Because of this, and likewise because of something in the nature of the Roman poet, it has always seemed to me that Horace is read best in the autumn. There is something in his mind that is native to the season. He came from the ripe, mellow autumn of a rich, a prodigious civilization that time was just beginning to touch with the shadows of age. Quintillian takes pains to tell us old Latin writers were stronger in genius than art. The opposite was true of Horace. With him poetry was not inspiration. He did not know its self-forgetful fury. Instead, it was one of the ornaments of a well-tempered life, out of which he wished to procure as much comfort as he could. In his verse there is nothing wonderful. At the same time it has an immortal touch. He was not a great imaginative poet. He was not a gifted dramatic poet. He seldom stirs the blood. But he has a smooth, even excellence, a companionableness, a marvelous proportion of word to thought. He is master of felicitous expression. What was he to the Rome of his day? Was he what through accomplished Latin lecturers and study, he has become to us? Was he great as an artist? Or have years colored him, and the modern mind thrown over him a romantic halo? Or do we find him charming because he opens a door into the vanished world of Rome, where existed so many alluring pictures of memory, which we have loved, then dumbly longed for? Did he ripen with years? Did the smoke of time do for him what it did for Sabine wine, sweeten, mellow? Are there poets read best centuries after their day? In him there is no restless modernity, no futile chasing of rainbows. Yet this serene art could not picture our world. We can measure changes which have come. It requires something tumultuous, less smooth, equable; less definite in outline. The model is at fault for sketchiness of written art, and a certain unsatisfactoriness as regards presentation. The reproduction must be nervous, with harsh lights, crude shadows. In the finished product absolutism is lacking. There is something that is trivial, infinitesimal, that sees darkly. Art has become uncertain. It no longer moves boldly. It has become a thing of temperament, instead of mind. The art of the pagan world was firmer. It approached life differently. Roman poets praise the masculine sound of the Latin lyre.