The gracious touch and quiet humor with which Horace treats even the
most serious themes are often misleading. This effect is the more
possible by reason of the presence among his works of passages, not many
and for the most part youthful, in which he is guilty of too great
freedom.

Horace is really a serious person. He is even something of a preacher, a
praiser of the time when he was a boy, a censor and corrector of his
youngers. So far as popular definitions of Stoic and Epicurean are
concerned, he is much more the former than the latter.

For Horace's counsel is always for moderation, and sometimes for
austerity. He is not a wine-bibber, and he is not a total abstainer. To
be the latter on principle would never have occurred to him. The vine
was the gift of God. Prefer nothing to it for planting in the mellow
soil of Tibur, Varus; it is one of the compensations of life:

"I_ts magic power of wit can spread_
T_he halo round a dullard's head_,
C_an make the sage forget his care_,
H_is bosom's inmost thoughts unbare_,
A_nd drown his solemn-faced pretense_
B_eneath its blithesome influence_.
B_right hope it brings and vigor back_
T_o minds outworn upon the rack_,
A_nd puts such courage in the brain_
A_s makes the poor be men again_,
W_hom neither tyrants' wrath affrights_,
N_or all their bristling satellites_."