T_he other coming is Horace the satirist_.
With Petrarch, the first great figure to emerge from the obscure vistas
of medievalism, the case was different. The first modern who really
understood the classics understood Horace also, and did him greater
justice than fell to his lot again for many generations. The copy of
Horace's works which he acquired on November 28, 1347, remained by him
until on the 18th of July in 1374 the venerable poet and scholar was
found dead at the age of seventy among his books. Fond as he was of
Virgil, Cicero, and Seneca, he had an intimate and affectionate
knowledge of Horace, to whom there are references in all his works, and
from whom he enriched his philosophy of life. Even his greatest and most
original creation, the _Canzoniere_, is not without marks of Horace, and
their fewness here, as well as their character, are a sign that
Petrarch's familiarity was not of the artificial sort, but based on real
assimilation of the poet. His letter to Horace begins:
Salve o dei lirici modi sovrano,
Salve o degl' Itali gloria ed onor,--
H_ail! Sovereign of the lyric measure_,
H_ail! Italy's great pride and treasure_;
and, after recounting the qualities of the poet, and acknowledging him
as guide, teacher, and lord, concludes:
Tanto è l' amor che a te m'avvince; tanto
È degli affetti miei donno il tuo canto--
S_o great the love that bindeth me to thee_;
S_o ruleth in my heart thy minstrelsy_.
But Petrarch is a torch-bearer so far in advance of his successors that
the illumination almost dies out again before they arrive. It was not
until well into the fifteenth century that the long and numerous line of
imitators, translators, adapters, parodists, commentators, editors, and
publishers began, which has continued to the present day. The
modern-Latin poets in all countries were the first, but their efforts
soon gave place to attempts in the vernacular tongues. The German Eduard
Stemplinger, in his _Life of the Horatian Lyric Since the Renaissance_,
published in 1906, knows 90 English renderings of the entire _Odes_ of
Horace, 70 German, 100 French, and 48 Italian. Some are in prose, some
even in dialect. The poet of Venusia is made a Burgundian, a Berliner,
and even a Platt-deutsch. All of these are attempts to transfuse Horace
into the veins of modern life, and are significant of their authors'
conviction as to the vitalizing power of the ancient poet. No author
from among the classics has been so frequently translated as Horace.
Petrarch, as we have seen, led the modern world by a century in the
appreciation of Horace. It was in 1470, ninety-six years after the
laureate's death, that Italy achieved the first printed edition of the
poet, which was also the first in the world. This was followed in 1474
by a printing of Acro's notes, grown by accretion since their origin in
the third century into a much larger body of commentary. In 1476 was
published the first Horace containing both text and notes, which were
those of Acro and Porphyrio, and in 1482 appeared Landinus's notes, the
first printed commentary on Horace by a modern humanist. Landinus was
prefaced by a Latin poem of Politian's, who, with Lorenzo dei Medici,
was a sort of arbiter in taste, and who produced in 1500 a Horace of his
own. Mancinelli, who, like many other scholars of the time, gave public
readings and interpretations of Horace and other classics, in 1492
dedicated to the celebrated enthusiast Pomponius Laetus an edition of
the _Odes_, _Epodes_, and _Secular Hymn_, in which he so successfully
integrated the comments of Acro, Porphyrio, Landinus, and himself, that
for the next hundred years it remained the most authoritative Horace. In
Italy, between 1470 and 1500, appeared no fewer than 44 editions of the
poet, while in France there were four and in Germany about ten. Venice
alone published, from 1490 to 1500, thirteen editions containing text
and commentary by "The Great Four," as they were called. The famous
Aldine editions began to appear in 1501. Besides Venice, Florence, and
Rome, Ferrara came early to be a brilliant center of Horatian study,
Lionel d'Este and the Guarini preparing the way for the more
distinguished, if less scholastic, discipleship of Ariosto and Tasso.
Naples and the South displayed little activity.
Roughly speaking, the later fifteenth century was the age of manuscript
recovery, commentary, and publication; the sixteenth, the century of
translation, imitation, and ambitious attempt to rival the ancients on
their own ground; the seventeenth and eighteenth, the centuries of
critical erudition, with many commentaries and versions and much
discussion of the theory of translation; and the nineteenth, the century
of scientific revision and reconstruction. In the last movement, Italy
had comparatively small part. Among her translators during these
centuries must be mentioned Ludovico Dolce, whose excellent rendering of
the _Satires_ and _Epistles_ was a product of the early sixteenth;
Scipione Ponsa, whose faithful _Ars Poetica_ in _ottava rima_ appeared
in the first half of the seventeenth; the advocate Borgianelli, whose
brilliant version of Horace entire belongs to the second half; and the
Venetian Abriani, whose complete _Odes_ in the original meters, the
first achievement of the kind, was a not unsuccessful performance which
has taken its place among Horatian curiosities. Among literary critics
are the names of Gravina, whose _Della Ragione Poetica_, full of sound
scholarship and refreshing good sense, appeared in 1716 at Naples; Volpi
of Padua, author of a treatise on Satire, in which the merits of
Lucilius, Horace, Juvenal, and Persius were effectively discussed; and
their followers, Algarotti the Venetian and Vannetti of Roveredo, in
whom Horatian criticism reached its greatest altitude.
If we look outside the field of scholastic endeavor and academic
imitation, and attempt to discern the effect of Horace in actual
literary creation, we are confronted by the difficulty of determining
exactly where imitation and adaptation cease to be artificial, and reach
the degree of individuality and independence which entitles them to the
name of originality. If we are to include here such authors as are
manifestly indebted to suggestion or inspiration from Horace, and yet
are quite as manifestly modern and Italian, we may note at least the
names of Petrarch, already mentioned; the famous Cardinal Bembo, whose
ideal, to write "thoughtfully and little," was a reflection of Horace;
Ariosto, whose satires are in the Horatian spirit, and who, complaining
to his brother Alessandro of the attitude of his patron, Cardinal
Hippolyto d'Este, recites the story of the fox and the weasel, changing
them to donkey and rat; Chiabrera of Savona, who wrote satire
honeycombed with Horatian allusion and permeated by Horatian spirit, and
who, in Leopardi's opinion, had he lived in a different age, would have
been a second Horace; Testi of Ferrara, whom Ariosto's enthusiasm for
Horace so kindled that he gravitated from the modern spirit to the
classical; Parini of Milan, whose poem, _Alla Musa_, is Horatian in
spirit and phrase; Leopardi, who composed a parody on the _Ars Poetica_;
Prati, who transmuted _Epode II_ into the _Song of Hygieia_; and
Carducci, whose use of Horatian meters, somewhat strained, is due to the
conscious desire of making Italy's past greatness serve the present. The
names of Bernardo Tasso and Torquato Tasso might be added.
It is not impossible, also, that the musical debt of the world to Italy
is in a measure owing to Horace. Whether the music which accompanied the
_Odes_ as they emerged from the Middle Age was only the invention of
monks, or the survival of actual Horatian music from antiquity, is a
question hardly to be answered; but the setting of Horace to music in
the Renaissance was not without an influence. In 1507, Tritonius
composed four-voice parts for twenty-two different meters of Horace and
other poets. In 1526, Michael engaged in the same effort, and in 1534
Senfl developed the youthful compositions of Tritonius. All this was for
school purposes. With the beginnings of Italian opera, these
compositions, in which the music was without measure and held strictly
to the service of poetry, came to an end. It is not unreasonable to
suspect that in these early attempts at the union of ancient verse and
music there exist the beginnings of the musical drama.
_ii_. IN FRANCE
France, where the great majority of Horatian manuscripts were preserved,
was the first to produce a translation of the _Odes_. Grandichan in
1541, and Pelletier in 1545, published translations of the _Ars Poetica_
which had important consequences. The famous Pleiad, whose most
brilliant star, Pierre de Ronsard, was king of poetry for more than a
score of years, were enthusiastic believers in the imitation of the
classics as a means for the improvement of letters in France. Du Bellay,
the second in magnitude, published in 1550 his _Deffence et illustration
de la langue françoyse_, a manifesto of the Pleiad full of quotations
from the _Ars Poetica_ refuting a similar work of Sibilet published in
1548. Ronsard himself is said to have been the first to use the word
"ode" for Horace's lyrics. The meeting of the two, in 1547, is regarded
as the beginning of the French school of Renaissance poetry. Horace thus
became at the beginning an influence of the first magnitude in the
actual life of modern French letters. In 1579 appeared Mondot's complete
translation. The versions of Dacier and Sanadon, in prose, in the
earlier eighteenth century, were an innovation provoking spirited
opposition in Italy. The line of translators, imitators, and enthusiasts
in France is as numerous as that of other countries. The list of great
authors inspired by Horace includes such names as Montaigne, "The French
Horace," Malherbe, Regnier, Boileau, La Fontaine, Corneille, Racine,
Molière, Voltaire, Jean Baptiste Rousseau, Le Brun, André Chénier, De
Musset.
_iii_. IN GERMANY
In Germany, the Renaissance movement had its pronounced beginning at
Heidelberg. In that city began also the active study of Horace, in the
lectures on Horace in 1456. The _Epistles_ were first printed in 1482 at
Leipzig, the _Epodes_ in 1488, and in 1492 appeared the first complete
Horace. Up to 1500, about ten editions had been published, only those of
1492 and 1498 being Horace entire, and none of them with commentary
except that of 1498, which had a few notes and metrical signs to
indicate the structure of the verse. The first German to translate a
poem of Horace was Johann Fischart, 1550-90, who rendered the second
_Epode_ in 145 rhymed couplets. The famous Silesian, Opitz, "father of
German poetry," and his followers, were to Germany what the Pleiad were
to France. His work on poetry, 1624, was grounded in Horace, and was
long the canon. Bucholz, in 1639, produced the first translation of an
entire book of the _Odes_ in German. Weckherlin, 1548-1653, translated
three _Odes_, Gottsched of Leipzig, 1700-66, and Breitinge of Zurich,
confess Horace as master of the art of poetry, and their cities become
the centers of many translations. Günther, 1695-1728, the most gifted
lyric poet of his race before Klopstock, made Horace his companion and
confidant of leisure hours. Hagedorn, 1708-54, forms his philosophy from
Horace,--"my friend, my teacher, my companion." Of Ramler, for
thirty-five years dictator of the Berlin literary world, who translated
and published some of the _Odes_ in 1769 and was called the German
Horace, Lessing said that no sovereign had ever been so beautifully
addressed as was Frederick the Great in his imitation of the Maecenas
ode. The epoch-making Klopstock, 1724-1803, quotes, translates, and
imitates Horace, and uses Horatian subjects. Heinse reads him and writes
of him enthusiastically, and Platen, 1796-1835, is so full of Homer and
Horace that he can do nothing of his own. Lessing and Herder are devoted
Horatians, though Herder thinks that Lessing and Winckelmann are too
unreserved in their enthusiasm for the imitation of classical letters.
Goethe praises Horace for lyric charm and for understanding of art and
life, and studies his meters while composing the _Elegies_. Nietzsche's
letters abound in quotation and phrase. Even the Church in Germany shows
the impress of Horace in some of her greatest hymns, which are in
Alcaics and Sapphics of Horatian origin. To speak of the German editors,
commentators, and critics of the nineteenth century would be almost to
review the history of Horace in modern school and university; such has
been the ardor of the German soul and the industry of the German mind.
_iv_. IN SPAIN
A glance at the use of Horace in Spain will afford not the least
edifying of modern examples. The inventories of Spanish libraries in the
Middle Age rarely contain the name of Horace, or the names of his lyric
brethren, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. Virgil, Lucan, Martial,
Seneca, and Pliny are much more frequent. It was not until the fifteenth
century that reminiscences of the style and ideas of Horace began to
appear in quantity. Imitation rather than translation was the vehicle of
Spanish enthusiasm. The fountain of Horatianism in Spain was the
imitation of _Epode II_, _Beatus Ille_, by the Marquis de Santillana,
one of Castile's two first sonneteers, in the first half of the
fifteenth century. Garcilaso also produced many imitations of the
_Odes_. The Horatian lyric seemed especially congenial to the Spanish
spirit and language. Fray Luís de León, of Salamanca, the first real
Spanish poet, and the most inspired of all the Spanish lovers of Horace,
was an example of the poet translating the poet where both were great
men. He not only brought back to life once more "that marvelous
sobriety, that rapidity of idea and conciseness of phrase, that
terseness and brilliance, that sovereign calm and serenity in the spirit
of the artist," which characterized the ancient poet, but added to the
Horatian lyre the new string of Christian mysticism, and thus wedded the
ancient and the modern. "Luís de León is our great Horatian poet," says
Menéndez y Pelayo. Lope de Vega wrote an _Ode to Liberty_, and was
influenced by the _Epistles_. The _Flores de Poetas ilustres de España_,
arranged by Pedro Espinosa and published in 1605 at Valladolid, included
translations of eighteen odes. Hardly a lyric poet of the eighteenth
century failed to turn some part of Horace into Spanish. Salamanca
perfected the ode, Seville the epistle, Aragon the satire. Mendoza in
his nine _Epistles_ shows his debt to Horace. In 1592, Luís de Zapata
published at Lisbon a not very successful verse translation of the _Ars
Poetica_. In 1616, Francisco de Cascales of Murcia published _Fablas
Poeticas_, containing in dialogue the substance of the same composition,
which had been translated by Espinel, 1551-1624, and which was
translated again in 1684, twice in 1777, and in 1827. Seville founded a
Horatian Academy. The greatest of the Spanish translators of Horace
entire was Javier de Burgos, whose edition of four volumes, 1819-1844,
is called by Menéndez y Pelayo the only readable complete translation of
Horace, "one of the most precious and enviable jewels of our modern
literature," and "perhaps the best of all Horaces in the neo-Latin
tongues." The nearest rival of Burgos was Martinez de la Rosa. The
greatest Spanish scholar and critic of Horace is Menéndez y Pelayo,
editor of the _Odes_, 1882, and author of _Horacio en España_, 1885.
In the index of _Horacio en España_ are to be found the names of 165
Castilian translators of the poet, 50 Portuguese, 10 Catalan, 2
Asturian, and 1 Galician. There appear the names of 29 commentators. Of
complete translations, there are 6 Castilian and 1 Portuguese; of
complete translations of the _Odes_, 6 Castilian and 7 Portuguese; of
the _Satires_, 1 Castilian and 2 Portuguese; of the _Epistles_, 1
Castilian and 1 Portuguese; of the _Ars Poetica_, 35 Castilian, 11
Portuguese, and 1 Catalan. The sixteenth century translators were
distinguished in general by facility and grace, the freshness and
abandon of youth, and a considerable degree of freedom, or even license.
Those of the eighteenth show a gain in accuracy and a loss in spirit.
_v_. IN ENGLAND
The appeal of Horace in England and English-speaking countries has been
as fruitful as elsewhere in scholarship, with the possible exception of
Germany. In its effect upon the actual fibre of literature and life, it
has been more fruitful.
A review of Horatian study in England would include the names of Talbot
and Baxter, but, above all, of the incomparably brilliant Richard
Bentley, despite his excesses, themselves due to his very genius, the
most famous and most stimulating critic and commentator of Horace the
world has seen. His edition, appearing in 1711, provoked in 1717 the
anti-Bentleian rejoinder of Richard Johnson, and in 1721 the more
ambitious but equally unsuccessful attempt to discredit him by the
Scotch Alexander Cunningham. The primacy in the study of Horace which
Bentley conferred upon England had been enjoyed previously by the Low
Countries and France, to which it had passed from Italy in the second
half of the sixteenth century. The immediate sign of this transfer of
the center to northern lands was the publication in 1561 at Lyons of the
edition containing the text revision and critical notes of Lambinus and
the commentary of the famous Cruquius of Bruges. The celebrated Scaliger
was unfavorably disposed to Horace, who found a defender in Heinsius,
another scholar of the Netherlands. D'Alembert, who became a sort of
_Ars Poetica_ to translators, published his _Observations_ at Amsterdam
in 1763.
An account of the English translations of the poet would include many
renderings of individual poems, such as those of Dryden, Sir Stephen E.
De Vere, and John Conington, and the version of Theodore Martin,
probably the most successful complete metrical translation of Horace in
any language. It is literally true that "every theory of translation has
been exemplified in some English rendering of Horace."
It is in the field of literature, however, that the manifestations of
Horace's hold upon the English are most numerous and most significant.
Even Shakespeare's "small Latin" includes him, in _Titus Andronicus_:
Demetrius.
W_hat's here? A scroll, and written round about!_
L_et's see_:
Integer vitae scelerisque purus
Non eget Mauri jaculis nec arcu.
Chiron.
O_, 'tis a verse in Horace; I know it well_:
I_ read it in the grammar long ago_.
The mere mention of English authors in poetry and prose who were touched
and kindled by the Horatian flame would amount to a review of the whole
course of English literature. It would begin principally with Spenser
and Ben Jonson, who in some measure represented in their land what the
Pleiad meant in France, and Opitz and his following in Germany. "Steep
yourselves in the classics," was Jonson's counsel, and his countrymen
did thus steep themselves to such a degree that it is possible for the
student to say of Milton's times: "The door to English literature and
history of the seventeenth century is open wide to those who are at ease
in the presence of Latin. Many writings and events of the time may
doubtless be understood and enjoyed by readers ignorant of the classics,
but to them the heart and spirit of the period as a whole will hardly be
revealed. Poetry, philosophy, history, biography, controversy, sermons,
correspondence, even conversation,--all have come down to us from the
age of Milton either written in or so touched with Latin that one is
compelled to enter seventeenth century England by way of Rome as Rome
must be entered by way of Athens."
Great as was the vogue of Latin in the earlier centuries, it was the
first half of the eighteenth, the most critical period in English
letters, that realized to the full the virtues of Horace. His words in
the _Ars Poetica_ "were accepted, even more widely than the laws of
Aristotle, as the standard of critical judgment. Addison and Steele by
their choice of mottoes for their periodicals, Prior by his adoption of
a type of lyric that has since his time been designated as Horatian, and
Pope with his imposing series of _Imitations_, gave such an impulse to
the already widespread interest that it was carried on through the whole
of the century." "Horace may be said to pervade the literature of the
eighteenth century in three ways: as a teacher of political and social
morality; as a master of the art of poetry; and as a sort of _elegantiae
arbiter_." Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, and Fielding, Gay, Samuel
Johnson, Chesterfield, and Walpole, were all familiar with and fond of
Horace, and took him unto themselves.
In the nineteenth century, Wordsworth has an intimate familiarity with
Virgil, Catullus, and Horace, but loves Horace best; Coleridge thinks
highly of his literary criticism; Byron, who never was greatly fond of
him, frequently quotes him; Shelley reads him with pleasure; Browning's
_The Ring and the Book_ contains many quotations from him; Thackeray
makes use of phrases from the _Odes_ "with an ease and facility which
nothing but close intimacy could produce"; Andrew Lang addresses to him
the most charming of his _Letters to Dead Authors_; and Austin Dobson is
inspired by him in many of his exquisite poems in lighter vein. These
names, and those in the paragraphs preceding, are not all that might be
mentioned. The literature of England is honey-combed with the classic
authors in general, and Horace is among the foremost. Without him and
without the classics, a great part of our literary patrimony is of
little use.
_vi_. IN THE SCHOOLS
Of the place of Horace in the schools and universities of all these
countries, and of the world of western civilization in general, it is
hardly necessary to speak. The enlightened sentiment of the five hundred
years since the death of Petrarch has been enthusiastic in the
conviction that the Greek and Latin classics are indispensable to
instruction of the first quality, and that among them Horace is of
exceeding value as a model of poetic taste and as an influence in the
formation of a philosophy of life. If his place has been less secure in
latter days, it is due less to alteration of that conviction than to
extension of the educational system to the utilitarian arts and
sciences, and to the passing of educational control from the few to the
general average.