The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1895-07-30
HORACE AS A MODERN.
A Revival OF Interest in the Great
oma Lyric Poet.

William Everett has a scholarly paper
in the Atlantic entitled 1.-THE Ship OF
State and the Stroke of Fate" 1t is in
teresting to note what the writer, him.
self an ardent student of Horace, says
of the poet. His estimate is as follows:
There has been in the last year a great
revival of interest in Horace-if n
can speak of reviving has never
died or even slept. When Augustus Gaze
sar, in the year II B. c., called the
whole people to BEHOLD the more than
centennial show, which none had ever
seen before, nor ever should see again,
the solemn record which. he entrusted to
marble, and which has only been I'M
earthed in the last few years, set forth
that ''Quintus 9Horatius tFlaccus COM
posed the song;'' the hymn, that is, to
Apollo and Diana, which we call Car
men Saeculare. Horace had then risen,
in spite of all detraction, to the first
place among the Roman poets; Virgil.
whose claims he would have been the
last to dispute, had been cut off two
years before. From that tins to this,
Horace has BEEN awarded the darling
object of his ambition, a rank among the
lyric bards.
In the last year he has had the honor
of being translated by the first orator
and statesman in our line; nor has this
version deferred a younger Oxonian
brother, Mr.. Deasley, from entering on
the same field, while Mr.. Graves has
transferred the themes of sixteen odes
into as many delicious satires on modern
politics, offering themselves as spoken by
the same great statesman, but of which
We may fear Mr.. Gladstone on earth
11ar ~ IN ~ f1a hsrt N no r711ah- n 20
Horace in Elysium. The Roman has, in
deed, as he prophesied, visited the Brit
ons; but they have not proved fierce to
never pictured that in a land beyond the
utmost limit of his blessed fields and rich
islands, and certainly endowed with no
whose name and the name of its site
he could not lave pronounced to save
his life, a descendant of the blue-eyed
German youth should edit him with
love and learning. esf9
There can hardly be said to live the
civilized man for whom Horace has not
he has been read and enjoyed by more
men, in more countries, than any other
writer, certainly than any other poet.
He had sixteen hundred years start
of Cervantes and Shakespeare; Homer
never began to compete with him in cir
eulati9 fo:oa Horace is JFF req BY men men who who
hood; he is indeed immortal and univer-
sal.
This wide acceptance he w to many
things combined; the charm of his verse,
the sparkle and tenseness of his lam
guage, the pungency and truth of his
sentiments, and a rich stream of feel
ing which runs deepest when most still.
Professor Sellar and Professor Tyrell
have pointed out that Horace is the most
perfect type of that urbanias which the
Romans claimed as one of their distin-
gushing qualities; and as a great and
beautiful city surely draws 10 her the
observant and thoughtful souls from ev-
cry district, and if she does not keep
them, u sends them home refined and
transmitted, so mfIorace exercises upon
thousands of men the mystic influence
of the Sternal City9insa way hat more
passionate, n~loftier and deeper poe.ASCa-
tullus, Virgil and Lucretius fail To AA