Alcaics and Sapphics of Horatian origin. To speak of the German editors,
commentators, and critics of the nineteenth century would be almost to
review the history of Horace in modern school and university; such has
been the ardor of the German soul and the industry of the German mind.


_iv_. IN SPAIN

A glance at the use of Horace in Spain will afford not the least
edifying of modern examples. The inventories of Spanish libraries in the
Middle Age rarely contain the name of Horace, or the names of his lyric
brethren, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. Virgil, Lucan, Martial,
Seneca, and Pliny are much more frequent. It was not until the fifteenth
century that reminiscences of the style and ideas of Horace began to
appear in quantity. Imitation rather than translation was the vehicle of
Spanish enthusiasm. The fountain of Horatianism in Spain was the
imitation of _Epode II_, _Beatus Ille_, by the Marquis de Santillana,
one of Castile's two first sonneteers, in the first half of the
fifteenth century. Garcilaso also produced many imitations of the
_Odes_. The Horatian lyric seemed especially congenial to the Spanish
spirit and language. Fray Luís de León, of Salamanca, the first real
Spanish poet, and the most inspired of all the Spanish lovers of Horace,
was an example of the poet translating the poet where both were great
men. He not only brought back to life once more "that marvelous
sobriety, that rapidity of idea and conciseness of phrase, that
terseness and brilliance, that sovereign calm and serenity in the spirit
of the artist," which characterized the ancient poet, but added to the
Horatian lyre the new string of Christian mysticism, and thus wedded the
ancient and the modern. "Luís de León is our great Horatian poet," says
Menéndez y Pelayo. Lope de Vega wrote an _Ode to Liberty_, and was