SOURCE: “Horace as a Lyrical Poet” in The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Horace and the Elegiac Poets, Clarendon Press, 1899, pp. 133-99.

In the following excerpt, Sellar examines and rates the merits of The Odes, discusses why there is such a wide range of opinion among Horace's critics, and analyzes how Horace achieves his desired tone and effects.

The Odes.

I.

It is for his Odes that Horace claims immortality, and it is to them that he chiefly owes it. Scarcely any work in any literature has been so widely and so familiarly known. Almost from the time of their author's death, they became what they have been since the revival of letters, one of the chief instruments by which literary taste and a delicate sense of language have been educated. The music of their verse, the grace, lucidity, and terseness of their diction, the truth and...