now nothing more delightful as one grows in
years, when the mind retains its subtlety, but is conscious of increasing
languor, than to test the one and brace the other by companionship
with a book familiar and frequently re-read: we walk thereby with a
supporting staff, stroll leaning upon a friendly arm. This is what
Horace does for us: coming back to him in our old age, we recover our
youthful selves, and are relieved to learn while we appreciate afresh
his well-remembered lines, that if our minds have become more inert,
they are also more feeling, than of yore."

For full justification of these graceful amenities we must turn to the
lyrical poems. The Satires and Epistles, as their author frequently
reminds us, were in prose: the revealed Horatian secret, the condensed
expression of the Horatian charm, demanded musical verse; and this we
have in the Odes and Epodes. The word Ode is Greek for a Song; Epode was
merely a metrical term to express an ode which alternated in longer and
shorter lines, and we may treat them all alike as Odes. The Epodes are
amongst his earliest publications, and bear signs of a 'prentice hand.
"Iambi," he calls them, a Greek word meaning "lampoons"; and six of them
are bitter personal attacks on individuals, foreign to the good breeding
and urbanity which distinguish his later writings. More of the same
class he is believed to have suppressed, retaining these as specimens
of that earlier style, and because, though inchoate, they won the
admiration of Virgil, and preferred their author to the patronage of
Maecenas. One of the finer Epodes (Epod. ix) has peculiar interest, as
written probably on the deck of Maecenas' galley during or immediately
after the battle of Actium; and is in that case the sole extant
contemporary record of the engagement. It reflects the loathing kindled
in Roman breasts by Antony's emasculate subjugation to his paramour;
imagines with horror a dissolute Egyptian harlot triumphant and supreme
in Rome, with her mosquito-curtained beds and litters, and her train of
wrinkled eunuchs. It describes with a spectator's accuracy the desertion
of the Gallic contingent during the battle, the leftward flight of
Antony's fleet: then, with his favourite device of lapsing from
high-wrought passion into comedy, Horace bewails his own sea-sickness
when the excitement of the fight is over, and calls for cups of wine to
quell it. In another Epode (Epod. ii) he recalls his boyish memories