"Thus trammell'd, thus condemn'd to flattery's trebles, He toils through all, still trembling to be wrong: For fear some noble thoughts like heavenly rebels Should rise up in high treason to his brain, He sings as the Athenean spoke, with pebbles In 's mouth, lest truth should stammer through his strain." If we look even to those epochs under monarchical governments, which have been designated by the high sounding title of the golden ages of literature, we shall observe a full exemplification of the remarks which I have made on this subject. Let us take the Augustan age itself. Under the patronage of the first of the Roman Emperors we find, it is true, the arts and light literature rising to a pitch which perhaps they had not reached under the republic. After the death of Brutus the world of letters experienced a revolution almost as {263} great as that of the political world. The literature of the Augustan age is distinguished by that tone and spirit which mark the downfall of liberty, and the consequent thraldom of the mind. The bold and manly voice of eloquence was hushed. The high and lofty spirit of the republic was tamed down to a sickly and disgusting servility. The age of poetry came when that of eloquence and philosophy was past; and Virgil and Horace and Propertius, flattered, courted and enriched by an artful prince and an elegant courtier, could consent to sing the sycophantic praises of the monarch who had signed the proscriptions of the triumvirate, and rivetted a despotism on his country. But the men who most adorned the various departments of learning during the long reign of Augustus, were born in the last days of the republic. They saw what the glory of the commonwealth had been--they beheld with their own eyes the greatness of their country, and they had inhaled in their youth the breath of freedom. No Roman writer, for example, excels the Lyric Bard in true feeling and sympathy for heroic greatness. We ever behold through the medium of his writings--even the gayest--a deep rooted sorrow locked up in his bosom, for the subversion of the liberties of the commonwealth. "On every occasion we can see the inspiring flame of patriotism and freedom breaking through that mist of levity in which his poetry is involved." "He constrained his inclinations," says Schlegel, "and endeavored to write like a royalist, but in spite of himself he is still manifestly a republican and a Roman."[2] [Footnote 2: Horace fought under Brutus and Cassius, on the side of the Republic, at the battle of Philippi, and he was after the battle saved from the wreck of the republican army, and treated with great respect and kindness by Augustus and his minister Mecænas.]