain ((Twins, to the first. and thus they came in time to be known as Epodes. Immature as they are as a whole, and interesting chiefly as the first essay: of the Horace of the Odes. three certainly reveal poetical power of no mean order—the idyllic second, with its sudden turn to satire at the close, the fifth, with its extraordinary picture of the sorceress Canidia• and the passionate ap peal to his countrymen in the sixteenth.
Shortly after the appearance of the first hook of the Satires, MaTenas presented Horace with a small farm among the Sabine hills, in the valley through which the cool Digentia flows south to join the Anio near the market-town of Varia, the modern Vi•o-Vitro. Perhaps no gift ever exercised a more important influence upon a man's career. lt, was not merely that he was thus enabled to devote himself wholly to his art without thought of pecuniary return. The farm was his "arx," his sure retreat from the fatigues and distractions of the great. world. The peace of nature, loved since the days at •enusia, entered into and possessed his soul. and the pure air—it was about two thousand feet above the sea—renew.41 his physical strength, of which, as the years passed. he had to take increasing care. He has immoltalized the farm, and, indeed, the whole valley, in his affectionate praise.. (Inc may doubt whether he could have been happy without active participation in the brilliant life of the capital. but much of what is truest and Lest in the inspiration of the Odes and the Epistles is due to the many quiet days spent with his books in Sa The eighty-eight lyrics that are comprised in the first three books of the Odes were undoubt edly privately circulated among his friends pre vious to their final collection and publication in one little volume in the year 23. Their com position extended over about seven years. for the earliest that can he dated with certainty (i.. :17) was written upon the receipt at. Rome of the news of Cleopatra's suicide, and few, if ally, could have preceded this. They were the outcome of long and loving study of the great Greek lyric poets, especially Abacus and Sappho. belonging to the
early classical period rather than to the Alex andrian age. But. while their form is similar, their content is vitally different in its effect, and it is difficult. to define precisely the nature of that ma:tiling charm which almost from the moment of their appearaiwe they have been uni versally felt to possess. Shelley in his Defence of Po, fry. following a famous passage in Plato's P/or./ras, and Sidney in his .1pologir for Poetry. both mointained that arc so beloved of the golly that whatsoever they write proceed, of a divine fury.• Rut nothing (-mild be more alien to Ilorace's temper than this. lie has neither the passion of Burns or CainIhis in the expression or feeling, nor the al ie earnest ness of Lucretius in urging the claims of the true nhilosophy of life, nor yet the imaginative and mystical power of Vergil. Cray, however. a poet, whose method of composition resembled. Horace's in its eritieal deliherateness—in the second poem of the fourth book of Odes, Tiorare himself to a bee tent with infinite labor gathers its sweets from many a flower—says in one of his letters: "Extreme conciseness of ex pression. yet pure. perspicuous, and musical, is one of the grand beauties of lyric poetry." The three adjectives here used are peculiarly appro priate to Tioraue's work: indeed, no other lyric poet in Latin literature has so exquisite a verbal technique. The O./es abound in phrases of such perfect finish that no change save for the worse sums possible. phrases which have been the common property of educated men for centuries: Pcrsieos earpr diem ; et deroryrn est pro patria mori: •i.rere fortes A ga M ?Ulna maim pylehra Olin pyl ebrior: nil ; Inendas: "Mee est desip"re in lnen: post equit"m sear, atm cara—to give a complete list would he almost to quote the Odes entire. Yet it is all a enriosa felicitas, as Petronius aptly described it, effects carefully and minutely wrought out by a mind trained in the nicest a ppreheIisiull the e,,lor values of words and an car attuned to all the subtleties of cadence. And no artist was ever more alive to the delicate shades of meaning that words gain from their context. Partly, no doubt, from the difficulties inherent in the use of for eign metres, but more especially because of his own liking for moderation and simplieity, the vocabulary which he has chosen to employ IS notably limited. Yet the oft-reenrring words produce so different au effect in their ever-chang ing settings that one •loes not 110I lee the repeti tion. The themes themselves are even more lim ited in their range than the vocabulary. but upon the few that he selects lie plays variations of surpassing beauty. There is nothing transcen dental. nothing of what Pus- held to be the ...settee of poetry, "no mere appreciation of the beauty before us. but a will effort to reach the beauty above." The Odes are rather the expres sion Of idealized emunion sense, and just for this reason Ilorace has been in all age.: the favorite poet of minds the most diverse, for none makes a surer appeal to the liner senswilities of humanity in its every-day moods.