perhaps as apposite an acknowledgment of the peculiarity of Horace's poetry as could have been chosen. That subtle, volatile essence is so difficult to reproduce, just because it is so difficult to define; and it is the same quality which renders it so universally charming. It has preserved through perpetuity its character of freshness and originality, because among many followers Horace has found no school, no imitator or adapter who has caught the tone of his mind as well as the outer marks of his style. To be another Horace, it is not enough to be able to write fluent, graceful, and suggestive lyrics on occasional topics. Nor is it enough of itself to be endowed with the same genial laughing turn of mind, the same equilibrium of spirit, the same content, or power of assuming content, in a summary acceptance of the problems of life, the same strict adherence to rule in living and writing, the same mixture of critical severity and charitable toleration which went to make up Horace's character as a man. The perfection of lyrical form is not sufficient without the calm, broad, Epicurean sunniness of temper; nor does this, again, suffice without the persevering and intuitive power which secures a studied perfection of form. That conscientious accuracy of expression, which never conveys more or less than the exact amount which is intended to be conveyed, is never more desirable, never more valuable, and rarely more difficult of attainment, than when it is busied upon topics professedly reflecting the personality of the writer. The golden rule for a poet 66 'His worst he kept, his best he gave❞— is one which the tendencies of our modern poetry have done much to overlay. A yearning zeal to rush into the public and irreticent exposition of vague life-dramas and other subjective mysteries is perhaps a natural consequence of the wider prevalence among ourselves of unquiet speculation as to the meaning of this little life, which Horace was satisfied to believe rounded with a sleep. Inevitable as this tendency may be, it is not desirable that its gratification should be so paramount an object in poetry as to render us as writers or readers indifferent to the careful self-scrutiny and patient study of his own work, which enabled the Roman lyrist justly to qualify his poems with the hard-earned title of operosa carmina. Had Horace been a more ambitious and professed philosopher, he would not have been so favourite and so immortal a singer. Having once chosen the medium through which he could best express his own mind for the benefit of others, he took care never to use that medium for the unlicensed conveyance of any thing which could not properly be brought within the range of its capabilities. The moral, where there is one, in Horace's songs is so carefully harmonised with both subject and expression as to be inseparable in the appreciation and the memory of every reader; and in many cases the real meaning of a song is best expressed in its leading to no perceptible moral at all. The true work of art, the operosum carmen of Horace, is that which has the art to conceal its own artifice altogether, and bursts out on us like the spontaneous growth of imagination or nature. It is this natural but highly cultivated growth of Latin soil which it is so difficult to reproduce upon English ground. An exotic plant always requires time and care before it will acclimatise itself thoroughly; and when it does so, it is always through some gradual and slight, but perceptible, modification of its indigenous habits and character. The principles of natural selection exact recognition at the hands of literary transplanters as forcibly as in experiments of physical culture. In translating an epic poem or a drama into a foreign language, the path is more clearly defined than it can ever be for the writer who attempts to transfuse into a new form occasional pieces like the odes or satires of Horace. The style of the heroic translation falls, in proportion to the power of its author, and always aims to fall, into a sustained gravity and simplicity analogous to that of the original. The whole duty of an English Iliad or Odyssey is to place before its readers as faithfully and forcibly as possible what the epic would have been if Homer's language had been English, while Homer's mind and age remained Greek. A similar subordination to the mould of his original is required from a translator of Eschylus or Aristophanes. But whoever undertakes to translate in this style a satire not dramatic in form, will discover sooner or later that he has been exercising a superfluous and ineffective degree and order of fidelity. Satire should always address itself personally and directly to those for whom it is intended, as the eyes of a portrait set on the wall follow steadily round the room the eyes of whoever looks at it, when he moves from one position to another. The aim of translating satire from Latin into English is not to show its English readers merely how it was used to lash, and for what vices, the Romans of the times of Augustus and Domitian; but to apply the same rules and the same tests as closely as may be to the country and the ages which will read it in its new form. The follies and pursuits of man, the quidquid agunt homines,-the true food of the satirist,-are in their intrinsic character independent of place and time, but vary from day to day in their outward fashion. To produce a full and vivid effect in their representation and condemnation, the painter must catch the actual folly that at the moment of his painting is on the wing. He may build the modern group on the lines of the antique composition, but the dress and the faces must be those of his own day. This was the sense in which Pope and Johnson understood (and rightly) the duties and the powers of a translator of satiric poems. The same principles apply, but with a lesser degree of simplicity and strictness, and therefore with a greater difficulty of right application, to occasional lyric poems. They must fall in their new language into some form which shall be to the apprehension of their new cycle of readers as natural and as original as their old form was to those to whom they were in the first instance addressed. They must put on not only a modern dress, but a modern face and expression, to be palatable either to those who do know the old forms, or to those who do not; and yet the new dress and face must unmistakably recall and involve the old. Those who read them as part of the literature of the present day must be able to feel in them the modern touches which redeem antiquarian imitations from the charge of nothingness. Those who know the originals by heart should be enabled to enjoy them still more on comparison with the translations, through the opportunity so given of appreciating the delicacy and the importance of the slight touches of alteration, which show at once the difference, and the likeness in difference, of the age of Horace and our own. Without wishing definitely to adjudge to Mr. Martin the palm of an uniform superiority over the other recent translators of Horace's lyrical poems, we hold that he has in general so emphatically caught the tone in which the Odes are to be translated rightly, if at all, that we shall use his version whenever quotation is necessary, in illustration of our remarks on Horace as a poet and a man. Few poets could be named whose lives and characters may be more fairly and fully illustrated out of their own works than Horace. The overflow of a man's heart into song has rarely been combined with a more genuine openness and sincerity of heart. No desire to wear a mask or to speak with a feigned voice, to display himself morally or as an artist greater or completer than he felt himself to be,-is traceable in any of his writings. If the sunny cheerfulness of his mind only beamed out here or there, it might be possible to suspect that the serenity of his philosophy was, if not put on or exaggerated, at any rate now and then brought forward for show. But when the expression of this content escapes as it were unconsciously through ode after ode, and epistle after epistle,-when chords of the most different tone lead up to the same close,—it is impossible not to believe it unaffected, enduring, and true. What is the sum of the philosophy to which this frame of temper is due? It is narrow, but complete. Its main rule is a para H phrase of the law, "Thou shalt not covet "-nil admirari. Be moderate in your wishes, your actions, and your thoughts. Temperance is every thing. Holding this truth, man can be happy under any circumstances; without it, he can be happy under none. The changeable wishes of foolish mortals are no true index of that which really suits them, and if granted by Fortune, laughing mischievously in her sleeve, are not unfrequently the sources of their greatest unhappiness. The pleasures of the present hour as it flies, and the memories of the past, are to be enjoyed, without unprofitable anxiety for what the future may or may not bring; and whatever the future does bring, it is better, and happier, and wiser to bear cheerfully when it comes. There is a time for every thing in life, and a time to have done with living. From the kingly palace or the poor man's hovel, we are all under notice to quit our present tenements at some undetermined date, and to follow Numa and Ancus, and the atavi reges, to wherever it is that they have gone before-to Charon's boat, the further side of Styx, the realms of Proserpine, the domus exilis Plutonia, or whatever else old Greek fables teach us to call it; and when once there, we are nothing more than pulvis et umbra-dust and a shade. In the mean time we are here; and we are foolish if we do not make the best of the world we are in. The varieties of human character are as perplexing and inscrutable, and as much beyond our power radically to change, as the varieties of individual destiny. In both cases we are bound to accept easily and good-humouredly what we cannot alter. Every man is one of a crowd, and should train himself to fit into his place; and then, crowd as there is, there is room for each and all to live and to find life worth living. The earth and its good things belong to no one more securely or inalienably than to his neighbour; and the enjoyment of them is limited both for rich and poor to a short temporary use. When once we have left our little villa or our lofty palace, our cellar stocked with choice Falernian or cheap Sabine wine, the trees we have planted and the pleasing wife we have loved, for the shades of Orcus which loom round every corner of life, a new generation, a vivacior hæres, will take our place, and disport itself as strangely and as briefly as we have done our selves. To our own selves it will then matter not a whit whether we have been rich nobles or mighty kings, nor even wise and philosophic souls, whose thoughts have reached beyond the stars. A monument of those our best thoughts and deeds may indeed survive us in the minds of men; but to the thinker of the thought and doer of the deed it will be all one by that time and for ever. Even that unsubstantial gratification, the glimmering glory of our posthumous fame, is one which we must take by anticipation in the present, or we shall never take it at all. Our soul shall no more taste it on the further shores of Styx, than our ashes in the funeral urn, or another living body reformed out of the atoms of which we are now composed, will be conscious of the wine we are drinking to-day. Therefore eat and drink, in moderation always, -be merry and wise; or, as Mr. Martin admirably translates the familiar and graceful ode, Tu ne quæsieris, "Ask not of fate to show ye Such lore is not for man- Shall round life's little span. Must quickly die! Content thee, then, nor madly hope To wrest a false assurance from Chaldean horoscope. Far nobler, better were it, Or this shall be The last, that now with sullen roar Scatters the Tuscan surge in foam upon the rock-bound shore. Be wise, your spirit firing With cups of tempered wine, In compass brief confine. The envious hours Fly as we talk: then live to-day, Nor fondly to to-morrow trust more than you must and may." Scire nefas. Let us not worry ourselves with peering into a subject which fate has hidden under an impenetrable veil. With such a creed, with no irrepressible yearning to believe in or speculate upon a future phase of existence as a continuation or consequence of our being here, no anxiety to convince himself that the problem of the universe was larger and more complex than it appeared to his own senses, it follows easily that Horace should have been an indifferent church-goer, as he calls himself,-a parcus Deorum cultor et infrequens. Why should he have been otherwise? The gods, if there were gods, were to Epicurus and his followers merely admirable as "models of being," as the ideal of imperturbable mental serenity, and freedom from labour or care. Even were it the fact that they had taken a share in the creation and government of the world, instead of smiling in secret indifference at the windy ways of men, they could give such as him little beyond actual life which he |