Lectures and Essays on Subjects Connected with Latin Literature and Scholarship

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ...and pointed out the path of life. Do not suppose then that the utmost cultivation of the poetic gift is a matter to be ashamed of. V. 408. Perhaps another Greek text; is poetry the production of 4van or of Texvrj? Of both, is Horace's reply; one is as necessary as the other. But he soon returns to what is nearest to his heart, the tendency of the existing state of Roman society to corrupt the poetical motive. Beware above all, he says, if you are rich, of being misled by the flattery of poor dependents whom you have obliged by some service; rather go for criticism to some honest judge like Quintilius Varus. And above all shun the mad enthusiasm which calls itself inspiration. 1 The ancient commentators here and Philargyrius on Eclogue 9. 35 agree in referring the words nonumque prematur in annum to the nine years spent by Helvius Cinna in the composition of his Zmyrna. It will, I think, appear from the foregoing analysis that the arrangement of the De Arte Poetica is, on the whole, natural and easy, though not very strict. The only point in it which really strikes one as anomalous is the fact that the lines on the dignity of poetry and the question whether poetry is the offspring of art or of genius should come so late in the piece; and it would be interesting to know whether this was the case with the treatise of Neoptolemus. It is of course quite conceivable that the arrangement is Horace's own, for he nowhere binds himself, any more than Vergil does, to strict logical sequence. His satura or epistula is more a causerie than a treatise. If my hypothesis as to the composition of the piece is correct, it follows that we have in the De Arte Poetica an instance of the same phenomenon that meets us so often in the philosophical works of Cicero. The...