460 
attendancé at court irksome and unplea- 
sant; and he gladly escaped from the 
Boise and intrigues of Rome, to the ob- 
scurity of his beloved retirement. It is 
highly amusing to read the descriptions 
he has left us of both his villas, and his 
enjoyment of a country-life. They are 
too long for insertion, but may be found 
in Ep. 16, to Quintius; in another, to 
Fuscus Aristius ; aud, in more poetical 
Janguage, in the 6th Ode of the second 
book. His temperate manner of living, 
when age began to moderate his desires, 
is described in the 6th Sat. lib. 1; and 
. nore figuratively in his Qde~to Apollo. 
Contented with the comparatively hum- 
ble independence he had secured, he says 
to his friend and patron— 
Satis superque me benignitas tua 
Ditavit 
Wot that he buried his talents, or ren- 
dered them useless by want of exertion, 
His Muse was often esiployed in poetical 
epistles to his frignds; and he sang the 
triumphs of Augustus over Pompey and 
Antony, and the warlike exploits of Ti- 
berius and Drusus. But he chose to 
avoid the fatigue of composing a work of 
any length, and determined to enjoy the 
leisure he had acquired; unwilling to sa- 
crifice his repose to the desire of increas- 
ing his reputation, for which he prehably 
thouglit he had done enough. 
Paupertas impulit audax 
Ut versus facerem ; sed, quod non desit, ha- 
bentem 
Quz poterunt unguam satis expurgare cicute, 
Wi melis dormire putem, quam scribere ver- 
sus f Lib. ti. Ep. 2. 
This epistle is suppased to have been 
the last work of Horace, and composed 
the year before he died, when he had 
taken his last farewell of the world, and 
was fixed in his solitude. His Jatter 
days were embittered by the loss of his 
friend and benefactor. Mecznas died 
jn the beginning of November; and, if 
we may credit Dion, the historian, the 
grateful and affectionate poet foilowed 
him on the 27th of the same month. 
This was about eight years before the 
birth of Christ, in the year of Rome 745, 
when Horace was in his 57th year. Un- 
abie ta sign a will, from the violence of 
his distemper, he declared Augustus his 
sole heir, and ordered his bones ta be 
ileposited near those of Mecznas, 
Jn his person, Horace was short and 
corpulent. This we collect from one of 
his own epistles,* and,irom a familar 
* Epist. 1. 4 
Lyceum of Ancient Literature.—No. XXV. 
[Dec. 1 y 
letter addressed to him by Augustus him- 
self. ‘ Pertulit ad me Dionysius libel- 
jum tuum, quem ego, ne accusem bre- 
Vitatem, quantuluscunque est boni con¢ 
sulo. Vereri autem miliivideris, ne malo- 
res jibelli tut sint, quam ipse es. Sed 
si tibi stutura deest, corpusculumnon de~ 
est. Itaque licebit in Sextariolo* scri- 
bas, cum circuitas voluminis tul sit 
oynateralcs, sicut’ est vencricul.” The | 
rest will not bear transcribing. ~ The 
above extract is sufficient to show 
the easy footing upon which Augustua 
admitted his favourites, and which Ho- 
race, witha discretion not very common 
amorg poets, never abused. ; 
In his youth, if we may judge from his 
writings, he had indulged in ail the ex- 
cesses common in his days. He desertbes, 
with the utmost freedom, the hopes and 
the fears, the success and the failure, of 
his gailantries. His descriptions, indeed, 
are sometimes too highiy coloured ; and 
he often mentions, with censurable !e- 
Vity, a more odious vice. Butthe amas 
tory effusions of poets are generally sub- 
ject to douht, as to the existence of their 
objects. Of Lalage, Chioe, Nezra, Ly- 
dia, Cinara, Phyllis, and others, whose 
names at present escape our memory, 
and who have ail been styled his favourite 
mistresses, some, perhaps, were the crea- 
tures of his own fancy, or, hke the Sac. 
charissa of Waller, beyond the reach of 
his addresses. 
Vie at first had imbibed the doctrines 
of Epicurus, which suited the indolence_ 
and levity of his disposition, and to - 
which the poem of Lucretius had given 
a temporary celebrity. But he retracted, 
when experience and reflection had given 
greater solidity to his character.¢ As 
one cause of his recantation, he mentions, 
his having observed, that it thundered 
and lightened, while the sky was serene 
and clear. Such a phenomenon he could 
not explain upon the principles of Epicu- 
rus, and he drew from it the strongest 
argument for the existence of an over- 
ruling Providence. 
ES 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
BT a ; 
NCLOSED Tf send you some direc- 
tions for preserving Pencil and 
Chalk Drawings, in answer to the en- 
quiries of your correspondent E. M. from 
Sydenham. 
* For an explanation of this word, see a 
note of Gesner (in Vit. Horat.) p. 89. edite 
Zeunti—Lips. 1802. at 
+ Lib. i. Od, 34 ‘h 
. . &e 
