H O R 



112 



H O R 



Horace. 



lowed the employment of a tax-gatherer. This was 

 the poet's own account, and most likely to be true. 

 Some of his enemies, however, reproached him with 

 his father having been a fishmonger (Salsamentariux), 

 *nd one of them said to him, Quoties egn vidi palrciii 

 tiium Lrachio sc immtingentem. His father, however, 

 though of humble origin, appears to have been a man 

 of liberal sentiments, and to have given his son an ex- 

 cellent education, as the son has recorded in these lines 

 o honourable to the memory of both : 



' Causa fuit pater his : * qui macro pauper agello 

 Noluit in Klavi ludum me mittere, uiagni 

 Quo pueri magni- c centurionibus orti 

 Licvo liiispcn- i loculos tabulamque lacerto, 

 Ibant octorris referentes Idibus jcra : 

 Sed pucruiii est ausus Romam portare docendum, 

 Artos, quas doceat quivis eques, atque senator 

 Semet prognatos : vestem servosque sequentes 

 In magno ut populo si quis viciUsct ; avita 

 Ex re praberi sumptus mihi crederet illos. 

 Ipse mihi custos incorruptissimus omnes 

 Circum doctores adcrat, quid multa ? pudicum 

 (Qui primus virtutis honos) servavit ab omni 

 Non solum facto, vcrum opprobrio quoque turpi. 



ffil me pamiteat tanum patris hvjus." .... 



SAT. vi. LIB. 1. 



At the age of eighteen, Horace was sent to Athens, for 

 the purpose of finishing his education, by the study of 

 philosophy and Greek literature. Whilst he was in 

 that city, Marcus Brutus, in his way to Macedonia, 

 stopped at the university, and, being pleased with Ho- 

 race, took him along with him on his journey. Brutus 

 afterwards entrusted a legion to his care as military tri- 

 bune. As the poet, in his writings, freely confesses, 

 that he had no gre.it genius for fighting, it may be sus- 

 pected, that it was by his wit and companionable ta- 

 lents that he had ingratiated himself with Brutus. At 

 the battle of Philippi, he describes himself, with some 

 humour, as throwing away his shield, to be disencum- 

 bered in his flight. By the victory of the opposite par- 

 ty, his property was forfeited, but his life was spared. 

 In his indigence he wrote verses, and so recommended 

 himself to Virgil and Varius, that, with the generosity 

 of true poets, they recommended him to Maecenas. At 

 the first interview with that noble patron, as he tells us 

 in the satire already quoted, he behaved with diffidence, 

 and simply told Maecenas what he was. The nobleman, 

 as was his custom, said little in reply, and did not send 

 for him again till nine months after, when he admitted 

 him among the number of his friends, and made him 

 easy in his circumstances. Horace proved so agreeable 

 to Maecenas, that he made him his familiar companion, 

 in which capacity he accompanied him to Brandusium, 

 in that journey which the poet has so agreeably de- 

 scribed in verse. He also introduced him to Augustus, 

 who delighted in his society, and used to call him ho- 

 muncio Icpidissimus. When seated between Virgil and 

 Horace, the emperor used to say, that he was between 

 sighs and tears; alluding to the uneasy respiration 

 which afflicted Virgil from a chest complaint, and to 

 Horace's tender eyes. Horace was certainly a courtier, 

 and he did not lay on his flattery in faint colours ; nor 

 does he seem to have troubled his patrons with any re- 

 currence to those maxims of public liberty, which he 

 must have learned with Brutus, and which had led him 

 into the field of Philippi ; but, on the other hand, he 

 makes allusion to great republican names with the spi- 

 rit of a Roman and of a poet ; and he lived among the 



great with personal independence, for he declined the 

 post offeree! to him by Augustus of being his private 

 secretary. 



The incidents of his life are few. His person is de- 

 scribed as short anil inclined to corpulence, and his 

 temper as easy and obliging. He passed his time be- 

 tween Rome, his Tiburtine or Sabine villa, and the soft 

 climate of Tarentum, to which he fled in winter. 

 Though an Epicurean enjoyer both of society and of 

 sensual pleasures, his writings breath a fondness for 

 rural retirement, and he seems often to have returned 

 from the satiety of vice, to the calm of virtue and re- 

 pose. He died in his 59th year, and was interred near 

 his patron Maecenas. Horace is the only one of the Latin 

 lyric poets who has come down to posterity; a circum- 

 stance for which the judgment of Quinctilian may con- 

 sole us, who assures us, that they were scarcely worthy 

 of perusal. In Horace have been supposed to be uni- 

 ted, if not individually surpassed, the gaiety of Ana- 

 creon, the majesty of Alcaeus, and the fire of Pindar. 

 We must leave it to the lovers of voluptuous literature 

 to decide, whether the revelling of the Teian bard pos- 

 sess not a lighter grace of ecstacy than that of the Ro- 

 man ? The soul of pleasure is in both ; but Horace's 

 moral reflections (Epicurean as his philosophy was) 

 are often like a drapery to his luxuriant images, that 

 encumbers their joyousness without communicating de- 

 corum. In the parallel with Pindar, he presents a clear 

 and rapid brilliancy of thought, more pleasing, if less 

 astonishing, than the vague and obscure sublime of the 

 Theban poet, as well as a richer variety in his subjects. 

 He may be called, perhaps without a rival, the master 

 of expression ; and such is the harmony and diction of 

 his odes, that an apt quotation from them always 

 sparkles like a gem when it illustrates the most eloquent- 

 ly expressed thought in the p:igc of any language. Of 

 all poets he is the most frequently quoted. To the me- 

 rits of style, harmony, and fancy, must be added his 

 knowledge of human nature, and of the principles of 

 human manners, exhibited in that part of his writings 

 where the tone of fancy and poetical diction is purpose- 

 ly relaxed ; in his satires, to wit, where we take him to 

 our bosoms for his good humour, and where his good 

 sense instructs us in the language of friendship. His 

 epistle to the Pisos has, perhaps, been too much consi- 

 dered as an attempt on his part to give a preceptive theo- 

 ry of the whole art of poetry. It is, in fact, only an epis- 

 tle upon the subject, in which his design is evidently 

 desultory. Horace knew poetry too well, to think of 

 submitting so ethereal a subject to the trammels of sys- 

 tematic theory ; and it is not his fault, if the world has 

 been since annoyed with sickening attempts to teach 

 the art of inspiration. The infallibility of all his tenets 

 of taste it is not our business here either to -impeach or 

 support ; but, in a general view, it must be confessed, 

 that his maxirrM, though misapplied by pedants to nar- 

 row the range of dramatic genius, have, with reference 

 to all that was then known in that species of poetry, a 

 most respectable weight and felicity. (>)) 

 HORATII. See ROME. 

 HORIZON, ARTIFICIAL. See QUADRANT. 

 HORN, a musical wind instrument, which, whether 

 of the short kind, called a bugle horn, or the long coiled 

 kind, called a French horn, has a scale of intervals 

 alike defective, and similar to that of the common 

 TRUMPET, which see. The supplying of chromatic 

 notes to the scale of the French horn, so as to render 

 it an instrument of general use in an orchestra, is said 



Horace 



Horn. 



Sneaking of the btttet traits of li 



