essential; to be truthful to
life; to keep the improbable and the horrible behind the scenes; to be
appropriate in meter and diction; to keep clear of the fallacy of poetic
madness; to look for the real sources of successful writing in sanity,
depth of knowledge, and experience with men; to remember the mutual
indispensability of genius and cultivation; to combine the pleasant and
the useful; to deny one's self the indulgence of mediocrity; never to
compose unless under inspiration; to give heed to solid critical
counsel; to lock up one's manuscript for nine years before giving it to
the world; to destroy what does not measure up to the ideal; to take
ever-lasting pains; to beware of the compliments of good-natured
friends? Not less familiar are the apt figurative illustrations of the
woman beautiful above and an ugly fish below, the purple patch, the
painter who would forever put in his cypress tree, the amphora that came
out a pitcher, the dolphin in the wood and the boar in the waters, the
sesquipedalian word, the mountains in travail and the birth of the
ridiculous mouse, the plunge _in medias res_, the praiser of the good
old times, the exclusion of sane poets from Helicon, the counsellor who
himself can write nothing, but will serve as whetstone for genius, the
nodding of Homer.

Nor did the effects of this diffusion of Horatian precept consist merely
in restraint upon the youthful and the impulsive, or confine themselves
to the drama, with which the _Ars Poetica_ was mainly concerned. The
persuasive and authoritative counsels of the Roman poet have entered, so
to speak, into the circulatory system of literary effort and become part
of the life-blood of modern enlightenment. Their great effect has been
formative: the cultivation of character in literature.

2. HORACE AND LITERARY CREATION

_i_. THE TRANSLATOR'S IDEAL

Besides the invisible, and the greatest, effect of Horace in the
moulding of character in literature, is the visible effect in literary
creation. His inspiration wrought by performance as well as by precept.
The numerous essays in verse and prose on the art of letters which have
been prompted by the _Ars Poetica_ are themselves examples of this
effect. They are not alone, however, though perhaps the most apparent.
The purer literature of the lyric also inspired to creation, with
results that are far more charming, if less substantial.

In the case of the lyric inspired by the _Odes_, as well