study-is his terseness. Terseness is one of the surest proofs of painstaking. Nothing was ever more truthful in art than the well-known reply of the writer to the friendly critic, who said, 'You are too prolix:' 'I had not time to be shorter.'

We know from Horace himself that he bestowed upon his artist-work an artist's labour-'Operosa carmina fingo.' He seems to have so meditated upon the subject he chooses as to be able to grasp it readily. There is no wandering after ideas-no seeking to prolong and over-adorn the main purpose for which he writes. If it be but a votive inscription to Diana, in which he dedicates a tree to her, he does not let his command of language carry him beyond. the simple idea he desires to express. He seems always to consider that he is addressing a very civilised and a very impatient audience, which has other occupations in life besides that of reading verses; and nothing in him is more remarkable than his study not to be tedious. Perhaps, indeed, it is to this desire that some of his shortcomings up to the mark which very poetical critics would assign to lyrical rapture are to be ascribed; but it is a fault on the right side.

The next and much more important characteristic of Horace as a lyrical artist is commonly exhibited in his grander odes, and often in his lighter ones; and to this I do not know if I can give a more expressive word than picturesqueness. His imagination, in his Odes, predominates over all his other qualities, great as those other qualities are; and that which he images being clear to himself, he contrives in very few words to render it distinct and vivid to the reader. When Lydia is entreated not to spoil Sybaris; by enumerating the very sports for which her lover has lost taste, he brings before us the whole picture of an athletic young Roman noble-his achievements in horsemanship, swimming, gymnastics; when, in the next ode, he calls on the Feastmaster to heap up the fagots, and

bring out the wine, and enjoy his youth while he may, he slides into a totally different picture. Here it is the young Roman idler, by whom only the mornings are devoted to the Campus Martius, the afternoons to the public lounge, the twilights to amorous assignations; and the whole closes still with a picture, the girl hiding herself within the threshold, and betrayed by her laugh, while the lover rushes in and snatches away the love-token from the not too reluctant finger. When he invites Tyndaris to his villa, the spot is brought before the eye the she-goats browsing amid the arbute and wild thyme; the pebbly slopes of Ustica; the green nook sheltered from the dog-star; the noon-day entertainment; the light wines and the lute. The place and the figures are before us as clearly as if on the canvas of a painter. He would tell you that he is marked from childhood for the destiny of poet; and he charms the eye with the picture of the truant infant asleep on the wild mountain-side, safe from the bear and the adder, while the doves cover him with leaves.

With a rarer and higher attribute of art Horace introduces the dramatic element very largely and prominently into his lyrics. His picture becomes a scene. His ideas take life and form as personations. Does he wish to dissuade his countrymen from the notion of transferring the seat of government from Rome to Asia, or perhaps, rather, from some large emigration and military settlement in the East? He calls up the image of the Founder of Rome borne to heaven in the chariot of Mars; ranges the gods in council on Olympus; and puts into the lips of Juno the warning which he desires to convey. Does he seek to discourage popular impatience for the return of the Parthian prisoners-viz., the soldiers of Crassus who had settled and married in the land of the conqueror? He evokes the great form of Regulus urging the Senate to refuse to ransom the Roman captives taken by Carthage-places

him as on a visible stage―utters his language, describes his looks, and shows him departing to face the tormentors, satisfied and serene. Would he console a girl for the absence of her lover, and hint to herself a friendly caution against an insidious gallant? In eight short stanzas he condenses a whole drama in personages and plot. Does he paint the reconciliation of two jealous lovers? He makes them speak for themselves; and their brief dialogue is among the most delightful of comedies. Would he tell us that he is going to sup with convivial friends? He suddenly transports us into the midst of the scene, regulates the toasts, calls for the flowers and music, babbles out his loves. The scene lives.

Not to weary the reader with innumerable instances of this art of picture and of drama, so sedulously cultivated by Horace, I will only observe that the various imitators of Horace have failed to emulate this the most salient characteristic of his charm in construction; and that even his numerous commentators have but slightly noticed it—nay, some have even censured as a desultory episode that which, according to Horace's system of treating his subject, is the substance of the poem itself. For the commencing stanzas sometimes only serve as a frame to the picture which he intends to paint, or a prologue to the scene which he proposes to dramatise.

Thus he begins a poem by an invocation to Mercury and the lyre to teach him a strain that may soften the coy heart of a young girl; passes rapidly to the effect of music even upon the phantoms in the shades below; the Danaides rest their urn, and then, as if the image of the Danaides spontaneously and suddenly suggested the idea, he places on the scene the sister murderesses at night slaughtering their bridegroomsand the image of Hypermnestra, the sole gentle and tender one, waking her lord and urging him to fly.

So, again, when his lady friend, Galatea, is about to undertake a voyage, he begins by a playful irony about omens,

hastens to the reality of stormy seas-and suddenly we have the picture of Europa borne from the field-flowers to the midst of the ocean. We behold her forlorn and alone on the shores of Crete-hearken to the burst of her despair and repentance-and see the drama conclude with the consolatory appearance of Venus, and Cupid with his loosened bow. To some commentators these vivid presentations of dramatic imagery have appeared exotic to the poem-episodes and interludes. But the more they are examined as illustrative of Horace's peculiar culture of lyric art, the more (in this respect not unimitative of Pindar) they stand out as the body of his piece, and the developed completion of his purpose. Take them away, and the poems themselves would shrink into elegant vers d'occasion. Horace, in a word, generally studies to secure to each of his finer and more careful poems, however brief it be, that which playwriters call 'a backbone.' And even where he does not obtain this through direct and elaborate picture or dramatic effect and interest, he achieves it perhaps in a single stanza, embodying some striking truth or maxim of popular application, expressed with a terseness so happy, that all times and all nations adopt it as a proverb.

We see, then, how much of his art in construction depends on his lavish employ of picture and drama-how much on compression and brevity. We must next notice, as constituent elements of Horace's peculiar charm, his employment of playful irony, and the rapidity of his transitions from sportive to earnest, earnest to sportive; so that, perhaps, no poet more avails himself of the effect of 'surprise-yet the surprise is not coarse and glaring, but for the most part singularly subdued and delicate-arising sometimes from a single phrase, a single word. He has thus, in his lyrics, more of that combination of tragic and comic elements to which the critics of a former age objected in Shakespeare, than perhaps any poet extant except Shake

speare himself. The consideration of this admirably artistic fidelity to the mingled yarn of life, leads us on to the notice. of Horatian style and diction.

The character of the audience he more immediately addresses will naturally have a certain effect on the style of an author, and an effect great in proportion to his practical good sense and good taste. No man possessed of what the French call savoir vivre, employs exactly the same style even in extempore discourse, whether he address a select audience of scholars or a miscellaneous popular assembly. The readers for whom Horace more immediately wrote were the polite and intellectual circles of Rome, wherein a large proportion were too busy, and a large proportion too idle, to allow themselves to be diverted very far, or for long at a stretch, into poetic regions, whether of thought or diction, remote from their ordinary topics and habitual language. Horace does not, therefore, in the larger number of songs composed-some to be popularly sung and all to be popularly read-build up a poetic language distinct from that of conversation. On the contrary, with some striking exceptions, where the occasion is unusually solemn, he starts from the conversational tone, seeks to familiarise himself winningly with his readers, and leads them on to loftier sentiment, uttered in more noble eloquence—just as an orator, beginning very simply, leads on the assembly he addresses. And possibly Horace's manner in this respect-which, though in a less marked degree, is also that of Catullus in most of the few purely lyrical compositions the latter has left to us-may be traced to the influence which oratory exercised over the generation born in the last days of the Republic. For in the age of Cicero and Hortensius it may be said that the genius of the Roman language developed itself rather in the beauties which belong to oratory than those which lie more hidden from popular appreciation in the dells and bosks of song.