quiet amusement with which he surveys the human family of which he is an
inseparable yet detachable part. It is the universal aspect of Horace
which is the object of his contemplation,--Horace playing a part
together with the rest of mankind in the infinitely diverting _comédie
humaine_. He uses himself, so to speak, for illustrative purposes,--to
point the moral of the genuine; to demonstrate the indispensability of
hard work as well as genius; to afford concrete proof of the possibility
of happiness without wealth. He is almost as objective to himself as the
landscape of the Sabine farm. Horace the spectator sees Horace the man
against the background of human life just as he sees snow-mantled
Soracte, or the cold Digentia, or the restless Adriatic, or leafy
Tarentum, or snowy Algidus, or green Venafrum. The clear-cut elegance of
his miniatures of Italian scenery is not due to their individual
interest, but to their connection with the universal life of man.
Description for its own sake is hardly to be found in Horace. In the
same way, the vivid glimpses he affords of his own life, person, and
character almost never prompt the thought of egotism. The most personal
of poets, his expression of self nowhere becomes selfish expression.

But there are spectators who are mere spectators. Horace is more; he is
a critic and an interpreter. He looks forth upon life with a keen vision
for comparative values, and gives sane and distinct expression to what
he sees.

Horace must not be thought of, however, as a censorious or carping
critic. His attitude is judicial, and the verdict is seldom other than
lenient and kindly. He is not a wasp of Twickenham, not a Juvenal
furiously laying about him with a heavy lash, not a Lucilius with the
axes of Scipionic patrons to grind, having at the leaders of the people
and the people themselves. He is in as little degree an Ennius,