clude from the advice which
he there recommends:

------------Vos exemplaria Graeca
Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.

Make the Greek authors your supreme delight;
Read them by day, and study them by night.--Francis.

In the writings of Horace there appears a fund of good sense, enlivened
with pleasantry, and refined by philosophical reflection. He had
cultivated his judgment with great application, and his taste was guided
by intuitive perception of moral beauty, aptitude, and propriety. The
few instances of indelicacy which occur in his compositions, we may
ascribe rather to the manners of the times, than to any blameable
propensity in the author. Horace died in the fifty-seventh year of his
age, surviving his beloved Mecaenas only three weeks; a circumstance
which, added to the declaration in an ode [276] to that personage,
supposed to have been written in Mecaenas's last illness, has given rise
to a conjecture, that Horace ended his days by a violent death, to
accompany his friend. But it is more natural to conclude that he died of
excessive grief, as, had he literally adhered to the affirmation
contained in the ode, he would have followed his patron more closely.
This seems to be confirmed by a fact immediately preceding his death; for
though he declared Augustus heir to his whole estate, he was not able, on
account of weakness, to put his signature to the will; a failure which it
is probable that he would have taken care to obviate, had his death been
premeditated. He was interred, at his own desire, near the tomb of
Mecaenas.----

OVID was born of an equestrian family, at Sulmo, a town of the Peligni,
on the 21st of March, in the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa. His father
intended him for the bar; and after passing him through the usual course
of instruction at Rome, he was sent to Athens, the emporium of learning,
to complete his education. On his return to Rome, in obedience to the
desire of his father, he entered upon the offices of public life in the
forum, and declaimed with great applause. But this was the effect of
paternal authority, not of choice: for, from his earliest years, he
discovered an extreme attachment to poetry; and no sooner was his father
dead, than, renouncing the bar, he devoted himself entirely to the
cultivation of that fascinating art, his propensity to which was
invincible. His productions, all written either in heroic or pentameter
verse, are numero