SOURCE: "Horace and the Poetry of Austin Dodson," in Amercian Journal of Philology, Vol. L, No. 197, 1929, pp. 1-14.

In the following essay, Lipscomb examines the influence of the Latin poetry of Horace on Dobson's work.

Long may you live such songs to make,
 And I to listen while you wake,
 With art too long disused, each tone
 Of the Lesboum barbiton,
 At mastery, through long finger-ache,
 At length arrived.

—Lowell, On Receiving a Copy of Mr. Austin

Dobson's "Old World Idylls."

Several years ago in the Quarterly Review¹ the late Edmund Gosse told of the meeting of Tennyson and Austin Dobson, on which occasion the Laureate advised the young aspirant to study diligently the poetry of Horace if he wished to become a classic. This day marked for Dobson the beginning of a deeper understanding of the technique and spirit of the Roman poet whose influence had already...