Without the slightest pretence of authority or the right to dictate, he contrives to supply us with an infinite number of sound and healthy moral lessons, to reason with us so genially and with so frank an admission of his own equal frailty, that it is impossible to be angry with him, impossible not to love the gentle instructor. He has been accused of tolerance towards vice. That is, we think, a great error. Horace knew men too well to be severe; his is no trumpet-call, but a still small voice, which pleads but does not accuse. He was no doubt in his youth a lax liver; [67] he had adopted the Epicurean creed and the loose conduct that follows it. But he was struggling towards a purer ideal. Even in the _Satires_ he is only half an Epicurean; in the _Epistles_ he is not one at all: and in proportion as he has outlived the hot blood of youth, his voice becomes clearer and his faith in virtue stronger. The _Epistles_ are to a great extent reflective; he has examined his own heart, and depicts his musings for our benefit. Many of them are moral essays filled with precepts of wisdom, the more precious as having been genuinely thought out by the writer for himself. Less dramatic, less vigorous, perhaps, than the _Satires_, they embody in choicest language the maturest results of his reflection. Their poetical merits are higher, their diction more chaste, their metre more melodious. With the _Georgics_ they are ranked as the most perfect examples of the modulation of hexameter verse. Their movement is rippling rather than flowing, and satisfies the mind rather than the ear, but it is a delicious movement, full of suggestive grace. The diction, though classical, admits occasional colloquialisms. [68] Several of the _Satires_, [69] and the three Epistles which form the second book, are devoted to literary criticism, and these have always been regarded as among the most interesting of Horace's compositions. His opinions on previous and contemporary poetry are given with emphasis, and as a rule ran counter to the opinion of his day. The technical dexterity in versification which had resulted from the feverish activity of the last forty years, had produced a disastrous consequence. All the world was seized with the mania for writing poetry: "Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim." The young Pisos were among the number. To them the poet gave this friendly counsel, to lock up their creations for nine years, and then publish, or as we may shrewdly suspect he meant--destroy them. Poetry is the one thing that, if it is to be done at all, must be done well: "Mediocribus esse poetis Non di, non homines, non concessere columnae."