Your tear shall dew my yet warm pyre,
Your bard and friend."
And what numbers of men have taken to their hearts from the same ode the famous
Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes
Angulus ridet,—
Yonder little nook of earth
Beyond all others smiles on me,—
and expressed through its perfect phrase the love they bear their own beloved nook of earth. "Happy Horace!" writes Sainte-Beuve on the margin of his edition, "what a fortune has been his! Why, because he once expressed in a few charming verses his fondness for the life of the country and described his favorite corner of earth, the lines composed for his own pleasure and for the friend to whom he addressed them have laid hold on the memory of all men and have become so firmly lodged there that one can conceive no others, and finds only those when he feels the need of praising his own beloved retreat!"
To speak of sterner virtues, what a source of inspiration to righteousness and constancy men have found in the apt and undying phrases of Horace! "Cornelius de Witt, when confronting the murderous mob; Condorcet, perishing in the straw of his filthy cell; Herrick, at his far-away old British revels; Leo, during his last days at the Vatican, and a thousand others," strengthened their resolution by repeating Iustum et tenacem:
"The man of firm and noble soul