S_o with the rest.  Who will may trace_
  B_ehind the new each elder face_
      D_efined as clearly_;
  S_cience proceeds, and man stands still_;
  O_ur “world” today’s as good or ill_,—­
      A_s cultured_ (nearly),
  A_s yours was, Horace!  You alone_,
  U_nmatched, unmet, we have not known_.

But it is not only to comparatively independent creation that we must look.  The dynamic power of Horace is to be found at work even in the translation of the poet.  The fact that he has had more translators than any other poet, ancient or modern, is itself an evidence of inspirational quality, but a greater proof lies in the variety and character of his translators and the quality of their achievement.  A list of those who have felt in this way the stirrings of the Horatian spirit would include the names not only of many great men of letters, but of many great men of affairs, whose successes are to be counted among examples of genuine inspiration.  Translation at its best is not mere craftsmanship, but creation,—­in Roscommon’s lines,

  ’T_is true, composing is the Nobler Part_,
  B_ut good Translation is no easy Art_.

Theodore Martin’s rendering of I. 21, To a Jar of Wine, already quoted in part, is an example.  Another brilliant success is Sir Stephen E. De Vere’s I. 31, Prayer to Apollo, quoted in connection with the poet’s religious attitude.  No less felicitous are Conington’s spirited twelve lines, reproducing III. 26, Vixi puellis: 

VIXI PUELLIS NUPER IDONEUS

  F_or ladies’ love I late was fit_,
    A_nd good success my warfare blest_;
  B_ut now my arms, my lyre I quit_,
    A_nd hang them up to rust or rest_. 
  H_ere, where arising from the sea_
    S_tands Venus, lay the load at last_,
  L_inks, crowbars, and artillery_,
    T_hreatening all doors that dared be fast_. 
  O_ Goddess!  Cyprus owns thy sway_,
    A_nd Memphis, far from Thracian snow_: 
  R_aise high thy lash, and deal me, pray_,
    T_hat haughty Chloe just one blow!_

To translate in this manner is beyond all doubt to deserve the name of poet.

We may go still farther and claim for Horace that he has been a dynamic power in the art of translation, not only as it concerned his own poems, but in its concern of translation as a universal art.  No other poet presents such difficulties; no other poet has left behind him so long a train of disappointed aspirants.  “Horace remains forever the type of the untranslatable,” says Frederic Harrison.  Milton attempts the Pyrrha ode in unrhymed meter, and the light and bantering spirit of Horace disappears.  Milton is correct, polished, restrained, and pure, but heavy and cold.  An exquisite jeu d’esprit has been crushed to death: