character and bearing
than in appearance. We discern in his composition the same strange and
seemingly contradictory blend of the grave and gay, the lively and
severe, the constant and the mercurial, the austere and the trivial, the
dignified and the careless, that is so baffling to the observer of
Italian character and conduct today.

2. HORACE THE POET

To understand how Horace came to be a great poet as well as an engaging
person, it is necessary to look beneath this somewhat commonplace
exterior, and to discern the spiritual man.

The foundations of literature are laid in life. For the production of
great poetry two conditions are necessary. There must be, first, an age
pregnant with the celestial fires of deep emotion. Second, there must be
in its midst one of the rare men whom we call inspired. He must be of
such sensitive spiritual fiber as to vibrate to every breeze of the
national passion, of such spiritual capacity as to assimilate the common
thoughts and moods of the time, of such fine perception and of such
sureness of command over word, phrase, and rhythm, as to give crowning
expression to what his soul has made its own.

For abundance of stirring and fertilizing experience, history presents
few equals of the times when Horace lived. His lifetime fell in an age
which was in continual travail with great and uncertain movement. Never
has Fortune taken greater delight in her bitter and insolent game, never
displayed a greater pertinacity in the derision of men. In the period
from Horace's birth at Venusia in southeastern Italy, on December 8,
B.C. 65, to November 27, B.C. 8, when

"M_ourned of men and Muses nine_,
T_hey laid him on the Esquiline_,"

there occurred the series of great events, to men in their midst
incomprehensible, bewildering, and disheartening, which after times
could readily interpret as the inevitable change from the ancient and
decaying Republic to the better knit if less free life of the Empire.

We are at an immense distance, and the differences have long since been
composed. The menacing murmur of trumpets is no longer audible, and the
seas are no longer red with blood. The picture is old, and faded, and
darkened, and leaves us cold, until we illuminate it with the light of
imagination. Then first we see, or rather feel, the magnitude of the
time: its hatreds and its selfishness; its differences of opinion,
sometimes honest and sometimes disingenuous, but always maintai