ABSTRACT
Unlike Pindar, Horace was known throughout the Middle Ages. But imitation of him became common only in the sixteenth century. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, produced one of the earliest English versions of an Horatian ode. Michael Drayton’s odes testify to Horace’s influence; and the success of Jonson’s poem on Sir Henry Morison should not stop from seeing that in general the cool equanimity of Horace was closer to his poetic temperament than was the burning passion of Pindar. ‘An Ode to Mr Anthony Stafford to hasten him into the Country’, by Thomas Randolph, is a clear instance; and a more famous ‘son of Ben’, Robert Herrick, has left not only five odes so named by himself but also other poems that might well have been so named. Despite its brevity, the ‘Horatian Ode’ has an extraordinary comprehensiveness. Eighteenth-century Horatian odes tend to be composed in fairly brief and simple stanzas.
