Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/354

342 merely expressing the fancy, the penchant, the seriousness, or the levity of the moment. He has his serious side; "deep moralist" is one of the titles a modern poet has emphatically bestowed upon him; and Mr. Landor, we remember, appears to suspect him of being rather malignant and morose at heart than gay and riant, observing that his lighter touches were less agreeable to his own nature than to the nature of Augustus and Mecænas, both of them fond of trifling. Dean Milman, in comparing the poetry of Horace with the later Grecian comedy, recognises in the former a fund of "serious thought, which is always at the bottom of the playful expression," and which is more consonant to the sterner practical genius of the Roman people; a people who, in their idlest moods, seemed to "condescend" to amusement not to consider it, like the Greeks, one of the common necessities, the ordinary occupations of life. In Horace, "the masculine and practical common sense, the natural but not undignified urbanity, the stronger if not sounder moral tone, the greater solidity, in short, of the whole style of thought and observation, compensate for the more lively imagination, the greater quickness and fluency, and more easy elegance of the Greek."

If he imitated the Greek, it was with originality. He owes it little but in the article of metre. Such grace and wit, such elegance and finish as his, come not at second-hand; no loan from abroad is what Margaret Fuller hailed in him as that "perfume and raciness, which makes life a banquet." He was the prototype, according to Archdeacon Hare, and hence has ever been the favourite of, wits and fine gentlemen—of those who count it a point of good breeding to seem pleased with everything,