Sed ne relictis, Musa, procax iocis
Ceæ retractes munera neniæ:
Mecum Dionæo sub antro
Quære modos leviore plectro.
Ed.
[EH] I have been unable to find any allusion to Simonides in Virgil. But probably Wordsworth merely refers to the numerous lost books of Greek and Latin literature; and wonders if these treasures (of all kinds), which Horace and Virgil knew and prized, would ever be recovered by us. Some of Horace's most significant references to the literature of Greece, and of the past, occur in Odes III. 3; iv. 2 and 3.
Since the above was written, the late Professor William Sellar wrote to me:—"I do not find any special reference to Simonides in Virgil. Besides the passages you refer to in Horace, there are two or three lines in the Odes, which he has translated from Simonides, e.g.
Est et fideli tuta silentio
Merces: (Carmina III. ii. 25)
but I think Wordsworth's reference is quite vague. It is quite appropriate so far, that it was only in the Augustan age that the Romans got back to the great sources of Greek poetry, and one cause of the superiority of Virgil and Horace to all their contemporaries was that they did this much more thoroughly than the others, and appreciated the purest and oldest of these sources. Horace's special study was of course the whole range of Greek lyric poetry. He no doubt acknowledges his relation to Sappho and Alcæus more than to Simonides, but he recognises him as well as Pindar among the Masters of lyrical poetry. So far as one can judge by the fragments of Simonides' lyrical poetry, I should say that his characteristics were tenderness, piety, and purity; and, in these respects, he has a strong affinity with Virgil, which may explain their association together by Wordsworth. The passage quoted by you is very interesting, as showing how Wordsworth—the most essentially modern and least conventional of poets—regarded Virgil and Horace, who have often been disparaged as types of conventionalism.... It would be very interesting to bring together the various passages in which Wordsworth draws from the sources of classical poetry. His reminiscences of Latin poetry seem to me to have a peculiar freshness, different from the more direct reproduction of Milton, Gray, etc."—Ed.