poem of this collection, an epistle to a young friend and man of letters, Julius Florus, is also mainly devoted to literary matters, and is especially interesting for its many allusions to Horace's own literary career. Its general purport is that he has now come to a time of life when he must put aside poetry with other amusements of youth, and address himself to the rhythms and harmonies of real life.' For this reason its composition is assigned with great probability to the period immediately following the publication of the first book of the Epistles, when Horace's lyrical muse was still silent, say B.C. 19 or 18. The epistle to Augustus, on the other hand, was probably written at least as late as B.C. 14.

34. These two epistles are followed in modern editions by the longest of Horace's poems (476 hexameters) and the one that approaches nearest to the character of a formal treatise. It is largely didactic, setting forth with much detail of precept and illustration, the correct principles of poetry as an art; and as early as the first century it was known under the title of Ars Poetica (or De Arte Poetica liber). It is, nevertheless, written in the form, and to a considerable extent preserves the character and tone, of an epistle, being addressed to three friends, a father and two sons, of the Piso family, and ostensibly designed for the special benefit of the elder of the two young men, who had literary aspirations. It is, moreover, for a formal treatise, very incomplete; it deals with only one branch of poetry,— the drama, with any degree of thoroughness, touching on the rest lightly or not at all. It seems probable, therefore, that the somewhat pretentious title Ars Poetica did not originate with Horace himself, but was given to the poem later, when it was issued separately, either for educational purposes or as material for learned commentary. The date of its composition is in dispute. Some place it as early as the first book of the Epistles, but the better view

appears to be that it was written in the last years of the poet's life.

DEATH AND PERMANENT FAME.

35. Of Horace's personal history in these last years we have no record. His health, as we have seen, had long been precarious, and he had not yet completed his fiftyseventh year when he died, in the latter part of November, B.C. 8. He was buried on the Esquiline, not far from the tomb of Maecenas, who had passed away only a few months before him.

36. The favor which Horace had won from the best minds of his own time has been confirmed by the permanent verdict of posterity. His works at once took their place among the classics of Latin literature. By the beginning of the second century, as we know definitely from Juvenal, and undoubtedly long before (see Quint. I. 8. 6), they were used as schoolbooks, and thus became a part of the literary outfit of the educated Roman. They continued to be read to some extent through the middle ages, and since the revival of letters their popularity has been steadily maintained. Perhaps no ancient writer has won a warmer place in the personal regard of modern men, and not only men of books, but men of affairs; for the secret of his power is not merely, or perhaps so much, in the unrivaled mastery of language and rhythm which lends such charm to his lyric poems, still less in the force of poetical genius, in which his greatness does not pass unchallenged, but rather in the character which shines through his verses, of the keen but kindly, urbane, wise, genial observer of life.

SCHOLIA AND MANUSCRIPTS.

37. Horace's poems became early the subject of learned criticism and interpretation. The oldest commentary that has come down to us is that of Pomponius PORPHYRIO,

who is supposed to have written in the fourth century, perhaps earlier. At any rate he lived at a time when the old Roman pagan customs had not yet died out, and he had access to still older authorities which are now lost; so that his work is of great value to us. We also have a collection of scholia under the name of Helenius ACRO, a distinguished grammarian who lived perhaps a century before Porphyrio; but although Acro unquestionably wrote a commentary on Horace, the one which now bears his name is a composite production, made up at a much later date by one or more unknown writers, who quote liberally from Porphyrio.

38. If we may take the word of Jacques de Crusque (better known by his Latinized name, Cruquius), professor at Bruges in the latter part of the sixteenth century, the oldest manuscript of Horace known to exist in modern times was preserved in the monastery of St. Peter at Blankenberg (Mons Blandinius), near Ghent, and presumably perished in the fire which consumed that institution in 1566. It was one of four codices which Cruquius had borrowed from the monastery and collated for his edition of Horace, which he first published in complete form in 1578. Although, therefore, these Blandinian manuscripts are themselves lost, we have in the edition of Cruquius a considerable number of readings from them; and some of these are of a very striking character. Cruquius regarded the manuscripts as of great value; three of them he assigned to the ninth century while the other, which he called 'vetustissimus' he thought might possibly date from the seventh. We have no means of revising this estimate. Keller and Holder, to whom we are indebted for the fullest existing critical apparatus of Horace, question the accuracy and even the good faith of Cruquius, and set little value on his manuscripts. The majority of Horatian scholars, however, dissent from this view and acquit Cruquius of any worse offense than care

lessness, while the 'Blandinius Vetustissimus' is justly held to be of exceptional importance both on account of the excellence of some of its peculiar readings and because it represents a tradition in large measure independent of the great mass of Horatian manuscripts. Cruquius also published in his edition a collection of scholia from his Blandinian manuscripts, the unknown writer or writers of which are commonly quoted as 'Commentator Cruquianus.' They are of no great value, being evidently derived, for the most part, from Acro and Porphyrio.

39. The extant manuscripts of Horace, about two hundred and fifty in number, range in date from the eighth or ninth to the fifteenth century. The oldest is one now in the public library at Berne, written by a Scotch or Irish monk in the latter part of the eighth or early in the ninth century. We have nearly twenty in all which appear to have been written before the end of the tenth century. All of the manuscripts (except one at Gotha, which appears to be derived from the Blandinian recension) come from a common archetype, which Keller thinks may have been written as early as the first or second century. No satisfactory classification has yet been discovered, which shall enable us to decide on disputed readings by the weight of manuscript testimony; nor is it probable that the relations of the manuscripts to one another can ever be sufficiently made out to establish such a classification. Owing to the practice in which copyists and revisers often indulged, of comparing their codex with one or more others, and borrowing readings from these at their discretion, the lines of tradition have become so confused that it is probably no longer possible to separate them. This appears in Keller's attempted classification, in which an important manuscript will be found now in one class, now in another. Keller sets up three classes, and in general accepts the united testimony of two against the remaining

one. His Classes II. and III. may be said to be fairly made out, though their value is much impaired by the vacillation of individual manuscripts. The case for his Class I. is by no means so clear. The serious problems of Horatian textual criticism involve, as a rule, the choice between two (seldom three) variants, each resting on good, but not conclusive, manuscript support; and the decision cannot be reached by any balancing of authorities, but calls for the exercise of sound judgment, trained by careful study of the poet's mode of thought and habit of expression.

II.

LANGUAGE AND STYLE.

40. Saturated as Horace was with Greek literature, it was inevitable that his language and style should bear the impress of a strong Greek influence. But to this influence he by no means surrendered himself unreservedly. His sturdy Roman character stamped itself upon his writings as upon his life, and he was no more spoiled as a literary artist by Greek culture than he was as a man by aristocratic society. He was strong enough to absorb the spirit of Greek art, and make it his own. The task he set himself was not to imitate the Greek poets, but to achieve with his own language what they had achieved with theirs. He understood well the genius of his native tongue, its capacities and its limitations; and his good sense and good taste saved him from attempting to do with it some of the things which the older poets had tried, such as the formation of unwieldy compounds, — just as he refrained from their sonorous rhetoric and extravagant use of assonance and alliteration, and from the studied prettiness of Catullus and his school. While his syntax often has a strong Greek