Page:The works of Horace - Christopher Smart.djvu/258

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240
EPISTLES OF HORACE.
BOOK I.

hensions and countenance? He that dreads the reverse of these, admires them almost in the same way as he that desires them; fear alike disturbs both ways: an unforeseen turn of things equally terrifies each of them: let a man rejoice or grieve, desire or fear; what matters it—if, whatever he perceives better or worse than his expectations, with downcast look he be stupefied in mind and body? Let the wise man bear the name of fool, the just of unjust; if he pursue virtue itself beyond proper bounds.

Go now, look with transport upon silver, and antique marble, and brazen statues, and the arts: admire gems, and Tyrian dyes: rejoice, that a thousand eyes are fixed upon you while you speak: industrious repair early to the forum, late to your house, that Mutus may not reap more grain [than you] from his lands gained in dowry, and (unbecoming, since he sprung from meaner parents) that he may not be an object of admiration to you rather than you to him. Whatever is in the earth, time will bring forth into open day light; will bury and hide things, that now shine brightest. When Agrippa’s portico,[1] and the Appian way, shall have beheld you well known; still it remains for you to go where Numa and Ancus are arrived. If your side or your reins are afflicted with an acute disease, seek a remedy from the disease. Would you live happily? Who would not? If virtue[2] alone can confer this, discarding pleasures, strenuously pursue it. Do you think virtue mere words, as a grove is trees? Be it your care that no other enter the port before you; that you lose not your traffic with Cibyra, with Bithynia. Let the round sum[3] of a thousand talents be completed; as many more; further, let a third thousand succeed, and the part which may square the heap. For why, sovereign money gives a wife with a [large] portion, and credit, and friends, and family,

  1. Porticus Agrippæ. It was called the arcade of good luck, Porticus boni eventûs, and situated near the Pantheon, at the entrance of the Campus Martius. This Epistle must have been written after the year 729, when the arcade was finished. Ed. Dubl.
  2. If riches and honors can not cure the body, much less can they cure the disorders of the soul. But if you think that religion and virtue are mere creatures of our imagination, then pursue the pleasures of life; give a loose to the passions; and enter into trade, that you may get wealth to support them. Fran.
  3. Rotundare and quadrare were terms of the Treasury to signify a complete sum. Cicero says, quadrare sestertia. Ed. Dubl.