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We are already acquainted from the foregoing Satires with our author's manner of giving his treatises the appearance of that natural planless career of thought, the characteristic of free and easy conversation, and entirely along meandring walks, with little occasional digressions, in reality to be approaching his object at every step. This method of composition cannot be sufficiently recommended to all who would descant upon opinions, manners, and passions, in the form of satires, epistles, or discourses: and since herein we cannot so well work by rules, as upon forms and models, which the judgment must select and the imagination impress; young poets, wishing to try their strength in this department, cannot perhaps more profitably employ themselves in any kind of study, than in diligently analyzing the Satires and Epistles of Horace. What a dull academical exercise would be the result, if the axioms contained in this performance were to be delivered in a methodical series of syllogistical deductions! And what else can be adduced but trite common-place matter on such a subject? But how new, how interesting and entertaining, is every thing that Horace says upon it, by partitioning the universals, converting all into results of immediate experience, illustrating every proposition by appropriate examples, and forming the main point which he intends to demonstrate, into an individual characteristic of Mæcenas, whose conduct he is vindicating, while, with the most simple cordiality he delineates his father's character and his own! By this method abstract ideas are rendered apparent, and metamorphosed as it were into historical personages; the figures file off into distinct groups, acquire their proper keeping, their natural colouring, light, and shade; and instead of a hard and dry didactic sketch, a living picture of manners is produced to our view, which at once satisfies-the judgment, affects the heart, and gratifies the taste,

The situation of Horace respecting his birth and education, was indeed one of those which rarely occur, A freedman of such noble sentiments, and procuring for his son such an excellent education as the elder Horatius, was a phenomenon not less ex

traordinary, than that the son of a freedman should become a man who in his twenty-second year deserved to be valued and beloved by a Marcus Brutus, and in his twenty-sixth by such men as Mæcenas and Pollio. Horace was unquestionably indebted to his father for all this, and more than most of his contemporaries of nobler descent were to theirs; and accord ingly he had great reason not to be ashamed of such a father. The same individuality may be predicated likewise of the use which he made of his leisure. His dispositions and his habits of life were strictly analogous to his situation; and in him much was highly praiseworthy, which would have heen extremely culpable in a thousand others. Our poet therefore, when speaking of the prerogatives of that mobility which is conferred upon us by education, moral character, talents, and acquirements, over that which consists solely in hereditary possessions, and the advantages of an humble over a splendid birth, enjoys the advantage of finding all he wants for setting these objects in the fairest point of view, as it were within his own enclosure, and therefore (making allowance for the difficulty of speaking of oneself with decency and without fatuity) but little art was requisite to finish this beautiful delineation of manners. Fewer requisites, so to speak, sufficed him for being a poet, because he was a man so fortunately born, and so happily situated. This remark is perhaps applicable to most, of his performances; but it may likewise be a hint to the poets, invita Minerva, and the imitators, servum pecus. It is not impossible to ape the manner of Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, with success; but in order to seize Horace's manner, we must be able almost to kidnap his very person.

Lydorum quicquid Hetruscos.] Horace here speaks in conformity to a vulgar tradition accredited by the historian Herodotus, in pursuance whereof the Hetrurians were descended from a Lydian colony which had been transported thither by Tyrrhenus, a son of King Atys, The falsity of this report, which was even held fabulous by Diodorus Siculus, may be seen proved to demonstration in the Recherches sur l'Origine des differents Peuples de l'Italie, article 5, in the Xth volume of the Histoire de l'Aca

demie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, the edition in 12mo.

Olim qui magnis legionibus imperitarint.] No vestige is to be found, either in the history or the fusti of the Roman republick, that the Cilnian family, from which Maecenas derived his lineage, was ever illustrated by posts of supreme command in it *. It is therefore ridiculous in the Abbé Souchay, in his Recherches sur la vie de Mécene to attempt at proving from this passage, that the ancestors of this celebrated favourite, after repairing to the capital from their native town Arezzo, were in great authority at Rome, and commanded armies. Certainly Horace here uses the word legiones for troops; but he could not intend to express any thing more by it, than what he says in several passages of his Odes, that Mæcenas could number Hetrurian Kings or Lucumones among his ancestors. It is apparent that he was much gratified with this sort of flattery on the original splendour of his house; and what is noticed by Livy in his tenth book, touching the supremacy of the Cilnian family in Aretium, one of the most powerful cities of the Hetrurian confederacy, was of itself sufficient to foster and encourage that vanity, even granting that the genealogical proofs of affinity to King Porsenna (for which we have the warranty of an antient scholiast), could not be exactly made out in all the due forms of heraldry.

Dum ingenuus. To me it appears not improbable, that Horace bas here taken the word ingenuus in its equivocal import. To the better under, standing of this and numerous other passages of our author, I must here bring to recollection, that the signal revolution effected under Augustus in the Roman republick, necessarily superinduced, together with a certain relaxation of the old Roman spirit and republican manners, a debaseinent or a counterfeiting of the several classes (ordines) of the Roman citizens. The patricians were by the in

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testine wars and the proscriptions, reduced to a very few families. The senatorial dignity was shorn of its ans tient splendour by the novi homines, who were in great numbers admitted into that body, even from the dregs of the populace, by favour or wealth. The equestrian order, on the other hand, rose in consequence in the same proportion as that of the sena tors declined. Even the class of the freeborn (ingenui) got up, and com posed a sort of inferior nobles, which hy insensible gradations coalesced with the equestrian order; with this difference, however, that between one who derived his pedigree from an an tient equestrian family, and one who merely in virtue of some acquired post of honour, or by means of his census, belonged to the equestrian order, there was about the same distinction as till of late subsisted in France and Germany between the old and new nobility. The change which this must have wrought in the national spirit was of the greater moment, as now even among the ingenui, formerly a stated regular degree was overleaped. For whereas heretofore the libertini, or sons of the emancipated, composed a middle class between the liberti and ingenui, and the son of a libertinus was first to be recreated with the privileges of an ingenuus; these were now accorded to the sons of the emancipated, and libertus and libertinus passed for one and the same t. That this was already become customary in Cicero's time, Torrentius, who had his doubts coucerning it, might have convinced himself from the 16th and 19th chapters of the oration pro Cluentio; where, speaking of the judicial defence of Scamander, a libertys of the Fabricii, who had been arraigned on a charge of assassination, Cicero says, he had employed an argument in vindication of this Scamander, which in libertinorum causis had always been held valid. The generality of expositors, from inattention to this confusion of ranks which had imperceptibly arisen

Besides the Favourite of Augustus, I find only two Mæcenases, whose names have accidentally come down to us. One of them figures in a fragment of Sallust, in the character of a Secretary, at the lower end of the table of Sertorius; the other is mentioned by Cicero (pro Cluent. cap. 56.) under the name Caj. Mæcenas, with great commendation, as having, with two other Roman knights, effectually opposed the turbulent enterprizes of the tribune, M. Livius Drusus (who was consul in the year 640). This might very possibly, however, have been the grandfather of ours. +Aldus Manutius, citante Masson, in vitâ Horații, p. 4. & seq.

in the latter period of the republick, have concluded from the terms libertinus and ingenuus, the former whereof is used by Horace of his father, and the latter of himself, that Horace's father was the son of a freedman. But the demonstration of Manutius, that libertinus had at that time lost its antient signification, and now was currently used for what was formerly expressed by libertus; and the whole construction of this Satire leaves no doubt remaining that that conclusion is built on premises altogether groundless.

Besides, there is no difficulty in supposing (and Horace even tells us 60 plainly enough) that people of superior parentage were discontented with an innovation by which they were degraded one step; and there fore, because there was a scarcity of such examples as that afforded by Mæcenas, Horace makes it so great a merit in him that in the choice of his companions he looked not to the condition of the father, so the man was only free-born. All this notwithstand ing, it may however be inferred from the manner in which our poet proceeds to shew that Mæcenas in so doing acted well, that by the expression dum ingenuus he had in view likewise the second meaning of it, namely, the nobility of the mind, and this the rather, since after all (as in the sequel he gives clearly to understand) it was not free birth in itself exclusively, but the formation of the mind and polished manners which free-born persons received by a more liberal education, which pre sented the true reasons why men of Mæcenas's station and character could live upon a familiar footing with them, Tulli.] Servius Tullius, who, born of a female slave in the palace of King Tarquinius Priscus, so distinguished himself by his personal qualities, that he became son-in-law and successor to that prince.

Contra Lævinum.] The old Scholiast says, that the subject here relates to a certain (unknown) P. Valerius Lævinus, who, by reason of the bad reputation he had brought on himself by his scurvy tricks, was never able to get any higher promotion than to the quæsture (the office of public treasurer). The family Valeria was pne of the oldest and noblest in Rome. Valerius Poplicola, who, in place of Collatinus, was given to the famous

Junius Brutus, as his colleague in the consulate, anno 244, because in con junction with him he had greatly contributed to the expulsion of the tyrant Tarquinius Superbus, furnished the first motive to the illustration of that family, whereof the Lævini, Corvini, Messallæ, Catuli, Flacci, and others, were so many branches.

Quid oportet vos facere, &c.] I think with Bentley, that instead of the usual nos, we should here read vos, because the reasons he adduces seem to me convincing, and the objections of Baxter and Gesner weak and frivolous. Horace by no means degrades himself by writing quid oportet vos facere, but he would if, with a ridi culous vanity, on this occasion, he had placed himself by the side of Mecenas as his equal, and (what would have been just as silly) made himself judge in his own cause, if he had written nos. This is another in stance in which it is necessary to vindicate the sound judgment of the author against his copyists.

Quam Decio mandare novo.] It is probably the first of the Decii, who (in the year 415) obtained the consulate, Publ, Decius Mus, whose name, by the voluntary sacrifice he made of himself to the safety and glory of the republick in the war against the Latius, became so famous. As to Valerius Levinus (who apparently was his contemporary, and perhaps had been his rival candidate for some post conducive to the consulate) he was also a homo novus.

Censorque moveret Appius, &c.] Horace here by an easy transition reverses his subject. We have examples both antient and domestic, would he say, that virtue and merit are not necessarily attached to noble birth; and the very populace, who are so easily imposed upon by names and genealogies, judge however (some times at least) properly enough, so as to prefer a new Decius to a Lævi nus unworthy of his progenitors. But suppose (continues he) the people were, in such a case, unjust to a candidate of obscure descent, or a censor, like Appius Pulchert, should

*Livy, lib. viii. ca 8-12.

Who in the year 702, together with. Luc. Piso, was censor, and in virtue of that office, turned several persons out of the senate, because they were sons of freedmen.

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turn some one out of the senate be cause his father was not free born, what mighty injustice after all is done? Why could not he sleep quietly in his own skin? Why did not he weigh all the mischief to which his vanity and his ambition exposed him? &c. This, meseems, is the natural sense and connection of the train of ideas in the passage before us; and I cannot conceive how Torrentius could find anything here obscure and incongru ous. That Horace is not positively speaking of himself, but of persons of his rank placed in a similar situation, scarcely needs to be noticed, this turn of expression being so common with him.

Sed fulgente trahit constrictos gloria curru, &c.] This once, Baxter appears to me to have justly discovered that Horace has taken this lofty and sonorous verse, so widely different from the ordinary diction of his sermones, from some heroic poem now lost, but well known at the time. Whether he intended it in derision or in earnest, such allusions and humorous applications of thoughts and metaphors of other authors are not unusual with him, and contribute not a little to that urbanity in which his writings so peculiarly excel. Ormond-street.

W. T.

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to his Imperial Majesty, &c, and Extraordinary Ambassadour from Leopoldus, Emperor of Germany, to the Grand Signior, Sultan Mahomet Hau the Fourth. Written by John Bur bury, Gent. London, &c. 1671;” 12mo.

Dedication: "To the Honourable Henry Howard, eldest son of the Right Honourable My Lord Henry Howard. Sir; Pictures which relate to a family are usually exposed in galleries, that the heir by looking on them, may not only see the features, but read too the virtues and generous exploits of his truly noble ancestors. This Picture of, my Lord, your fas ther's journey to Turkey (whom you have so lively coppi'd in your early travels abroad) I humbly present at your feet, being sure it will have a choice place in the gallery of your mind, since the original itself (which extracts admiration from all) will doubtless as highly deserve of poste rity, as any of your greatest proge nitors. Here without the wind of adulation, I might tow down the stream of my Lord your father's qua lities, and excellent endowments; but remembring that you two only differ in time, I shall but say this (least I seem to flatter you) that you are most happy in your father, and your father as happy in you. May your happi ness, like the Danube, (which in its long passage through Tyrole, Bava

thirty navigable Rivers, ere it falls into the Sea) increase all along in the course of your life, till it become to be as great, as to your Noble self and your family, the devotion is of, Sir, your most humble and most obe. dient faithful servant,

JOHN BURBURY." > It appears from this Relation, that the Author was an attendant of Lord Henry Howard, who joined the Im perial Ambassador's suite at Vienna, and accompanied him to Constantinople. They set forward “on Tuesday the twenty one of February 1664, about one of the clock in the morn ing." The object of the Embassy was to settle the terms of a Peace. The Ambassador was Count Lesley, the particular friend of Thomas Earl of Arundel and Surrey, grandfather of Lord Henry Howard, and Mr. Edward his brother, who, by invitation, ac

companied

companied the Ambassador on this occasion.

On the road to Vienna "we lay at Hoyne; and here began our lodging en straw, which we were so familiar with afterwards. As for our horses, some of them were constantly taken from the plough, and wearied with labour before-hand, so as 'tis no won der we had so many falls. Our guide, like an ignis fatuus, misled us up and down, he could not tell whither; for which being rated severely, he was for a while so abominably unsavoury, there was no going near him : at last by good fortune we lighted on a vil lage. There we met with a Lutheran Parson, as full of wine as fat, whose Latine came from him in clusters, which shewed he had doubled his glasses." "But of all the postillions we had, I must needs tell the Reader of one, who formally appearing in bis ruffle, his cloak, and high-steepled hat, no sooner got upon his horse, which was skittish, and had a trunk behind him, but the horse, not en during the rattling and weight of the trunk, fell a kicking and dancing in that manner, that down went the steeple; and the cloak, ruffe, and man had followed after, but that relief ran in, and his wife cry'd to him, If you have not, Hans, a carê, that Horse will throw you to the D- But Hans boldly venturing again, sate very demurely and gingerly," &c.

They arrived at Vienna on the 26th of March. The 28th "My Lord waited on the Emperor to the Convent of the Capuchins, where his Imperial Majesty dined, the Princes and Lords of the greatest condition waiting on his Majesty, and walking afoot before his coach." "After dinner, the Emperour, the Empress, and Princesses, went to a park about a mile from Vi enna, where his Majesty's huntsmen inclosing some four acres of ground, with canvas extended by poles above a man's height, and a little way far ther, with canvas aforesaid, making a lane abreast high, by letting fall the canvas towards the East, with beagles hunted in at a time some eight or ten foxes, which coursed up and down, were by several gentlemen, who had nets in their hands for that purpose, of a foot and a half wide, and between three and four yards. long, tossed up into the air, as it were in several blankets, as they ran up and downs

seeking places to escape. In this manner, and with dogs and sticks, they sacrificed seventy foxes to the Emperour's pleasure, and afterwards baited and killed six badgers.” "The 31st My Lord waited on the Empe rour, who that day went afoot, about a mile from Vienna, where a Sepul chre, in imitation of that of our Sa viour's at Jerusalem, is annually vi sited, and his Majesty kneeled and prayed by the way at five several stations."" His Majesty washed and kissed the feet of 12 men, the youngest of which was 70 years old, and the eldest 104; among them they made up the age of 987 years." The 18th of April,

His Lordship saw the Emperour ride the great horse, and fourscore colts backed by the riders." The Ambassadour's retinue, rode in triumph through the streets to the Emperour's palace, a very numerous and sumptuous train, on the 5th of May: and on the 25th began their route to Constantinople. “His Lordship visited the Hot Baths some four leagues distant from Vienna, whither persons of quality, as Earls and Countesses, very frequently resort, who go all together into the same Bath; but with this distinction, that the men keep on one side, and the women on the other. The men go with drawers and their shirts, wearing black leather caps, with buttons on the top, for the easier saluting of the ladies and gen tlemen, when they come into the Bath. They have several laws, and the forfeitures go to the poor; and commonly the women are very great sticklers for exacting and levying the same." The houses [at Vienna] are goodly and large, and commonly have great cellars for storing of their wines, which are in that abundance in this City, that vulgarly they say (and per haps without vanity) there is more wine than water at Vienna, though the City hath many fair fountains and wells." In one of the suburbs, seated in an island of the Danube, the Jews do inhabit. There is a park in it, abounding with tall trees, and herds of deer and boars, which wander up and down in a tame and fearless man mer." "The territory of Vienna produceth wheat, &c. ; every thing grow jng there smells somewhat of brim stone, for the soil is sulphurious.”

Having thus far conducted the Tras vellers, I have only to remark that,

though

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