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 ously at men and manners which he did not like. Young, ardent, constitutionally hot in temper, eager to assert, amid the general chaos of morals public and private, the higher principles of the philosophic schools from which he had so recently come, irritated by the thousand mortifications to which a man of cultivated tastes and keenly alive to beauty is exposed in a luxurious city, where the prizes he values most are carried off, yet scarcely valued, by the wealthy vulgar, he was especially open to the besetting temptation of clever young men to write satire, and to write it in a merciless spirit. As he says of himself (Odes, I. 15),

Youth is always intolerant, and it is so easy to be severe; so seductive to say brilliant things, whether they be true or not. But there came a day, and it came soon, when Horace saw that triumphs gained in this way were of little value, and when he was anxious that his friends should join with him in consigning his smart and scurril lines (celeres et criminosos Iambos) to oblivion. The amende for some early lampoon which he makes in the Ode just quoted, though ostensibly addressed to a lady who had been its victim, was probably intended to cover a wider field.

Personal satire is always popular, but the fame it begets is bought dearly at the cost of lifelong enmities end many after-regrets. That Horace in his early