He looks down from his post upon the life of men with as clear vision as
Lucretius, whom he admires:
Nothing is sweeter than to dwell in the lofty citadels secure in the
wisdom of the sages, thence to look down upon the rest of mankind
blindly wandering in mistaken paths in the search for the way of life,
striving one with another in the contest of wits, emulous in distinction
of birth, night and day straining with supreme effort at length to
arrive at the heights of power and become lords of the world.
Farther, Horace is not merely the stander-by contemplating the game in
which objective mankind is engaged. He is also a spectator of himself.
Horace the poet-philosopher contemplates Horace the man with the same
quiet amusement with which he surveys the human family of which he is an
inseparable yet detachable part. It is the universal aspect of Horace
which is the object of his contemplation,--Horace playing a part
together with the rest of mankind in the infinitely diverting _comedie
humaine_. He uses himself, so to speak, for illustrative purposes,--to
point the moral of the genuine; to demonstrate the indispensability of
hard work as well as genius; to afford concrete proof of the possibility
of happiness without wealth.
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