ial Horatian effect on literary
culture, however slight the external marks.

3. HORACE IN THE LIVING OF MEN

Let us take leave of these illustrations of the dynamic power of Horace
in letters, and consider in conclusion his power as shown directly in
the living of men.

First of all, we may include in the dynamic working of the poet his
stirring of the heart by pure delight. If this is not the highest and
the ultimate effect of poetry, it is after all the first and the
essential effect. Without the giving of pleasure, no art becomes really
the possession of men and the instrument of good. As a matter of fact,
many of the most frequently and best translated _Odes_ are devoid both
of moral intent, and, in the ordinary sense, of moral effect. _To
Pyrrha_, _Soracte Covered with Snow_, _Carpe Diem_, _To Glycera_,
_Integer Vitae_, _To Chloe_, _Horace and Lydia_, _The Bandusian Spring_,
_Faunus_, _To an Old Wine-Jar_, _The End of Love_, and _Beatus Ille_ are
merely _jeux-d'esprit_ of the sort that for the moment lighten and clear
the spirit. The same may be said of _The Bore_ and the _Journey to
Brundisium_ among the _Satires_, and of many of the _Epistles_.

But these trifles light as air are nevertheless of the sort for which
mankind is eternally grateful, because men are convinced, without
process of reason, that by them the fibre of life is rested and refined
and strengthened. We may call this familiar effect by the less familiar
name of re-creative. What lover of Horace has not felt his inmost being
cleansed and refreshed by the simple and exquisite art of _The Bandusian
Spring_, whose cameo of sixty-eight Latin words in four stanzas is an
unapproachable model of vividness, elegance, purity, and restraint:

O_ crystal-bright Bandusian Spring_,
W_orthy thou of the mellow wine_
A_nd flowers I give to thy pure depths_:
A_ kid the morrow shall be thine_.

T_he day of lustful strife draws on_,
T_he starting horn begins to gleam_;
I_n vain! His red blood soon shall tinge_
T_he waters of thy clear, cold stream_.

T_he dog-star's fiercely blazing hour_
N_e'er with its heat doth change thy pool_;
T_o wandering flock and ploughworn steer_
T_hou givest waters fresh and cool_.

T_hee, too, 'mong storied founts I'll place_,
S_inging the oak that slants the steep_,
A_bove the hollowed home of rock_
F_rom which thy prattling streamlets leap_.

Or who does not live more abu