e strength or softness, the beauty or grandeur, the
animated rapidity or the graceful ease of their various compositions. Of
the amorous effusions of the lyre, we yet have examples in the odes of
Anacreon, and the incomparable ode of Sappho: the lyric strains which
animated to battle, have sunk into oblivion; but the victors in the
public games of Greece have their fame perpetuated in the admirable
productions of Pindar.

Horace, by adopting, in the multiplicity of his subjects, almost all the
various measures of the different Greek poets, and frequently combining
different measures in the same composition, has compensated for the
dialects of that tongue, so happily suited to poetry, and given to a
language less distinguished for soft inflexions, all the tender and
delicate modulations of the Eastern song. While he moves in the measures
of the Greeks with an ease and gracefulness which rivals their own
acknowledged excellence, he has enriched the fund of lyric harmony with a
stanza peculiar to himself. In the artificial construction of the Ode,
he may justly be regarded as the first of lyric poets. In beautiful
imagery, he is inferior to none: in variety of sentiment and felicity of
expression, superior to every existing competitor in Greek or Roman
poetry. He is elegant without affectation; and what is more remarkable,
in the midst of gaiety he is moral. We seldom meet in his Odes with the
abrupt apostrophes of passionate excursion; but his transitions are
conducted with ease, and every subject introduced with propriety.

The Carmen Seculare was written at the express desire of Augustus, for
the celebration of the Secular Games, performed once in a hundred years,
and which continued during three days and three nights, whilst all Rome
resounded with the mingled effusions of choral addresses to gods and
goddesses, and of festive joy. An occasion which so much interested the
ambition of the poet, called into exertion the most vigorous efforts of
his genius. More concise in mythological attributes than the hymns
ascribed to Homer, this beautiful production, in variety and grandeur of
invocation, and in pomp of numbers, surpasses all that Greece, (176)
melodious but simple in the service of the altar, ever poured forth from
her vocal groves in solemn adoration. By the force of native genius, the
ancients elevated their heroes to a pitch of sublimity that excites
admiration, but to soar beyond which they could deriv