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PREFACE,

TO THIS REVISED EDITION,

BY MR. PYE.

WHEN it was first proposed to give a small edition of Francis's translation of Horace, it was not deemed necessary to encumber the page with the notes, which would only serve to swell the bulk of the volume, without being of any use to the English reader; as they chiefly illustrate phrases, and establish particular readings in the original, to which they always refer, and therefore can only be intelligible to the Latin scholar, who has a Latin edition before him; and indeed that edition only which is usually printed with this translation. All the labour of the Editor has been directed towards correcting some of the errors, and retranslating such Odes and such passages in the Satires and Epistles as seemed to detract from the general merit of the work; for, to give equal excellence to so long and so varied a series of composition as the poems of Horace seems almost beyond the span of the human intellect.

It however has occurred, that short notes explanatory of the subject of some of the poems,

and of various customs of the Romans to which they allude, would be satisfactory to the reader; and this has been attempted. The Editor has also occasionally given his reasons for altering certain passages in the translation of Francis, and shown how often that gentleman has suffered his better judgment to be led astray by the absurd refinements of the French critics, and especially by Sanadon; many of whose remarks are eminently absurd.

The swelling of the notes to a considerable extent has been carefully avoided. Though in a multitude of counsellors there may be wisdom, in a multitude of words there is not always precision; and when the eye is perpetually drawn down to read long dissertations at the bottom of the page, while only two or four lines of the text are printed at the top of it, no attention whatever can comprehend the connexion of the parts, or discover that lucid order which our poet lays down as absolutely essential to every perfect composition.

ODES.

BOOK I.

ODE I.

[Mæcenas, the favourite and chief minister of Augustus, was supposed to be descended from the ancient kings of Etruria. He was so celebrated for his encouragement of Virgil, Horace, and other poets, that even now a patron of literature is often figuratively called a Mæcenas.]

TO MECENAS.

O THOU, whose birth illustrious springs
From fair Etruria's ancient kings,

Mæcenas, to whose guardian name

I

owe my

fortune and my fame;
There are, who round the' Olympic goal
Delight the kindling wheel to roll,
And boldy snatch the' illustrious prize
Which lifts earth's masters to the skies'.
This man, to honours raised supreme,
By Rome's inconstant, loud acclaim;
Another, if from Libya's plain
He stores his private barn with grain;
A third, who with unceasing toil
Ploughs cheerful his paternal soil;

Earth's masters.' That is, the Romans; which appears to me the obvious sense, though some suppose it means the gods.

While in their several wishes bless'd,
Not all the wealth by kings possess'd
Shall tempt, with fearful souls, to brave
The terrors of the foamy wave.

When loud the winds and waters wage
Wild war with elemental rage,
The merchant praises the retreat,
The quiet of his rural seat;
Yet, want untutor❜d to sustain,

Soon rigs his shatter'd bark again.

No mean delights possess his soul,
With good old wine who crowns his bowl;
Whose early revels are begun

Ere half the course of day be run;
Now, by some sacred fountain laid,
Now, stretch'd beneath some bowering shade.
Others in tented fields rejoice,

The trumpet-sound, the clarion-voice:
With joy the sounds of war they hear,
Of war, which tender mothers fear.
The sportsman, chill'd by midnight Jove,
Forgets his tender, wedded love,
Whether his faithful hounds pursue,
And hold the bounding hind in view;
Whether the boar, fierce-foaming, foils
The chase, and breaks the spreading toils.
An ivy wreath, fair learning's prize,
Raises Mæcenas to the skies;

Be mine, amid the breezy grove,
In sacred solitude to rove;

To see the nymphs and satyrs bound,
Light-dancing, through the mazy round,

While all the tuneful Sisters join
Their various harmony divine.

But if you rank me with the choir
Who tuned with art the Grecian lyre,
Swift to the noblest heights of fame
Shall rise thy Poet's deathless name.

II.

[It is recorded in history (Dion.) that the night after the name of Augustus was conferred on Octavius Cæsar, there happened an uncommon inundation of the Tyber; to which this Ode probably alludes.]

TO AUGUSTUS.

ENOUGH of snow, and hail, the' immortal Sire
Hath pour'd tempestuous; whilst his thunders dire,
With red right arm at his own temples hurl'd,
With fear and horror shook the guilty world,
Lest Pyrrha's age return, with plaintive cries,
Who saw the deep with newborn wonders rise;
When to the mountain summit Proteus drove
His seaborn herd, and where the woodland dove
Late perch'd, his wonted seat, the scaly brood
Entangled hung upon the topmost wood,
And every timorous native of the plain
High-floating swam amid the boundless main.

We saw, push'd backward to his native source,
The yellow Tyber roll his rapid course,
With impious ruin threatening Vesta's fane,
And the great monuments of Numa's reign;
With grief and rage while Ilia's bosom glows,
Boastful, for her revenge, his waters rose,
But now, the' uxorious river glides away,
So Jove commands, smooth-winding to the sea:
And yet, less numerous by their parents' crimes,
Our sons shall hear, shall hear to latest times,

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