prorogation" of the contest." For contest is wont to beget trembling emulation and strife, and strife cruel enmities and funereal war.

In vain he endeavors to retain his book, desirous of getting abroad; tells it what trouble it is to undergo, and imparts some things to be said of him to posterity.

nus

.33

34

You seem, my book, to look wistfully at Janus and Vertumto the end that you may be set out for sale, neatly polished by the pumice-stone of the Sosii. You hate keys and seals, which are agreeable to a modest [volume]; you grieve that you are shown but to a few, and extol public places; though educated in another manner. Away with you, whither you are so solicitous of going down :" there will be no returning for you, when you are once sent out. "Wretch that I am, what have I done? What did I want ?"—you will say when any one gives you ill treatment, and you know 31 Diludia posco. The Latins used deludere, to leave off playing. From thence came diludia, to signify a space of time and intermission of fighting given to the gladiators during the public games. Horace therefore pleasantly begs he may have time allowed him to correct his verses, before he mounts the stage and plays for the prize in public. FRAN.

32 In 733, Horace published a collection of his Epistles and Satires, and probably placed this Epistle at the head of them, from whence Sanadon places it as a preface to his moral poetry. Under an allegory of a child, unwillingly confined in his father's house, and wishing for liberty, the poet gives his book some critical advice, which may be of much importance to authors in general. The character he draws of himself is natural, and nothing is disguised by modesty or vanity. FRAN.

33 Vertumnum Janumque. Vertumnus, according to the Scholiast, was the god who presided over buying and selling, from whence he had a statue and temple in the forum.

84 The Sosii were a plebeian family, well known in Rome, two brothers of which distinguished themselves by the correctness of their books and the beauty of the binding. COMMENT.

35 The forum was situated between the hills on which Rome was built, from whence we frequently find in forum decendere in Cicero and Seneca. The present reading is of all the manuscripts. BENT. CUN. SAN.

38

36

that you will be squeezed into small compass, as soon as the eager reader is satiated." But, if the augur be not prejudiced by resentment of your error, you shall be caressed at Rome [only] till your youth be passed. When, thumbed by the hands of the vulgar, you begin to grow dirty; either you shall in silence feed the grovelling book-worms, or you shall make your escape to Utica, or shall be sent bound to Ilerda. Your disregarded adviser shall then laugh [at you]: as he, who in a passion pushed his refractory ass over the precipice. For who would save [an ass] against his will? This too awaits you, that faltering dotage shall seize on you, to teach boys their rudiments in the skirts of the city. But when the abating warmth of the sun shall attract more ears, you shall tell them, that I was the son of a freedman, and extended my wings beyond my nest; so that, as much as you take away from my family," you may add to my merit: that I was in favor with the first men in the state, both in war and peace; of a short stature, gray before my time, calculated for

40

39

36 In breve to cogi. In arctum volumen contrahi. The poet threatens his book, that it shall be rolled up as if condemned never to be read again. The books of the ancients were written on skins of parchment, which they were obliged to unfold and extend when they designed to read. TORR.

37 The lover here signifies a passionate reader; he seizes a book with rapture; runs it over in haste; his curiosity begins to be satisfied; his appetite is cloyed; he throws it away, and never opens it again. FRAN.

38 Novelty is a kind of youth, which gives to every thing a certain grace and value. Few books have a privilege of not growing old. In general, their youth is extremely short, and scarce divided from their age. SAN.

39 There were schools in the most frequented parts of the city, where professors of abilities and reputation explained the best Greek and Latin authors. Children were taught to read in the suburbs, whither Horace presages his book should be banished in its old age. This prediction should be considered as a modest pleasantry, for our poet knew too well the value of his works to be afraid of such a destiny. TORR. SAN.

40 Sol tepidus. M. Dacier and the rest of the commentators understand the middle of the day, when the sun is most violent; but this was a time when people usually retired into their houses to avoid the heat. Sol tepidus may therefore mean the mildness and moderate warmth of evening, when men of letters assembled, either in the public walks or shops of booksellers, to read any works lately published. SAN.

41 Nature made Horace the son of a public crier, but his own merit made him the companion of an emperor, and gained him the friendship of the greatest, as well as most ingenious men of the Augustan age. FRAN.

sustaining heat," prone to passion, yet so as to be soon appeased. If any one should chance to inquire my age; let him know that I had completed four times eleven Decembers, in the year in which Lollius admitted Lepidus13 as his colleague.

42 We may remark, in many places of his works, that our poet was very sensible to cold; that in winter he went to the sea-coast, and that he was particularly fond of Tarentum in that season, because it was milder there. We may likewise understand the words of his exercises in the Campus Martius, as in his Odes patiens pulveris atque solis, but the former sense is more natural. SAN.

43 Augustus being in the year 733 in Sicily, the senate made him an offer of the consulship, which he refused. This refusal and his absence occasioned a very strongly disputed election between Lepidus and Silanus, who pretended to fill his place. Augustus sent for them into Sicily, and forbade them to return to Rome until the election was ended. By this means Lollius, who had been appointed colleague with Augustus, easily carried the votes in favor of Lepidus, which Horace means by the word duxit. Our poet was born on the 8th of December, 689, and consequently his forty-fourth year ended 733. SAN.

THE SECOND BOOK

OF THE

EPISTLES OF HORACE.

EPISTLE I.

TO AUGUSTUS.1

He honors him with the highest compliments; then treats copiously of poetry, its origin, character, and excellence.

SINCE you alone support so many and such weighty concerns, defend Italy with your arms, adorn it by your virtue, reform

1 Augustus had written to Horace to reproach him for not having addressed any part of his works to him. Know, says he, that I am angry with you; or are you apprehensive it shall injure your reputation with posterity, that you have been one of my friends? These reproaches, probably, occasioned this Epistle, which is justly ranked among the best performances of our author, and not unworthy of a prince of superior genius, delicate taste, and more than common erudition. It may be divided into four parts. In the first, the poet examines the comparison between ancients and moderns, which had been a matter of dispute in almost all ages. He then shows, that novelty is the mother of all polite arts, especially of poetry, that divine art, which deserves the greatest praises and greatest rewards. In the third part he treats of the theater, and the difficulty of succeeding there. In the last, he would inform princes how much they are interested to animate an emulation among Epic and Lyric poets, who have it in their power to make them immortal. These different parts are enlivened by a continual criticism upon the manner in which the Romans judged of poets, and by many reflections, equally useful and agreeable, upon the origin and progress of poetry.

The date of this Epistle is determined by so many facts, and so strongly marked, that it is unaccountable how it hath been mistaken. It mentions the divine honors paid to Augustus in 726: the sovereign authority which he received from the senate in 727: the reduction of the Parthians in 734: the laws which he made for the reformation of manners in 737: the conquests of Tiberius and Drusus in 739, 742, 743, and shutting the temple of Janus in 744, when this letter was written, and when Horace was in his fifty-second year, åbout two years before his death. FRAN.

it by your laws; I should offend, O Cæsar, against the public interests, if I were to trespass upon your time with a long discourse."

Romulus, and father Bacchus, and Castor and Pollux, after great achievements, received into the temples of the gods, while they were improving the world and human nature, composing fierce dissensions, settling property, building cities, lamented that the esteem which they expected was not paid in proportion to their merits. He who crushed the dire Hydra, and subdued the renowned monsters by his forefated labor, found envy was to be tamed by death [alone]. For he burns by his very splendor, whose superiority is oppressive to the arts beneath him: after his decease, he shall be had in hon

2 The poet is thought to begin with apologizing for the shortness of this Epistle. And yet it is one of the longest he ever wrote. How is this inconsistency to be reconciled? The case, I believe, was this. The genius of epistolary writing demands, that the subject-matter be not abruptly delivered, or hastily obtruded on the person addressed; but, as the law of decorum prescribes (for the rule holds in writing, as in conversation), be gradually and respectfully introduced to him. This obtains more particularly in applications to the great, and on important subjects. But now the poet, being to address his prince on a point of no small delicacy, and on which he foresaw he should have occasion to hold him pretty long, prudently contrives to get as soon as possible into his subject; and, to that end, hath the art to convert the very transgression of this rule into the justest and most beautiful compliment.

That cautious preparation, which is ordinarily requisite in our approaches to greatness, had been, the poet observes, in the present case, highly unseasonable, as the business and interests of the empire must, in the mean time, have stood still and been suspended. By sermone, then, we are to understand, not the body of the Epistle, but the proem or introduction only. The body, as of public concern, might be allowed to engage, at full length, the emperor's attention; but the introduction, consisting of ceremonial only, the common good required him to shorten as much as possible. It was no time for using an insignificant preamble, or, in our English phrase, of making long speeches. This reason, too, is founded, not merely in the elevated rank of the emperor, but in the peculiar diligence and solicitude with which, history tells us, he endeavored to promote, by various ways, the interests of his country. So that the compliment is as just as it is polite. It may be further observed, that sermo is used in Horace to signify the ordinary style of conversation (see 1 Sat. 3, 65, and 4, 42), and therefore not improperly denotes the familiarity of the epistolary address, which, in its easy expression, so nearly approaches to it. HURD.

3 I have partly followed Anthon, but the variety of interpretations in this passage is most perplexing. See M'Caul's notes.