Greek thought and art. The "monument more imperishable than bronze" had
now been completed; its results are marked in the _Epistles_ by a new and
admirable maturity and refinement. Good sense, good feeling, good taste,
--these qualities, latent from the first in Horace, have obtained a final
mastery over the coarser strain with which they had at first been
mingled; and in their shadow now appear glimpses of an inner nature even
more rare, from which only now and then he lifts the veil with a sort of
delicate self-depreciation, in an occasional line of sonorous rhythm, or
in some light touch by which he gives a glimpse into a more magical view
of life and nature: the earliest swallow of spring on the coast, the
mellow autumn sunshine on a Sabine coppice, the everlasting sound of a
talking brook; or, again, the unforgettable phrases, the _fallentis
semita vitae,_ or _quod petis hic est,_ or _ire tamen restat,_ that have,
to so many minds in so many ages, been key-words to the whole of life.

It is in the _Epistles_ that Horace reveals himself most intimately, and
perhaps with the most subtle charm. But the great work of his life, for
posterity as well as for his own age, was the three books of _Odes_ which
were published by him in 23 B.C., at the age of forty-two, and represent
the sustained effort of about ten years. This collection of eighty-eight
lyrics was at once taken to the heart of the world. Before a volume of
which every other line is as familiar as a proverb, which embodies in a
quintessential form that imperishable delight of literature to which the
great words of Cicero already quoted[7] give such beautiful expression,
whose phrases are on all men's lips as those of hardly any other ancient
author have been, criticism is almost silenced. In the brief and graceful
epilogue, Horace claims for himself, with no uncertainty and with no
arrogance, such eternity as earth can give. The claim was completely
just. The school-book of the European world, the _Odes_ have been no less
for nineteen centuries the companions of mature years and the delight of