2. MORAL. But if the gods are beyond our ken, and if the world to come is misty, we still have this world with us; a world not always to be daffed aside with love and wine and comradeship, since behind its frolic wantonness lie the ennobling claims of duty and of conscience. As with Fielding, as with Thackeray, the light current tone of sportiveness or irony heightens the rare solemnity of didactic moral earnestness. Of all the Latin poets, says Sir Richard Fanshaw, Horace is the fullest fraught with excellent morality. In the six stately Odes which open the third book, together with a later Ode (xxiv) which closes the series and ought never to have been severed from it, Horatian poetry rises to its greatest height of ethical impressiveness. Ushered in with the solemn words of a hierophant bidding the uninitiated avaunt at the commencement of a religious ceremony (III, i, 1-2), delivered with official assumption in the fine frenzy of a muse-inspired priest, their unity of purpose and of style makes them virtually a continuous poem. It lashes the vices and the short-sighted folly of society; with the Sword of Damocles above his head the rich man sits at a luxurious board (III, i, 17); sails in his bronzed galley, lolls in his lordly chariot, with black Care ever at the helm or on the box (III, i, 40). By hardihood in the field and cheerful poverty at home Rome became great of yore; such should be the virtues of to-day. Let men be _moral_; it was immorality that ruined Troy; _heroic_--read the tale of Regulus; _courageous_, but with courage ordered, disciplined, controlled (III, iii; v; iv, 65). Brute force without mind, he says almost in Milton's words, falls by its own strength, as the giants fell encountering the gods: For what is strength without a double share Of wisdom? vast, unwieldy, burdensome; Proudly secure, yet liable to fall By weakest subtleties, not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command. ("Samson Ag.," 53.) Self-discipline, he reminds his audience, need not be sullen and austere; in regenerated Rome the Muses still may rule. Mild thoughts they plant, and they joy to see mild thoughts take root; refinement of manners and of mind, and the gladsomeness of literary culture (III, iv, 41). He turns to reprove the ostentation of the rich; their adding field to field, poor families evicted from farmstead and cottage to make way for spreading parks and ponds and gardens; driven from home Both wife and husband forth must roam, Bearing their household gods close pressed, With squalid babes, upon their breast. (II, xviii, 23.)