ORIGINAL VIEWS,

&c. &c.

SECTION I.

INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.

THE products of ancient classical genius, considered relatively to their matter, and independently of titles, authors, and times, may be conceived to belong to three, and these for the most part very intermixed, classes. Under one class may be included those whose modes of thought and forms of expression are based on associations which have not only ceased to exist among men, but which it is now impossible for the imagination adequately to recall. Another may recognise the offspring of combinations which, although obliterated by time, are yet fairly restorable in thought. A third, and the most important, will embrace such as respect those developments of mental and physical agencies whose uniform processes constitute the course of nature itself.

That casual associations should be familiar at one time or place which in a different locality or age may appear impracticable or inconceivable would, of course, be a necessary result even of the influence ex

A

ercised by local varieties of external nature upon the suggestions of human invention and fancy. But the constitution of human society and the natural laws of improvement require that the main amount of the thoughts and practices of men should originate in constant sources, should be familiar to the intelligence of communities in general, and should be transmissible through successive ages. Hence those recesses in the extant stores of ancient literature, which time or change has locked against us, occupy but a trifling portion of the vast included space: and from almost every department of these inexhaustible resources the visitant 'bringeth forth things' (that are at once both) 'new and old.'

'Tis true the Eschylean and Pindaric strains awake but faint echoes in the modern mind; the choral chant of Sophocles, and even the less aspiring lay of Euripides, is no longer comprehensible in its primary intent and effect; the flash of Aristophanic wit is widely dissipated or wholly intercepted by the hazy atmosphere which it now traverses; the written or recited period no more resembles the speaking inspiration of Demosthenes, than the music-scroll represents the performance of the piece; while the lessons of Aristotle ever and anon elude our apprehension, because of an apparently irremediable deficiency in our acquaintance with the exact import of sundry ancient technicalities. Still these disappointments are happily the exceptions, not the rule, belonging to our case. And from the soul-stirring heroics of Homer (the great

body of whose conceptions respecting gods, heroes, armies, battles, travel, and the spiritual world, we are perhaps as competent to picture before the mind's eye as was the original auditory of the minstrel sage) to the quaint sententiousness of Tacitus, it is generally the privilege of the modern scholar to commune with the worthies of olden time, with a freedom which his own will almost alone restricts,-to test the philosopher's theory, to scan the historian's facts, to applaud the statesman's eloquence, to ponder the moralist's precept, and to attune the poet's song.

Among the authors whose feelings and sentiments have found a constant and cordial response in the approval of each succeeding age, the Poet-philosopher of Venusia holds a confessedly pre-eminent rank. Exuberant in graceful poetic imagery and terse philosophic sentiment, which are adapted with a rare knowledge of human nature to illustrate every possible grade, condition, and circumstance of ordinary life, his Works may in this respect fairly assert rivalry with those of our own immortal bard of Avon: and a Latin linguist unfamiliar with Horace stands in the same predicament as would an English literate unversed in Shakespeare.

The universal applicability, however, which renders quotation from an ancient author familiar as household words, is not unattended by countervailing disadvantages. Mistaken notions, whether of direct or collateral import, when once received, often become inveterate by mere transmissive adoption: an inter

ORIGINAL VIEWS

OF

PASSAGES IN THE LIFE AND WRITINGS

OF

HORACE:

WITH WHICH IS COMBINED

AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE SUITABILITY OF THE ANCIENT EPIC AND LYRIC
STYLES TO MODERN SUBJECTS OF NATIONAL AND GENERAL INTEREST.

BY

JOHN MURRAY, A. M., LL.D.

"Legitimæ inquisitionis vera norma est, ut nihil veniat in practicam, cujus non fit etiam
doctrina aliqua et theoria."-BACON, De Augmentis Scientiarum.

HODGES AND SMITH, GRAFTON-STREET,

BOOKSELLERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

MDCCCLII.

298. e. 24.