verse in the _Divina Commedia_
which refers to him:

L' altro e Orazio satiro che viene,--

T_he other coming is Horace the satirist_.

With Petrarch, the first great figure to emerge from the obscure vistas
of medievalism, the case was different. The first modern who really
understood the classics understood Horace also, and did him greater
justice than fell to his lot again for many generations. The copy of
Horace's works which he acquired on November 28, 1347, remained by him
until on the 18th of July in 1374 the venerable poet and scholar was
found dead at the age of seventy among his books. Fond as he was of
Virgil, Cicero, and Seneca, he had an intimate and affectionate
knowledge of Horace, to whom there are references in all his works, and
from whom he enriched his philosophy of life. Even his greatest and most
original creation, the _Canzoniere_, is not without marks of Horace, and
their fewness here, as well as their character, are a sign that
Petrarch's familiarity was not of the artificial sort, but based on real
assimilation of the poet. His letter to Horace begins:

Salve o dei lirici modi sovrano,
Salve o degl' Itali gloria ed onor,--

H_ail! Sovereign of the lyric measure_,
H_ail! Italy's great pride and treasure_;

and, after recounting the qualities of the poet, and acknowledging him
as guide, teacher, and lord, concludes:

Tanto e l' amor che a te m'avvince; tanto
E degli affetti miei donno il tuo canto--

S_o great the love that bindeth me to thee_;
S_o ruleth in my heart thy minstrelsy_.

But Petrarch is a torch-bearer so far in advance of his successors that
the illumination almost dies out again before they arrive. It was not
until well into the fifteenth century that the long and numerous line of
imitators, translators, adapters, parodists, commentators, editors, and
publishers began, which has continued to the present day. The
modern-Latin poets in all countries were the first, but their efforts
soon gave place to attempts in the vernacular tongues. The German Eduard
Stemplinger, in his _Life of the Horatian Lyric Since the Renaissance_,
published in 1906, knows 90 English renderings of the entire _Odes_ of
Horace, 70 German, 100 French, and 48 Italian. Some are in prose, some
even in dialect. The poet of Venusia is made a Burgundian, a Berliner,
and even a Platt-deutsch. All of these are attempts to transfuse Horace
into the veins of modern life, and ar