to their issue) came into my hands, and I was at the pains to do what, as I have said elsewhere, so few seem to have done-follow up the lines of investigation that you had laid down. And here comes in the reflection I wish with all modesty to make. It is possible that for the work I have undertaken my diversion from exclusive classical study, which from one side undoubtedly put me at a disadvantage, from another, and perhaps a rarer one, afforded me some assistance. It is possible that if I have lost some refinements I may have gained some breadth and it is also possible that my judgment on points of evidence has been strengthened by exercise in another field, so as to bring me into the present arena as one whose views, even if wrong, are at least worthy of notice. Whether it be so or not, the reflection has sometimes been consolatory when I have found myself-more especially on historical questions connected with Horace-in disagreement with scholars whose abilities I recognise, and whose services to classical literature I prize. THE INTERPRETATION OF THE ODES: 3. So much for my claim to a hearing: let us pass to topics of more interest and closer relevance. The thesis of yours, subsequently admitted by the late Professor Sellar, that the Three Books are not a casual collection of odes, must-for it is trueultimately come to be the basic principle for the interpretation of this portion of Horace's lyrics. To it will be added your further development that what the fall of Antonius is to the Hymn to the Queen of Antium (I. 35), in the preliminary and historic first book, the fall of Murena is to the entire work. Among scholars the "vis insita " may at present be against it, but in this case surely, if slowly, doctrina vim insitam summovebit, and the glory of Horace's sun will reveal itself exempt from the spots now thought to disfigure him which are merely the effects of flaws in the critical lenses through which he is scrutinised. This is a strong assertion made in a tone very different from the usual one of scholarship. Nevertheless I am in no danger of forgetting the words of my master, Charles Badham, on verbal criticism, and I admit that interpretation also is "a cold, severe, watchful calculation of probabilities which shuns all outbreaks of fancy as interruptions of its work." But for several years I faithfully submitted to that restraint, and, when the process leads to a result, to refuse to accept the emerging truth is a sign of weakness not of strength. 4. And further, the occasion is extraordinary. Since the issue of Wolf's Prolegomena in 1795 no classical question of greater magnitude has been raised. It proposes a radical displacement of view with regard to the most familiar work in ancient literature. Horace's Odes not a medley of elegant lyrics? Not the erotic effusions of an urbane sybarite, about whose morality the less said the better, mingled with patriotic outbursts, commonplace didacticisms, and mere studies in translation from some Greek dithyrambist or gnomic poet? Not composed for recitation in amorous and halfdrunken tones, amid scenes, if not exactly of "riot and ill-managed merriment,” at least of conviviality, and in the presence of laughing (and highly improper) Lydes and Pyrrhas, as Sainte-Beuve asserts? Horace's Odes capable of being transformed from an attractive but puzzling blend of sense and silliness, sublimity and bathos, lewdness and piety, etc., to a work charged with significance, which we can admire and revere as a whole? What strange heresy is this? No heresy at all. The Odes are connected. They are serious in their aim, and they follow the line of a true and tragic story as surely as In Memoriam. We can see throughout them enough points of connection to prove this, though the whole be not revealed. Murena's career is there traced from early days to the moment of his execution ;-but I have said enough of that in my former book and need not repeat myself. そ 5. To illustrate another point in interpretation, let us look at the ode O saepe mecum (II. 7). We can assign a reason for its inclusion in Horace's "Monumentum,"and discern how usefully it serves his purpose. It purports to be written for a feast, and, judging solely by its place, for one held shortly before Octavian's assumption of the title Augustus (II 9). It was published to the world several years afterwards. Now compare it with canto CIV. of In Memoriam. That poem commemorates the second Christmas after the death of A. H. H. It was published several years afterwards. Do we suppose that Tennyson prepared it for after-dinner reading on that particular Christmas Eve? It is possible, but who would trouble to inquire, after its incorporation in a series, with an intention easily intelligible, and with the manifest relation of a part to the whole, has deprived the answer of any interpretative relevance or value? So with the fall of Cleopatra (I. 37): the Epodes were presumably published within a year or two of her defeat or death: they have poems thereon much more likely to be contemporary. In his scheme for the Three Books, which were clearly issued long after the Epodes, Horace found that at this point he had to touch ground trodden before, and he does so in a new poem which covers a year in time. We shall have occasion subsequently to notice other poems similarly related. THE ORDER OF THE ODES 6. With regard to the order of the Odes, Mr Wickham is strictly right in saying that it is not chronological. However, that statement only conveys half the truth, and is by itself misleading. You pointed out that the historic odes are chronologically arranged, and contended for the true principle that odes without allusions to public events need not be so. I have taken the case a little further, and have shown why the ode on Quintilius (I. 24) is perhaps misplaced (it certainly is if he died in B.C. 24, as Eusebius and Jerome say), and how it comes that we are relieved of any concern whether their chronicle is accurate. So with the Iccius ode (I. 29): it matters not one jot when we perceive Horace's reason, |