Identifier: greatfamous07hornuoft (find matches)
Title: Great men and famous women : a series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in history Volume 7
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Horne, Charles F. (Charles Francis), 1870-1942
Subjects: Biography
Publisher: New York : Selmar Hess
Contributing Library: Kelly - University of Toronto

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As a critic he shows the same general good sense, but his
criticisms do not profess to be original or to go much beneath the surface. In
Greek literature he follows Alexandrian taste ; in Latin he represents the ten-
dency of his age to undervalue the earlier efforts of the native genius and lay
great stress on the technical finish of his own day.
From his own lifetime till now Horace has had a popularity unexampled in
literature. A hundred generations who have learned him as school-boys have re-
membered and returned to him in mature age as to a personal friend. He is
one of those rare examples, like Julius Caesar in politics, of genius which ripens
late and leaves the more enduring traces. Up to the age of thirty-five his work
is still crude and tentative ; afterward it is characterized by a jewel finish, an ex-
quisite sense of language which weighs every word accurately and makes every
word inevitable and perfect. He was not a profound thinker; his philosophy
is rather that of the market-place than of the schools, he does not move among
high ideals or subtle emotions. The romantic note which makes Virgil so magi-
cal and prophetic a figure at that turning-point of the worlds history has no
place in Horace ; to gain a universal audience he offers nothing more and noth-
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VIRGIL, HORACE AND VARIUS AT THE HOUSE OF MÆCENAS.

DANTE 19

ing less than what is universal to mankind. Of the common range of thought
and feeling he is perfect and absolute master ; and in the graver passages of the
epistles, as in the sad and noble cadence of his most famous odes, the melan-
cholv temper which underlay his quick and bright humor touches the deepest
springs of human nature. Of his style the most perfect criticism was given in
the next generation by a single phrase, Horatii curiosa felicitas; of no poet
can it be more truly said, in the phrase of the Greek dramatist Agathon, that
skill has an affection for luck and luck for skill. His poetry supplies more
phrases which have become proverbial than the rest of Latin literature put to-
gether. To suggest a parallel in English literature we must unite in thought the
excellences of Pope and Gray with the easy wit and cultured grace of Addison.
Horace's historical position in Latin literature is this: on the one hand,
carried on and perfected the native Roman growth, satire, from the ruder essays
of Lucilius, so as to make Roman life from day to day, in city and country, live
anew under his pen ; on the other hand, he naturalized the metres and manner of
the great Greek lyric poets, from Alcaeus and Sappho downward.

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