Those of the eighteenth show a gain in accuracy and a loss in spirit.


_v_. IN ENGLAND

The appeal of Horace in England and English-speaking countries has been
as fruitful as elsewhere in scholarship, with the possible exception of
Germany. In its effect upon the actual fibre of literature and life, it
has been more fruitful.

A review of Horatian study in England would include the names of Talbot
and Baxter, but, above all, of the incomparably brilliant Richard
Bentley, despite his excesses, themselves due to his very genius, the
most famous and most stimulating critic and commentator of Horace the
world has seen. His edition, appearing in 1711, provoked in 1717 the
anti-Bentleian rejoinder of Richard Johnson, and in 1721 the more
ambitious but equally unsuccessful attempt to discredit him by the
Scotch Alexander Cunningham. The primacy in the study of Horace which
Bentley conferred upon England had been enjoyed previously by the Low
Countries and France, to which it had passed from Italy in the second
half of the sixteenth century. The immediate sign of this transfer of
the center to northern lands was the publication in 1561 at Lyons of the
edition containing the text revision and critical notes of Lambinus and
the commentary of the famous Cruquius of Bruges. The celebrated Scaliger
was unfavorably disposed to Horace, who found a defender in Heinsius,
another scholar of the Netherlands. D'Alembert, who became a sort of
_Ars Poetica_ to translators, published his _Observations_ at Amsterdam
in 1763.

An account of the English translations of the poet would include many