Oh! that passage. Why, I have had it by heart for half a hundred. We quote from it at Quarter Sessions. TALBOYS. The first grace of the whole composition seems to me its two-fold personality--the free intimacy between the great Protector and the small Protected. It is like Horace's part of a familiar colloquy, where you may fancy, at discretion, interlocutory remark, or answer, or question of Augustus. NORTH. True, Talboys. Verse has attracted to the Bard the rays of imperial favour. The Emperor himself is a Verse-maker. How natural and suitable that Horace in verses which vary, to the time of the moment, with inimitable facility, from a conversation-like negligence, or negligent seeming--to sweetness and beauty, to strength and dignity--should win the august ear, tired with the din of arms or of debating tongues, to an hour's chat on the interests of the Muses. SEWARD. The praise of the Poet how loving and ingenious! how insinuatingly subdued! NORTH. Yet the ground is chosen with a dexterous boldness. The majestic opening Address of the Poem showed Augustus, like a Jupiter, wielding with beneficent power the destinies of the Roman world. And now, confronting the dispenser of welfare to nations, he sets up another benefactor of the State, the Poet, face to face with golden-throned, and purple-vested Octavius Cæsar--poor Horatius Flaccus! BULLER. Most awkward of Courtiers! Most crazed of versifiers! SEWARD. Beware of rash judgments and half-informations. You familiar with Hory-- BULLER. You muttered the passage so that you murdered it. TALBOYS. You, familiar with Hory, see at least how, by the choice of the ground, he has obliged himself to stepping cautiously and tenderly over it. He leads to it--he does not begin with it. Arrived at the comparison, he proposes it rather implicitly than explicitly--admire the Rhetorician. He will avert jealousy--he will propitiate kindness. BULLER. Artful Dodger. TALBOYS. He has acknowledged--you might have given us the line--a _fault_. Nothing seriously wrong though. As if Apollo had shot a plague with golden arrows upon the City, all are turned Versifiers--young and old--and grave and gay--wise and foolish--the skilled and the unskilled--the called and the uncalled. BULLER. You write verses well yourself, Talboys. TALBOYS.