Gross and malicious also are the ideas of the female sex and the passion
frequently encountered in the poems of Ovid; not so coarse and cynical,
indeed, as in Martial and Catullus, but sufficiently so to have
confounded the æsthetic judgment of the present generation, and spread
the notion that Virgil and Horace are greater poets than Ovid, whereas,
from the point of view of originality and imaginativeness, by far the
greatest of the three is Ovid, who also had much more influence on the
great writers of the best period of English literature than his rivals,
as Professor W. Y. Sellar has pointed out.
Both these circumstances are to be regretted—the undervaluation of
Ovid’s genius as well as his frequent frivolity on which it is based.
For Ovid was unquestionably the first poet who had a conception of the
higher possibilities of Love; in fact he was the greatest, and the only
great, Love-poet before Dante. His rare genius enabled him to anticipate
and depict the modern imaginative side of Love, even while he seemed
wholly devoted to the ancient sensual side. And, in reading his poems,
great caution is necessary, lest these _emotional anticipations_ of his
quasi-modern genius be supposed to have been common and prevalent among
less gifted Romans of his time.
Ovid was a profound observer and psychologist, and had a most subtle
knowledge of contemporary feminine nature; Although the principal object
of his _Ars Amoris_ is to teach men how to out-trump the natural cunning
of women, yet he does not forget his feminine readers, but gives them
numerous hints regarding the best way of fascinating fickle men. In the
_Remedia Amoris_ he describes various remedies for healing Cupid’s
wounds, most of which are approved to the present day; and the _Elegies_
and _Heroides_, too, are full of pretty modern touches and flashes of
insight. A few of these points may be briefly alluded to.
Coyness, although often manifested by the Roman women in almost as crude
a manner as among savages, does not appear to have been appreciated by
all of them at its full value; so the poet frequently counsels them as
to the more subtle ways of exercising it; one of his rules for women
being, that if they have offended an admirer, the best way to make him
forget it is to pretend to be offended themselves, which will restore
the equilibrium. How the consciousness of being beautiful makes a woman
courageous, coy, and cruel is shown in another place. That eyes have a
language plainer than speech is not a modern discovery; and that a short
absence favours, long absence kills, passion was also known to Ovid. He
warns men against the danger of feigning love, because this may end in
arousing genuine passion. Men are informed that courage and confidence
in one’s ability to win a woman are half the battle. And disappointed
lovers are assured that failure sometimes turns into an advantage, for
it may arouse pity, and love enter in the guise of friendship.
The emotional hyperbole and mixed feelings of Love are not strangers to
Ovid. He compares the tortures of Love to the berries on the trees in
number, to the shells on the sea-beach; for true Love, he says, always
creates anguish and pain; and “the sweetest torment on earth is woman.”
Among the companions of Cupid are “flattery and illusion.” But “even if
the beloved deceives me with false words, hope itself will yield me
great enjoyment,” could only have been written by one who realised the
imaginative side of love. And in another passage the poet directly
enjoins the necessity of intellectual culture to take the place of the
faded charms of youth.
Hero’s Letter to Leander in the _Heroides_ contains some pretty touches.
Leander has informed his love that when the storm prevents him from
swimming over to her, his mind yet hastens to meet her. But Hero is in
great trouble at his prolonged absence, and her deepest anguish is
Jealousy of a possible rival: in the absence of real grounds of
apprehension, her imagination invents them, as in a modern lover’s mind.
She suspects that his passion has lost the ardour which sustained him in
his difficult feat; and, too weak to quite swim over to him and back
again, and anxious to save him the double journey, she suggests that
they should meet in the middle of the sea, exchange a kiss, and each
return to the shore whence they came.
Is there anything more exquisitely romantic or pathetic in all modern
Love-poetry—in Shakspere, Heine, Burns, or Byron?