_i_. THE TRANSLATOR'S IDEAL
Besides the invisible, and the greatest, effect of Horace in the
moulding of character in literature, is the visible effect in literary
creation. His inspiration wrought by performance as well as by precept.
The numerous essays in verse and prose on the art of letters which have
been prompted by the _Ars Poetica_ are themselves examples of this
effect. They are not alone, however, though perhaps the most apparent.
The purer literature of the lyric also inspired to creation, with
results that are far more charming, if less substantial.
In the case of the lyric inspired by the _Odes_, as well as in the case
of the critical essay inspired by the _Ars Poetica_, it is not always
easy to distinguish adaptation or imitation from actual creation.
Bernardo Tasso's _Ode_, for example, and Giovanni Prati's _Song of
Hygieia_, while really independent poems, are so charged with Horatian
matter and spirit that one hesitates to call them original. The same is
true of the many inspirations traceable to the famous _Beatus Ille
Epode_, which, with such _Odes_ as _The Bandusian Spring_, _Pyrrha_,
_Phidyle_, and _Chloe_, have captured the fancy of modern poets. Pope's
_Solitude_, on the other hand, while surely an inspiration of the second
_Epode_, shows hardly a mark affording proof of the fact.
To some of the most manifest imitations and adaptations, it is
impossible to deny originality. The _Fifth Book of Horace_, by Kipling
and Graves, is an example. Thackeray's delightful _Ad Ministram_ is
another example which must be classed as adaptation, yet such is its
spontaneity that not to see in it an inspiration would be stupid and
unjust: