is like good-humored despair, he sees that the path is pedagogical. In
reproachful tones, he addresses the book of _Epistles_ that is so eager
to try its fortune in the big world: But if the prophet is not blinded
by disgust at your foolishness, you will be prized at Rome until the
charm of youth has left you. Then, soiled and worn by much handling of
the common crowd, you will either silently give food to vandal worms, or
seek exile in Utica, or be tied up and sent to Ilerda. The monitor you
did not heed will laugh, like the man who sent his balky ass headlong
over the cliff; for who would trouble to save anyone against his will?
This lot, too, you may expect: for a stammering old age to come upon you
teaching children to read in the out-of-the-way parts of town.



2. HORACE AND ANCIENT ROME

That Horace refers to being pointed out by the passer-by as the minstrel
of the Roman lyre, or, in other words, as the laureate, that his satire
provokes sufficient criticism to draw from him a defense and a
justification of himself against the charge of cynicism, and that he
finally records a greater freedom from the tooth of envy, are all
indications of the prominence to which he rose. That Virgil and Varius,
poets of recognized worth, and their friend Plotius Tucca, third of the
whitest souls of earth, introduced him to the attention of Maecenas, and
that the discriminating lover of excellence became his patron and made
him known to Augustus, are evidences of the appeal of which he was
capable both as poet and man. In the many names of worthy and
distinguished men of letters and affairs to whom he addresses the
individual poems, and with whom he must therefore have been on terms of
mutual respect, is seen a further proof. Even Virgil contains passages