4. HORACE AND MODERN TIMES
THE REBIRTH OF HORACE
The national character of the _Aeneid_ gave Virgil a greater appeal than
Horace in ancient Roman times. In the Middle Age, his qualities as
story-teller and poet of the compassionate heart, together with his fame
as necromancer and prophet, made still more pronounced the favor in
which he was held. The ignorance of the earlier centuries of the period
could not appreciate Horace the logical, the intellectual, the
difficult, while the schematized religion and knowledge of the later
were not attracted by Horace the philosophical and individual.
With the Renaissance and its quickening of intellectual life in general,
and in particular the value it set upon personality and individualism,
the positions of the poets were reversed. For four hundred years now it
can hardly be denied that Horace rather than Virgil has been the
representative Latin poet of humanism.
This is not to say that Horace is greater than Virgil, or that he is as
great. Virgil is still the poet of stately movement and golden
narrative, the poet of the grand style. Owing to the greater facility
with which he may be read, he is also still the poet of the young and of
greater numbers.
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