f perfect art, or the statue, or
the temple. In actual conduct, the hedonist of the better type differed
little from the Stoic himself.

The gracious touch and quiet humor with which Horace treats even the
most serious themes are often misleading. This effect is the more
possible by reason of the presence among his works of passages, not many
and for the most part youthful, in which he is guilty of too great
freedom.

Horace is really a serious person. He is even something of a preacher, a
praiser of the time when he was a boy, a censor and corrector of his
youngers. So far as popular definitions of Stoic and Epicurean are
concerned, he is much more the former than the latter.

For Horace's counsel is always for moderation, and sometimes for
austerity. He is not a wine-bibber, and he is not a total abstainer. To
be the latter on principle would never have occurred to him. The vine
was the gift of God. Prefer nothing to it for planting in the mellow
soil of Tibur, Varus; it is one of the compensations of life:

"I_ts magic power of wit can spread_
T_he halo round a dullard's head_,
C_an make the sage forget his care_,
H_is bosom's inmost thoughts unbare_,
A_nd drown his solemn-faced pretense_
B_eneath its blithesome influence_.
B_right hope it brings and vigor back_
T_o minds outworn upon the rack_,
A_nd puts such courage in the brain_
A_s makes the poor be men again_,
W_hom neither tyrants' wrath affrights_,
N_or all their bristling satellites_."

When wine is a curse, it is not so because of itself, but because of
excess in its use. The cup was made for purposes of pleasure, but to
quarrel over it,--leave that to barbarians! Take warning by the
Thracians, and the Centaurs and Lapiths, never to overstep the bounds of
moderation. Pleasure with after-taste of bitterness is not real
pleasure. Pleasure purchased with pain is an evil.

Upon women he looks with the same philosophic calm as upon wine. Love,
too, was to be regarded as one of the contributions to life's pleasure.
To dally with golden-haired Pyrrha, with Lyce, or with Glycera, the
beauty more brilliant than Parian marble, was not in his eyes to be
blamed in itself. What he felt no hesitation in committing to his poems
for friends and the Emperor to read, they on their part felt as little
hesitation in confessing to him. The fault of love lay not in itself,
but in abuse. This is not said of adultery, which was always an offense