Epistles are the most perfect of his productions, and rank with the “Georgics” of Virgil and the “Satires” of Juvenal as the most perfect form of Roman verse.  His satires are also admirable, but without the fierce vehemence and lofty indignation that characterized those of Juvenal.  It is the folly rather than the wickedness of vice which Horace describes with such playful skill and such keenness of observation.  He was the first to mould the Latin tongue to the Greek lyric measures.  Quintilian’s criticism is indorsed by all scholars,—­Lyricorum Horatius fere solus legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax.  No poetry was ever more severely elaborated than that of Horace, and the melody of the language imparts to it a peculiar fascination.  If inferior to Pindar in passion and loftiness, it glows with a more genial humanity and with purer wit.  It cannot be enjoyed fully except by those versed in the experiences of life, who perceive in it a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the masters of human thought.

It is the fashion to depreciate the original merits of this poet, as well as those of Virgil, Plautus, and Terence, because they derived so much assistance from the Greeks.  But the Greeks also borrowed from one another.  Pure originality is impossible.  It is the mission of art to add to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the whole realm.  Even Shakspeare, the most original of modern poets, was vastly indebted to those who went before him, and he has not escaped the hypercriticism of minute observers.

In this mention of lyrical poetry I have not spoken of Catullus, unrivalled in tender lyric, the greatest poet before the Augustan era.  He was born 87 B.C., and enjoyed the friendship of the most celebrated characters.  One hundred and sixteen of his poems have come down to us, most of which are short, and many of them defiled by great coarseness and sensuality.  Critics say, however, that whatever he touched he adorned; that his vigorous simplicity, pungent wit, startling invective, and felicity of expression make him one of the great poets of the Latin language.

In didactic poetry Lucretius was pre-eminent, and is regarded by Schlegel as the first of Roman poets in native genius.  He was born 95 B.C., and died at the age of forty-two by his own hand.  His principal poem “De Rerum Natura” is a delineation of the Epicurean philosophy, and treats of all the great subjects of thought with which his age was conversant.  Somewhat resembling Pope’s “Essay on Man” in style and subject, it is immeasurably superior in poetical genius.  It is a lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, upon the great phenomena of the outward world.  As a painter and worshipper of Nature, Lucretius was superior to all the poets of antiquity.  His skill in presenting abstruse speculations is marvellous, and his outbursts of poetic genius are matchless in power and beauty.