body of whose conceptions respecting gods, heroes, armies, battles, travel, and the spiritual world, we are perhaps as competent to picture before the mind's eye as was the original auditory of the minstrel sage) to the quaint sententiousness of Tacitus, it is generally the privilege of the modern scholar to commune with the worthies of olden time, with a freedom which his own will almost alone restricts,—to test the philosopher's theory, to scan the historian's facts, to applaud the statesman's eloquence, to ponder the moralist's precept, and to attune the poet's song.

Among the authors whose feelings and sentiments have found a constant and cordial response in the approval of each succeeding age, the Poet-philosopher of Venusia holds a confessedly pre-eminent rank. Exuberant in graceful poetic imagery and terse philosophic sentiment, which are adapted with a rare knowledge of human nature to illustrate every possible grade, condition, and circumstance of ordinary life, his Works may in this respect fairly assert rivalry with those of our own immortal bard of Avon: and a Latin linguist unfamiliar with Horace stands in the same predicament as would an English literate unversed in Shakespeare.

The universal applicability, however, which renders quotation from an ancient author familiar as household words, is not unattended by countervailing disadvantages. Mistaken notions, whether of direct or collateral import, when once received, often become inveterate by mere transmissive adoption: an inter

pretation or statement which was originally a casual blunder or idle fiction may be eventually confirmed by usage as an accredited 'acceptation': and thus by sole force of repetition the circulation of error is assimilated to the currency of truth. The sanction which general consent sometimes bestows, merely because it is general consent, upon the most palpable distortions of a writer's meaning, may be instanced by a simple case, where in a very well-known quasiproverb not only are the plain words of the author completely misstated, but sense (a usual attribute of popular sayings) is thereby neutralized. Who has not heard the following couplet quoted?

Convince a man against his will,

He's of the same opinion still.

and

But the author of Hudibras was a writer too sagacious to indite such a contradiction in terms accordingly in the original the passage reads:

He that complies against his will

Is of his own opinion still.

A peculiar liability to mistake in our estimate of ancient popular authors may arise from the circumstance that, when we discover a considerable coincidence between their modes of thought and those which we ourselves ordinarily observe, we are disposed to think morally of them as we do of one another; and to forget the vast disparity of the external circumstances under which they wrote from those in

which we read. Accordingly not only is too little of real admiration likely to accrue to sterling virtues exercised under disadvantages which we can but faintly imagine-not only is too little of extenuation admitted for apparent deficiencies or overt faults of character, but the influences which the before-mentioned disparity may bring to bear upon the interpretation itself are apt to be forgotten.

Again, when an author, such as Horace, accommodates himself to conventional trifles (which, after all, constitute the principal sum of human life in general), we are inclined to attribute to his Works less of scientific design-less of systematic deduction-less of harmony in the parts-than may be consistent with the depth of root whence the whole production is confessed to spring. And thus, to a certain extent, with authors, as with acquaintances, 'too much familiarity breeds contempt.'

As far as such circumstances may have conduced to the origin and perpetuation of any misconception. of passages in the life and writings of the bard of Venusia, so far their suggestion here is relevant, as an apology for the purport of the present work. But as new comment in this province of classical literature is not generally felt to be a desideratum—as every school-boy is supposed to 'know his Horace,' and every lecturer' to have only not' contributed to edify the conversaziones of Mæcenas, because of an accidental distance of time and place-the author is much more likely to be regarded beforehand as an

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innovator than as a restorer: no share of that antecedent favour which encourages an attempt made to supply an admitted deficiency can be his: the justification of his undertaking must rest upon its performance; and even here an unusual difficulty is encountered at every step, in the probability that the reader may feel each new proposition as an impeachment of his own individual (previous) judgment.

The most general form in which the whole result contemplated could be stated is expressible in one word-simplification: the substitution of what the author conceives to be the plain, the natural, and the sound, for the conflicting, the constrained, and the untenable. But it by no means follows that the process necessary for the attainment of this end should itself be invariably simple; or that it ought in any instance to be such as would be devised without industry, and estimated without care. But easy and difficult are often only other names for known and unknown; and the question of the present moment becomes the axiom of the next. It is certainly not insinuated here that any argument employed in the following pages is likely to prove difficult to any one -the author's hope and endeavour lie in the opposite direction: and in several cases a few passing remarks are considered adequate to compass the required purpose. It is merely urged that what is relied upon as the main utility of the book, and as constituting its chief claim to attention, namely-simplification of result — should not in any particular instance be

prejudiced because the author has not been clever enough to invent a demonstration as brief as his proposition, or because he that reads may not always run. Upon the line of proof generally adopted it should be observed by the junior reader that to argue from deference to a particular authority on one question, and against the validity of the same authority on another, however nearly similar, infers no inconsistency. In some practical affairs, such as the rules which govern the proceedings of courts of justice, it is convenient to restrict controversial tendencies by forbidding to go behind certain precedents: but in matters of opinion, authority is supposed to be quoted, neither to favour despatch, nor yet to serve the purposes of advocacy, but because the party citing such believes it, in the given instance, to be right; and it is just as competent for him to shew cause, the next moment, against the reception of the same authority, as it is to originate any inquiry, improvement, or discovery whatsoever. In the case, however, of verbal investigations proper to a dead language, a more than ordinary weight must certainly be due to long-established authority, as the utmost discoverable result here can never ascend higher than the ascertainment of past facts, and these are not to be arrived at by any mere process of reasoning. Still, considerable scope for inference exists in the comparison of testimonies, the adjustment of contradictions, and the assignment of their proper rank to authorities. But as new views of ancient compositions remarkable