“H_ealth to enjoy the blessings sent_
    F_rom heaven; a mind unclouded, strong_;
  A_ cheerful heart; a wise content_;
    A_n honored age; and song_.”

II.  HORACE THROUGH THE AGES

INTRODUCTORY

Thus much we have had to say in the interpretation of Horace.  Our interpretation has centered about his qualities as a person:  his broad experience, his sensitiveness, his responsiveness, his powers of assimilation, his gift of expression, his concreteness as a representative of the world of culture, as a son of Italy, as a citizen of eternal Rome, as a member of the universal human family.

Let us now tell the story of Horace in the life of after times.  It will include an account of the esteem in which he was held while still in the flesh; of the fame he enjoyed and the influence he exercised until Rome as a great empire was no more and the Roman tongue and Roman spirit alike were decayed; of the way in which his works were preserved intact through obscure centuries of ignorance and turmoil; and of their second birth when men began to delight once more in the luxuries of the mind.  This will prepare the way for a final chapter, on the peculiar quality and manner of the Horatian influence.

1.  HORACE THE PROPHET

Horace is aware of his qualities as a poet.  In an interesting blend, of which the first and larger part is detached and judicial estimation of his work, a second part literary convention, and the third and least a smiling and inoffensive self-assertion, he prophesies his own immortality.

From infancy he has been set apart as the child of the Muses.  At birth Melpomene marked him for her own.  The doves of ancient story covered him over with the green leaves of the Apulian wood as, lost and overcome by weariness, he lay in peaceful slumber, and kept him safe from creeping and four-footed things, a babe secure in the favor of heaven.  The sacred charm that rests upon him preserved him in the rout at Philippi, rescued him from the Sabine wolf, saved him from death by the falling tree and the waters of shipwreck.  He will abide under its shadow wherever he may go,—­to his favorite haunts in Latium, to the far north where fierce Britons offer up the stranger to their gods, to the far east and the blazing sands of the Syrian desert, to rude Spain and the streams of Scythia, to the treeless, naked fields of the frozen pole, to homeless lands under the fiery car of the too-near sun.  He will rise superior to the envy of men.  The pinions that bear him aloft through the clear ether will be of no usual or flagging sort.  For him there shall be no death, no Stygian wave across which none returns: 

  F_orego the dirge; let no one raise the cry_,
    O_r make unseemly show of grief and gloom_,
  N_or think o’er me, who shall not really die_,
    T_o rear the empty honor of the tomb_.