British School at Rome: Papers of the British School at Rome (9.1920)

James Peddie Steele. ii
eyes in a line of his own composition followed by an apt quotation from
Horace {Ep. i. io, 50) :—-
Prospiciens Anienis aquas et Tiburis umbram,
Excepto quod non simul esses, cetera laetus.1
The Times for 13 November, 1912, included a letter from Dr. Steele
on the claims of Italian as a subject of study in England, in the course
of which he quoted part of a poem on the ‘ Praises of Venice,’ in which
every word is good Latin and good Italian, beginning with the lines :—■
Te saluto, alma Dea, Dea generosa,
0 gloria nostra, 0 Veneta regina !
One of his favourite authors was the modern Latin poet and his-
torian, George Buchanan. At his house in Florence he kept a folio
volume of that eminent Scotsman’s works on the top of his revolving
book-case. In a letter of 3 June, 1912, he told me that ' during pro-
fessional life,’ he had kept in touch with Latin and Greek ' only through
the Greek Bible and Buchanan’s Psalms.’ In view of the proposed
celebration in 1906 of the fourth centenary of Buchanan’s birth, he
offered to the alumni of the four universities of Scotland a prize of a
hundred guineas for the best essay on ‘ Sixteenth century Humanism,
as illustrated by the life and work of George Buchanan ’ ; the prize
was won by Mr. T. D. Robb, whose essay was published in the ' Glasgow
Quatercentenary Studies ’ in 1907. He also printed an original Alcaic
Ode in his honour.
His interest in the study of Horace prompted him to make a special
study of the Alcaic Odes, and from time to time he printed odes of his
own in that metre for private circulation. ' For some years before his
death,’ as has been stated by Professor Harrower of Aberdeen, ‘ his
friends had urged him to collect his verses into book form, but his taste
was so exacting and his modesty so great, that he found great difficulty
in complying with their wish.’ He had, however, collected several of
these odes, whichthe caused to be put into type. One of the most re-
markable is the ode in which. Horace welcomes Burns to the land of the
famous. Conducted by Horace, Burns is introduced first to Virgil;
and then to Catullus, Propertius, Ovid and Tibullus, and, last of all, to
1 Cp., in general, my letter on ‘ Dr. SteeLe of Florence,’ in the Literary Supplement
of The Times for 2 August, 1917, p. 369.