DELICACY OF HORACE'S HEALTH.--HIS CHEERFULNESS.--LOVE OF BOOKS.--HIS
PHILOSOPHY PRACTICAL.--EPISTLE TO AUGUSTUS.--DEATH.
Horace had probably passed forty when the Epistle just quoted was
written. Describing himself at forty-four (Epistles, I. 20), he says
he was "prematurely grey,"--his hair, as we have just seen, having been
originally black,--adding that he is
"In person small, one to whom warmth is life,
In temper hasty, yet averse from strife."
His health demanded constant care; and we find him writing (Epistles, I.
15) to a friend, to ask what sort of climate and people are to be
found at Velia and Salernum,--the one a town of Lucania, the other of
Campania,--as he has been ordered by his doctor to give up his favourite
watering-place, Baiae, as too relaxing. This doctor was Antonius Musa, a
great apostle of the cold-water cure, by which he had saved the life
of Augustus when in extreme danger. The remedy instantly became
fashionable, and continued so until the Emperor's nephew, the young
Marcellus, died under the treatment. Horace's inquiries are just such as
a valetudinarian fond of his comforts would be likely to make:--
"Which place is best supplied with corn, d'ye think?
Have they rain-water or fresh springs to drink?
Their wines I care not for, when at my farm
I can drink any sort without much harm;
But at the sea I need a generous kind
To warm my veins, and pass into my mind,
Enrich me with new hopes, choice words supply,
And make me comely in a lady's eye.
Which tract is best for game? on which sea-coast
Urchins and other fish abound the most?
That so, when I return, my friends may see
A sleek Phaeacian [1] come to life in me:
These things you needs must tell me, Vala dear,
And I no less must act on what I hear." (C.)
[1] The Phaeacians were proverbially fond of good living.
Valetudinarian though he was, Horace maintains, in his later as in his
early writings, a uniform cheerfulness. This never forsakes him; for
life is a boon for which he is ever grateful. The gods have allotted him
an ample share of the means of enjoyment, and it is his own fault if he
suffers self-created worries or desires to vex him. By the questions he
puts to a friend in one of the latest of his Epistles (II. 2), we see
what was the discipline he applied to himself--
"You're not a miser: has all other vice
Departed in the train of avarice?
Or do ambitious longings, angry fret,
The terror of the grave, torment you yet?
Can you make sport of portents, gipsy crones,
Hobgoblins, dreams, raw head and bloody bones?
Do you count up your birthdays year by year,
And thank the gods with gladness and blithe cheer,
O'erlook the failings of your friends, and grow
Gentler and better as your sand runs low?" (C.)
And to this beautiful catalogue of what should be a good man's aims,
let us add the picture of himself which Horace gives us in another and
earlier Epistle (I. 18):--
"For me, when freshened by my spring's pure cold,
Which makes my villagers look pinched and old,
What prayers are mine? 'O may I yet possess
The goods I have, or, if heaven pleases, less!
Let the few years that Fate may grant me still
Be all my own, not held at others' will!
Let me have books, and stores for one year hence,
Nor make my life one flutter of suspense!'
But I forbear; sufficient 'tis to pray
To Jove for what he gives and takes away;
Grant life, grant fortune, for myself I'll find
That best of blessings--a contented mind." (C.)
"Let me have books!" These play a great part in Horace's life. They were
not to him, what Montaigne calls them, "a languid pleasure," but rather
as they were to Wordsworth--
"A substantial world, both fresh and good,
Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness may grow."
Next to a dear friend, they were Horace's most cherished companions. Not
for amusement merely, and the listless luxury of the self-wrapt lounger,
were they prized by him, but as teachers to correct his faults, to
subdue his evil propensities, to develop his higher nature, to purify
his life (Epistles, I. 1), and to help him towards attaining "that best
of blessings, a contented mind:"--
"Say, is your bosom fevered with the fire
Of sordid avarice or unchecked desire?
Know there are spells will help you to allay
The pain, and put good part of it away.
You're bloated by ambition? take advice;
Yon book will ease you, if you read it _thrice_.
Run through the list of faults; whate'er you be,
Coward, pickthank, spitfire, drunkard, debauchee,
Submit to culture patiently, you'll find
Her charms can humanise the rudest mind." (C.)
Horace's taste was as catholic in philosophy as in literature. He was
of no school, but sought in the teachings of them all such principles
as would make life easier, better, and happier: "_Condo et compono, quae
mox depromere possum_"--
"I search and search, and where I find I lay
The wisdom up against a rainy day." (C.)
He is evermore urging his friends to follow his example;--to resort like
himself to these "spells,"--the _verba et voces_, by which he brought
his own restless desires and disquieting aspirations into subjection,
and fortified himself in the bliss of contentment. He saw they were
letting the precious hours slip from their grasp,--hours that might have
been so happy, but were so weighted with disquiet and weariness; and he
loved his friends too well to keep silence on this theme. We, like them,
it has been admirably said, [Footnote: Étude Morale et Littéraire sur
les Epitres d'Horace; par J. A. Estienne. Paris, 1851. P.212.]
are "possessed by the ambitions, the desires, the weariness, the
disquietudes, which pursued the friends of Horace. If he does not always
succeed with us, any more than with them, in curing us of these, he at
all events soothes and tranquillises us in the moments which we spend
with him. He augments, on the other hand, the happiness of those who are
already happy; and there is not one of us but feels under obligation to
him for his gentle and salutary lessons,--_verbaque et voces_,--for
his soothing or invigorating balsams, as much as though this gifted
physician of soul and body had compounded them specially for ourselves."
When he published the First Book of Epistles he seems to have thought
the time come for him to write no more lyrics (Epistles, I. 1):--
"So now I bid my idle songs adieu,
And turn my thoughts to what is just and true." (C.)
Graver habits, and a growing fastidiousness of taste, were likely to
give rise to this feeling. But a poet can no more renounce his lyre than
a painter his palette; and his fine "Secular Hymn," and many of the Odes
of the Fourth Book, which were written after this period, prove that,
so far from suffering any decay in poetical power, he had even gained
in force of conception, and in that _curiosa felicitas_, that exquisite
felicity of expression, which has been justly ascribed to him by
Petronius. Several years afterwards, when writing of the mania for
scribbling verse which had beset the Romans, as if, like Dogberry's
reading and writing, the faculty of writing poetry came by nature, he
alludes to his own sins in the same direction with a touch of his old
irony (Epistles, II. 1):--
"E'en I, who vow I never write a verse,
Am found as false as Parthia, maybe worse;
Before the dawn I rouse myself and call
For pens and parchment, writing-desk, and all.
None dares be pilot who ne'er steered a craft;
No untrained nurse administers a draught;
None but skilled workmen handle workmen's tools;
But verses all men scribble, wise or fools." (C.)
Or, as Pope with a finer emphasis translates his words--
"But those who cannot write, and those who can,
All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble to a man."
It was very well for Horace to laugh at his own inability to abstain
from verse-making, but, had he been ever so much inclined to silence,
his friends would not have let him rest. Some wanted an Ode, some an
Epode, some a Satire (Epistles, II. 2)--
"Three hungry guests for different dishes call,
And how's one host to satisfy them all?" (C.)
And there was one friend, whose request it was not easy to deny. This
was Augustus. Ten years after the imperial power had been placed in his
hands (B.C. 17) he resolved to celebrate a great national festival in
honour of his own successful career. Horace was called on to write
an Ode, known in his works as "The Secular Hymn," to be sung upon the
occasion by twenty-seven boys and twenty-seven girls of noble birth.
"The Ode," says Macleane, "was sung at the most solemn part of the
festival, while the Emperor was in person offering sacrifice at the
second hour of the night, on the river side, upon three altars, attended
by the fifteen men who presided over religious affairs. The effect must
have been very beautiful, and no wonder if the impression on Horace's
feelings was strong and lasting." He was obviously pleased at being
chosen for the task, and not without pride,--a very just one,--at the
way it was performed. In the Ode (IV. 6), which seems to have been a
kind of prelude to the "Secular Hymn," he anticipates that the virgins
who chanted it will on their marriage-day be proud to recall the fact
that they had taken part in this oratorio under his baton:--
"When the cyclical year brought its festival days,
My voice led the hymn of thanksgiving and praise,
So sweet, the immortals to hear it were fain,
And 'twas HORACE THE POET who taught me the strain!"
It was probably at the suggestion of Augustus, also, that he wrote the
magnificent Fourth and Fourteenth Odes of the Fourth Book. These were
written, however, to celebrate great national victories, and were
pitched in the high key appropriate to the theme. But this was not
enough for Augustus. He wanted something more homely and human, and
was envious of the friends to whom Horace had addressed the charming
Epistles of the First Book, a copy of which the poet had sent to him
by the hands of a friend (Epistles, I. 13), but only to be given to the
Caesar,
"If he be well, and in a happy mood,
And ask to have them,--be it understood."
And so he wrote to Horace--the letter is quoted by Suetonius--"Look
you, I take it much amiss that none of your writings of this class are
addressed to me. Are you afraid it will damage your reputation with
posterity to be thought to have been one of my intimates?" Such a
letter, had Horace been a vain man or an indiscreet, might have misled
him into approaching Augustus with the freedom he courted. But he fell
into no such error. There is perfect frankness throughout the whole of
the Epistle, with which he met the Emperor's request (II. 1), but the
social distance between them is maintained with an emphasis which it is
impossible not to feel. The Epistle opens by skilfully insinuating that,
if the poet has not before addressed the Emperor, it is that he may not
be suspected of encroaching on the hours which were due to the higher
cares of state:--
"Since you, great Caesar, singly wield the charge
Of Rome's concerns, so manifold and large,--
With sword and shield the commonwealth protect,
With morals grace it, and with laws correct,--
The bard, methinks, would do a public wrong,
Who, having gained your ear, should keep it long." (C.)
It is not while they live, he continues, that, in the ordinary case, the
worth of the great benefactors of mankind is recognised. Only after
they are dead, do misunderstanding and malice give way to admiration and
love. Rome, it is true, has been more just. It has appreciated, and it
avows, how much it owes to Augustus. But the very same people who have
shown themselves wise and just in this are unable to extend the same
principle to living literary genius. A poet must have been long dead and
buried, or he is nought. The very flaws of old writers are cried up as
beauties by pedantic critics, while the highest excellence in a writer
of the day meets with no response.
"Had Greece but been as carping and as cold
To new productions, what would now be old?
What standard works would there have been, to come
Beneath the public eye, the public thumb?" (C.)
Let us then look the facts fairly in the face; let us "clear our minds
of cant." If a poem be bad in itself, let us say so, no matter how old
or how famous it be; if it be good, let us be no less candid, though the
poet be still struggling into notice among us.
Thanks, he proceeds, to our happy times, men are now devoting themselves
to the arts of peace. "_Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit_"--"Her
ruthless conqueror Greece has overcome." The Romans of the better class,
who of old thought only of the triumphs of the forum, or of turning over
their money profitably, are now bitten by a literary furor.
"Pert boys, prim fathers, dine in wreaths of bay,
And 'twixt the courses warble out the lay." (C.)
But this craze is no unmixed evil; for, take him all in all, your poet
can scarcely be a bad fellow. Pulse and second bread are a banquet
for him. He is sure not to be greedy or close-fisted; for to him, as
Tennyson in the same spirit says, "Mellow metres are more than ten per
cent." Neither is he likely to cheat his partner or his ward. He may cut
a poor figure in a campaign, but he does the state good service at home.
"His lessons form the child's young lips, and wean
The boyish ear from words and tales unclean;
As years roll on, he moulds the ripening mind,
And makes it just and generous, sweet and kind;
He tells of worthy precedents, displays
The examples of the past to after days,
Consoles affliction, and disease allays." (C.)
Horace then goes on to sketch the rise of poetry and the drama among the
Romans, glancing, as he goes, at the perverted taste which was making
the stage the vehicle of mere spectacle, and intimating his own high
estimate of the dramatic writer in words which Shakespeare seems to have
been meant to realise:--
"That man I hold true master of his art,
Who with fictitious woes can wring my heart;
Can rouse me, soothe me, pierce me with the thrill
Of vain alarm, and, as by magic skill,
Bear me to Thebes, to Athens, where you will." (C.)
Here, as elsewhere, Horace treats dramatic writing as the very highest
exercise of poetic genius; and, in dwelling on it as he does, he
probably felt sure of carrying with him the fullest sympathies of
Augustus. For among his varied literary essays, the Emperor, like most
dilettanti, had tried his hand upon a tragedy. Failing, however, to
satisfy himself, he had the rarer wisdom to suppress it. The story of
his play was that of Ajax, and when asked one day how it was getting
on, he replied that his hero "had finished his career upon a
sponge!"--"_Ajacem suum in spongio incubuisse_."
From the drama Horace proceeds to speak of the more timid race of
bards, who, "instead of being hissed and acted, would be read," and who,
himself included, are apt to do themselves harm in various ways through
over-sensitiveness or simplicity. Thus, for example, they will intrude
their works on Augustus, when he is busy or tired; or wince, poor
sensitive rogues, if a friend ventures to take exception to a verse; or
bore him by repeating, unasked, one or other of their pet passages,
or by complaints that their happiest thoughts and most highly-polished
turns escape unnoticed; or, worse folly than all, they will expect to
be sent for by Augustus the moment he comes across their poems, and told
"to starve no longer, and go writing on." Yet, continues Horace, it is
better the whole tribe should be disappointed, than that a great
man's glory should be dimmed, like Alexander's, by being sung of by a
second-rate poet. And wherefore should it be so, when Augustus has at
command the genius of such men as Virgil and Varius? They, and they
only, are the fit laureates of the Emperor's great achievements; and in
this way the poet returns, like a skilful composer, to the _motif_ with
which he set out--distrust of his own powers, which has restrained,
and must continue to restrain, him from pressing himself and his small
poetic powers upon the Emperor's notice.
In the other poems which belong to this period--the Second Epistle of
the Second Book, and the Epistle to the Pisos, generally known as the
_Ars Poetica_--Horace confines himself almost exclusively to purely
literary topics. The dignity of literature was never better vindicated
than in these Epistles. In Horace's estimation it was a thing always to
be approached with reverence. Mediocrity in it was intolerable. Genius
is much, but genius without art will not win immortality; "for a good
poet's made, as well as born." There must be a working up to the highest
models, a resolute intolerance of anything slight or slovenly, a fixed
purpose to put what the writer has to express into forms at once the
most beautiful, suggestive, and compact. The mere trick of literary
composition Horace holds exceedingly cheap. Brilliant nonsense finds
no allowance from him. Truth--truth in feeling and in thought--must be
present, if the work is to have any value. "_Scribendi recte sapere est
et principium et fons_,"--
"Of writing well, be sure the secret lies
In wisdom, therefore study to be wise." (C.)
Whatever the form of composition, heroic, didactic, lyric, or dramatic,
it must be pervaded by unity of feeling and design; and no style is
good, or illustration endurable, which, either overlays or does not
harmonise with the subject in hand.
The Epistle to the Pisos does not profess to be a complete exposition of
the poet's art. It glances only at small sections of that wide theme.
So far as it goes, it is all gold, full of most instructive hints for a
sound critical taste and a pure literary style. It was probably meant to
cure the younger Piso of that passion for writing verse which had, as we
have seen, spread like a plague among the Romans, and which made a
visit to the public baths a penance to critical ears,--for there the
poetasters were always sure of an audience,--and added new terrors
to the already sufficiently formidable horrors of the Roman banquet.
[Footnote: This theory has been worked out with great ability by
the late M. A. Baron, in his 'Epitre d'Horace aux Pisons sur l'Art
Poétique'--Bruxelles, 1857; which is accompanied by a masterly
translation and notes of great value.] When we find an experienced
critic like Horace urging young Piso, as he does, to keep what he writes
by him for nine years, the conclusion is irresistible, that he hoped
by that time the writer would see the wisdom of suppressing his crude
lucubrations altogether. No one knew better than Horace that first-class
work never wants such protracted mellowing.
Soon, after this poem was written the great palace on the Esquiline lost
its master. He died (B.C. 8) in the middle of the year, bequeathing his
poet-friend to the care of Augustus in the words "_Horati Flacci, ut
mei, esto memor_,"--"Bear Horace in your memory as you would myself."
But the legacy was not long upon the emperor's hands. Seventeen years
before, Horace had written:
"Think not that I have sworn a bootless oath;
Yes, we shall go, shall go,
Hand linked in hand, where'er thou leadest, both
The last sad road below."
The lines must have rung in the poet's ears like a sad refrain. The
Digentia lost its charm; he could not see its crystal waters for the
shadows of Charon's rueful stream. The prattle of his loved Bandusian
spring could not wean his thoughts from the vision of his other self
wandering unaccompanied along that "last sad road." We may fancy that
Horace was thenceforth little seen in his accustomed haunts. He who had
so often soothed the sorrows of other bereaved hearts, answered with a
wistful smile to the friendly consolations of the many that loved him.
His work was done. It was time to go away. Not all the skill of Orpheus
could recall him whom he had lost. The welcome end came sharply and
suddenly; and one day, when, the bleak November wind was whirling down
the oak-leaves on his well-loved brook, the servants of his Sabine
farm heard that they should no more see the good, cheery master, whose
pleasant smile and kindly word had so often made their labours light.
There was many a sad heart, too, we may be sure, in Rome, when the
wit who never wounded, the poet who ever charmed, the friend who never
failed, was laid in a corner of the Esquiline, close to the tomb of his
"dear knight Maecenas." He died on the 27th November B.C. 8, the kindly,
lonely man, leaving to Augustus what little he possessed. One would fain
trust his own words were inscribed upon his tomb, as in the supreme hour
the faith they expressed was of a surety strong within his heart,--
NON OMNIS MORIAR.