“The fool! would he try a flight further and say, He never saw, never, before to-day, What was able to take his breath away— A face to lose youth for, to occupy age With the dream of, meet death with—why, I'll not engage But that, half in a rapture and half in a rage, I should toss him the thing’s self, ‘’Tis only a duplicate, A thing of no value—take it, I supplicate.’” Longinus, one feels, would have been in some danger of losing his literary loves on this principle; the modern critic can “say ditto to Mr Browning” over a thousand passages. But Horace was quite safe. He never felt this enthusiasm for author, or book, or page; and so he never tried, as others in their despairing way do, to render a reason for it. To those who consider criticism as a whole and historically, the enormous influence which the _Ars Poetica_ has exercised [Sidenote: _The_ Satires _and_ Epistles.] must always give it the prerogative place among its author’s critical work. But it is needless to say that he has other claims to appear here. And the pieces which give him these claims have by some been considered more important, as they certainly are more original. It is unnecessary to pick out _Pindarum quisquis_ and the other literary references in the Odes, universally known, admirably expressed, but as criticism hardly more than a refashioning of _publica materies_. The Fourth and Sixth _Satires_ of the First book, which are probably a good deal earlier than the adaptation from Neoptolemus, and the two _Epistles_ of the Second book, which may be taken as later, are serious documents. The Satires perhaps give a better opinion of Horace’s talent than of his taste and temper. His critics had praised Lucilius against him; and without denying his predecessor all merit, he makes, though less generously, the sort of comment which even Dryden made on the rough versification and lack of art of the giant race before the flood. This (i. 4) naturally brought fresh attacks on him, and in i. 10 he returns to the subject, lashes the _fautores ineptos Lucili_, indulges in the too famous sneer at Catullus and Calvus, and with a touch of something which is perhaps not quite alien from snobbishness, boasts his intimacy and agreement not merely with Varius, Virgil, Pollio, Messala, among men of letters, but with Mæcenas and Octavius.