PASTORAL IV. OR, Pollio. The poet celebrates the birthday of Saloninus, the son of Pollio, born in the consulship of his father, after the taking of Saloæn, a city in Dalmatia. Many of the verses are translated from one of the Sibyls, who prophesied of our Saviour's birth. Sicilian muse, begin a loftier strain ! Tho' lowly shrubs, and trees that shade the plain, To make the vocal woods deserve a consul's care. Shall Pollio's consulship and triumph grace: race. The father banish'd virtue shall restore; And crimes shall threat the guilty world no more. The son shall lead the life of gods, and be The goats with strutting dogs shall homeward speed, His cradle shall with rising flow'rs be crown'd: Unlabor'd harvests shall the fields adorn, And cluster'd grapes shall blush on every thorn; Another Argo land the chiefs upon th' Iberian shore; And great Achilles urge the Trojan fate. For every soil shall every product bear. The lab'ring hind his oxen shall disjoin: No plough shall hurt the glebe, no pruning-hook the vine; Nor wool shall in dissembled color shine O, of celestial seed! O, foster-son of Jove! The nodding frame of heav'n, and earth, and main ! Not Thracian Orpheus should transcend my lays, Begin, auspicious boy! to cast about Thy infant eyes, and with a smile thy mother single out. Thy mother well deserves that short delight. The nauseous qualms of ten long months and travail to requite. Then smile! the frowning infant's doom is read: The writings of Horace, although not read as much by scholars in this country as those of Virgil, are marked with as much genius and a deeper knowledge of the affairs of the world. He was educated in part at Athens, and imbibed all the sweets of that attic hive. He spent his days in literary ease, and associated with men in the first rank in Rome, from Augustus to the orators and poets around him. "In the person of Horace there was nothing characteristic of the Roman. He was below the middle size, and extremely corpulent. Augustus compares him, in a letter, to the book which he sent him-a little thick volume. He was grey-haired at a very early age, and luxurious living by no means agreed with his constitution; yet he constantly associated with the greatest men in Rome, and frequented the table of his illustrious patrons as if he were in his own house. The emperor, whilst sitting at his meals with Virgil at his right hand and Horace at his left, often ridiculed the short breath of the former, and the watery eyes of the latter, by observing that 'he sat between tears and sighs.' In early life Horace seems to have been a disciple of Epicurus, and a professor of the doctrine of chance in the formation of things; but in Ode xxxiv. book i. we find him abjuring this system of philosophy, and embracing that of stoicism; mentioning as one great, though apparently unreasonable motive for recantation, that it thundered and lightened in a pure sky, which was a phænomenon not to be accounted for on natural principles, and, consequently, an irresistible argument in support of an over-ruling Providence. "Horace has been, of all others, the poet for quotation, and the companion of the classical scholar. His Odes are indisputably the best models of that kind of composition in the Latin language; for when many others were extant, Quintilian pronounced him almost the only one of the lyric poets worthy of being read.' It has been well observed of him, that he has given to a rough language the tender and delicate modulation of the eastern song. His odes are pathetic, heroic, and amatory. The seventeenth of the second book, written during the last illness of Mæcenas, is of the first kind; it possesses all that variety of sentiment and felicity of expression in which he is so eminently superior to his great Theban competitor. Of the heroic, one of the most celebrated is that to Fortune, (Ode xxxv. book i.) wherein he invokes her with the most insinuating grace, and recommends Augustus and the Romans to her care. The amatory odes of this inestimable poet evince the polished and delicate taste of which he was so eminently possessed; they contain the refinement and softness of Sappho, combined with the spirit and elegance of Anacreon. In his ode to Pyrrha, there is a mixture of sweetness and reproach, of praise and satire, uniformly pleasing in all languages; and which Scaliger calls the purest nectar. Horace can equally inflame the mind by his enthusiasm, and calm it by his philosophy. Where shall we see in an uninspired writer, better consolation for poverty, or stronger arguments for contentment, than are contained in his admirable ode to Dellius? And his hymn to the praise of the gods and of illustrious men, may claim the palm, when put in competition with the finest compositions of his Grecian predecessors. "The satires and epistles of Horace are full of morality and good sense. In the first book of the satires it is his obvious endeavour to eradicate vice; and in the second, to dispel those prejudices which infest the human mind. The epistles are an appendix to the satires; |