Laudator Temporis Acti

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), "Horatius. A Lay Made about the Year of the City CCCLX," stanza 28, Lays of Ancient Rome:

To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods...

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), "Last Words On Translating Homer":

But Lord Macaulay's

Then out spake brave Horatius,
    The captain of the gate:
'To all the men upon this earth
    Death cometh soon or late.' ...

(and here, since I have been reproached with undervaluing Lord Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, let me frankly say that, to my mind, a man's power to detect the ring of false metal in those Lays is a good measure of his fitness to give an opinion about poetical matters at all)—I say, Lord Macaulay's

To all the men upon this earth
    Death cometh soon or late,

it is hard to read without a cry of pain.

Cf. Arnold's "On Translating Homer," Lecture II:

...one continual falsetto, like the pinchbeck Roman Ballads of Lord Macaulay...

Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944), Studies in Literature: Third Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), p. 191

Or we may take Macaulay's Lays. Matthew Arnold was utterly wrong in suggesting that these encourage bad taste, or that a liking for them supposes bad taste. So far as they go the Lays are sound, sane, clean as a whistle; and it is a poor game, anyhow, to discourage a boy's thrill over Horatius at the bridgehead and teach him to feel like a little prig...