Horace was even acquainted with him at that time. There must have been some other reason for this reticence, and it is quite as likely to have been one of artistic taste as one founded on personal or political considerations; for Horace does not mention by name Cleopatra, nor even Sextus Pompeius. It is consistent with the dignity of lyric song to avoid the direct mention of the name of our national enemy, especially if conquered. In an English lyrical poem on the Crimean war, we should scarcely think it strange if the poet did not obtrude on us the name of Nicholas.

CARM. IX.

Quando repostum Cæcubum ad festas dapes,

Victore lætus Cæsare,

Tecum sub alta, sic Jovi gratum, domo,

Beate Mæcenas,1 bibam,

Sonante mixtum tibiis carmen lyra,

Hac Dorium, illis barbarum?
Ut nuper, actus cum freto Neptunius
Dux 2 fugit, ustis navibus,

Minatus Urbi vincla, quæ detraxerat
Servis amicus perfidis.

3

Romanus, eheu, posteri negabitis,

Emancipatus feminæ,

Fert vallum et arma miles, et spadonibus

Servire rugosis potest,

the Son of Neptune. Though Horace speaks of the rejoicing at the defeat of Sextus Pompeius as if it were of late ('ut nuper '), it occurred between five and six years before (A.U.C. 718). Fugitive slaves formed a large part of the force of Sextus Pompeius.

This does not refer to Mark Antony himself, but to the Roman soldiers under him. The singular number is used poetically. 'Fert Vallum.' The Roman soldier carried palisades ('vallum') for an empaled camp.

Shaming war's standards, in their midst, the sun
Beholds a tent lawn-draped against mosquitoes.1
Hitherwards, then, Gaul's manly riders wheeled
Two thousand fretting steeds, and shouted Cæsar.'
And all along the hostile fleet swift prores
Backed from the fight, and slunk into the haven.3
Hail, God of Triumph! why delay so long

1

The golden cars and sacrificial heifers? Hail, God of Triumph! from Jugurthine wars

Thou brought'st not back to Rome an equal chieftain ; Not Africanus, to whom Valour built

A sepulchre on ground which once was Carthage.
Routed by sea, by land, the Foe hath changed.
For weeds of mourning his imperial purple ;
Or spreading sails to unpropitious winds.

For Crete, ennobled by her hundred cities;
Or by the south blast dashed on Afric's sands,
Or, drifting shoreless, lost in doubtful seas,

Ho there, good fellow! out with larger bowls,
And delicate Chian wines, or those of Lesbos;
Or rather, mix us lusty Cæcuban,

A juice austere, which puts restraint on sickness;
The Care-Unbinder well may free us now

From every doubt that fortune smiles on Cæsar.

Conopium.' The mosquito net or curtain in use in Egypt, and still common in Italy and hot climates, placed in the midst of the 'signa militaria'—i.e., the rising ground on which the military standards were grouped round the prætorium or imperial tent.

At huc.' The reading in the MSS. varies. Orelli has at hoc,' and takes 'hoc' with 'frementes Galli.' I prefer Macleane's reading, at huc,' taking frementes' with 'equos;' 'huc' thus means 'hither,' 'to our side.' Ritter has 'ad hunc,' contending that 'ad' has the force of adversus '-i. e., against Antonius, who is signified, though not named. Munro has also ‘ad hunc,' observing that ‘it has most authority; but what Horace did here write it is impossible to

say.

Interque signa turpe militaria.

Sol adspicit conopium.1

At huc 2 frementes verterunt bis mille equos
Galli, canentes Cæsarem,
Hostiliumque navium portu latent

Puppes sinistrorsum citæ.3

Io Triumphe, tu moraris aureos
Currus, et intactas boves?

Io Triumphe, nec Jugurthino parem
Bello reportasti ducem,

Neque Africanum, cui super Carthaginem
Virtus sepulcrum condidit.
Terra marique victus hostis punico
Lugubre mutavit sagum;

Aut ille centum nobilem Cretam urbibus,
Ventis iturus non suis,
Exercitatas aut petit Syrtes Noto,

Aut fertur incerto mari.
Capaciores affer huc, puer, scyphos,

Et Chia vina aut Lesbia.

Vel, quod fluentem nauseam coërceat,
Metire nobis Cæcubum:

Curam metumque Cæsaris rerum juvat

Dulci Lyæo solvere.

"Ad hunc" may = "ad solem." As the line refers to the desertion to Cæsar of the Gauls, or cavalry of Galatia, under their king Deiotarus, at huc' seems the simplest interpretation.

'Hostiliumque navium portu latent
Puppes sinistrorsum citæ.'

Macleane considers the meaning of the words impenetrably obscure, from our ignorance of the Roman nautical phrases. He inclines to favour Bentley's supposition, that 'sinistrorsum cita' may be equivalent to 'back water;' adding, 'something of that sort, connected with flight, I have no doubt it means.'

• Neque Africanum,' not, as some would have it, 'Africano,' as referring to the African war.

EPODE X.

ON MÆVIUS SETTING OUT ON A VOYAGE.

The name of Mævius has become proverbially identified with the ideal of a bad poet; but, after all, the justice of this very unpleasant immortality rests upon no satisfactory evidence. Virgil, with laconic disdain, dismisses him and Bavius to obloquy, and this poem is a specimen of Horace's mode, in his hot youth, of treating a person to whom he owed a grudge. But poets are very untrustworthy judges of the merits of a contemporary poet, whom, for some reason or other, they dislike. If nothing of Southey be left to remote posterity, and he is only then to be judged by what Byron has said of him, Southey would appear a sort of Mævius. On the other hand, what would Byron seem if nothing were left of his works, and, one or two thousand years hence, he were to be judged by the opinions of his verse which Southey and Wordsworth and Coleridge have left on record? As to the severest things said of Mævius by writers of a later generation, and who had probably never read a line of him, they are but echoes of the old lampoons, 'Give a dog a bad name,' &c. If it be true, as the commentator in Cruquius says, that Mævius was ‘a detractor of all learned men,' and a cultivator of archaisms, or an elder school of expression, 'sectator vocum antiquarum,'

Under ill-boding auspices puts forth the vessel
Which has Mævius-a rank-smelling cargo-on board;
Either side of that vessel, with surges the roughest,

O be mindful, I pray thee, wild Auster, to scourge !
On an ocean upheaved from its inmost foundations,
May the dark frowning Eurus snap cables and oars;

rum,' it is probable enough that he incurred the resentment of Horace and the scorn of Virgil by his attacks on their modern style, and that his adherence to the elder forms of Latin poetry was uncongenial to their own taste. For Virgil's contemptuous mention, indeed, there might be some cause less general, if Mævius and Bavius wrote the Anti-Bucolica ascribed to them-i.e., two pastorals in parody of the Eclogues; and especially if Mævius were the author of a very ready and a very witty attempt to turn him into ridicule. Virgil, reciting the First Book of his Georgics, after the words, Nudus ara, sere nudus,' came to a dead halt, when some one, said to be either Mævius or Bavius, finished the line by calling out, habebis frigore febrem.' Whoever made that joke must have been clever enough to be a disagreeable antagonist. One thing, at all events, seems pretty evident-viz., that Mævius must have had power of some kind to excite the muse of Horace to so angry an excess. Had he been a man wholly without mark or following, he could scarcely have stung to such wrath. even a youthful poet. Be that as it may, this ode has all the vigour of a good hater, and there is much of the gusto of true humour in its extravagance. The exact date of its composition is unknown, but it bears the trace of very early youth. Grotefend assigns it to A.U.C. 716, when Horace was twenty-seven.

CARM. X.

Mala soluta navis exit alite,

Ferens olentem Mævium:

Ut horridis utrumque verberes latus,
Auster, memento fluctibus!
Niger rudentes Eurus, inverso mari,
Fractosque remos differat;