I decided the other night to pull off the shelf my old Shorey and Laing edition of Horace, Odes and Epodes.
Horace is a classical Latin author whose esteem has fallen over the past century, the platitudes that made him such a favorite among the Georgians and Victorians seemed hollow as the old order collapsed in an era of wars and revolutions. Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est — currently receiving greater attention as the centenary of the start of World War I approaches — marked the change in Horace's reputation.
In rereading Horace the other night, I am still deeply impressed by the technical skill and wit in his verse, and who wouldn't find attractive a sentiment such as Beatus ille qui procul negotiis? (I might someday have that phrase inscribed somewhere in the house.) But Horace's sentiments, while they may occasionally be reckoned pleasant and proper, are not particularly profound. The moral struggles at the heart of Vergil's poetry, and the passions and regrets woven through Ovid's works, elevate the writings of those contemporaries over the Horace's technical mastery.
Horace was one of the great poets of Augustan literature, and his reputation has deservedly traveled per liquidum aethera, but it understandable why 21st-century readers do not find him as absorbing as Ovid or Vergil.