page on the lambent humour, the self-accusing tolerance, the penetrative
yet benignant wit of Thackeray.

[Footnote 1: May the writer ask indulgence while he recalls how,
exactly fifty-eight years ago, as senior boy at Winchester,
he recited this Satire publicly, receiving in recompense at
Warden Barter's hands the Queen's silver medal for elocution.]

* * * * *

Between the latest of the Satires and the earliest of the Epistles, we
have to reckon an interval of something like ten years, during which had
been published the Epodes and the majority of the Odes. "Epistles" his
editors have agreed to entitle them; but not all of them are genuine
Letters. Some are rather dedicated than written to the persons whose
names they bear; some are thrown for literary purposes into epistolary
form; some again are definitely and personally addressed to friends.
"Sermons" he calls them himself as he called the Satires, and their
motive is mostly the same; like those, they are Conversations, only with
absent correspondents instead of with present interlocutors, real or
imagined. He follows in them the old theme, the art of living, the
happiness of moderation and contentment; preaching easily as from
Rabelais' easy chair, with all the Frenchman's wit, without his
grossness. And, as we read, we feel how the ten years of experience, of
thought, of study, have matured his views of life, how again the labour
spent during their progress on lyrical composition, with perhaps the
increasing influence over his taste of Virgil's poetry, have trained his
ear, mellowed and refined his style. "The Epistles of Horace," says Dean
Milman, "are, with the Poem of Lucretius, the Georgics of Virgil, and
perhaps the Satires of Juvenal, the most perfect and most original form
of Roman verse."

Of the three letters to Maecenas, one, like the Ode we have before
quoted on p. 28, is a vigorous assertion of independence. The great
man, sorely sick and longing for his friend, had written peevishly
(Ep. I, vii), "You said you should be absent five days only, and you
stay away the whole of August." "Well--I went away because I was ill,
and I remain away because in this 'undertakers' month,' as you call
it in Rome, I am afraid of being worse if I go back. When cold weather
comes I shall go down to the sea; then, with the first swallow, dear
friend, your poet will revisit you. I love you fondly; am grateful to
you every hour of my li