a more genial vein. It is a letter of enquiry as to the relative advantages of Velia and Salernum as a winter residence, at a time when he was forbidden his usual course of baths at Baiae by Antonius Musa, the fashionable physician of the day, who cured the Emperor and may have killed his son-in-law by the cold-water treatment. In it he admits his liability to the common infirmity of valetudinarians—a difficulty in resisting the temptations of good living when they came in his way, though he could be independent of them when he had no opportunity of yielding to them. This self-criticism affords the opportunity of introducing in the person of Maenius the most finished and life-like picture of the 'scurra,' who plays a similar part in Roman satire to that played by the parasite in Greek comedy, though the Roman appears to be a more reckless and less inoffensive person than his Greek prototype usually is. Other Epistles are written in the vein of some of the lighter Odes, and are addressed to some of the friends who are also addressed in the Odes. Thus the fourth is a letter to Tibullus, whom, under his gentile name of Albius, he consoles or rallies, in one of the Odes of Book i, on his desertion by his mistress. In this Epistle Tibullus is characterised as a poet and scholar, endowed with all personal advantages of mind, body and fortune, and cultivating his art or meditating on the wise conduct of life among the health-giving woods of his estate near Pedum. To one so blessed by fortune and so wise, the only lesson recommended is the Epicurean maxim which forms the burden of several of his Odes Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum; Grata superveniet, quae non sperabitur, hora. He concludes with an invitation couched in terms of ironical self-disparagement like those used in the Epistle to Vala— Me pinguem et nitidum bene curata cute vises, The fifth, addressed to the same person as the seventh Ode of Book iv, a man of distinction and a rising advocate of the day, is in the form of an invitation to an entertainment, and enables us to judge of Horace in the character of a host. It shows the discrimination with which he chose his guests, his love of good conversation, and the importance he attaches to that article in the code of social honour, that the friendly conversation of the dining-room should not become a matter of gossip outside ne fidos inter amicos Sit qui dicta foras eliminet. Other letters intermingle hints on the conduct of life with words of friendly courtesy or good-humoured banter. Such are the Epistle to Iccius, the student of philosophy, whose new-born zeal for military adventure is the subject of raillery in one of the Odes; the Epistle to the friend to whom the ' Integer vitae ' is addressed, Aristius Fuscus, in which he contrasts his own love of the country with the town-bred tastes of the critic and grammarian, in all other respects so completely his 'alter ego'; the letter to his steward, in which the charm of the country is contrasted with the pleasures of the town with still stronger emphasis; and the interesting letter to Bullatius, in which he questions him about his travels, and reminds him that the cure for restlessness and ennui- the common malady of the age was to be sought, not in change of scene, but in change of heart and mind. The familiar quotation, Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt, is what we so often find in the Epistles, a paraphrase of a thought expressed with lyrical fervour in the Odes patriae quis exul Se quoque fugit? In all of these the same lessons are taught or hinted at as in the Odes, the lessons of self-dependence, of simple living, of a love of nature and all natural pleasures, and of a grateful enjoyment of the present, undisturbed by any anxieties for the future. The wise enjoyment of life is the general lesson of these shorter Epistles, as the wise conduct of life is of those which are more formally didactic. Among the most pleasing of those the interest of which is chiefly personal, is that addressed to Julius Florus, while serving on the staff of Tiberius in the East, in which a friendly regard for the circle of young poets or aspirants to literary distinction, with which Tiberius had surrounded himself, is combined with candid counsel on the propriety of making up some quarrel with an old friend. The part of a mentor could not be filled with more tact or more consideration for the self-esteem of younger men. He touches lightly but impressively on the more serious teaching, which forms the main subject of his more elaborate Epistles; and happily indicates that the motive for the application of a rational philosophy to life is patriotism and self-approval Hoc opus, hoc studium parvi properemus et ampli, Si patriae volumus, si nobis vivere cari.-(Ep. i. 3. 28, 29.) So much of the teaching of the later Greek moralists and of the Romans who followed them, is directed to secure the happiness or the moral improvement of the individual, for his own sake, that it is interesting to note either in the Odes or the Epistles the recognition of that public virtue, which was the ideal entertained in the best days of the Greek and Roman republics. Perhaps the gem of the whole collection is the seventh, the interest of which is almost exclusively personal. In it Horace with delicate courtesy and warm affection, but at the same time with frank independence of spirit, excuses himself for absence in the country during the whole month of August, after promising Maecenas to return to Rome within a week. In this Epistle, as in some others referred to, we find the note of the valetudinarian. No other passage, among the many in Odes, Satires, and Epistles which indicate the relation between Horace and his patron, gives a juster idea of what that relation was-not quite the friendship of social equals, but one of close intimacy and warm affection, of deference and gratitude, but tempered by self-respect, on the one side, and an affection springing from the need of sympathy and companionship, and tempered by courteous consideration, on the other. He soon relieves the strain of apology and self-vindication by an admir able story admirably told, illustrative of the relation of patron and client, the story of the well-to-do citizen who had been happy and cheerful in his own way, till he was taken up, partly from good nature, partly for amusement, by Philippus, the famous politician and advocate of the time of the Social war; who was encouraged and helped by him to buy a farm, and after being nearly ruined in consequence, came to his patron and begged to be replaced in his former condition. The account of this citizen, changed into a yeoman ('ex nitido rusticus'), and of his experience of the actual hardships and vicissitudes of a small farmer's life, is perhaps the best specimen of Horace's gift as a teller of stories; a gift largely possessed by Italian writers ancient and modern. His frequent allusion to fables and anecdotes would lead us to suppose that he had, as other good talkers have had, a large store of them among the resources of his conversational powers. In most of the longer Epistles-the first, second, sixth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth-to which may be added the latter part of the second of Book ii, the didactic spirit is more conspicuous; the personal element, though not absent, is subsidiary. These Epistles present different aspects of his teaching. He seems aware of an apparent contradiction in professing at one time to uphold the tenets of Stoicism, and while entering in spirit into the duties of active life, and claiming to be independent of the outward conditions of happiness Virtutis verae custos rigidusque satelles at another time to speak as the disciple of Aristippus, and, without becoming the slave of external conditions, to study how to make them most conducive to the enjoyment of life. As there is nothing on which he more insists than the necessity of consistency in conduct and opinion Si curatus inaequali tonsore capillos Occurri, rides; si forte subucula pexae Trita subest tunicae vel si toga dissidet impar, Diruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis ?-(Ep. i. 1. 94-100) it appears, at first sight, difficult to understand his apparent adherence to irreconcilable philosophies. But, living among other men as well as meditating on the abstract tendency of things, he saw that human life was too complex to be reduced to any single rule. He felt the nobleness of an ideal of absolute superiority to the world; and he has expressed the power which this ideal had over the Roman imagination in passages of the Odes and Epistles with as much fervour as any Stoic. But he recognised also the necessity of living in the world, and, in some things, adapting oneself to its ways. Like Cicero, he regarded it as pedantry to apply an impracticable theory of perfection to the unimportant minutiae of life; and yet he knew how much of real well-being depended on these minutiae, what an important part pleasure played in life, and how much better it was to regulate than to eliminate it. The first Epistle, addressed to Maecenas, is introductory to the rest, and is intended to show the efficacy of philosophic culture in subduing the lower nature— Invidus, iracundus, iners, vinosus, amator, Nemo adeo ferus est ut non mitescere possit, and to contrast the philosophic attitude of mind with the restless Hic murus aëneus esto, Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa. But with a characteristic touch of irony, like that with which he concludes the second Epode, he sums up his doctrine with the Stoical paradox, which he ridicules in one of his earliest |