Virgil’s epic was the pride of his countrymen, who, with a pardonable national vanity, pronounced it superior to Homer’s. Tenderness, grace, elegance, rhythmical perfection, brilliance of description, it certainly possesses; yet, with all its beauties, it is not faultless. We miss the wonderful imagination that plays through every page of the Iliad; indeed, Homer furnished the originals of many of its most striking figures. Nor did Virgil disdain levying on Latin authors also. Whatever recommended itself to him in the poetry of others, he borrowed for his own. And yet he must not be regarded as a plagiarist; doubtless it was his intention to enshrine in a national epic literary monuments of all the great minds of his country. Æneas, his hero, too often appears as the boaster or the heartless hypocrite, rather than as the ideal of greatness and piety it was designed to draw. The author himself seems to have felt the inferiority of his epic to the Iliad, and hence his wish to destroy it. We are told that it was first written in prose; and then the artist, having a clear conception of the whole, threw different portions into verse as the spirit moved him. (_See Nettleship’s “Introduction to the Study of the Æneid.”_) =Horace= (65-8 B.C.).—The great lyric poet of Rome was Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), a freedman’s son, of Venusia on the roaring Au’fidus. That he might enjoy the best educational advantages, his father took him to Rome at the early age of twelve. Here he was placed in charge of a famous schoolmaster, called by his pupils “the Flogger;” under whose rod the country lad made the acquaintance of Ennius and Homer. To the watchful care and liberality of his parent, who remained to guard him from the temptations of the metropolis, he gratefully acknowledged that he owed everything. Horace was at Athens, finishing his course, when Cæsar fell beneath the daggers of the conspirators. With a number of hot-headed fellow-students he promptly espoused the cause of Brutus the Liberator, and served in the civil war as military tribune. But Horace’s courage could not stand the touch of cold steel; he ignominiously fled from the field of Philippi, and his estate was confiscated as a reward for his patriotism. Poverty now compelled him to take a clerkship at Rome; and to add to his slender income he began writing verses. This brought him into notice, and in 38 B.C. he had the honor of an introduction to the social circle that gathered round Mæcenas. His little farm, fifteen miles from Tibur, the ruins of which are still pointed out to tourists, was the gift of his munificent patron.