of the peace and external prosperity established throughout Italy under
the new government. Together with these official pieces he included some
others: an early sketch for the _Carmen Seculare,_ a curious fragment of
literary criticism in the form of an ode addressed to one of the young
aristocrats who followed the fashion of the Augustan age in studying and
writing poetry, and eight pieces of the same kind as his earlier odes,
written at various times within the ten years which had now passed since
the publication of the first three books. An introductory poem, of
graceful but half-ironical lamentation over the passing of youth, seems
placed at the head of the little collection in studious depreciation of
its importance. Had it not been for the necessity of publishing the
official odes, it is probable enough that Horace would have left these
few later lyrics ungathered. They show the same care and finish in
workmanship as the rest, but there is a certain loss of brilliance;
except one ode of mellow and refined beauty, the famous _Diffugere
nives,_ they hardly reach the old level. The creative impulse in Horace
had never been very powerful or copious; with growing years he became
less interested in the achievement of literary artifice, and turned more
completely to his other great field, the criticism of life and
literature. To the concluding years of his life belong the three
delightful essays in verse which complete the list of his works. Two of
these, which are placed together as a second book of _Epistles_, seem to
have been published at about the same time as the fourth book of the
_Odes_. The first, addressed to the Emperor, contains the most matured
and complete expression of his views on Latin poetry, and is in great
measure a vindication of the poetry of his own age against the school
which, partly from literary and partly from political motives, persisted
in giving a preference to that of the earlier Republic. In the second,
inscribed to one of his younger friends belonging to the circle of
Tiberius, he reviews his own life as one who was now done with literature