alchemized
into one, they might combine to yield an English Horace. Until eclectic
nature, emulating the Grecian sculptor, shall fashion an archetype from
these seven models, the vernacular student, with his Martin and his
Conington, sipping from each alternately, like Horace's Matine bee
(IV, ii, 27), the terseness of the professor and the sweetness of the
poet, may find in them some echo from the ever-shifting tonality of the
Odes, something of their verbal felicity, something of their thrilling
wistfulness; may strive not quite unsuccessfully, in the words of
Tennyson's "Timbuctoo," to attain by shadowing forth the unattainable.

ON THE "WINES" OF HORACE'S POETRY

The wines whose historic names sparkle through the pages of Horace
have become classical commonplaces in English literature. "Well, my
young friend, we must for once prefer the Falernian to the _vile
Sabinum?_" says Monkbarns to Lovel when the landlord of the Hawes Inn
at Queensferry brings them claret instead of port. It may be well
that we should know somewhat of them.

The choicest of the Italian wines was _Caecuban_, from the
poplar-trained vines grown amongst the swamps of Amyclae in Campania.
It was a heady, generous wine, and required long keeping; so we find
Horace speaking of it as ranged in the farthest cellar end, or "stored
still in our grandsire's binns"(III, xxviii, 2, 3; I, xxxvii, 6); it was
reserved for great banquets, kept carefully under lock and key: "your
heir shall drain the Caecuban you hoarded under a hundred padlocks"
(II, xiv, 25). It was beyond Horace's means, and only rich men could
afford to drink it; we hear of it at Maecenas' table and on board his
galley (I, xx, 9); and it appeared at the costly banquet of Nasidienus
(page 27). With the Caecuban he couples the _Formian_ (I, xx, 11), and
_Falernian_ (I, xx, 10), grown on the southern slopes of the hills
dividing Campania from Latium. "In grassy nook your spirit cheer with
old Falernian vintage," he says to his friend Dellius (II, iii, 6).
He calls it fierce, rough, fiery; recommends mixing it with Chian
wine, or with wine from Surrentum (Sat. II, iv, 55), or sweetening and
diluting it with honey from Mount Hymettus (Sat. II, ii, 15). From
the same district came the _Massic_ wine, also strong and fiery. "It
breeds forgetfulness" (II, vii, 21), he says; advises that it should
be softened by exposure to the open sky (Sat. II, iv, 51). He had a
small supply of it, which