and rustic, ideal and practical, at the cultured
court and among the ignorant, but not always unwise, common people.

And yet, numbers of men possessed of experience as abundant have died
without being poets, or even wise men. Their experience was held in
solution, so to speak, and failed to precipitate. Horace's experience
did precipitate. Nature gave him the warm and responsive soul by reason
of which he became a part of all he met. Unlike most of his associates
among the upper classes to which he rose, his sympathies could include
the freedman, the peasant, and the common soldier. Unlike most of the
multitude from which he sprang, he could extend his sympathies to the
careworn rich and the troubled statesman. He had learned from his own
lot and from observation that no life was wholly happy, that the cares
of the so-called fortunate were only different from, not less real than,
those of the ordinary man, that every human heart had its chamber
furnished for the entertainment of Black Care, and that the chamber was
never without its guest.

But not even the precipitate of experience called wisdom will alone make
the poet. Horace was again endowed by nature with another and rarer and
equally necessary gift,--the sense of artistic expression. It would be
waste of time to debate how much he owed to native genius, how much to
his own laborious patience, and how much to the good fortune of generous
human contact. He is surely to be classed among examples of what for
want of a better term we call inspiration. The poet _is_ born. We may
account for the inspiration of Horace by supposing him of Greek descent
(as if Italy had never begotten poets of her own), but the mystery
remains. In the case of any poet, after everything has been said of the
usual influences, there is always something left to be accounted for
only on the ground of genius. It was the possession of this that set
Horace apart from other men of similar experience.

The poet, however, is not the mere accident of birth. Horace is aware of
a power not himself that makes for poetic righteousness, and realizes
the mystery of inspiration. The Muse cast upon him at birth her placid
glance. He expects glory neither on the field nor in the course, but
looks to song for his triumphs. To Apollo,

"L_ord of the enchanting shell_,
P_arent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs_,"

who can give power of song even unto the mute, he owes all his power and
all his fame. It