My explanation of it is this.  The Odes of Pindar were the acknowledged models of lyric poetry.  Lyric poets imitated his manner as closely as they could; and nothing was more remarkable in his compositions than the extreme violence and abruptness of the transitions.  This in Pindar was quite natural and defensible.  He had to write an immense number of poems on subjects extremely barren, and extremely monotonous.  There could be little difference between one boxing-match and another.  Accordingly, he made all possible haste to escape from the immediate subject, and to bring in, by hook or by crook, some local description; some old legend; something or other, in short, which might be more susceptible of poetical embellishment, and less utterly threadbare, than the circumstances of a race or a wrestling-match.  This was not the practice of Pindar alone.  There is an old story which proves that Simonides did the same, and that sometimes the hero of the day was nettled at finding how little was said about him in the Ode for which he was to pay.  This abruptness of transition was, therefore, in the Greek lyric poets, a fault rendered inevitable by the peculiarly barren and uniform nature of the subjects which they had to treat.  But, like many other faults of great masters, it appeared to their imitators a beauty; and a beauty almost essential to the grander Ode.  Horace was perfectly at liberty to choose his own subjects, and to treat them after his own fashion.  But he confounded what was merely accidental in Pindar’s manner with what was essential; and because Pindar, when he had to celebrate a foolish lad from Aegina who had tripped up another’s heels at the Isthmus, made all possible haste to get away from so paltry a topic to the ancient heroes of the race of Aeacus, Horace took it into his head that he ought always to begin as far from the subject as possible, and then arrive at it by some strange and sudden bound.  This is my solution.  At least I can find no better.  The most obscure passage,—­at least the strangest passage,—­in all Horace may be explained by supposing that he was misled by Pindar’s example:  I mean that odd parenthesis in the “Qualem Ministrum:” 

                      quibus
 Mos unde deductus per omne—.

This passage, taken by itself, always struck me as the harshest, queerest, and most preposterous digression in the world.  But there are several things in Pindar very like it. [Orelli makes an observation, much to the same effect, in his note on this passage in his edition of 1850.]

You must excuse all this, for I labour at present under a suppression of Greek, and am likely to do so for at least three years to come.  Malkin may be some relief; but I am quite unable to guess whether he means to come to Calcutta.  I am in excellent bodily health, and I am recovering my mental health; but I have been sorely tried.  Money matters look well.  My new brother-in-law and I are brothers in more than law.  I am more comfortable than I expected to be in this country; and, as to the climate, I think it, beyond all comparison, better than that of the House of Commons.