Lord of Naiads, lord of Mænads,

Who with hands divinely strengthened, from the mountain heave the ash:

Nothing little, nothing lowly,

Nothing mortal, will I utter! Oh, how perilously sweet 'Tis to follow thee, Lenæus,

Thee the god who wreathes his temples with the vine-leaf for his crown!

into the wood, and following a winding path, suddenly the veil is rent.
The passage is well translated by a lamented friend, Dr. Whewell :-
'Lost is the landscape at once in the dark wood's secret recesses,
Where a mysterious path leads up the winding ascent ;

Suddenly rent is the veil ; all startled, I view with amazement,
Through the wood's opening glade, blazing in splendour the day.'

I cannot help thinking that Horace had in his mind an actual scene, as Schiller had in the Walk-that it was in some ramble amidst rocks, woods, and water, that the idea of this dithyramb occurred to him. We have his own authority for believing that, like most other poets, he composed a good deal in his rural walks,-'circa nemus uvidique Tiburis ripas operosa parvus Carmina fingo.'

Baccharumque valentium

Proceras manibus vertere fraxinos :

Nil parvum aut humili modo,

Nil mortale loquar. Dulce periculum est, O Lenæe, sequi deum

Cingentem viridi tempora pampino.

ODE XXV I.

VENUS.

This ode has been generally supposed to be written when Horace had arrived at a time of life sufficiently advanced to retire from the service of the ladies, and Malherbe, the French poet, had it in his eye when, at the age of fifty, he made farewell visits to the fair ones he had courted till then,

I have lived till of late well approved by the fair,
And have, not without glory, made war in their cause;
Now the wall on the left side of Venus1 shall guard

My arms, and the lute which has done with the service.

and

Here, here, place the flambeaux which lit the night-march; Here, the bows and the crowbars-dread weapons of siege, Carrying menace of doom to the insolent gates

2

Which refused at my conquering approach to surrender.

Regal goddess who reignest o'er Cyprus the blest,
And o'er Memphis, unchilled by the snow-flakes of Thrace,
Lift on high o'er that arrogant Chloë thy scourge,

And by one touch-but one-fright her into submission.

In the temple of Venus, on the left wall, as being most propitious. -MACLEANE. The left side, as the heart side, is now, in many superstitious practices derived from the ancients, considered the best for divinations connected with the affections. In chiromancy, the left hand is examined in preference to the right, not only for the line of life, but for the lines supposed to prognosticate in affairs of the heart.

The torches to light the gallant to the house he went to attack, and the crowbar to burst open her door, are intelligible enough. What is meant by 'arcus,' 'the bows,' is by no means so clear. The weapon may be merely symbolical (Cupid's bow and arrows), or it may have been the arbalist or cross-bow, and used to frighten the porter.-See Orelli's note.

and informed them that he resigned his commission in the armies of Cytherea. But I think with Macleane that the ode represents nothing more than a successful gallant's first refusal; and that to apply it to Horace himself, or to assume, from the opening, that he was getting into years, and about to abandon lyrical poetry, is to mistake the character and scope of the ode.

CARM. XXVI.

Vixi puellis nuper idoneus,
Et militavi non sine gloria;

Nunc arma defunctumque bello
Barbiton hic paries habebit,

Lævum marinæ qui Veneris1 latus
Custodit. Hic, hic ponite lucida
Funalia, et vectes, et arcus
Oppositis foribus minaces.2

O quæ beatam, diva, tenes Cyprum, et
Memphin carentem Sithonia nive,
Regina, sublimi flagello

Tange Chloën semel arrogantem.

ODE XXVII.

TO GALATEA UNDERTAKING A JOURNEY.

We know nothing more of Galatea than the ode tells us, by which she appears to have been a friend of Horace's meditating a journey to Greece. Upon the strength of a line in which he asks her to remember him, an attempt has been actually made to include her in the catalogue of Horace's mistresses;

Let the ill omen of the shrilling screech-owl,1
Or pregnant bitch, or vixen newly littered,
Or tawny she-wolf skulked down from Lanuvium2
Convoy the wicked;

Let the snake break off their intended journey,
If their nags start, when arrow-like he glances
Slant on the road-I, where I love, a cautious
Provident Augur,

Ere the weird crow, reseeking stagnant marshes,
Predict the rain-storm, will invoke the raven

From the bright East, and bid that priestlier prophet
Promise thee sunshine.4

1 Parræ recinentis.' Macleane observes that it is not determined what this bird 'parra' was, or whether it is known in these islands. I venture to call it, as other translators have done, the screech-owl, which is still, in Italy as elsewhere, deemed a bird of bad omen. Orelli treats of the subject in an elaborate note, which, however, decides nothing. Yonge says, 'I believe it is the owl.'-See his note.

2 Rava decurrens lupa Lanuvino.' The wolf runs down from the wooded hills round Lanuvium, because that town was near the Appia Via, leading to Brundusium, where Galatea would embark.—MACLEANE, ORELLI. Rava lupa.' What exact colour 'rava' means is only so far clear that Horace applies it both to a lion and a wolf. Orelli says