Horace

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"This may your circumcisèd Jew
Believe, but never I. For true
I hold it that the Deities
Enjoy themselves in careless ease;[1]
Nor think, when Nature, spurning Law,
Does something which inspires our awe,
'Tis sent by the offended gods
Direct from their august abodes."

[1]
So Tennyson, in his "Lotus-Eaters:"--

"Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotus-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind."

See the whole of the passage.

Had Horace known anything of natural science, he might not have gone
so far to seek for the explanation of the seeming miracle.

Gibbon speaks contemptuously of many of the incidents recorded in this
poem, asking, "How could a man of taste reflect on them the day
after?" But the poem has much more than a merely literary interest;
thanks to such passages as these, and to the charming tribute by
Horace to his friends previously cited.

Nothing can better illustrate the footing of easy friendship on which
he soon came to stand with Maecenas than the following poem, which
must have been written before the year B.C. 32; for in that year
Terentia became the mistress of the great palace on the Esquiline, and
the allusion in the last verse is much too familiar to have been
intended for her. Horace, whose delicacy of stomach was probably
notorious, had apparently been the victim of a practical joke--a
species of rough fun to which the Romans of the upper classes appear
to have been particularly prone. It is difficult otherwise to
understand how he could have stumbled at Maecenas's table on a dish so
overdosed with garlic as that which provoked this humorous protest.
From what we know of the abominations of an ordinary Roman banquet,
the vegetable stew in this instance must have reached a climax of
unusual atrocity.

"If his old father's throat any impious sinner
Has cut with unnatural hand to the bone,
Give him garlic, more noxious than hemlock, at dinner.
Ye gods! the strong stomachs that reapers must own!

"With what poison is this that my vitals are heated?
By viper's blood--certes, it cannot be less--
Stewed into the potherbs; can I have been cheated?
Or Canidia, did she cook the villainous mess?

"When Medea was struck by the handsome sea-rover,
Who in beauty outshone all his Argonaut band,
This mixture she took to lard Jason all over,
And so tamed the fire-breathing bulls to his hand.

"With this her fell presents she dyed and infected,
On his innocent leman avenging the slight
Of her terrible beauty, forsaken, neglected,
And then on her car, dragon-wafted, took flight.

"Never star on Apulia, the thirsty and arid,
Exhaled a more baleful or pestilent dew,
And the gift, which invincible Hercules carried,
Burned not to his bones more remorselessly through.

"Should you e'er long again for such relish as this is,
Devoutly I'll pray, wag Maecenas, I vow,
With her hand that your mistress arrest all your kisses,
And lie as far off as the couch will allow."

It is startling to our notions to find so direct a reference as that
in the last verse to the "reigning favourite" of Maecenas; but what
are we to think of the following lines, which point unequivocally to
Maecenas's wife, in the following Ode addressed to her husband (Odes,
II. 12)?

"Would you, friend, for Phrygia's hoarded gold,
Or all that Achaemenes' self possesses,
Or e'en for what Araby's coffers hold,
Barter one lock of her clustering tresses,

While she stoops her throat to your burning kiss,
Or, fondly cruel, the bliss denies you,
She would have you snatch, or will, snatching this
Herself, with a sweeter thrill surprise you?"

If Maecenas allowed his friends to write of his wife in this strain,
it is scarcely to be wondered at if that coquettish and capricious
lady gave, as she did, "that worthy man good grounds for uneasiness."

CHAPTER IV.

PUBLICATION OF FIRST BOOK OF SATIRES.--HIS FRIENDS.--RECEIVES THE
SABINE FARM FROM MAECENAS.

In B.C. 34, Horace published the First Book of his Satires, and placed
in front of it one specially addressed to Maecenas--a course which he
adopted in each successive section of his poems, apparently to mark
his sense of obligation to him as the most honoured of his friends.
The name _Satires_ does not truly indicate the nature of this
series. They are rather didactic poems, couched in a more or less
dramatic form, and carried on in an easy conversational tone, without
for the most part any definite purpose, often diverging into such
collateral topics as suggest themselves by the way, with all the ease
and buoyancy of agreeable talk, and getting back or not, as it may
happen, into the main line of idea with which they set out. Some of
them are conceived in a vein of fine irony throughout. Others, like
"The Journey to Brundusium," are mere narratives, relieved by humorous
illustrations. But we do not find in them the epigrammatic force, the
sternness of moral rebuke, or the scathing spirit of sarcasm, which
are commonly associated with the idea of satire. Literary display
appears never to be aimed at. The plainest phrases, the homeliest
illustrations, the most everyday topics--if they come in the way--are
made use of for the purpose of insinuating or enforcing some useful
truth. Point and epigram are the last things thought of; and therefore
it is that Pope's translations, admirable as in themselves they are,
fail to give an idea of the lightness of touch, the shifting lights
and shades, the carelessness alternating with force, the artless
natural manner, which distinguish these charming essays. "The
terseness of Horace's language in his Satires," it has been well said,
"is that of a proverb, neat because homely; while the terseness of
Pope is that of an epigram, which will only become homely in time,
because it is neat."

In writing these Satires, which he calls merely rhythmical prose,
Horace disclaims for himself the title of poet; and at this time it
would appear as if he had not even conceived the idea of "modulating
Aeolic song to the Italian lyre," on which he subsequently rested his
hopes of posthumous fame. The very words of his disclaimer, however,
show how well he appreciated the poet's gifts (Satires, I. 4):--

"First from the roll I strike myself of those I poets call,
For merely to compose in verse is not the all-in-all;
Nor if a man shall write, like me, things nigh to prose akin,
Shall he, however well he write, the name of poet win?
To genius, to the man-whose soul is touched with fire divine,
Whose voice speaks like a trumpet-note, that honoured name assign.
'Tis not enough that you compose your verse
In diction irreproachable, pure, scholarly, and terse,
Which, dislocate its cadence, by anybody may
Be spoken like the language of the father in the play.
Divest those things which now I write, and Lucilius wrote of yore,
Of certain measured cadences, by setting that before
Which was behind, and that before which I had placed behind,
Yet by no alchemy will you in the residuum find
The members still apparent of the dislocated bard,"--

a result which he contends would not ensue, however much you might
disarrange the language of a passage of true poetry, such as one he
quotes from Ennius, the poetic charm of which, by the way, is not very
apparent. Schooled, however, as he had been, in the pure literature of
Greece, Horace aimed at a conciseness and purity of style which had
been hitherto unknown in Roman satire, and studied, not
unsuccessfully, to give to his own work, by great and well-disguised
elaboration of finish, the concentrated force and picturesque
precision which are large elements in all genuine poetry. His own
practice, as we see from its results, is given in the following lines,
and a better description of how didactic or satiric poetry should be
written could scarcely be desired (Satires, I. 10).

"'Tis not enough, a poet's fame to make,
That you with bursts of mirth your audience shake;
And yet to this, as all experience shows,
No small amount of skill and talent goes.
Your style must he concise, that what you say
May flow on clear and smooth, nor lose its way,
Stumbling and halting through a chaos drear
Of cumbrous words, that load the weary ear;
And you must pass from grave to gay,--now, like
The rhetorician, vehemently strike,
Now, like the poet, deal a lighter hit
With easy playfulness and polished wit,--
Veil the stern vigour of a soul robust,
And flash your fancies, while like death you thrust;
For men are more impervious, as a rule,
To slashing censure than to ridicule.
Here lay the merit of those writers, who
In the Old Comedy our fathers drew;
Here should we struggle in their steps to tread
Whom fop Hermogenes has never read,
Nor that mere ape of his, who all day long
Makes Calvus and Catullus all his song."

The concluding hit at Hermogenes Tigellius and his double is very
characteristic of Horace's manner. When he has worked up his
description of a vice to be avoided or a virtue to be pursued, he
generally drives home his lesson by the mention of some well-known
person's name, thus importing into his literary practice the method
taken by his father, as we have seen, to impress his ethical teachings
upon himself in his youth. The allusion to Calvus and Catullus, the
only one anywhere made to these poets by Horace, is curious; but it
would be wrong to infer from it, that Horace meant to disparage these
fine poets. Calvus had a great reputation both as an orator and poet.
But, except some insignificant fragments, nothing of what he wrote is
left. How Catullus wrote we do, however, know; and although it is
conceivable that Horace had no great sympathy with some of his love
verses, which were probably of too sentimental a strain for his taste,
we may be sure that he admired the brilliant genius as well as the
fine workmanship of many of his other poems. At all events, he had too
much good sense to launch a sneer at so great a poet recently dead,
which would not only have been in the worst taste, but might justly
have been ascribed to jealousy. When he talks, therefore, of a pair of
fribbles who can sing nothing but Calvus and Catullus, it is, as
Macleane has said in his note on the passage, "as if a man were to say
of a modern English coxcomb, that he could sing Moore's ballads from
beginning to end, but could not understand a line of Shakespeare,"--no
disparagement to Moore, whatever it might be to the vocalist.
Hermogenes and his ape (whom we may identify with one Demetrius, who
is subsequently coupled with him in the same satire) were musicians
and vocalists, idolised, after the manner of modern Italian singers,
by the young misses of Rome. Pampered favourites of fashion, the
Farinellis of the hour, their opinion on all matters of taste was sure
to be as freely given as it was worthless. They had been, moreover, so
indiscreet as to provoke Horace's sarcasm by running down his verses.
Leave criticism, he rejoins, to men who have a right to judge. Stick
to your proper vocation, and

"To puling girls, that listen and adore,
Your love-lorn chants and woeful wailings pour!"

In the same Satire we have proof how warmly Horace thought and spoke
of living poets. Thus:--

"In grave Iambic measures Pollio sings
For our delight the deeds of mighty kings.
The stately Epic Varius leads along,
And where is voice so resonant, so strong?
The Muses of the woods and plains have shed
Their every grace and charm on Virgil's head."

With none of those will he compete. Satire is his element, and there
he proclaims himself to be an humble follower of his great
predecessor. But while he bows to Lucilius as his master, and owns him
superior in polish and scholarly grace to the satirists who preceded
him, still, he continues--

"Still, were he living now--had only such
Been Fate's decree--he would have blotted much,
Cut everything away that could be called
Crude or superfluous, or tame, or bald;
Oft scratched his head, the labouring poet's trick,
And bitten all his nails down to the quick."

And then he lays down the canon for all high-class composition, which
can never be too often enforced:--

"Oh yes, believe me, you must draw your pen
Not once or twice, but o'er and o'er again,
Through what you've written, if you would entice
The man who reads you once to read you twice,
Not making popular applause your cue,
But looking to find audience fit though few." (C.)

He had himself followed the rule, and found the reward. With natural
exultation he appeals against the judgment of men of the Hermogenes
type to an array of critics of whose good opinion he might well be
proud:--

"Maecenas, Virgil, Varius,--if I please
In my poor writings these and such as these,--
If Plotius, Valgius, Fuscus will commend,
And good Octavius, I've achieved my end.
You, noble Pollio (let your friend disclaim
All thoughts of flattery, when he names your name),
Messala and his brother, Servius too,
And Bibulus, and Furnius kind and true,
With others, whom, despite their sense and wit,
And friendly hearts, I purposely omit;
Such I would have my critics; men to gain
Whose smiles were pleasure, to forget them pain." (C.)

It is not strange that Horace, even in these early days, numbered so
many distinguished men among his friends, for, the question of genius
apart, there must have been something particularly engaging in his
kindly and affectionate nature. He was a good hater, as all warm-
hearted men are; and when his blood was up, he could, like Diggory,
"remember his swashing blow." He would fain, as he says himself
(Satires, II. 1), be at peace with all men:--

"But he who shall my temper try--
'Twere best to touch me not, say I--
Shall rue it, and through all the town
My verse shall damn him with renown."

But with his friends he was forbearing, devoted, lenient to their
foibles, not boring them with his own, liberal in construing their
motives, and as trustful in their loyalty to himself as he was assured
of his own to them; clearly a man to be loved--a man pleasant to meet
and pleasant to remember, constant, and to be relied on in sunshine or
in gloom. Friendship with him was not a thing to be given by halves.
He could see a friend's faults-no man quicker-but it did not lie in
his mouth to babble about them. He was not one of those who "whisper
faults and hesitate dislikes." Love me, love my friend, was his rule.
Neither would he sit quietly by, while his friends were being
disparaged. And if he has occasion himself to rally their foibles in
his poems, he does so openly, and does it with such an implied
sympathy and avowal of kindred weakness in himself, that offence was
impossible. Above all, he possessed in perfection what Mr Disraeli
happily calls "the rare gift of raillery, which flatters the self-love
of those whom it seems not to spare." These characteristics are
admirably indicated by Persius (I. 116) in speaking of his Satires--

"Arch Horace, while he strove to mend,
Probed all the foibles of his smiling friend;
Played lightly round and round each peccant part,
And won, unfelt, an entrance to his heart." (Gifford.)

And we may be sure the same qualities were even more conspicuous in
his personal intercourse with his friends. Satirist though he was, he
is continually inculcating the duty of charitable judgments towards
all men.

"What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted,"

is a thought often suggested by his works. The best need large grains
of allowance, and to whom should these be given if not to friends?
Here is his creed on this subject (Satires, I. 3):--

"True love, we know, is blind; defects, that blight
The loved one's charms, escape the lover's sight,
Nay, pass for beauties; as Balbinus shows
A passion for the wen on Agna's nose.
Oh, with our friendships that we did the same,
And screened our blindness under virtue's name!
For we are bound to treat a friend's defect
With touch most tender, and a fond respect;
Even as a father treats a child's, who hints,
The urchin's eyes are roguish, if he squints:
Or if he be as stunted, short, and thick,
As Sisyphus the dwarf, will call him 'chick!'
If crooked all ways, in back, in legs, and thighs,
With softening phrases will the flaw disguise.
So, if one friend too close a fist betrays,
Let us ascribe it to his frugal ways;
Or is another--such we often find--
To flippant jest and braggart talk inclined,
'Tis only from a kindly wish to try
To make the time 'mongst friends go lightly by;
Another's tongue is rough and over-free,
Let's call it bluntness and sincerity;
Another's choleric; him we must screen,
As cursed with feelings for his peace too keen.
This is the course, methinks, that makes a friend,
And, having made, secures him to the end."

What wonder, such being his practice--for Horace in this as in other
things acted up to his professions--that he was so dear, as we see he
was, to so many of the best men of his time? The very contrast which
his life presented to that of most of his associates must have helped
to attract them to him. Most of them were absorbed in either political
or military pursuits. Wealth, power, dignity, the splendid prizes of
ambition, were the dream of their lives. And even those whose tastes
inclined mainly towards literature and art were not exempt from the
prevailing passion for riches and display. Rich, they were eager to be
more rich; well placed in society, they were covetous of higher social
distinction. Now at Rome, gay, luxurious, dissipated; anon in Spain,
Parthia, Syria, Africa, or wherever duty, interest, or pleasure called
them, encountering perils by land and sea with reckless indifference
to fatigue and danger, always with a hunger at their hearts for
something, which, when found, did not appease it; they must have felt
a peculiar interest in a man who, without apparent effort, seemed to
get so much more out of life than they were able to do, with all their
struggles, and all their much larger apparent means of enjoyment. They
must have seen that wealth and honour were both within his grasp, and
they must have known, too, that it was from no lack of appreciation of
either that he deliberately declined to seek them. Wealth would have
purchased for him many a refined pleasure which he could heartily
appreciate, and honours might have saved him from some of the social
slights which must have tested his philosophy. But he told them, in
every variety of phrase and illustration--in ode, in satire, and
epistle--that without self-control and temperance in all things, there
would be no joy without remorse, no pleasure without fatigue--that it
is from within that happiness must come, if it come at all, and that
unless the mind has schooled itself to peace by the renunciation of
covetous desires,

"We may be wise, or rich, or great,
But never can be blest."

And as he spoke, so they must have seen he lived. Wealth and honours
would manifestly have been bought too dearly at the sacrifice of the
tranquillity and independence which he early set before him as the
objects of his life.

"The content, surpassing wealth,
The sage in meditation found;"

the content which springs from living in consonance with the dictates
of nature, from healthful pursuits, from a conscience void of offence;
the content which is incompatible with the gnawing disquietudes of
avarice, of ambition, of social envy,--with that in his heart, he knew
he could be true to his genius, and make life worth living for. A man
of this character must always be rare; least of all was he likely to
be common in Horace's day, when the men in whose circle he was moving
were engaged in the great task of crushing the civil strife which had
shaken the stability of the Roman power, and of consolidating an
empire greater and more powerful than her greatest statesmen had
previously dreamed of. But all the more delightful to these men must
it have been to come into intimate contact with a man who, while
perfectly appreciating their special gifts and aims, could bring them
back from the stir and excitement of their habitual life to think of
other things than social or political successes,--to look into their
own hearts, and to live for a time for something better and more
enduring than the triumphs of vanity or ambition.

Horace from the first seems to have wisely determined to keep himself
free from those shackles which most men are so eager to forge for
themselves, by setting their heart on wealth and social distinction.
With perfect sincerity he had told Maecenas, as we have seen, that he
coveted neither, and he gives his reasons thus (Satires, I. 6):--

"For then a larger income must be made,
Men's favour courted, and their whims obeyed;
Nor could I then indulge a lonely mood,
Away from town, in country solitude,
For the false retinue of pseudo-friends,
That all my movements servilely attends.
More slaves must then be fed, more horses too,
And chariots bought. Now have I nought to do,
If I would even to Tarentum ride,
But mount my bobtailed mule, my wallets tied
Across his flanks, which, napping as we go,
With my ungainly ankles to and fro,
Work his unhappy sides a world of weary woe."

From this wise resolution he never swerved, and so through life he
maintained an attitude of independence in thought and action which
would otherwise have been impossible. He does not say it in so many
words, but the sentiment meets us all through his pages, which Burns,
whose mode of thinking so often reminds us of Horace, puts into the
line,

"My freedom's a lairdship nae monarch may touch."

And we shall hereafter have occasion to see that, when put to the
proof, he acted upon this creed. "Well might the overworked statesman
have envied the poet the ease and freedom of his life, and longed to
be able to spend a day as Horace, in the same Satire, tells us his
days were passed!--

"I walk alone, by mine own fancy led,
Inquire the price of potherbs and of bread,
The circus cross, to see its tricks and fun,
The forum, too, at times, near set of sun;
With other fools there do I stand and gape
Bound fortune-tellers' stalls, thence home escape
To a plain meal of pancakes, pulse, and pease;
Three young boy-slaves attend on me with these.
Upon a slab of snow-white marble stand
A goblet and two beakers; near at hand,
A common ewer, patera, and bowl;
Campania's potteries produced the whole.
To sleep then I....
I keep my couch till ten, then walk awhile,
Or having read or writ what may beguile
A quiet after-hour, anoint my limbs
With oil, not such as filthy Natta skims
From lamps defrauded of their unctuous fare.
And when the sunbeams, grown too hot to bear,
Warn me to quit the field, and hand-ball play,
The bath takes all my weariness away.
Then, having lightly dined, just to appease
The sense of emptiness, I take mine ease,
Enjoying all home's simple luxury.
This is the life of bard unclogged, like me,
By stern ambition's miserable weight.
So placed, I own with gratitude, my state
Is sweeter, ay, than though a quaestor's power
From sire and grandsire's sires had been my dower."

It would not have been easy to bribe a man of these simple habits and
tastes, as some critics have contended that Horace was bribed, to
become the laureate of a party to which he had once been opposed, even
had Maecenas wished to do so. His very indifference to those favours
which were within the disposal of a great minister of state, placed
him on a vantage-ground in his relations with Maecenas which he could
in no other way have secured. Nor, we may well believe, would that
distinguished man have wished it otherwise. Surrounded as he was by
servility and selfish baseness, he must have felt himself irresistibly
drawn towards a nature so respectful, yet perfectly manly and
independent, as that of the poet. Nor can we doubt that intimacy had
grown into friendship, warm and sincere, before he gratified his own
feelings, while he made Horace happy for life, by presenting him with
a small estate in the Sabine country--a gift which, we may be sure, he
knew well would be of all gifts the most welcome. It is demonstrable
that it was not given earlier than B.C. 33, or after upwards of four
years of intimate acquaintance. That Horace had longed for such a
possession, he tells us himself (Satires, II. 6). He had probably
expressed his longing in the hearing of his friend, and to such a
friend the opportunity of turning the poet's dream into a reality must
have been especially delightful.

The gift was a slight one for Maecenas to bestow; but, with Horace's
fondness for the country, it had a value for him beyond all price. It
gave him a competency--_satis superque_--enough and more than he
wanted for his needs. It gave him leisure, health, amusement; and,
more precious than all, it secured him undisturbed freedom of thought,
and opportunities for that calm intercourse with nature which he
"needed for his spirit's health." Never was gift better bestowed, or
more worthily requited. To it we are indebted for much of that poetry
which has linked the name of Maecenas with that of the poet in
associations the most engaging, and has afforded, and will afford,
ever-new delight to successive generations. The Sabine farm was
situated in the Valley of Ustica, thirty miles from Rome, and twelve
miles from Tivoli. It possessed the attraction, no small one to
Horace, of being very secluded--Varia (Vico Varo), the nearest town,
being four miles off--yet, at the same time, within an easy distance
of Rome. When his spirits wanted the stimulus of society or the bustle
of the capital, which they often did, his ambling mule could speedily
convey him thither; and when jaded, on the other hand, by the noise
and racket and dissipations of Rome, he could, in the same homely way,
bury himself within a few hours among the hills, and there, under the
shadow of his favourite Lucretilis, or by the banks of the clear-
flowing and ice-cold Digentia, either stretch himself to dream upon
the grass, lulled by the murmurs of the stream, or do a little fanning
in the way of clearing his fields of stones, or turning over a furrow
here and there with the hoe. There was a rough wildness in the scenery
and a sharpness in the air, both of which Horace liked, although, as
years advanced and his health grew more delicate, he had to leave it
in the colder months for Tivoli or Baiae. He built a villa upon it, or
added to one already there, the traces of which still exist. The farm
gave employment to five families of free _coloni_, who were under
the superintendence of a bailiff; and the poet's domestic
establishment was composed of eight slaves. The site of the farm is at
the present day a favourite resort of travellers, of Englishmen
especially, who visit it in such numbers, and trace its features with
such enthusiasm, that the resident peasantry, "who cannot conceive of
any other source of interest in one so long dead and unsainted than
that of co-patriotism or consanguinity," believe Horace to have been
an Englishman [Footnote: Letter by Mr Dennis: Milman's 'Horace.'
London, 1849. P. 109.]. What aspect it presented in Horace's time we
gather from one of his Epistles (I. 16):--

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