The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-03-08
PROF. ]. B. CARLYLE SPEAKS.
An Admirable Lecture On Horace.
the Man and the Poet"

An address that was greatly enjoyed
was delivered last night by Prof. J. B.
Carlyle, of Wake Forest College, before
the students of the Baptist Female Uni
versitv.
Besides the pupils there were a number
OF visitors in attendance in the auditor
ium OF the University, and these heard a
most eloquent and valuable address from
the gifted speaker, who after being intro
duced by DIR. r. T. Vann, president OF
the University, said in part:
Every man is the product of three fac
tors-heredity, environment and educa-
ton. Of these heredity gives him GER
tain innate force in larger or less meas
ure; environment supplies freedom for
the exercise of this force, while educa-
ton imparts efficiency to this force thus
exercised in the field of achievement.
Each of these factors made a large contrl-
button to the life of the Man Horace.
From father and mother he inherited Won
irous blending of sense and sentiment, OF
fact and fancy, of simplicity and sublimity
which made him at once the most sensible
of men and sentimental of poets. In his
Born near the border of Apulia, with its
ragged mountain scenery and sweeping
torrents, his boyhood was spent amid
simple. serious minded folk. who believed
with all the heart in noblest traditions of
the republic then waning to its death and
practiced the sturdy virtues of the good
olden time. The crime, confusion and cor
ruption which held high carnival at home
where Pompey, Crassus and Caesar in the
fire triumvirate were dispensing offices
and honors, had no influence in Venusia
where the boy Horace was spending his
happy boyhood days in woodland fair and
valley free. In his education he was
more fortunate still. Finishing the course
in the Venusian schools he was carried by
his father to Rome to be educated with
the sons of the noble and wealthy. Later
he went to Athens for his university
training in The best thought of the world.
From the three factors above mentioned
he received common sense character, and
culture which marked his as a man. He
wrote Satires, Epodes, Epistles and
Odes. The satires were the first fruits OF
his youthful genius; the odes the ripened
fruitage of his maturer powers. dis
tinct purpose runs through all his poems.
sometimes philosophical, sometimes patr-
otto, sometimes purely personnel, but al
ways pertinent and practical. The lottiest
patriotism and the noblest moral sentl-
ments are none the less effective in his
poems because uttered in playful manner
and withouts the claim of seriousness. On
intimate terms with the naughty Angus
tus and courtly Macaenas he criticised
bn n
patricians in their expressions of the poor,
and the turbelences OF the pleblans IN
the rule of the mob.
His real spirit breathes in the beautiful
sentiment of the third ode Of the third
hook:
''The righteous man Of purpose fixed and
strong
Scorns the depraved commands
Of angry faction clamoring for wrong,
Nor fears the despot's frown. Not Aus
ter's roar,
whitening the restless waves on Adria
shore.
Not the red thunder hurled
From Jove's avenging hands
Can shake his solid will. Unmoved he
stands
Erect, amid the ruins of world"
Such was Horace the poet. Less pas
sionate but more sane than Catullus, less
intense but more comprehensive than Lu-
cretius, less serious but wider In the
range of his synpathies than Virgil, less
emotional but more sensible than Ovid,
he at once combined the more striking ex
ceIlencies of all these poets and III the
delicate touch of his fancy and the ma
iestic sweep of his genius he surpassed
them ALL He lives and breathes in the
and life of today thus verifying
his prophecy of himself: II shall not all
lia''