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HOR in its golden age, was "too proud to care from whence he came;" he was willing to recall his humble origin, "libertino patre natus," in order the more fully to express his sense of gratitude for an example and a training which had been to him "worth a hundred coats of arms." One of his satires preserves the memory of his teacher, "Orbilius plagosus" (a rhetorician who, according to Suetonius, used to tear his rivals with his discourses, and his pupils with his whip), who taught him to learn by heart long passages from the antiquated verse of Livius Andronicus. In his twentieth year, in accordance with the prevailing fashion, Horace was sent to Athens to unite with Bibulous and Messala and the son of Cicero in the pursuit after truth, "inter silvas Academi." We learn from himself that he began during this period to write his first verses in Greek, till Quirinus appeared before him in dreams, and forbade the youthful aspirant to lay the fruits of Italy on a foreign altar. The epistle to Florus commemorates this visit, and the events which followed it. In the year 46. Cæsar fell beneath the daggers of his assassins, and Brutus went to Athens with the view of securing the interest of the young patricians there. A pretender to philosophy himself, he was successful in gaining the good-will of the students; and several among them, deluded by the hope of bringing back an "old order," rendered attractive by the romantic associations of the past, were ready to enlist themselves under his banner. Horace quitted the Academy to enter into the war of parties—

He tells us elsewhere that he was made military tribune, and that the appointment of one so young in years and obscure in origin to a position for which the event proved him but imperfectly adapted, excited the rancour of his compeers. In this capacity he served at Philippi, 42 ., and by his own confession fled in the patrician route, "relicta non bene parmulâ." Alcæus and Demosthenes, like him "imbellis ac firmus parum," had already proved that the qualities which insure renown in letters, are not always coincident with those which are eminent on the field. Appian informs us that the territories around Venusia were among those confiscated and divided among the victorious veterans. The small paternal estate of our poet, probably shared the fate which the Mantuan shepherds are made to deplore in the eclogues of his rival. He went to Rome, as he says, like a bird whose wings were clipped, and it was the mother of invention, "paupertas audax," that first drove him to write. Some of the early satires and odes probably belong to this period. Horace continued for a time to look back with regret on the epoch in which he had been an unfortunate actor, and regarded the new government with a suspicion which found expression in an attack on some of its parasites (v. Sat. i. 2). The sixteenth epode, which is supposed to belong to the year of the Perusian war, embodies the despairing view which the remnants of the patrician party were then disposed to take of the commonwealth; it is remarkable for the emigré spirit which pervades it, so much more frequently found in the remains of Greek literature. But the seductions of a city life went along with his growing popularity, to wean the poet from his Utopian politics. Lydia and Glycera, and Pyrrha with her yellow hair, may have been among the influences that helped to tone down his republican ardour. He left by degrees his memories of Pharsalia and Philippi to sing the praises of his mistress, to celebrate the virtues of his friend, to give sober advice to Murena, to write odes to Fortune, to receive with dignified gratitude the favour of the court, and acquiesce in the new order of things. He became more and more a man of the world in which he mixed, and abandoned the visions of the Stoic for the contentment of the temperate Epicurean. About this time "scriptum quæstorium comparavit," he bought an office among the sex primi, or scribes, whose duty it was to affix their signature to the public accounts; to which he alludes in Sat. ii. 6. His verses were attracting the attention, and gradually winning for him the friendship, of the leading literary men of the city. In the year 39. Varius and Virgil presented him to Mæcenas, already famous for the exercise of that discriminating liberality which has immortalized his name. Horace has given a modest account of this interview, in the same satire in which he recalls his origin and boyhood. The great minister answered in few words his bashful speech, and after waiting for nine months, gave his right hand to the great poet. The friendship sealed on that day, and only interrupted after twenty years by death, is one of the most beautiful in the annals of literature. No misunderstanding clouded, no servility ever degraded it. The heart of Horace was won, but his pen remained free. To Mæcenas he offers the first-fruits of his muse, the overflowings of his praise; but there is mingled with every expression of respect or solicitude, a quiet familiarity which make us forget the poet and the patron in the fancy of two noble kinsmen. The famous fifth satire of the first book recalls the year 37 ., in which Mæcenas was sent to treat with Antony, and Horace accompanied the embassy. This satire—so rich in humorous incident and graphic illustration—leads us with them along the Appian way to Brundusium. If, as is probable, they proceeded together to Tarentum, we may attribute the ode to Archytas to the suggestion of this visit. Between the publication of the first and second books of the satire, which certainly preceded that of the other works, Mæcenas crowned his munificence by presenting Horace with that modest estate, which, under the name of his Sabine farm, has been associated in the memory of the world with the happiest days of the poet's life. Lifted above the pressure of common cares, he was left to enjoy the "fallentis semita vitæ" in a retreat which has become familiar to us as our neighbour's park and garden. Here, "far from the smoke and din of Rome," he was at leisure to study the beauty of the fields; to watch the wandering of the flocks, the marriage of the vines; to celebrate, as his genius moved him, the praises of a country life, whether in a letter to Fuscus in the city, or a message to his steward, or an ode inspired by the rural deities. Hence on occasion he would descend, to press through the throngs of the forum up to the palace on the Esquiline. Thither, more frequently, he would invite his friends to share a cup of his mild mountain wine. Horace is still the mirror of men and their manners, the gentle satirist—"vafer Horatius circum præcordia ludens"—the poet-preacher of the "philosophie douce" with his recurring text the golden mean; but the green trees are waving on the slope of Mount Lucretilis while he writes, and the cool stream of Ligentia murmurs, and the fountain of Bandusia sparkles through his verse. He had come into possession of the "parva rura," which he had pronounced the summit of his ambition, and he proved his sincerity by the completeness of his content. "Satis beatus unicis Sabinis," he envied neither wealth nor power, nor rival fame. But higher honours were in store for him; the favourite of the emperor's minister was himself to become one of the favourites of a prince who knew the power, and could appreciate the claims of literature. The second book of the satires may have been published in the year preceding, the epodes in that which followed the battle of Actium, and the first three books of odes some time later. The three which open the first book, appear to have been written as introductions to the whole; and the first nine, varying alike in metre and theme, are possibly placed together, as giving in brief space specimens of the variety of their author's style. From a passage in the second epistle of the first book of epistles, we know that he spent a portion of the year 27. at Præneste; the book must have been published some years after, but we may assume that as the probable date of his first intimacy with Augustus. The introduction was brought about through the intervention of Mæcenas and Pollio; we are told that the emperor failed to induce Horace to become his secretary, and that he wrote complaining of his excessive reserve:—"Know that I am angry that you never address any of your epistles to me." The opening epistle of the second book is said to have been dictated by this remonstrance; certain it is that, from whatever cause, the name and praises of Augustus are more prominent in the remaining works of the poet. In the literary triumvirate of the era Horace is the link between Virgil and Ovid; he appears to have succeeded to the sort of tacit laureatship left vacant by the death of the former. The odes in the fourth book, celebrating the victories of Drusus and Germanicus, have an official air, and we know that the "Carmen seculare" was written by order of the prince to be sung at the secular games, 17. The latter years of the poet's life were divided between a villa at Tibur, which he owed to the munificence of Augustus, and his house at the foot of the Esquiline. Mæcenas and Horace thus lived near each other; in death they were not long divided.