As authors of carefully wrought collections of mostly short lyric poetry dealing with topics such as love, death, nature and patriotism, Quintus Horatius Flaccus and Alfred Edward Housman naturally invite comparison; but unlike many lyric poets, Housman was also one of the leading classical scholars of his day, who worked on the text of Horace's poems and translated and lectured on the works of the Roman poet – and this engaging new study has the distinction of being the first analysis to make use of Housman's unpublished lecture notes on Horace, from lectures delivered during the former's tenure of the Kennedy Professorship of Latin at Cambridge. Over the course of ten chapters, G. argues that ‘a close reading of each author's writings – and in particular of their short, lyric poetry – can illuminate the other's to a much greater extent than has been generally appreciated’ (p. ix), that ‘Housman's verse contains a deep undercurrent of Horatian feeling’ (p. 13) and that ‘it is possible, by reflecting on Housman's thought and literary technique, to come to understand Horace better than we might otherwise do’ (ibid.).

The first eight chapters offer detailed readings of selected passages from the work of each of the two poets. Following an introduction which outlines a number of affinities and differences between the poet of Pyrrha and the author of A Shropshire Lad, and addresses some preliminary questions of literary interpretation, the second chapter concentrates principally on Horace, arguing that the Odes display more of Housman's characteristic pessimism than has sometimes been acknowledged. The following chapter is devoted to Horace's spring odes, 1.4 and 4.7, the latter of which Housman famously translated and is said to have considered ‘the most beautiful poem in ancient literature’, while Chapter 4 examines the vexed issue of Horace's attitude to religion, which G. interprets as consistently sceptical. Despite occasional nods to Housman in the three preceding chapters, the later poet finally takes centre stage in Chapter 5, where his treatment of political themes is seen as characterised by a ‘double irony’ later detected also by G. in Horace's imperial lyrics (one wonders what Eduard Fraenkel, whose Horace notoriously contains the index entry ‘“Irony” last expedient of despairing commentators’, would have made of this); attention is also paid to the scornful vehemence of Housman's engagement with religious subjects, which G. tentatively suggests might represent ‘an inverted form of belief’ (p. 85). After a return to Horace, this time to the explicitly political odes of the third and fourth books, in Chapter 6, the seventh chapter explores ‘questions of integrity and consistency’ in the works of each author, with particular reference to the ‘pathetic fallacy’ in the case of Housman. Chapter 8 deals with matters of ‘form and content’ (G.'s contention is that any essential incongruity between these two features is impossible, on the grounds that ‘any form will permit any tonal development of any subject matter’, p. 163; but can certain forms not carry particular associations? If not, some kinds of literary parody would surely lose much of their force), while the final two chapters turn to Housman's activities in the fields of literary criticism and Horatian scholarship.

G.'s keen familiarity with and lively enthusiasm for the texts he discusses are apparent throughout. He is not afraid to set himself in opposition to current critical doctrines: assertions such as ‘[T]he meaning of a work of literature is fully fixed at the time of its production, and … the work does not depend for its semantic determinacy on future readings and acts of interpretation … There is no aspect of the authentic meaning of a work of literature that is not at least available to its contemporary audience’ (p. 13; original emphasis) will no doubt raise eyebrows in some quarters, and not everyone will agree that Horace's account of his brush with mortality in the episode of the falling tree in Odes 2.13 ‘has the ring of truth, and critics are not wrong to rely on their experience and judgement in arriving at assessments of the likely autobiographical import of such recounted events; nor is it the case … that such assessments are irrelevant to a consideration of the aesthetic merits of a poem’ (p. 11). G.'s views on some of these issues are expounded more systematically in his Language, Truth, and Literature (2013), the preface to which should be required reading for anyone contemplating an academic career in the UK – but one need not share G.'s critical assumptions to derive benefit from his analyses of the poetry examined here. Even where one is inclined to disagree with his interpretations of particular passages, G. shows himself a thoughtful and sensitive reader of both Horace and Housman, and the thoroughness of his engagement with the corpus of Horatian commentary in the sections devoted to the Roman poet means that students of Horace will need to take account of these informed and attentive readings, whether or not they are ultimately persuaded by G.'s inferences.

For all its merits, this stimulating reassessment exhibits a number of problems, the most serious of which relate to structure and focus. All too often the analysis of Horace, in particular, is presented as a series of interesting textual points which require elucidation, rather than adding to the cumulative thrust of the overarching argument. Chapter 5 is not framed as a developing thesis, and offers no conclusion, not even of a provisional nature; despite the chapter's title, its final section (pp. 86–9) is concerned with neither religion nor politics. Likewise significant stretches of the chapter on ‘form and content’ (see especially pp. 156–60, 166–72) do not touch directly upon either of those themes, and I cannot help feeling that pp. 180–9 do not belong in this book – and certainly not at the point in the book at which they appear. Also problematic, in my view, is G.'s unsympathetic and peremptory treatment of Housman's expressions of his ‘views’ on literary criticism. For G., Housman's Cambridge inaugural contains ‘some quite extraordinary opinions about literary criticism’ (p. 176); the scholar-poet's professions are dismissed as ‘absurd’ and ‘ridiculous’ (pp. 173, 176–7), and his reasoning branded ‘obtuseness’ (p. 178). Most scathingly, G. observes that ‘Housman has simply not sat down and thought sensibly about what he is saying; a moment's reflection reveals to any normally intelligent person that the above is nonsense’ (p. 177). The virulence of these denunciations should give us pause: can we really suppose that when faced with an occasion of such moment, prestige and public exposure as his inaugural lecture as Professor of Latin at Cambridge, a scholar of Housman's calibre did not think seriously about what he was going to say? Is it plausible simply to leap to the conclusion that ‘Housman's failure to give due recognition in his critical and theoretical writings to the mutualism that exists between textual and literary criticism does indeed mark a certain failure of intelligence’ (p. 179)? Given the obviousness of the point, as stressed by G., can Housman really have failed to notice it – or should we perhaps consider other possibilities? G. offers a stark dichotomy, ‘Stupid or dishonest – that appears to be the choice’ (p. 180); but is the choice really so restricted? Could Housman's pronouncements not be ironic, or provocative or consciously paradoxical? Are the mock-modesty of the new incumbent and the deliberate overstatement of rhetorical polemic necessarily the same thing as dishonesty? Why may Horace be allowed recourse to self-deprecating irony in discussing matters of literary criticism, when he refuses for himself the title of poet (Serm. 1.4.39–40), but not Housman, when he declines to add his own name to the ranks of literary critics in the course of a literary-critical disquisition?

It is hard not to feel that the earnest, literal-minded response of the professional philosopher fails to do full justice to Housman's inflammatory baiting of his contemporaries; but if this is one of the more questionable aspects of G.'s study, there is none the less much of interest and value across the volume as a whole for readers of Horace, of Housman and of both.