Horace

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"Or sings of gods, and monarchs sprung
Of gods, that overthrew
The Centaurs, hideous crew,
And, fearless of the monster's fiery tongue,
The dread Chimaera slew;

"Or those the Eléan palm doth lift
To heaven, for wingèd steed,
Or sturdy arm decreed,
Giving, than hundred statues nobler gift,
The poet's deathless meed;

"Or mourns the youth snatched from his bride,
Extols his manhood clear,
And to the starry sphere
Exalts his golden virtues, scattering wide
The gloom of Orcus drear.

"When the Dircéan swan doth climb
Into the azure sky,
There poised in ether high,
He courts each gale, and floats on wing sublime,
Soaring with steadfast eye.

"I, like the tiny bee, that sips
The fragrant thyme, and strays
Humming through leafy ways,
By Tibur's sedgy banks, with trembling lips
Fashion my toilsome lays.

"But thou, when up the sacred steep
Caesar, with garlands crowned,
Leads the Sicambrians bound,
With bolder hand the echoing strings shalt sweep,
And bolder measures sound.

"Caesar, than whom a nobler son
The Fates and Heaven's kind powers
Ne'er gave this earth of ours,
Nor e'er will give though backward time should run
To its first golden hours.

"Thou too shalt sing the joyful days,
The city's festive throng,
When Caesar, absent long,
At length returns,--the Forum's silent ways,
Serene from strife and wrong.

"Then, though in statelier power it lack,
My voice shall swell the lay,
And sing, 'Oh, glorious day,
Oh, day thrice blest, that gives great Caesar back
To Rome, from hostile fray!'

"'Io Triumphe!' thrice the cry;
'Io Triumphe!' loud
Shall shout the echoing crowd
The city through, and to the gods on high
Raise incense like a cloud.

"Ten bulls shall pay thy sacrifice,
With whom ten kine shall bleed:
I to the fane will lead
A yearling of the herd, of modest size,
From the luxuriant mead,

"Horned like the moon, when her pale light
Which three brief days have fed,
She trimmeth, and dispread
On his broad brows a spot of snowy white,
All else a tawny red."

Augustus did not return from Gaul, as was expected when this Ode was
written, but remained there for about two years. That this protracted
absence caused no little disquietude in Rome is apparent from the
following Ode (IV. 5):--

"From gods benign descended, thou
Best guardian of the fates of Rome,
Too long already from thy home
Hast thou, dear chief, been absent now;

"Oh, then return, the pledge redeem,
Thou gav'st the Senate, and once more
Its light to all the land restore;
For when thy face, like spring-tide's gleam,

"Its brightness on the people sheds,
Then glides the day more sweetly by,
A brighter blue pervades the sky,
The sun a richer radiance spreads!

"As on her boy the mother calls,
Her boy, whom envious tempests keep
Beyond the vexed Carpathian deep,
From his dear home, till winter falls,

"And still with vow and prayer she cries,
Still gazes on the winding shore,
So yearns the country evermore
For Caesar, with fond, wistful eyes.

"For safe the herds range field and fen,
Full-headed stand the shocks of grain,
Our sailors sweep the peaceful main,
And man can trust his fellow-men.

"No more adulterers stain our beds,
Laws, morals, both that taint efface,
The husband in the child we trace,
And close on crime sure vengeance treads.

"The Parthian, under Caesar's reign,
Or icy Scythian, who can dread,
Or all the tribes barbarian bred
By Germany, or ruthless Spain?

"Now each man, basking on his slopes,
Weds to his widowed trees the vine,
Then, as he gaily quaffs his wine,
Salutes thee god of all his hopes;

"And prayers to thee devoutly sends,
With deep libations; and, as Greece
Ranks Castor and great Hercules,
Thy godship with his Lares blends.

"Oh, may'st thou on Hesperia shine,
Her chief, her joy, for many a day!
Thus, dry-lipped, thus at morn we pray,
Thus pray at eve, when flushed with wine."

"It was perhaps the policy of Augustus," says Macleane, "to make his
absence felt; and we may believe that the language of Horace, which
bears much more the impress of real feeling than of flattery,
represented the sentiments of great numbers at Rome, who felt the want
of that presiding genius which had brought the city through its long
troubles, and given it comparative peace. There could not be a more
comprehensive picture of security and rest obtained through the
influence of one mind than is represented in this Ode, if we except
that with which no merely mortal language can compare (Isaiah, xi. and
lxv.; Micah, iv.)"

We must not assume, from the reference in this and other Odes to the
divine origin of Augustus, that this was seriously Relieved in by
Horace, any more than it was by Augustus himself. Popular credulity
ascribed divine honours to great men; and this was the natural growth
of a religious system in which a variety of gods and demigods played
so large a part. Julius Caesar claimed-no doubt, for the purpose of
impressing the Roman populace-a direct descent from _Alma Venus
Genitrix_, as Antony did from Hercules. Altars and temples were
dedicated to great statesmen and generals; and the Romans, among the
other things which they borrowed from the East, borrowed also the
practice of conferring the honours of apotheosis upon their rulers,--
the visible agents, in their estimation, of the great invisible power
that governed the world. To speak of their divine descent and
attributes became part of the common forms of the poetical vocabulary,
not inappropriate to the exalted pitch of lyrical enthusiasm. Horace
only falls into the prevailing strain, and is not compromising himself
by servile flattery, as some have thought, when he speaks in this Ode
of Augustus as "from gods benign descended," and in others as "the
heaven-sent son of Maia" (I. 2), or as reclining among the gods and
quaffing nectar "with lip of deathless bloom" (III. 3). In lyrical
poetry all this was quite in place. But when the poet contracts his
wings, and drops from its empyrean to the level of the earth, he
speaks to Augustus and of him simply as he thought (Epistles, II. 1)--
as a man on whose shoulders the weight of empire rested, who protected
the commonwealth by the vigour of his armies, and strove to grace it
by "sweeter manners, purer laws." He adds, it is true,--

"You while in life are honoured as divine,
And vows and oaths are taken at your shrine;
So Rome pays honour to her man of men,
Ne'er seen on earth before, ne'er to be seen again "--(C.)

but this is no more than a statement of a fact. Altars were erected to
Augustus, much against his will, and at these men made their prayers
or plighted their oaths every day. There is not a word to imply either
that Augustus took these divine honours, or that Horace joined in
ascribing them, seriously.

It is of some importance to the argument in favour of Horace's
sincerity and independence, that he had no selfish end to serve by
standing well with Augustus. We have seen that he was more than
content with the moderate fortune secured to him by Maecenas. Wealth
had no charms for him. His ambition was to make his mark as a poet.
His happiness lay in being his own master. There is no trace of his
having at any period been swayed by other views. What then had he to
gain by courting the favour of the head of the state? But the argument
goes further. When Augustus found the pressure of his private
correspondence too great, as his public duties increased, and his
health, never robust, began to fail, he offered Horace the post of his
private secretary. The poet declined on the ground of health. He
contrived to do so in such a way as to give no umbrage by the refusal;
nay, the letters which are quoted in the life of Horace ascribed to
Suetonius show that Augustus begged the poet to treat him on the same
footing as if he had accepted the office, and actually become a member
of his household. "Our friend Septimius," he says in another letter,
"will tell you how much you are in my thoughts; for something led to
my speaking of you before him. Neither, if you were too proud to
accept my friendship, do I mean to deal with you in the same spirit."
There could have been little of the courtier in the man who was thus
addressed. Horace apparently felt that Augustus and himself were
likely to be better friends at a distance. He had seen enough of court
life to know how perilous it is to that independence which was his
dearest possession. "_Dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici,-
Expertus metuit_," is his ultimate conviction on this head
(Epistles, I. 18)--

"Till time has made us wise,
'tis sweet to wait
Upon the smiles and favour of the great;
But he that once has ventured that career
Shrinks from its perils with instinctive fear."

In another place (Epistles, I. 10) he says, "_Fuge magna; licet sub
paupere tecto Reges et regum vita praecurrere amicos_"--

"Keep clear of courts; a homely life transcends
The vaunted bliss of monarchs and their friends._" (C.)

But apart from such considerations, life would have lost its charm for
Horace, had he put himself within the trammels of official service. At
no time would these have been tolerable to him; but as he advanced
into middle age, the freedom of entire independence, the refreshing
solitudes of the country, leisure for study and reflection, became
more and more precious to him. The excitements and gaieties and social
enjoyments of Rome were all very well, but a little of them went a
great way. They taxed his delicate health, and they interfered with
the graver studies, to which he became daily more inclined as the
years went by. Not all his regard for Maecenas himself, deep as it
was, could induce him to stay in town to enliven the leisure hours of
the statesman by his companionship at the expense of those calm
seasons of communion with nature and the books of the great men of
old, in which he could indulge his irresistible craving for some
solution of the great problems of life and philosophy. Men like
Maecenas, whose power and wealth are practically unbounded, are apt to
become importunate even in their friendships, and to think that
everything should give way to the gratification of their wishes.
Something of this spirit had obviously been shown towards Horace.
Maecenas may have expressed himself in a tone of complaint, either to
the poet himself, or in some way that had reached his ears, about his
prolonged absence in the country, which implied that he considered his
bounties had given him a claim upon the time of Horace which was not
sufficiently considered. This could only have been a burst of
momentary impatience, for the nature of Maecenas was too generous to
admit of any other supposition. But Horace felt it; and with the
utmost delicacy of tact, but with a decision that left no room for
mistake, he lost no time in letting Maecenas know, that rather than
brook control upon his movements, however slight, he will cheerfully
forego the gifts of his friend, dear as they are, and grateful for
them as he must always be. To this we owe the following Epistle (I.
7). That Maecenas loved his friend all the better for it--he could
scarcely respect him more than he seems to have done from the first--
we may be very sure.

Only five days, I said, I should be gone;
Yet August's past, and still I linger on.
'Tis true I've broke my promise. But if you
Would have me well, as I am sure you do,
Grant me the same indulgence, which, were I
Laid up with illness, you would not deny,
Although I claim it only for the fear
Of being ill, this deadly time of year,
When autumn's clammy heat and early fruits
Deck undertakers out, and inky mutes;
When young mammas, and fathers to a man,
With terrors for their sons and heirs are wan;
When stifling anteroom, or court, distils
Fevers wholesale, and breaks the seals of wills.
Should winter swathe the Alban fields in snow,
Down to the sea your poet means to go,
To nurse his ailments, and, in cosy nooks
Close huddled up, to loiter o'er his books.
But once let zephyrs blow, sweet friend, and then,
If then you'll have him, he will quit his den,
With the first swallow hailing you again.
When you bestowed on me what made me rich,
Not in the spirit was it done, in which
Your bluff Calabrian on a guest will thrust
His pears: "Come, eat, man, eat--you can, you must!"
"Indeed, indeed, my friend, I've had enough."
"Then take some home!" "You're too obliging." "Stuff!
If you have pockets full of them, I guess,
Your little lads will like you none the less."
"I really can't--thanks all the same!" "You won't?
Why then the pigs shall have them, if you don't."
'Tis fools and prodigals, whose gifts consist
Of what they spurn, or what is never missed:
Such tilth will never yield, and never could,
A harvest save of coarse ingratitude.
A wise good man is evermore alert,
When he encounters it, to own desert;
Nor is he one, on whom you'd try to pass
For sterling currency mere lackered brass.
For me, 'twill be my aim myself to raise
Even to the flattering level of your praise;
But if you'd have me always by your side,
Then give me back the chest deep-breathed and wide,
The low brow clustered with its locks of black,
The flow of talk, the ready laugh, give back,
The woes blabbed o'er our wine, when Cinara chose
To teaze me, cruel flirt--ah, happy woes!
Through a small hole a field-mouse, lank and thin,
Had squeezed his way into a barley bin,
And, having fed to fatness on the grain,
Tried to get out, but tried and squeezed in vain.
"Friend," cried a weasel, loitering thereabout,
"Lean you went in, and lean you must get out."
Now, at my head if folks this story throw,
Whate'er I have I'm ready to forego;
I am not one, with forced meats in my throat,
Fine saws on poor men's dreamless sleep to quote.
Unless in soul as very air I'm free,
Not all the wealth of Araby for me.
You've ofttimes praised the reverent, yet true
Devotion, which my heart has shown for you.
King, father, I have called you, nor been slack
In words of gratitude behind your back;
But even your bounties, if you care to try,
You'll find I can renounce without a sigh.
Not badly young Telemachus replied,
Ulysses' son, that man so sorely tried:
"No mettled steeds in Ithaca we want;
The ground is broken there, the herbage scant.
Let me, Atrides, then, thy gifts decline,
In thy hands they are better far than mine!"
Yes, little things fit little folks. In Rome
The Great I never feel myself at home.
Let me have Tibur, and its dreamful ease,
Or soft Tarentum's nerve-relaxing breeze.
Philip, the famous counsel, on a day--
A burly man, and wilful in his way--
From court returning, somewhere about two,
And grumbling, for his years were far from few,
That the Carinae [1] were so distant, though
But from the Forum half a mile or so,
Descried a fellow in a barber's booth,
All by himself, his chin fresh shaved and smooth,
Trimming his nails, and with the easy air
Of one uncumbered by a wish or care.
"Demetrius!"--'twas his page, a boy of tact,
In comprehension swift, and swift in act,
"Go, ascertain his rank, name, fortune; track
His father, patron!" In a trice he's back.
"An auction-crier, Volteius Mena, sir,
Means poor enough, no spot on character,
Good or to work or idle, get or spend,
Has his own house, delights to see a friend,
Fond of the play, and sure, when work is done,
Of those who crowd the Campus to make one."

"I'd like to hear all from himself. Away,
Bid him come dine with me--at once--to-day!"
Mena some trick in the request divines,
Turns it all ways, then civilly declines.
"What! Says me nay?" "'Tis even so, sir. Why?
Can't say. Dislikes you, or, more likely, shy."
Next morning Philip searches Mena out,
And finds him vending to a rabble rout
Old crazy lumber, frippery of the worst,
And with all courtesy salutes him first.
Mena pleads occupation, ties of trade,
His service else he would by dawn have paid,
At Philip's house,--was grieved to think, that how
He should have failed to notice him till now.
"On one condition I accept your plea.
You come this afternoon, and dine with me."
"Yours to command." "Be there, then, sharp at four!
Now go, work hard, and make your little more!"
At dinner Mena rattled on, expressed
Whate'er came uppermost, then home to rest.
The hook was baited craftily, and when
The fish came nibbling ever and again,
At morn a client, and, when asked to dine,
Not now at all in humour to decline,
Philip himself one holiday drove him down,
To see his villa some few miles from town.
Mena keeps praising up, the whole way there,
The Sabine country, and the Sabine air;
So Philip sees his fish is fairly caught,
And smiles with inward triumph at the thought.
Resolved at any price to have his whim,--
For that is best of all repose to him,--
Seven hundred pounds he gives him there and then,
Proffers on easy terms as much again,
And so persuades him, that, with tastes like his,
He ought to buy a farm;--so bought it is.
Not to detain you longer than enough,
The dapper cit becomes a farmer bluff,
Talks drains and subsoils, ever on the strain
Grows lean, and ages with the lust of gain.
But when his sheep are stolen, when murrains smite
His goats, and his best crops are killed with blight,
When at the plough his oxen drop down dead,
Stung with his losses, up one night from bed
He springs, and on a cart-horse makes his way,
All wrath, to Philip's house, by break of day.
"How's this?" cries Philip, seeing him unshorn
And shabby. "Why, Vulteius, you look worn.
You work, methinks, too long upon the stretch."
"Oh, that's not it, my patron. Call me wretch!
That is the only fitting name for me.
Oh, by thy Genius, by the gods that be
Thy hearth's protectors, I beseech, implore,
Give me, oh, give me back my life of yore!"
If for the worse you find you've changed your place,
Pause not to think, but straight your steps retrace.
In every state the maxim still is true,
On your own last take care to fit your shoe!

[1]
The street where he lived, or, as we should say, "Ship Street." The
name was due probably to the circumstance of models of ships being
set up in it.

CHAPTER X.

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.)

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