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Mr. URBAN, Shrewsbury, Aug. 3. BEG to offer you a sketch of the N. E. view of the antient and very curious Church of St. Alkmund in Shrewsbury, which, excepting its most beautiful steeple, was destroyed by the Parishioners in 1793, The drawing from which the inclosed is copied, was made by me a few days previous to the unnecessary demolition of the venerable fabrick, and is, 4 believe, the only existing representation of its Northern elevation.---(See Plate I.) Yours, &c. H. O.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF HORACE.

it were much if even the artificial teeth of Canidia, and the false hair of her friend Sagana, had not done him signal disservice with some fair ladies, whose charms he thus taught their rivals to suspect,

Horace had already in pretty lively colours represented to himself this inevitable fate of a young satirist, at the time when his first essays were circulating singly among his friends and acquaintance, in transcripts of their own taking: but having now collected them, and a whole volume of his satires lying on the stall of the brothers Sosii for public sale, the clamour raised by those who thought themselves struck at, exceeded his expeciation, and that circumstance, together with the manner of judging in general here and there, perhaps even in respectable houses, of his Socratie muse, seems naturally to have inspired him with the thought of prefixing to the second book of his satires, such a comic apology, as should procure him peace for the future, and get the men of good understanding and nice discerminent, as well as the laughers, on his side.

BOOK I. SAT. I. TOTWITHSTANDING the relish which the literary people of Rome still found in the satires of old Lucilius, the enterprise, however, of our bard to try his strength in the same species of composition, excited as much surprise as though he had ventured on that slippery path with out precedent or example. Resentments naturally subside with time, and mone had now any reason to complain of the liberties, however great, that, seventy years ago, Lucilius, the famous poet, had taken with the leading men The wit, the humour, the ingenuity, of his age; they cropped the roses of the urbanity, with which he has introhis wit, without being wounded by its duced these ideas in the present perforthorns, and laughed, with all their mance, still continue surprising, even heart, at many a sarcasm, which had after he has so long accustomed us caused him at whom it was auned, to to find him uniformly equal to himself, make a sour face. We are at present and comparable to himself, alone. in the same situation respecting the That strain of irony, in which none satires of Horace: but at the time, (the great Athenian master himself, and in the place when and where they not excepted) ever knew how to wanwere written, many parts of them ton with more elegance and ease than must indeed have produced a quite he, is called in most opportunely and contrary effect; and though Horace successfully to his aid; it runs through (besides that he was really of that the whole piece; agreeably insinuatgentle and benevolent disposition ing itself into that playful style of which he assumes to himself in the simplicity and good nature, which is fourth and sixth satires) from his easy so peculiar to him; while both comand agreeable situation in life and the bine to shed a grace upon the whole, good company in which he passed his which may be better felt than describtime, could never let his satire degene-ed, but certainly cannot be unobserved rate either into the angry snaps and bites of a snarling cynic, nor into the splenetic ravings of a disappointed man, nor like Juvenal's, into a bitter invective on the times: yet: there were not wanting people, who were much alarmed for themselves, when they perceived what little ceremony he observed with a Gorgonius and Rufillus, with a Pantalabus and Nomentanus, Fannius and Tigellius, and

GENT. MAG. January, 1811.

by any reader of taste. Nothing could well be more happily imagined, than in the ironical perplexity into which the contradictory judgments of the public on his satires have thrown him, to go and consult a lawyer, and (on which the whole matter hinges) of all possible lawyers, exactly Trebatius: an incident, whereby the poem at once acquires all the interest of a ludicrous dramatical scene, and the art

lessness

lessness of a casual conversation, in the course of which, however, he himself finds an opportunity, as it were by chance, and as if between themselves alone, to disclose in confidence to Trebatius, his private opinion of one and another, which was partly designed for quite different persons.

In order to feel the beauty of this piece to its full extent, as far at least as that is possible at present, we must previously have made ourselves acquainted with the character of Trebatius through the medium of Cicero's letters to him which are still extant*. The dialogue itself will be the more perspicuous, the more distinct and lively the knowledge we have of the interlocutor. We then behold as it were the gesture, the looks, the tone with which he utters every word; and who can need to be told, how totally different in signification the very same words frequently are, when pronouneed with one or another modulation of voice, accompanied with such, or a contrary motion of the eyes, lips, &c.? Caius Trebatius Testa, sprung from a good family, though it always remained in obscurity, of the equestrian order, appears to have been the first of his name, who felt impulse and capacity to distinguish himself in the world. To a young man, destitute both of credit and fortune, only two avenues were open at Rome to either, the law, and the army. Trebatius made choice of the former, and thus becoming acquainted with Cicero, was so successful in his assiduities as in early life to secure to himself the protection of that great man, and had the art, no less by his industry and abilities than by the charms of his converse, to render himself so agreeable and estimable to him, that of all his humble friends there was scarcely one in whose behalf, from real attachment alone, he made such earnest applications, and in whose success he took so cordial an interest. Trebatius was in the prime of life, when Cicero, in the year 699, recommended him to Julius Cæsar, who (as every one knows) was then, as proconsul of Gaul, making

hasty strides to the completion of the great plan he had been regularly prosecuting all his life. Gaul, and a place amongst Cæsar's comites, was at that juncture, a gold mine in the contemplation of all young folks who wanted to make their fortune; without being too scrupulous about the means. Trebatius was not cold and insensible to this shining bait; on the contrary, he had an eager desire to take the short road to opulence; but he appears to have been too heedless, too impatient, andwhat some would perhaps call too honest, for pushing his fortune, by a zealous and entire devotion to his new patron, as far as in his power lay. The truth is, in the temper and disposition of Trebatius, there were several points in which he resembled Cicero; he had not fortitude enough always to act, altogether and without capitulation and conditions, according to his conviction; though he had the principles of integrity. Whenever he was attracted towards the contrary side, he uniformly vacillated back again to his natural propensity, and there were propositions to which he could not be determined by any prospect of advantage. Hence it was, that notwithstanding the various obligations he was under to the mighty Cæsar, yet at the breaking out of the civil war, without assisting the republic in any way by it, he improvidently found himself engaged, together with his old and first patron, Cicero, in the Pompeian faction, and therefore, presently after, in the necessity of leaving his fate to the vaunted Clementia Cæsaris. He was not, however, deceived in his calculation. Cæsar forgave him; and Trebatius, to whom (as it appears) this event was a lesson of prudence for the rest of his life, henceforth addicted himself entirely to his former profession without meddling any farther with matters of state, excepting that in the year 706 he personated a very harmless popular tribune. He was, to judge from the familiar and jocose style of Cicero's letters to him, and the many clear indications they containt; a man of activity and enterprise,

*They follow in the viith book of the letters ad familiares, from the 7th to the 21st in regular succession. The 19th and 20th are written in the year 709, all the rest are of the years 699 and 700.

For instance: sed hæc jocati sumus tuo more, ep. 14. and in the 10th letter: rideamus licet, sum enim a te invitatus and in the following, where he very gravely assures him, that, were it not for Trebatius's good, the separation from so agreeable a compa

with a high flow of spirits and a jovial disposition, and appears (as Melmoth observes) to have had in his youth somewhat more of the character of a man of the world, and agreeable companion, than befitted the gravity of his profession. Cicero therefore frequently rallies him on his juristery, in a strain that might have entirely ruined the credit of his friend with his clients, if he had not as often repaired the mischief by other passages of a serious nature, and particularly recommended him to Cæsar in expressions which only a man of extraordinary worth could deserve*.

That conjunction of solid and useful, with agreeable qualities, that application to business associated with wit and sprightliness in conversation, it was, that in the sequel, raised him so high in the favour and esteem of the young Cæsar, that he was regularly consulted in all weighty affairs that hinged on points of law. It is therefore unquestionable that, for the same reasons, he lived in amicable connexion with Mæcenas, that this intimacy brought our poet acquainted with him, and that, notwithstanding their disparity of aget, the similarity and unison of their disposition and humour placed them on that familiar footing together, which is exhibited to us through the whole of this entertaining dialogue. For, on such a footing they must have stood together, if it be at all conceivable, that Horace could make a man of Trebatius's public character and consequence the interlocutor in such a conference. But, no sooner do we presuppose this circumstance, and the jovial humour of the old lawyer, than we have the true point of view from which this piece should be contem

plated. All then appears in its natural light; we understand both Trebatius and the poet; we are no longer puzzled here and there at expressions which, only to him who has not comprehended the genius and spirit of the whole, can appear problematical; and we wonder how so many commentators, engrossed with verbal criticism, could so perversely mistake this spirit, and how even the learned Cruquius could adopt the supposition, that Horace, on account of an unfavourable judgment that Trebatius had passed upon his satires, intended to give him a secret wipe. We rather on the direct contrary perceive, that with' all their pretended difference of opinion, they are at the bottom in a perfectly good understanding together; and although the bard, (as is the manner of all those who, on affairs in which every man must follow his own advice, apply to others for theirs) had already taken his resolution before hand, ere he asks his adviser what he should do; yet at least he could have consulted no other oraculum juris, from whom he was more sure of being dismissed at last with the pleasing decision:

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Solventur risu tabulæ, tu missus abibis. Ter, uncti corpus habento!] Horace humorously makes Trebatius, as a learned counsellor, deliver his advice with affected solemnity in the authoritative style of a prætorian edict transnanto! - habento! Dacier at this place observes, from a passage in the fifth of Cicero's letters to Trebatius (Famil. vii. 10. where he is termed studiosissimus homo natundi) that Trebatius here speaks as an old lover of swimming, and recommends to Horace his favourite diætetic remedy as

nion would have been quite insupportable to him: "were not our parting beneficial to thee," he adds, "nothing could be more foolish than both of us: I in not immediately running back again to Rome after thee; thou in having not come flying hither. For, by Hercules, one serious or jocular conversation of ours (una nostra vel severa vel jocosa congressio) would be more interesting than all your foes and friends in Gaul."

*

tibi spondeo, probiorem hominem, meliorem virum, prudentiorem esse neminem. Accedit etiam quod familiam ducit in jure civili, singularis memoria, sunima scientia, &c. From the circumstance that he was then already at the head of a peculiar sect of jurists (which afterwards, through his principal pupil Antistius Labeo, grew into such consequence as to rival the sect of Ofilius and Ateius Capito) it is to be inferred, that in the year 699, when Cicero introduced him into the cohors amicorum Cæsaris, he was not so young as Melmoth in his translation of the 7th epistle makes him.

Trebatius, in the year 718 (in which this piece, at the very latest was composed) was indeed not above fourscore years old, as Dacier, from a mistake of the facetious expression of Cicero, mi vetule, infers: since at the time when Cicero so calls bim, he was ætate opportunissima for making his fortune with Cæsar. Cic. ad Famil. vii. 7. however safely admit, that he was somewhat turned of 50, and at least about 20 years older than Horace.

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