sense, but his criticisms do not profess to be original or to go
much beneath the surface. In Greek literature he follows Alexandrian
taste; in Latin he represents the tendency of his age to undervalue
the earlier efforts of the native genius and lay great stress on the
technical finish of his own day.

[Illustration: Virgil, Horace and Varius, at the House of Maecenas.]

From his own lifetime till now Horace has had a popularity unexampled
in literature. A hundred generations who have learned him as
school-boys have remembered and returned to him in mature age as to a
personal friend. He is one of those rare examples, like Julius Caesar
in politics, of genius which ripens late and leaves the more enduring
traces. Up to the age of thirty-five his work is still crude and
tentative; afterward it is characterized by a jewel finish, an
exquisite sense of language which weighs every word accurately and
makes every word inevitable and perfect. He was not a profound
thinker; his philosophy is rather that of the market-place than of the
schools, he does not move among high ideals or subtle emotions. The
romantic note which makes Virgil so magical and prophetic a figure at
that turning-point of the world's history has no place in Horace; to
gain a universal audience he offers nothing more and nothing less
than what is universal to mankind. Of the common range of thought and
feeling he is perfect and absolute master; and in the graver passages
of the epistles, as in the sad and noble cadence of his most fatuous
odes, the melancholy temper which underlay his quick and bright humor
touches the deepest springs of human nature. Of his style the most
perfect criticism was given in the next generation by a single phrase,
_Horatii curiosa felicitas_, of no poet can it be more truly said, in
the phrase of the Greek dramatist Agathon, that "skill has an
affection for luck and luck for skill." His poetry supplies more
phrases which have become proverbial than the rest of Latin literature
put together. To suggest a parallel in English literature we must
unite in thought the excellences of Pope and Gray with the easy wit
and cultured grace of Addison.

Horace's historical position in Latin literature is this: on the one
hand, he carried on and perfected the native Roman growth, satire,
from the ruder essays of Lucilius, so as to make Roman life from day
to day, in city and country, live anew under his pen; on the other
hand, he naturaliz