is the gift of Heaven that he is pointed out by the
finger of the passer-by as the minstrel of the Roman lyre, that he
breathes the divine fire and pleases men. But he is as perfectly
appreciative of the fact that poets are born and also made, and condemns
the folly of depending upon inspiration unsupported by effort. He calls
himself the bee of Matinum, industriously flitting with honeyed thigh
about the banks of humid Tibur. What nature begins, cultivation must
develop. Neither training without the rich vein of native endowment, nor
natural talent without cultivation, will suffice; both must be friendly
conspirators in the process of forming the poet. Wisdom is the beginning
and source of writing well. He who would run with success the race that
is set before him must endure from boyhood the hardships of heat and
cold, and abstain from women and wine. The gift of God must be made
perfect by the use of the file, by long waiting, and by conscious
intellectual discipline.

3. HORACE THE INTERPRETER
OF HIS TIMES

HORACE THE DUALITY

Varied as were Horace's experiences, they were mainly of two kinds, and
there are two Horaces who reflect them. There is a more natural Horace,
simple and direct, of ordinary Italian manners and ideals, and a less
natural Horace, finished in the culture of Greece and the
artificialities of life in the capital. They might be called the
unconventional and the conventional Horace.

This duality is only the reflection of the two-fold experience of Horace
as the provincial village boy and as the successful literary man of the
city. The impressions received from Venusia and its simple population of
hard-working, plain-speaking folk, from the roaring Aufidus and the
landscape of Apulia, from the freedman father's common-sense instruction
as he walked about in affectionate companionship with his son, never
faded from Horace's mind. The ways of the city were superimposed upon
the ways of the country, but never displaced nor even covered them. They
were a garment put on and off, sometimes partly hiding, but never for
long, the original cloak of simplicity. It is not necessary to think its
wearer insincere when, constrained by social circumstance, he put it on.
As in most dualities not consciously assumed, both Horaces were genuine.
When Davus the slave reproaches his master for longing, while at Rome,
to be back in the country, and for praising the attractions of the city,
while in the country