AziUGal 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
LYCEUM OF ANCIENT LITERA- 
TURE.—No. XXVI. 
HORACE, 
HERE so many have concurred 
to point out the merits, and to 
perpetuate the fame, of Horace; upon 
a subject, which has already exhausted 
ali that criticism could offer, or ingenuity 
suggest, the classical reader will be pre- 
pared to expect here only those general 
observations, which may confirin the opi- 
nion he has already formed ; but which 
will add little to the materials, upon 
which that opinion is grounded. Most 
willingly, indeed, would we have omitted 
this article altogether; not so much from 
any difficulty likely to occur in a poet, 
who has been so repeatedly. revised by 
commentators, ancient and modern, as 
from the impossibility of offering remarks 
sufficiently striking, or new, to excite at- 
tention. But the necessity of conform. 
ing to the regular plan which we from 
the first adopted, compels us te proceed, 
‘The odes of Horace are, of course, the 
only part of his works which we propose 
to consider-at present. 
It may, perhaps, form no idle disqui- 
sition to attempt to ascertain the differ- 
ent periods, at which were written the 
several poems of Horace. This we 
shall do, taking. Bentley for our guide.* 
"Lhe internal evidence of the poems them- 
selves may, indeed, lead us to form a to. 
Jerable conclusion aS to their respéctive 
dates. Thus, the first book of the odes 
may be ascertained from the prologue ; 
the second and third from the epilogues ; 
the epodes from these lines of the 14th 
epod : 
Inceptos, olim promissum carmen, [ambos 
Ad umbilicum adducere. x 
The date of the first book of Satires 
may be collected from the last line of 
the 10th: 
1, puer, atq. meo citus hac subscribe libello; 
the last from the prologue. The first book, 
also, of the epistles may be traced from 
the prologue and epilogue. That the 
fourth book of the odes, and the second 
of the epistles, were published after a 
considerable lapse of time froin thie rest, 
is evident from the authority of Sueto- 
nius; a testimony which, as Bentley 
observes, is so decisive, that it would be 
an useless task in any one to attempt to 
refute it. Supposing, then, this internal, 
evidence to he sufficiently cleay, the ar- 
* Vide Bentley, de Temporibus Librorum 
Horatii. ‘ey 
Montuty Mae. No. 194 
tation. 
Lyceum of Ancient Literature.—No. XXVI. 9 
rangement willbe as follows :—-The first 
book of Satires, the earliest work of Ho- 
race, was written between the twenty- 
sixth and twenty-eighth year of bis age ; 
the second, between his thirty-second 
and thirty-fourth ; the*Epodes, in the 
two following years ; the first book of the 
Odes, wascomposed between his thirty- 
“sixth and thirty-eighth; the second, in 
his fortieth and forty-frst ; the third, in 
the course of the two succeeding years : 
the first book of Episties, in ‘his forty- 
sixth and forty-seventh years; then the 
fourth of the Odes, and the Carmen Se- 
culare, in the course of his forty-ninth, 
fittieth, and fifty-first years. © The Art of 
Poetry, and the fourth of the Epistles, 
are not so well ascertained ; probably, 
they were written only a year or two be- 
fore he died. This arrangement will ap- 
pear to be judicious, and not, loosely 
hazarded, if the reader will carefully at- 
tend to the evidence of the poems them- 
selves. Inthe first place, it is obser- 
vable, that, in tlie Satires, the Epodes, 
and the first of the Odes, the name of 
Cesar is always used, never that of 
Augustus, which was not assumed till 
about the thirty-ninth year of Horace ; 
after which it is frequently adopted. 
Then again, in the Satires and Epodes, 
the poet: describes himself as a young 
man, and asserts, that he owed all his 
fame to the publication of his Satires. 
He no where mentions his lyric compo- 
sitions ashaving contibuted to his repu- 
His progressive advance in ‘ite 
may be collected from a close exami- 
nation of the sentiments of each succes- 
sive poem. The free, and often vicious, 
tendency of his early poems, denotes his 
youthful years; but we see him after- 
wards engagedon more decorous subjects, 
and assuming a graver and chaster style, 
It is by this internal’ evidence alone, that 
we can properly ascertain the different 
periods at which Horace wrote. Those 
who have not condescended to follow 
this unerring guide, have lost themselves 
in the wildest conjectures, and have sel- 
dom failed to obscure, rather than illus- 
trate, the subject. 
Let us now consider Horace as a writer 
of odes, a species of poetry, waich, of 
all others, requires the greatest strength 
and elevatiou of genius, and “a sort of 
enthusiasm, that must diffuse itself 
through the whole. Judgment, too, 
must have its share, in tempering the 
flights of too wild an imagination; and 
the greatest art must be used, without 
the appearance of any, that the compo- 
F positiun 
