he day,
telling, in culpable iambics, of fair faces, facile amours, easy
epicureanism, rose-crowned locks, yet telling of them--and of other
matters less admissible--on a lyre with wonderful chords. At the
conclusion of the third book of the _Odes_, he declared that he had
completed a monument which the succession of centuries without number
could not destroy. "I shall not die," he added. He was right. Because of
that flame of fair faces, lovers turn to him still. Because of his
iambics, he has a niche in the hearts of the polite. Versatile in love and
in verse, his inconstancy and his art are nowhere better displayed than in
the incomparable _Donec gratus eram tibi_, which Ponsard rewrote:

HORACE.

Tant que tu m'as aime, que nul autre plus digne
N'entourait de ses bras ton col blanc comme un cygne,
J'ai vecu plus heureux que Xerxes le grand roi.

LYDIE.

Tant que tu n'as aime personne plus que moi,
Quand Chloe n'etait pas preferee a Lydie,
J'ai vecu plus illustre et plus fiere qu'Ilie.

HORACE.

J'appartiens maintenant a la blonde Chloe,
Qui plait par sa voix douce et son luth enjoue.
Je suis pret a mourir pour prolonger sa vie.

LYDIE.

Calais maintenant tient mon ame asservie,
Nous brulons tous les deux de mutuels amours,
Et je mourrais deux fois pour prolonger ses jours.

HORACE.

Mais quoi! Si j'ai regret de ma premiere chaine?
Si Venus de retour sous son joug me ramene?
Si je refuse a l'autre, et te rends mon amour?

LYDIE.

Encor que Calais soit beau comme le jour,
Et toi plus inconstant que la feuille inconstante,
Avec toi je vivrais et je mourrais contente.

Horace was the poet of ease, Catullus of love, Propertius of passion,
Tibullus of sentiment. Ovid was the poet of pleasure. A man of means, of
fashion, of the world, what to-day would be called a gentleman, he might
have been laureate of the Empire. Corinna interfered. Corinna was his
figurative muse. Whether she were one or many is uncertain, but nominally
at least it was for her that he wrote the suite of feverish fancies
entitled the "Art of Love" and which were better entitled the "Art of not
Loving at all." Subsequently, he planned a great Homeric epic. But, if
Corinna inspired masterpieces, she gave him no time to complete them. She
wanted her poet to herself. She refused to share him even with the gods.
It is supposed that Corinna was Jul