would find the truest expression of himself and the purest specimens of his art. The irony with which he sometimes seems to disclaim all higher purpose, and the enduring grace with which he can invest some transient phase of passion or sentiment, or of social gaiety, seem to afford some countenance to this view both of the man and of his art. But it is safer to look for the expression of his most real self in his familiar writings, and in the Odes to recognise him as the sympathetic artist, yielding to various and sometimes opposite moods, as they were fitted to call forth the graver or gayer tones of his lyre. Love and wine were favourite themes of his prototypes, the older Greek lyrical poets, as they have been of some of the greatest lyrical poets of modern times; and Horace, though neither an ardent lover nor an intemperate reveller, had in the memories of his youth and in the sympathetic observation of his maturer years the materials which his fancy could idealise in connexion with both of these subjects. In his love poems he does not give utterance to the force of his personal passion, as Catullus does in the Lesbia poems, as tradition tells us that Sappho and Alcaeus did, and as Propertius and Tibullus did among his younger contemporaries. It is not in the Odes, but in one or two of the Epodes, that we find traces of personal passion in Horace Cum tu magnorum numen laesura Decorum In verba iurabas mea, Artius atque hedera procera adstringitur ilex The passionate sincerity of these words, uttered 'calida iuventa,' may be contrasted with the light-hearted irony with which he treats a similar experience in one of the most charming of his lighter Odes Ulla si iuris tibi peierati Poena, Barine, nocuisset unquam. The confessions of Horace seem to imply that he was too fickle or too self-possessed a lover ever to have been scathed by any 'grande passion' of which he would care to perpetuate the torment and the rapture as Catullus has done; nor did he ever allow this single feeling to gain such ascendency over him, and so to make the other interests of life indifferent to him, as was the case with Catullus, Propertius, and the other elegiac poets. His poems addressed to his many real or imaginary heroines are artistic studies in which he idealises and invests with the associations of Greek poetry, sometimes his own, but more frequently the lighter and more transient relations of the younger men of his day with the class in Rome who corresponded to the Glycerium or the Thais of Greek comedy. He sees them in the triumph of their dangerous fascination in such poems as Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa (i. 5). Lydia, dic, per omnes (i. 8). Ulla si iuris tibi peierati (ii. 8). He appreciates the humorous side which a sentimental affair with one of a lower degree presents to the associates of the lover, as in Ne sit ancillae tibi amor pudori (ii. 4). He tells sympathetically a tale of true love in the 'Quid fles Asterie' (iii. 7), or dramatically varies the often-told story of 'amantium irae amoris integratio' in the 'Donec gratus eram tibi' (iii. 9). He reminds us of the influence of advancing years on the warmth of his feelings— Lenit albescens animos capillus; and though he sometimes speaks of himself as burning with jealousy, he makes us think of him rather, to use his own words, as vacui, sive quid urimur Non praeter solitum leves, singing the praises of Lalage in his Sabine wood, entertaining the accomplished Tyndaris in the beautiful valley crowned by Lucretilis, bidding a fatherly farewell to Galatea before she sails across the Adriatic Sis licet felix ubicumque mavis, Et memor nostri, Galatea, vivas (iii. 27)— or inviting Phyllis, the latest of all his loves, to come to his country house and entertain him with her music. It is not likely that these poems are mere literary studies dealing with purely imaginary situations and personages, nor that on the other hand they are a literal reproduction of actual circumstances. They are rather idyllic pictures suggested by or combined out of the ordinary experience of the time. So far as these heroines of Horace's Odes appear in his representation, they might be supposed to be refined and accomplished ladies leading a somewhat independent but quite decorous life. They appear to be well read in Greek poetry, and accomplished musicians. In addressing them he uses the stories of the Greek mythology as a literature of romance, as Ovid did later in the Heroides. Thus in the Galatea Ode he tells very charmingly the adventure of Europa— Nuper in pratis studiosa florum— and in the Quid fles Asterie,' it is said of the agent who passes between Chloe and Gyges, peccare docentes Fallax historias movet. In all of these poems he aims at introducing an ideal of Greek refinement and romance into the realism of Roman pleasure. But we have no pictures of Roman family life like that in the Epithalamium of Catullus nor do we find any noble picture of a Roman matron, like the Cornelia of Propertius. In general we find the lighter, brighter and more decorous phases of the love affairs and the life of pleasure of the time. Yet he reminds us also of the coarser and more reckless aspect of these affairs in the introduction of the 'Damalis multi meri' at the revels of young men, and he does not shrink, in two or three of his least agreeable Odes, from shewing us the other side of the picture-the hideousness of what remains of this life of pleasure after the charm of youth has passed. If we believed the motive of such Odes as i. 25, iv. 13, to be bitter and vindictive, such a belief would seriously diminish the estimate we form both of the heart and of the taste of Horace. But we may look upon them rather as completing the artistic representation of this phase of life, shewing the life of pleasure in its decay as in its idyllic grace. And as all his representation seems intended also to point a moral, so the poems i. 25, iii. 15, iv. 13, impress the lesson which he applies to himself in the Epistles, that if there is a time when he can say 'non lusisse pudet,' the time also comes when it is imperative 'incidere ludum.' Of all the poets of love, ancient or modern, Horace is perhaps the least serious. He is less serious even than Ovid, who at least in the Heroides shews occasionally a juster appreciation of the tenderness and constancy of a woman's heart. The tone of Horace is more that of persiflage than of either ardent passion or tender sentiment. He paints the piquant attraction of coyness or inconstancy, of waywardness or cruelty, in his Chloe or Pyrrha, his Glycera or Barine, but he regards the influence of woman, at the best, as ministering to the refined amusement of a man's lighter hours. He may sigh for the lot of those Quos irrupta tenet copula, nec malis Suprema citius solvet amor die, but he had soon for himself learned to lay aside the Spes animi credula mutui. We seldom if ever come upon that feeling of the union of heart with heart which is the secret of the charm of the 'Acmen Septimius suos amores' of Catullus. own ironical description of it His song is nearer his nos proelia virginum Sectis in iuvenes unguibus acrium Cantamus vacui. Phrases here and there, such as or Nec tinctus viola pallor amantium, shew that he could note the signs of more powerful passion, but it did not come within the carefully meditated scope of his lyrical art to attempt any rivalry with Sappho or Catullus in a sphere in which they were unapproachable. His remonstrances with his brother poets, Tibullus and Valgius, imply a feeling that there is something unmanly in the complaints of lovers over the loss of the object of their affection through either inconstancy or death. It is especially in the treatment of this sentiment that the peculiar irony of Horace is shewn, and his frequent declaration that love is the one appropriate theme of his Muse might seem intended to disguise the prominence he elsewhere gives to the didactic office which his Muse fulfils or to her function in awaking national sentiment. He is apparently more sincere in his praises of wine, though on this subject also we have to remember that he is following the example of the oldest lyric poets Musa dedit fidibus Divos puerosque Deorum, Et pugilem victorem et equum certamine primum The opening words of three of the poems in Book i— Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte Nullam, Vare, sacra vite prius severis arborem- remind us that in his praises of wine he was the artistic imitator of Alcaeus. But he writes also as a man to whom in his youth the pleasures of comradeship had been enhanced by wine Cum quo morantem saepe diem mero Malobathro Syrio capillos (ii. 7)— and who in his maturer years had no greater enjoyment than that of 'honest talk and wholesome wine' with an old friend, or with some of the intellectual leaders of the time. In his earlier poems on the subject-such as Epode 13, Odes i. 7, 9, 18, written probably in the time between the battle of Philippi and |