ems they contain the essence of his indefinable
magic art. They deal apparently with dull truisms and stale moralities,
avowals of simple joys and simple sorrows. They tell us that life is
brief and death is sure, that light loves and ancient wines are good,
that riches are burdensome, and enough is better than a feast, that
country life is delightful, that old age comes on us apace, that our
friends leave us sorrowing and our sorrow does not bring them back.
Trite sayings no doubt; but embellished one and all with an adorable
force and novelty at once sadly earnest and vividly exact; not too
simple for the profound and not too artful for the shallow; consecrated
by the verbal felicity which belongs only to an age of peculiar
intellectual refinement, and which flashed diamond-like from the facets
of his own highly polished mind. "He is the Breviary of the natural man,
his poetry is the Imitation not of Christ but of Epicurus."

His Odes may be roughly classified as Religious, Moral, Philosophical,
Personal, Amatory.

1. RELIGIOUS. Between the classic and the Christian hymn, as Matthew
Arnold has reminded us, there is a great gulf fixed. The Latin
conception of the gods was civic; they were superior heads of the
Republic; the Roman church was the invisible Roman state; religion was
merely exalted patriotism. So Horace's addresses to the deities for
the most part remind them of their coronation oaths, of the terms on
which they were worshipped, their share in the bargain with humanity,
a bargain to be kept on their side if they expected tribute of lambs and
piglings, of hallowed cakes and vervain wreaths. Very little of what we
call devotion seasons them. In two Odes (I, ii, xii), from a mere litany
of Olympian names he passes to a much more earnest deification of
Augustus. Another (III, xix) is a grace to Bacchus after a wine-bout.
Or Faunus is bidden to leave pursuing the nymphs (we think of Elijah's
sneer at Baal) and to attend to his duties on the Sabine farm, of
blessing the soil and protecting the lambs (III, xviii). The hymn to
Mercury recounts mythical exploits of the winged god, his infantile
thefts from Apollo, his guiding Priam through the Grecian camp, his
gift of speech to men, his shepherding souls to Hades (I, x). Venus is
invoked in a dainty prayer to visit the chapel which Glycera is building
for her (I, xxx):

O come, and with thee bring thy glowing boy,
The Graces all, with kirtles flowing free