Produced by Charles Franks, Delphine Lettau and the DP team

HORACE

By Theodore Martin

From the Series Ancient Classics for English Readers

Edited By Rev. W. Lucas Collins, M. A.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. BIRTH.--EDUCATION.--CAMPAIGN WITH BRUTUS AND CASSIUS

CHAPTER II. RETURNS TO ROME AFTER BATTLE OF PHILIPPI.--EARLY POEMS

CHAPTER III. INTRODUCTION TO MAECENAS.--THE JOURNEY TO BRUNDUSIUM

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

CHAPTER V. LIFE IN ROME.--HORACE'S BORE.--EXTRAVAGANCE OF THE ROMAN
             DINNERS

CHAPTER VI. HORACE'S LOVE-POETRY

CHAPTER VII. HORACE'S POEMS TO HIS FRIENDS.--HIS PRAISES OF
             CONTENTMENT

CHAPTER VIII. PREVAILING BELIEF IN ASTROLOGY.--HORACE'S VIEWS OF A
              HEREAFTER.--RELATIONS WITH MAECENAS--BELIEF IN THE
              PERMANENCE OF HIS OWN FAME

CHAPTER IX. HORACE'S RELATIONS WITH AUGUSTUS--HIS LOVE OF
              INDEPENDENCE

CHAPTER X. DELICACY OF HORACE'S HEALTH.--HIS CHEERFULNESS--LOVE OF
              BOOKS.--HIS PHILOSOPHY PRACTICAL.--EPISTLE TO AUGUSTUS.
              --DEATH

PREFACE.

No writer of antiquity has taken a stronger hold upon the modern
mind than Horace. The causes of this are manifold, but three may be
especially noted: his broad human sympathies, his vigorous common-sense,
and his consummate mastery of expression. The mind must be either
singularly barren or singularly cold to which Horace does not speak. The
scholar, the statesman, the soldier, the man of the world, the town-bred
man, the lover of the country, the thoughtful and the careless, he who
reads much, and he who reads little, all find in his pages more or
less to amuse their fancy, to touch their feelings, to quicken their
observation, to nerve their convictions, to put into happy phrase the
deductions of their experience. His poetical sentiment is not pitched in
too high a key for the unimaginative, but it is always so genuine that
the most imaginative feel its charm. His wisdom is deeper than it seems,
so simple, practical, and direct as it is in its application; and his
moral teaching more spiritual and penetrating than is apparent on a
superficial study. He does not fall into the common error of didactic
writers, of laying upon life more than it will bear; but he insists that
it shall at least bear the fruits of integrity, truth, honour, justice,
self-denial, and brotherly charity. Over and above the mere literary
charm of his works, too--and herein, perhaps, lies no small part of the
secret of his popularity--the warm heart and thoroughly urbane nature of
the man are felt instinctively by his readers, and draw them to him as
to a friend.

Hence it is that we find he has been a manual with men the most diverse
in their natures, culture, and pursuits. Dante ranks him next after
Homer. Montaigne, as might be expected, knows him by heart. Fenelon
and Bossuet never weary of quoting him. La Fontaine polishes his own
exquisite style upon his model; and Voltaire calls him "the best of
preachers." Hooker escapes with him to the fields to seek oblivion of a
hard life, made harder by a shrewish spouse. Lord Chesterfield tells us,
"When I talked my best I quoted Horace." To Boileau and to Wordsworth he
is equally dear. Condorcet dies in his dungeon with Horace open by his
side; and in Gibbon's militia days, "on every march," he says, "in every
journey, Horace was always in my pocket, and often in my hand." And
as it has been, so it is. In many a pocket, where this might be least
expected, lies a well-thumbed Horace; and in many a devout Christian
heart the maxims of the gentle, genial pagan find a place near the
higher teachings of a greater master.

Where so much of a writer's charm lies, as with Horace, in exquisite
aptness of language, and in a style perfect for fulness of suggestion
combined with brevity and grace, the task of indicating his
characteristics in translation demands the most liberal allowance from
the reader. In this volume the writer has gladly availed himself,
where he might, of the privilege liberally accorded to him to use the
admirable translations of the late Mr Conington, which are distinguished
in all cases by the addition of his initial. The other translations are
the writer's own. For these it would be superfluous to claim indulgence.
This is sure to be granted by those who know their Horace well. With
those who do not, these translations will not be wholly useless, if they
serve to pique them into cultivating an acquaintance with the original
sufficiently close to justify them in turning critics of their defects.

QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS.

BORN, A.U.C. 689, B.C. 65. DIED, A.U.C. 746, B.C. 8.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH.--EDUCATION.--CAMPAIGN WITH BRUTUS AND CASSIUS.

Like the two greatest lyrists of modern times, Burns and Béranger,
Horace sprang from the ranks of the people. His father had been a slave,
and he was himself cradled among "the huts where poor men lie." Like
these great lyrists, too, Horace was proud of his origin. After he had
become the intimate associate of the first men in Rome--nay, the bosom
friend of the generals and statesmen who ruled the world--he was at
pains on more occasions than one to call attention to the fact of his
humble birth, and to let it be known that, had he to begin life anew,
he was so far from desiring a better ancestry that he would, like Andrew
Marvell, have made "his destiny his choice." Nor is this done with the
pretentious affectation of the parvenu, eager to bring under notice the
contrast between what he is and what he has been, and to insinuate his
personal deserts, while pretending to disclaim them. Horace has no such
false humility. He was proud, and he makes no secret that he was so, of
the name he had made,--proud of it for himself and for the class from
which, he had sprung. But it was his practice, as well as his settled
creed, to rate at little the accidents of birth and fortune. A
stronger and higher feeling, however, more probably dictated the
avowal,--gratitude to that slave-born father whose character and careful
training had stamped an abiding influence upon the life and genius of
his son. Neither might he have been unwilling in this way quietly to
protest against the worship of rank and wealth which he saw everywhere
around him, and which was demoralising society in Rome. The favourite of
the Emperor, the companion of Maecenas, did not himself forget, neither
would he let others forget, that he was a freedman's son; and in his own
way was glad to declare, as Béranger did of himself at the height of his
fame,

  "Je suis vilain, et très vilain."

The Roman poets of the pre-Augustan and Augustan periods, unlike Horace,
were all well born. Catullus and Calvus, his great predecessors in lyric
poetry, were men of old and noble family Virgil, born five years before
Horace, was the son of a Roman citizen of good property. Tibullus,
Propertius, and Ovid, who were respectively six, fourteen, and twenty
years his juniors, were all of equestrian rank. Horace's father was a
freed-man of the town of Venusia, the modern Venosa. It is supposed that
he had been a _publicus servus_, or slave of the community, and took
his distinctive name from the Horatian tribe, to which the community
belonged. He had saved a moderate competency in the vocation of
_coactor_, a name applied both to the collectors of public revenue
and of money at sales by public auction. To which of these classes he
belonged is uncertain--most probably to the latter; and in those days of
frequent confiscations, when property was constantly changing hands,
the profits of his calling, at best a poor one, may have been unusually
large. With the fruits of his industry he had purchased a small farm
near Venusia, upon the banks of the Aufidus, the modern Ofanto, on the
confines of Lucania and Apulia, Here, on the 8th of December, B.C. 65,
the poet was born; and this picturesque region of mountain, forest, and
river, "meet nurse of a poetic child," impressed itself indelibly on his
memory, and imbued him with the love of nature, especially in her rugged
aspect, which remained with him through life. He appears to have left
the locality in early life, and never to have revisited it; but when he
has occasion to describe its features (Odes, III. 4), he does this with
a sharpness and truth of touch, which show how closely he had even then
begun to observe. Acherontia, perched nest-like among the rocks, the
Bantine thickets, the fat meadows of low-lying Forentum, which his
boyish eye had noted, attest to this hour the vivid accuracy of his
description. The passage in question records an interesting incident in
the poet's childhood. Escaping from his nurse, he has rambled away
from the little cottage on the slopes of Mount Vultur, whither he had
probably been taken from the sultry Venusia to pass his _villeggiatura_
during the heat of summer, and is found asleep, covered with fresh
myrtle and laurel leaves, in which the wood-pigeons have swathed him.

  "When from my nurse erewhile, on Vultur's steep,
    I stray'd beyond the bound
    Of our small homestead's ground,
  Was I, fatigued with play, beneath a heap
    Of fresh leaves sleeping found,--

  "Strewn by the storied doves; and wonder fell
    On all, their nest who keep
    On Acherontia's steep,
  Or in Forentum's low rich pastures dwell,
    Or Bantine woodlands deep,

  "That safe from bears and adders in such place
    I lay, and slumbering smiled,
    O'erstrewn with myrtle wild,
  And laurel, by the god's peculiar grace
    No craven-hearted child."

The incident thus recorded is not necessarily discredited by the
circumstance of its being closely akin to what is told by Aelian of
Pindar, that a swarm of bees settled upon his lips, and fed him with
honey, when he was left exposed upon the highway. It probably had some
foundation in fact, whatever may be thought of the implied augury of the
special favour of the gods which is said to have been drawn from it
at the time. In any case, the picture of the strayed child, sleeping
unconscious of its danger, with its hands full of wild-flowers, is
pleasant to contemplate.

In his father's house, and in those of the Apulian peasantry around
him, Horace became familiar with the simple virtues of the poor, their
industry and independence, their integrity, chastity, and self-denial,
which he loved to contrast in after years with the luxury and vice of
imperial Rome. His mother he would seem to have lost early. No mention
of her occurs, directly or indirectly, throughout his poems; and
remarkable as Horace is for the warmth of his affections, this could
scarcely have happened had she not died when he was very young. He
appears also to have been an only child. This doubtless drew him closer
to his father, and the want of the early influences of mother or sister
may serve to explain why one misses in his poetry something of that
gracious tenderness towards womanhood, which, looking to the sweet and
loving disposition of the man, one might otherwise have expected to find
in it. That he was no common boy we may be very sure, even if this were
not manifest from the fact that his father resolved to give him a higher
education than was to be obtained under a provincial schoolmaster. With
this view, although little able to afford the expense, he took his son,
when about twelve years old, to Rome, and gave him the best education
the capital could supply. No money was spared to enable him to keep his
position among his fellow-scholars of the higher ranks. He was waited on
by several slaves, as though he were the heir to a considerable fortune.
At the same time, however, he was not allowed either to feel any shame
for his own order, or to aspire to a position which his patrimony
was unable to maintain. His father taught him to look forward to some
situation akin to that in which his own modest competency had been
acquired; and to feel that, in any sphere, culture, self-respect,
and prudent self-control must command influence, and afford the best
guarantee for happiness. In reading this part of Horace's story, as
he tells it himself, one is reminded of Burns's early lines about his
father and himself:--

  "My father was a farmer upon the Carrick border,
  And carefully he bred me up in decency and order.
  He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne'er a farthing,
  For without an honest manly heart no man was worth regarding."

The parallel might be still further pursued. "My father," says Gilbert
Burns, "was for some time almost the only companion we had. He conversed
familiarly on all subjects with us as if we had been men, and was at
great pains, while we accompanied him in the labours of the farm, to
lead the conversation to such subjects as might tend to increase our
knowledge, or confirm us in virtuous habits." How closely this resembles
the method adopted with Horace by his father will be seen hereafter.
[Footnote: Compare it, too, with what Horace reports of "Ofellus the
hind, Though no scholar, a sage of exceptional kind," in the Second
Satire of the Second Book, from line 114 to the end.]

Horace's literary master at Rome was Orbilius Pupillus, a grammarian,
who had carried into his school his martinet habits as an old soldier;
and who, thanks to Horace, has become a name (_plagosus Orbilius_,
Orbilius of the birch) eagerly applied by many a suffering urchin
to modern pedagogues who have resorted to the same material means of
inculcating the beauties of the classics. By this Busby of the period
Horace was grounded in Greek, and made familiar, too familiar for his
liking, with Ennius, Naevius, Pacuvius, Attius, Livius Andronicus, and
other early Latin writers, whose unpruned vigour was distasteful to
one who had already begun to appreciate the purer and not less vigorous
style of Homer and other Greek authors. Horace's father took care that
he should acquire all the accomplishments of a Roman gentleman, in which
music and rhetoric were, as a matter of course, included. But, what
was of still more importance during this critical period of the future
poet's first introduction to the seductions of the capital, he enjoyed
the advantages of his father's personal superintendence and of a careful
moral training. His father went with him to all his classes, and, being
himself a man of shrewd observation and natural humour, he gave the
boy's studies a practical bearing by directing his attention to the
follies and vices of the luxurious and dissolute society around him,
showing him how incompatible they were with the dictates of reason and
common-sense, and how disastrous in their consequences to the good name
and happiness of those who yielded to their seductions. The method he
pursued is thus described by Horace (Satires, I. 4):--

  "Should then my humorous vein run wild, some latitude allow.
  I learned the habit from the best of fathers, who employed
  Some living type to stamp the vice he wished me to avoid.
  Thus temperate and frugal when exhorting me to be,
  And with the competence content which he had stored for me,
  'Look, boy!' he'd say,' at Albius' son--observe his sorry plight!
  And Barrus, that poor beggar there! Say, are not these a sight,
  To warn a man from squandering his patrimonial means?'
  When counselling me to keep from vile amours with common queans;
  'Sectanus, ape him not!' he'd say; or, urging to forswear
  Intrigue with matrons, when I might taste lawful joys elsewhere;
  'Trebonius' fame is blurred since he was in the manner caught.
  The reasons why this should be shunned, and why that should be
  sought,
  The sages will explain; enough for me, if I uphold
  The faith and morals handed down from our good sires of old,
  And, while you need a guardian, keep your life pure and your name.
  When years have hardened, as they will, your judgment and your
  frame,
  You'll swim without a float!' And so, with talk like this, he won
  And moulded me, while yet a boy. Was something to be done,
  Hard it might be--'For this,' he'd say, 'good warrant you can
  quote'--
  And then as model pointed to some public man of note.
  Or was there something to be shunned, then he would urge, 'Can you
  One moment doubt that acts like these are base and futile too,
  Which have to him and him such dire disgrace and trouble bred?'
  And as a neighbour's death appals the sick, and, by the dread
  Of dying, forces them to put upon their lusts restraint,
  So tender minds are oft deterred from vices by the taint
  They see them bring on others' names; 'tis thus that I from those
  Am all exempt, which bring with them a train of shames and woes."

Nor did Horace only inherit from his father, as he here says, the kindly
humour and practical good sense which distinguish his satirical and
didactic writings, and that manly independence which he preserved
through the temptations of a difficult career. Many of "the rugged
maxims hewn from life" with which his works abound are manifestly but
echoes of what the poet had heard from his father's lips. Like his
own Ofellus, and the elders of the race--not, let us hope, altogether
bygone--of peasant-farmers in Scotland, described by Wordsworth as
"Religious men, who give to God and men their dues,"--the Apulian
freedman had a fund of homely wisdom at command, not gathered from
books, but instinct with the freshness and force of direct observation
and personal conviction. The following exquisite tribute by Horace
to his worth is conclusive evidence how often and how deeply he had
occasion to be grateful, not only for the affectionate care of this
admirable father, but also for the bias and strength which that father's
character had given to his own. It has a further interest, as occurring
in a poem addressed to Maecenas, a man of ancient family and vast
wealth, in the early days of that acquaintance with the poet which was
afterwards to ripen into a lifelong friendship.

  "Yet if some trivial faults, and these but few,
  My nature, else not much amiss, imbue
  (Just as you wish away, yet scarcely blame,
  A mole or two upon a comely frame),
  If no man may arraign me of the vice
  Of lewdness, meanness, nor of avarice;
  If pure and innocent I live, and dear
  To those I love (self-praise is venial here),
  All this I owe my father, who, though poor,
  Lord of some few lean acres, and no more,
  Was loath to send me to the village school,
  Whereto the sons of men of mark and rule,--
  Centurions, and the like,--were wont to swarm,
  With slate and satchel on sinister arm,
  And the poor dole of scanty pence to pay
  The starveling teacher on the quarter-day;
  But boldly took me, when a boy, to Rome,
  There to be taught all arts that grace the home
  Of knight and senator. To see my dress,
  And slaves attending, you'd have thought, no less
  Than patrimonial fortunes old and great
  Had furnished forth the charges of my state.
  When with my tutors, he would still be by,
  Nor ever let me wander from his eye;
  And, in a word, he kept me chaste (and this
  Is virtue's crown) from all that was amiss,
  Nor such in act alone, but in repute,
  Till even scandal's tattling voice was mute.
  No dread had he that men might taunt or jeer,
  Should I, some future day, as auctioneer,
  Or, like himself, as tax-collector, seek
  With petty fees my humble means to eke.
  Nor should I then have murmured. Now I know,
  More earnest thanks, and loftier praise I owe.
  Reason must fail me, ere I cease to own
  With pride, that I have such a father known;
  Nor shall I stoop my birth to vindicate,
  By charging, like the herd, the wrong on Fate,
  That I was not of noble lineage sprung:
  Far other creed inspires my heart and tongue.
  For now should Nature bid all living men
  Retrace their years, and live them o'er again,
  Each culling, as his inclination bent,
  His parents for himself, with mine content,
  I would not choose whom men endow as great
  With the insignia and seats of state;
  And, though I seemed insane to vulgar eyes,
  Thou wouldst perchance esteem me truly wise,
  In thus refusing to assume the care
  Of irksome state I was unused to bear."

The education, of which Horace's father had laid the foundation at Rome,
would not have been complete without a course of study at Athens, then
the capital of literature and philosophy, as Rome was of political
power. Thither Horace went somewhere between the age of 17 and 20. "At
Rome," he says (Epistles, II. ii. 23),

  "I had my schooling, and was taught
  Achilles' wrath, and all the woes it brought;
  At classic Athens, where I went ere long,
  I learned to draw the line 'twixt right and wrong,
  And search for truth, if so she might be seen,
  In Academic groves of blissful green." (C.)

At Athens he found many young men of the leading Roman
families--Bibulus, Messalla, Corvinus, the younger Cicero, and
others--engaged in the same pursuits with himself, and he contracted
among them many enduring friendships. In the political lull which ensued
between the battle of Pharsalia (B.C. 48) and the death of Julius Caesar
(B.C. 44), he was enabled to devote himself without interruption to the
studies which had drawn him to that home of literature and the arts. But
these were destined before long to be rudely broken. The tidings of that
startling event had been hailed with delight by the youthful spirits,
some of whom saw in the downfall of the great Dictator the dawn of a new
era of liberty, while others hoped from it the return to power of the
aristocratic party to which they belonged. In this mood Brutus found
them when he arrived in Athens along with Cassius, on their way to take
command of the Eastern provinces which had been assigned to them by the
Senate. Cassius hurried on to his post in Syria, but Brutus lingered
behind, ostensibly absorbed in the philosophical studies of the schools,
but at the same time recruiting a staff of officers for his army from
among the young Romans of wealth and family whom it was important he
should attach to his party, and who were all eagerness to make his
cause their own. Horace, infected by the general enthusiasm, joined his
standard; and, though then only twenty-two, without experience, and with
no special aptitude, physical or mental, for a military life, he was
intrusted by Brutus with the command of a legion. There is no reason to
suppose that he owed a command of such importance to any dearth of men
of good family qualified to act as officers. It is, therefore, only
reasonable to conclude, that even at this early period he was recognised
in the brilliant society around him as a man of mark; and that Brutus,
before selecting him, had thoroughly satisfied himself that he possessed
qualities which justified so great a deviation from ordinary rules,
as the commission of so responsible a charge to a freedman's son. That
Horace gave his commander satisfaction we know from himself. The line
(Epistles, I. xx. 23), "_Me primis urbis belli placuisse domique_,"--

  "At home, as in the field, I made my way,
  And kept it, with the first men of the day,"--

can be read in no other sense. But while Horace had, beyond all doubt,
made himself a strong party of friends who could appreciate his genius
and attractive qualities, his appointment as military tribune excited
jealousy among some of his brother officers, who considered that the
command of a Roman legion should have been reserved for men of nobler
blood--a jealousy at which he said, with his usual modesty, many years
afterwards (Satires, I. vi. 45), he had no reason either to be surprised
or to complain.

In B.C. 43, Brutus, with his army, passed from Macedonia to join Cassius
in Asia Minor, and Horace took his part in their subsequent active and
brilliant campaign there. Of this we get some slight incidental glimpses
in his works. Thus, for example (Odes, II. 7), we find him reminding his
comrade, Pompeius Varus, how

  "Full oft they sped the lingering day
  Quaffing bright wine, as in our tents we lay,
  With Syrian spikenard on our glistening hair."

The Syrian spikenard, _Malobathrum Syrium_, fixes the locality. Again,
in the epistle to his friend Bullatius (Epistles, I. 11), who is
making a tour in Asia, Horace speaks of several places as if from vivid
recollection. In his usual dramatic manner, he makes Bullatius answer
his inquiries as to how he likes the places he has seen:--

  "_You know what Lebedos is like_; so bare,
  With Gabii or Fidenae 'twould compare;
  Yet there, methinks, I would accept my lot,
  My friends forgetting, by my friends forgot,
  Stand on the cliff at distance, and survey
  The stormy sea-god's wild Titanic play." (C.)

Horace himself had manifestly watched the angry surges from the cliffs
of Lebedos. But a more interesting record of the Asiatic campaign,
inasmuch as it is probably the earliest specimen of Horace's writing
which we have, occurs in the Seventh Satire of the First Book. Persius,
a rich trader of Clazomene, has a lawsuit with Rupilius, one of Brutus's
officers, who went by the nickname of "King." Brutus, in his character
of quaestor, has to decide the dispute, which in the hands of the
principals degenerates, as disputes so conducted generally do, into a
personal squabble. Persius leads off with some oriental flattery of the
general and his suite. Brutus is "Asia's sun," and they the "propitious
stars," all but Rupilius, who was

                        "That pest,
  The Dog, whom husbandmen detest."

Rupilius, an old hand at slang, replies with a volley of rough sarcasms,
"such as among the vineyards fly," and

               "Would make the passer-by
  Shout filthy names, but shouting fly"--

a description of vintage slang which is as true to-day as it was then.
The conclusion is curious, as a punning allusion to the hereditary fame
of Brutus as a puller-down of kings, which it must have required some
courage to publish, when Augustus was omnipotent in Rome.

  "But Grecian Persius, after he
  Had been besprinkled plenteously
  With gall Italic, cries, 'By all
  The gods above, on thee I call,
  Oh Brutus, thou of old renown,
  For putting kings completely down,
  To save us! Wherefore do you not
  Despatch this King here on the spot?
  One of the tasks is this, believe,
  Which you are destined to achieve!'"

This is just such a squib as a young fellow might be expected to dash
off for the amusement of his brother officers, while the incident which
led to it was yet fresh in their minds. Slight as it is, one feels sure
its preservation by so severe a critic of his own writings as Horace was
due to some charm of association, or possibly to the fact that in it
he had made his first essay in satire. The defeat of Brutus at Philippi
(B.C. 42) brought Horace's military career to a close. Even before this
decisive event, his dream of the re-establishment of liberty and the
old Roman constitution had probably begun to fade away, under his actual
experience of the true aims and motives of the mass of those whom Brutus
and Cassius had hitherto been leading to victory, and satiating with
plunder. Young aristocrats, who sneered at the freedman's son, were
not likely to found any system of liberty worthy of the name, or to use
success for nobler purposes than those of selfish ambition. Fighting
was not Horace's vocation, and with the death of Brutus and those
nobler spirits, who fell at Philippi rather than survive their hopes
of freedom, his motive for fighting was at an end. To prolong a contest
which its leaders had surrendered in despair was hopeless. He did not,
therefore, like Pompeius Varus and others of his friends, join the party
which, for a time, protracted the struggle under the younger Pompey.
But, like his great leader, he had fought for a principle; nor could
he have regarded otherwise than with horror the men who had overthrown
Brutus, reeking as they were with the blood of a thousand proscriptions,
and reckless as they had shown themselves of every civil right and
social obligation. As little, therefore, was he inclined to follow the
example of others of his distinguished friends and companions in arms,
such as Valerius Messalla and Aelius Lamia, who not merely made their
peace with Antony and Octavius, but cemented it by taking service in
their army.

CHAPTER II.

RETURNS TO ROME AFTER BATTLE OF PHILIPPI.--EARLY POEMS.

Availing himself of the amnesty proclaimed by the conquerors, Horace
found his way back to Rome. His father was dead; how long before is not
known. If the little property at Venusia had remained unsold, it was of
course confiscated. When the lands of men, like Virgil, who had taken no
active part in the political conflicts of the day, were being seized to
satisfy the rapacity of a mercenary soldiery, Horace's paternal acres
were not likely to escape. In Rome he found himself penniless. How to
live was the question; and, fortunately for literature, "chill penury"
did not repress, but, on the contrary, stimulated his "noble rage."

  "Bated in spirit, and with pinions clipped,
  Of all the means my father left me stripped,
  Want stared me in the face, so then and there
  I took to scribbling verse in sheer despair."

Despoiled of his means, and smarting with defeat, Horace was just in the
state of mind to strike vigorously at men and manners which he did not
like. Young, ardent, constitutionally hot in temper, eager to assert,
amid the general chaos of morals public and private, the higher
principles of the philosophic schools from which he had so recently
come, irritated by the thousand mortifications to which a man of
cultivated tastes and keenly alive to beauty is exposed in a luxurious
city, where the prizes he values most are carried off, yet scarcely
valued, by the wealthy vulgar, he was especially open to the besetting
temptation of clever young men to write satire, and to write it in a
merciless spirit. As he says of himself (Odes, I. 15),

  "In youth's pleasant spring-time,
  The shafts of my passion at random I flung,
  And, dashing headlong into petulant rhyme,
  I recked neither where nor how fiercely I stung."

Youth is always intolerant, and it is so easy to be severe; so seductive
to say brilliant things, whether they be true or not. But there came a
day, and it came soon, when Horace, saw that triumphs gained in this way
were of little value, and when he was anxious that his friends should
join with him in consigning his smart and scurril lines (_celeres et
criminosos Iambos_) to oblivion. The _amende_ for some early lampoon
which he makes in the Ode just quoted, though ostensibly addressed to
a lady who had been its victim, was probably intended to cover a wider
field.

Personal satire is always popular, but the fame it begets is bought
dearly at the cost of lifelong enmities and many after-regrets. That
Horace in his early writings was personal and abusive is very clear,
both from his own language and from a few of the poems of this class and
period which survive. Some of these have no value, except as showing how
badly even Horace could write, and how sedulously the better feeling
and better taste of his riper years led him to avoid that most worthless
form of satire which attacks where rejoinder is impossible, and
irritates the temper but cannot possibly amend the heart. In others, the
lash is applied with no less justice than vigour, as in the following
invective, the fourth of the Epodes:--

  "Such hate as nature meant to be
  'Twixt lamb and wolf I feel for thee,
  Whose hide by Spanish scourge is tanned,
  And legs still bear the fetter's brand!
  Though of your gold you strut so vain,
  Wealth cannot change the knave in grain.
  How! see you not, when striding down
  The Via Sacra [1]in your gown
  Good six ells wide, the passers there
  Turn on you with indignant stare?
  'This wretch,' such gibes your ear invade,
  'By the Triumvirs' [2] scourges flayed,
  Till even the crier shirked his toil,
  Some thousand acres ploughs of soil
  Falernian, and with his nags
  Wears out the Appian highway's flags;
  Nay, on the foremost seats, despite
  Of Otho, sits and apes the knight.
  What boots it to despatch a fleet
  So large, so heavy, so complete,
  Against a gang of rascal knaves,
  Thieves, corsairs, buccaneers, and slaves,
  If villain of such vulgar breed
  Is in the foremost rank to lead?'"

[1]   The Sacred Way, leading to the Capitol, a favourite lounge.

[2]   When a slave was being scourged, under the orders of the
   Triumviri Capitales, a public crier stood by, and proclaimed the
   nature of his crime.

Modern critics may differ as to whom this bitter infective was aimed at,
but there could have been no doubt on that subject in Rome at the time.
And if, as there is every reason to conclude, it was levelled at Sextus
Menas, the lines, when first shown about among Horace's friends, must
have told with great effect, and they were likely to be remembered long
after the infamous career of this double-dyed traitor had come to a
close. Menas was a freedman of Pompey the Great, and a trusted officer
of his son Sextus. [Footnote: Shakespeare has introduced him in "Antony
and Cleopatra," along with Menecrates and Varrius, as "friends to Sextus
Pompeius."] He had recently (B.C. 38) carried over with him to Augustus
a portion of Pompey's fleet which was under his command, and betrayed
into his hands the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. For this act of
treachery he was loaded with wealth and honours; and when Augustus,
next year, fitted out a naval expedition against Sextus Pompeius,
Menas received a command. It was probably lucky for Horace that this
swaggering upstart, who was not likely to be scrupulous as to his means
of revenge, went over the very next year to his former master, whom he
again abandoned within a year to sell himself once more to Augustus.
That astute politician put it out of his power to play further tricks
with the fleet, by giving him a command in Pannonia, where he was
killed, B.C. 36, at the siege of Siscia, the modern Sissek.

Though Horace was probably best known in Rome in these early days as a
writer of lampoons and satirical poems, in which the bitterness of his
models Archilochus and Lucilius was aimed at, not very successfully--for
bitterness and personal rancour were not natural to the man--he showed
in other compositions signs of the true poetic spirit, which afterwards
found expression in the consummate grace and finish of his Odes. To
this class belongs the following poem (Epode 16), which, from internal
evidence, appears to have been written B.C. 40, when the state of Italy,
convulsed by civil war, was well calculated to fill him with despair.
Horace had frequent occasion between this period and the battle of
Actium, when the defeat and death of Antony closed the long struggle for
supremacy between him and Octavius, to appeal to his countrymen against
the waste of the best blood of Italy in civil fray, which might have
been better spent in subduing a foreign foe, and spreading the lustre
of the Roman arms. But if we are to suppose this poem written when the
tidings of the bloody incidents of the Perusian campaign had arrived in
Rome,--the reduction of the town of Perusia by famine, and the massacre
of from two to three hundred prisoners, almost all of equestrian or
senatorial rank,--we can well understand the feeling under which the
poem is written.

TO THE ROMAN PEOPLE.

  Another age in civil wars will soon be spent and worn,
  And by her native strength our Rome be wrecked and overborne,
  That Rome, the Marsians could not crush, who border on our lands,
  Nor the shock of threatening Porsena with his Etruscan bands,
  Nor Capua's strength that rivalled ours, nor Spartacus the stern,
  Nor the faithless Allobrogian, who still for change doth yearn.
  Ay, what Gennania's blue-eyed youth quelled not with ruthless sword,
  Nor Hannibal by our great sires detested and abhorred,
  We shall destroy with impious hands imbrued in brother's gore,
  And wild beasts of the wood shall range our native land once more.
  A foreign foe, alas! shall tread The City's ashes down,
  And his horse's ringing hoofs shall smite her places of renown,
  And the bones of great Quirinus, now religiously enshrined,
  Shall be flung by sacrilegious hands to the sunshine and the wind.
  And if ye all from ills so dire ask how yourselves to free,
  Or such at least as would not hold your lives unworthily,
  No better counsel can I urge, than that which erst inspired
  The stout Phocaeans when from their doomed city they retired,
  Their fields, their household gods, their shrines surrendering as a
  prey
  To the wild boar and the ravening wolf; [1] so we, in our dismay,
  Where'er our wandering steps may chance to carry us should go,
  Or wheresoe'er across the seas the fitful winds may blow.
  How think ye then? If better course none offer, why should we
  Not seize the happy auspices, and boldly put to sea?
  But let us swear this oath;--"Whene'er, if e'er shall come the time,
  Rocks upwards from the deep shall float, return shall not be crime;
  Nor we be loath to back our sails, the ports of home to seek,
  When the waters of the Po shall lave Matinum's rifted peak.
  Or skyey Apenninus down into the sea be rolled,
  Or wild unnatural desires such monstrous revel hold,
  That in the stag's endearments the tigress shall delight,
  And the turtle-dove adulterate with the falcon and the kite,
  That unsuspicious herds no more shall tawny lions fear,
  And the he-goat, smoothly sleek of skin, through the briny deep
  career!"
  This having sworn, and what beside may our returning stay,
  Straight let us all, this City's doomed inhabitants, away,
  Or those that rise above the herd, the few of nobler soul;
  The craven and the hopeless here on their ill-starred beds may loll.
  Ye who can feel and act like men, this woman's wail give o'er,
  And fly to regions far away beyond the Etruscan shore!
  The circling ocean waits us; then away, where nature smiles,
  To those fair lands, those blissful lands, the rich and happy Isles!
  Where Ceres year by year crowns all the untilled land with sheaves,
  And the vine with purple clusters droops, unpruned of all her
  leaves;
  Where the olive buds and burgeons, to its promise ne'er untrue,
  And the russet fig adorns the tree, that graffshoot never knew;
  Where honey from the hollow oaks doth ooze, and crystal rills
  Come dancing down with tinkling feet from the sky-dividing hills;
  There to the pails the she-goats come, without a master's word,
  And home with udders brimming broad returns the friendly herd.
  There round the fold no surly bear its midnight prowl doth make,
  Nor teems the rank and heaving soil with the adder and the snake;
  There no contagion smites the flocks, nor blight of any star
  With fury of remorseless heat the sweltering herds doth mar.
  Nor this the only bliss that waits us there, where drenching rains
  By watery Eurus swept along ne'er devastate the plains,
  Nor are the swelling seeds burnt up within the thirsty clods,
  So kindly blends the seasons there the King of all the Gods.
  That shore the Argonautic bark's stout rowers never gained,
  Nor the wily she of Colchis with step unchaste profaned;
  The sails of Sidon's galleys ne'er were wafted to that strand,
  Nor ever rested on its slopes Ulysses' toilworn band:
  For Jupiter, when he with brass the Golden Age alloyed,
  That blissful region set apart by the good to be enjoyed;
  With brass and then with iron he the ages seared, but ye,
  Good men and true, to that bright home arise and follow me!

[1]   The story of the Phocaeans is told by Herodotus (Ch. 165). When
   their city was attacked by Harpagus, they retired in a body to make
   way for the Persians, who took possession of it. They subsequently
   returned, and put to the sword the Persian garrison which had been
   left in it by Harpagus. "Afterwards, when this was accomplished,
   they pronounced terrible imprecations on any who should desert the
   fleet; besides this, they sunk a mass of molten iron, and swore
   that they would never return to Phocaea until it should appear
   again."

This poem, Lord Lytton has truly said, "has the character of youth in
its defects and its beauties. The redundance of its descriptive passages
is in marked contrast to the terseness of description which Horace
studies in his Odes; and there is something declamatory in its general
tone which is at variance with the simpler utterance of lyrical art. On
the other hand, it has all the warmth of genuine passion, and in sheer
vigour of composition Horace has rarely excelled it."

The idea of the Happy Isles, referred to in the poem, was a familiar one
with the Greek poets. They became in time confounded with the Elysian
fields, in which the spirits of the departed good and great enjoyed
perpetual rest. It is as such that Ulysses mentions them in Tennyson's
noble monologue:--

  "It may be that the gulfs shall wash us down,
  It may be we shall reach the Happy Isles,
  And see the great Achilles, whom we knew."

These islands were supposed to be in the far west, and were probably the
poetical amplification of some voyager's account of the Canaries or
of Madeira. There has always been a region beyond the boundaries of
civilisation to which the poet's fancy has turned for ideal happiness
and peace. The difference between ancient and modern is, that material
comforts, as in this epode, enter largely into the dream of the ancient,
while independence, beauty, and grandeur are the chief elements in the
modern picture:--

  "Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
  Breadth of Tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.
  Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,
  Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, droops the trailer from the
crag;  Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree,
  Summer Isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea."

To the same class of Horace's early poems, though probably a few years
later in date, belongs the following eulogium of a country life and its
innocent enjoyments (Epode 2), the leading idea of which was embodied by
Pope in the familiar lines, wonderful for finish as the production of a
boy of eleven, beginning

  "Happy the man whose wish and care
  A few paternal acres bound."

With characteristic irony Horace puts his fancies into the mouth of
Alphius, a miserly money-lender. No one yearns so keenly for the country
and its imagined peace as the overworked city man, when his pulse is low
and his spirits weary with bad air and the reaction of over-excitement;
no one, as a rule, is more apt to tire of the homely and uneventful
life which the country offers, or to find that, for him at least, its
quietude does not bring peace. It is not, therefore, at all out of
keeping, although critics have taken exception to the poem on this
ground, that Horace makes Alphius rhapsodise on the charms of a rural
life, and having tried them, creep back within the year to his moneybags
and his ten per cent. It was, besides, a favourite doctrine with him,
which he is constantly enforcing in his later works, that everybody
envies his neighbour's pursuits--until he tries them.

ALPHIUS.

  Happy the man, in busy schemes unskilled,
    Who, living simply, like our sires of old,
  Tills the few acres, which his father tilled,
    Vexed by no thoughts of usury or gold;

  The shrilling clarion ne'er his slumber mars,
    Nor quails he at the howl of angry seas;
  He shuns the forum, with its wordy jars,
    Nor at a great man's door consents to freeze.

  The tender vine-shoots, budding into life,
    He with the stately poplar-tree doth wed,
  Lopping the fruitless branches with his knife,
    And grafting shoots of promise in their stead;

  Or in some valley, up among the hills,
    Watches his wandering herds of lowing kine,
  Or fragrant jars with liquid honey fills,
    Or shears his silly sheep in sunny shine;

  Or when Autumnus o'er the smiling land
    Lifts up his head with rosy apples crowned,
  Joyful he plucks the pears, which erst his hand
    Graffed on the stem they're weighing to the ground;

  Plucks grapes in noble clusters purple-dyed,
    A gift for thee, Priapus, and for thee,
  Father Sylvanus, where thou dost preside,
    Warding his bounds beneath thy sacred tree.

  Now he may stretch his careless limbs to rest,
    Where some old ilex spreads its sacred roof;
  Now in the sunshine lie, as likes him best,
    On grassy turf of close elastic woof.

  And streams the while glide on with murmurs low,
    And birds are singing 'mong the thickets deep,
  And fountains babble, sparkling as they flow,
    And with their noise invite to gentle sleep.

  But when grim winter comes, and o'er his grounds
    Scatters its biting snows with angry roar,
  He takes the field, and with a cry of hounds
    Hunts down into the toils the foaming boar;

  Or seeks the thrush, poor starveling, to ensnare,
    In filmy net with bait delusive stored,
  Entraps the travelled crane, and timorous hare,
    Rare dainties these to glad his frugal board.

  Who amid joys like these would not forget
    The pangs which love to all its victims bears,
  The fever of the brain, the ceaseless fret,
    And all the heart's lamentings and despairs?

  But if a chaste and blooming wife, beside,
    The cheerful home with sweet young blossoms fills,
  Like some stout Sabine, or the sunburnt bride
    Of the lithe peasant of the Apulian hills,

  Who piles the hearth with logs well dried and old
    Against the coming of her wearied lord,
  And, when at eve the cattle seek the fold,
    Drains their full udders of the milky hoard;

  And bringing forth from her well-tended store
    A jar of wine, the vintage of the year,
  Spreads an unpurchased feast,--oh then, not more
    Could choicest Lucrine oysters give me cheer,

  Or the rich turbot, or the dainty char,
    If ever to our bays the winter's blast
  Should drive them in its fury from afar;
    Nor were to me a welcomer repast

  The Afric hen or the Ionic snipe,
    Than olives newly gathered from the tree,
  That hangs abroad its clusters rich and ripe,
    Or sorrel, that doth love the pleasant lea,

  Or mallows wholesome for the body's need,
    Or lamb foredoomed upon some festal day
  In offering to the guardian gods to bleed,
    Or kidling which the wolf hath marked for prey.

  What joy, amidst such feasts, to see the sheep,
    Full of the pasture, hurrying homewards come;
  To see the wearied oxen, as they creep,
    Dragging the upturned ploughshare slowly home!

  Or, ranged around the bright and blazing hearth,
    To see the hinds, a house's surest wealth,
  Beguile the evening with their simple mirth,
    And all the cheerfulness of rosy health!

  Thus spake the miser Alphius; and, bent
    Upon a country life, called in amain
  The money he at usury had lent;--
    But ere the month was out, 'twas lent again.

In this charming sketch of the peasant's life it is easy to see that
Horace is drawing from nature, like Burns in his more elaborate picture
of the "Cottar's Saturday Night." Horace had obviously watched closely
the ways of the peasantry round his Apulian home, as he did at a later
date those of the Sabine country, and to this we owe many of the most
delightful passages in his works. He omits no opportunity of contrasting
their purity of morals, and the austere self-denial of their life, with
the luxurious habits and reckless vice of the city life of Rome. Thus,
in one of the finest of his Odes (Book III. 6), after painting with a
few masterly strokes what the matrons and the fast young ladies of the
imperial city had become, it was not from such as these, he continues,
that the noble youth sprang "who dyed the seas with Carthaginian gore,
overthrew Pyrrhus and great Antiochus and direful Hannibal," concluding
in words which contrast by their suggestive terseness at the same time
that they suggest comparison with the elaborated fulness of the epode
just quoted:--

  "But they, of rustic warriors wight
  The manly offspring, learned to smite
    The soil with Sabine spade,
  And faggots they had cut, to bear
  Home from the forest, whensoe'er
    An austere mother bade;

  "What time the sun began to change
  The shadows through the mountain range,
    And took the yoke away
  From the o'erwearied oxen, and
  His parting car proclaimed at hand
    The kindliest hour of day."

Another of Horace's juvenile poems, unique in subject and in treatment
(Epode 5), gives evidence of a picturesque power of the highest kind,
stimulating the imagination, and swaying it with the feelings of pity
and terror in a way to make us regret that he wrote no others in a
similar vein. We find ourselves at midnight in the gardens of the
sorceress Canidia, whither a boy of good family--his rank being clearly
indicated by the reference to his purple _toga_ and _bulla_--has been
carried off from his home. His terrified exclamations, with which the
poem opens, as Canidia and her three assistants surround him, glaring
on him, with looks significant of their deadly purpose, through lurid
flames fed with the usual ghastly ingredients of a witch's fire,
carry us at once into the horrors of the scene. While one of the hags
sprinkles her hell-drops through the adjoining house, another is casting
up earth from a pit, in which the boy is presently imbedded to the chin,
and killed by a frightful process of slow torture, in order that a
love philtre of irresistible power may be concocted from his liver
and spleen. The time, the place, the actors are brought before us with
singular dramatic power. Canidia's burst of wonder and rage that the
spells she deemed all-powerful have been counteracted by some sorceress
of skill superior to her own, gives great reality to the scene; and the
curses of the dying boy, launched with tragic vigour, and closing with a
touch of beautiful pathos, bring it to an effective close.

The speculations as to who and what Canidia was, in which scholars
have run riot, are conspicuous for absurdity, even among the wild and
ridiculous conjectures as to the personages named by Horace in which the
commentators have indulged. That some well-known person was the original
of Canidia is extremely probable, for professors of witchcraft abounded
at the time, combining very frequently, like their modern successors,
the arts of Medea with the attributes of Dame Quickly. What more
natural than for a young poet to work up an effective picture out of
the abundant suggestions which the current stories of such creatures and
their doings presented to his hand? The popular belief in their power,
the picturesque conditions under which their spells were wrought, the
wild passions in which lay the secret of their hold upon the credulity
of their victims, offered to the Roman poet, just as they did to our own
Elizabethan dramatists, a combination of materials most favourable for
poetic treatment. But that Horace had, as many of his critics contend,
a feeling of personal vanity, the pique of a discarded lover, to avenge,
is an assumption wholly without warrant. He was the last man, at any
time or under any circumstances, to have had any relations of a personal
nature with a woman of Canidia's class. However inclined he may have
been to use her and her practices for poetic purposes, he manifestly not
only saw through the absurdity of her pretensions, but laughed at her
miserable impotence, and meant that others should do the same. It seems
to be impossible to read the 8th of his First Book of his Satires, and
not come to this conclusion. That satire consists of the monologue of a
garden god, set up in the garden which Maecenas had begun to lay out on
the Esquiline Hill. This spot had until recently been the burial-ground
of the Roman poor, a quarter noisome by day, and the haunt of thieves
and beasts of prey by night. On this obscene spot, littered with skulls
and dead men's bones, Canidia and her accomplice Sagana are again
introduced, digging a pit with their nails, into which they pour the
blood of a coal-black ewe, which they had previously torn limb-meal,

  "So to evoke the shade and soul
  Of dead men, and from these to wring
  Responses to their questioning."

They have with them two effigies, one of wax and the other of wool--the
latter the larger of the two, and overbearing the other, which cowers
before it,

               "Like one that stands
  Beseeching in the hangman's hands.
  On Hecate one, Tisiphone
  The other calls; and you might see
  Serpents and hell-hounds thread the dark,
  Whilst, these vile orgies not to mark,
  The moon, all bloody red of hue,
  Behind the massive tombs withdrew."

The hags pursue their incantations; higher and higher flames their
ghastly fire, and the grizzled wolves and spotted snakes slink in terror
to their holes, as the shrieks and muttered spells of the beldams make
the moon-forsaken night more hideous. But after piling up his horrors
with the most elaborate skill, as if in the view of some terrible
climax, the poet makes them collapse into utter farce. Disgusted
by their intrusion on his privacy, the Priapus adopts a simple but
exceedingly vulgar expedient to alarm these appalling hags. In
an instant they fall into the most abject terror, suspend their
incantations, and, tucking up their skirts, make off for the more
comfortable quarters of the city as fast as their trembling limbs can
carry them--Canidia, the great enchantress, dropping her false teeth,
and her attendant Sagana parting company with her wig, by the way:--

                             "While you
  With laughter long and loud might view
  Their herbs, and charmed adders wound
  In mystic coils, bestrew the ground."

And yet grave scholars gravely ask us to believe that Canidia was an old
mistress of the poet's! These poems evidently made a success, and Horace
returned to the theme in his 17th Epode. Here he writes as though he had
been put under a spell by Canidia, in revenge for his former calumnies
about her.

  "My youth has fled, my rosy hue
  Turned to a wan and livid blue;
  Blanched by thy mixtures is my hair;
  No respite have I from despair.
  The days and nights, they wax and wane,
  Yet bring me no release from pain;
  Nor can I ease, howe'er I gasp,
  The spasm, which holds me in its grasp."

Here we have all the well-known symptoms of a man under a malign magical
influence. In this extremity Horace affects to recant all the mischief
he has formerly spoken of the enchantress. Let her name what penance he
will, he is ready to perform it. If a hundred steers will appease her
wrath, they are hers; or if she prefers to be sung of as the chaste and
good, and to range above the spheres as a golden star, his lyre is at
her service. Her parentage is as unexceptionable as her life is pure,
but while ostentatiously disclaiming his libels, the poet takes care to
insinuate them anew, by apostrophising her in conclusion, thus:--

  "Thou who dost ne'er in haglike wont
  Among the tombs of paupers hunt
  For ashes newly laid in ground,
  Love-charms and philtres to compound,
  Thy heart is gentle, pure thy hands."

Of course, Canidia is not mollified by such a recantation as this. The
man who,

  "Branding her name with ill renown,
  Made her the talk of all the town,"

is not so lightly to be forgiven.

  "You'd have a speedy doom? But no,
  It shall be lingering, sharp, and slow."

The pangs of Tantalus, of Prometheus, or of Sisyphus are but the types
of what his shall be. Let him try to hang, drown, stab himself--his
efforts will be vain:--

  "Then comes my hour of triumph, then
  I'll goad you till you writhe again;
  Then shall you curse the evil hour
  You made a mockery of my power."

She then triumphantly reasserts the powers to which she lays claim.
What! I, she exclaims, who can waste life as the waxen image of my
victim melts before my magic fire [Footnote: Thus Hecate in Middleton's
"Witch" assures to the Duchess of Glo'ster "a sudden and subtle death"
to her victim:--]--I, who can bring down the moon from her sphere, evoke
the dead from their ashes, and turn the affections by my philtres,--

  "Shall I my potent art bemoan
  As impotent 'gainst thee alone?"

Surely all this is as purely the work of imagination as Middleton's
"Witch," or the Hags in "Macbeth," or in Goethe's 'Faust.' Horace used
Canidia as a byword for all that was hateful in the creatures of her
craft, filthy as they were in their lives and odious in their persons.
His literary and other friends were as familiar with her name in this
sense as we are with those of Squeers and Micawber, as types of a class;
and the joke was well understood when, many years after, in the 8th of
his Second Book of Satires, he said that Nasidienus's dinner-party
broke up without their eating a morsel of the dishes after a certain
point,--"As if a pestilential blast from Canidia's throat, more venomous
than that of African vipers, had swept across them."

  "His picture made in wax, and gently molten
  By a blue fire, kindled with dead men's eyes,
  Will waste him by degrees."--

An old delusion. We find it in Theocritus, where a girl, forsaken by her
lover, resorts to the same desperate restorative (Idylls ii. 28)--

  "As this image of wax I melt here by aidance demonic,
  Myndian Delphis shall so melt with love's passion anon."

Again Ovid (Heroides vi. 91) makes Hypsipyle say of Medea:

  "The absent she binds with her spells, and figures of wax she
devises,  And in their agonised spleen fine-pointed needles she thrusts."

CHAPTER III.

INTRODUCTION TO MAECENAS.--THE JOURNEY TO BRUNDUSIUM.

Horace had not been long in Rome, after his return from Greece, before
he had made himself a name. With what he got from the booksellers, or
possibly by the help of friends, he had purchased a patent place in the
Quaestor's department, a sort of clerkship of the Treasury, which he
continued to hold for many years, if not indeed to the close of his
life. The duties were light, but they demanded, and at all events had,
his occasional attention, even after he was otherwise provided for.
Being his own--bought by his own money--it may have gratified his love
of independence to feel that, if the worst came to the worst, he had his
official salary to fall back upon. Among his friends, men of letters are
at this time, as might have been expected, found to be most conspicuous.
Virgil, who had recently been despoiled, like, himself, of his
paternal property, took occasion to bring his name before Maecenas, the
confidential adviser and minister of Octavius, in whom he had himself
found a helpful friend. This was followed up by the commendation of
Varius, already celebrated as a writer of Epic poetry, and whose tragedy
of "Thyestes," if we are to trust Quintilian, was not unworthy to rank
with the best tragedies of Greece. Maecenas may not at first have been
too well disposed towards a follower of the republican party, who
had not been sparing of his satire against many of the supporters and
favourites of Octavius. He sent for Horace, however (B.C. 39), and any
prejudice on this score, if prejudice there was, was ultimately got
over. Maecenas took time to form his estimate of the man, and it was
not till nine months after their first interview that he sent for Horace
again. When he did so, however, it was to ask him to consider himself
for the future among the number of his friends. This part of Horace's
story is told with admirable brevity and good feeling in the Satire from
which we have already quoted, addressed to Maecenas (B. I. Sat. 6) a few
years afterwards.

  "Lucky I will not call myself, as though
  Thy friendship I to mere good fortune owe.
  No chance it was secured me thy regards,
  But Virgil first, that best of men and bards,
  And then kind Varius mentioned what I was.
  Before you brought, with many a faltering pause,
  Dropping some few brief words (for bashfulness
  Robbed me of utterance) I did not profess
  That I was sprung of lineage old and great,
  Or used to canter round my own estate
  On Satureian barb, but what and who
  I was as plainly told. As usual, you
  Brief answer make me. I retire, and then,
  Some nine months after, summoning me again,
  You bid me 'mongst your friends assume a place:
  And proud I feel that thus I won your grace,
  Not by an ancestry long known to fame,
  But by my life, and heart devoid of blame."

The name of Maecenas is from this time inseparably associated with that
of Horace. From what little is authentically known of him, this much may
be gathered: He was a man of great general accomplishment, well versed
in the literature both of Greece and Rome, devoted to literature and
the society of men of letters, a lover of the fine arts and of natural
history, a connoisseur of gems and precious stones, fond of living in
a grand style, and of surrounding himself with people who amused him,
without being always very particular as to who or what they were. For
the indulgence of all these tastes, his great wealth was more than
sufficient. He reclaimed the Esquiline hill from being the public
nuisance we have already described, laid it out in gardens, and in the
midst of these built himself a sumptuous palace, where the Church of
Santa Maria Maggiore now stands, from which he commanded a superb view
of the country looking towards Tivoli. To this palace, salubrious from
its spacious size and the elevation of its site, Augustus, when ill,
had himself carried from his own modest mansion; and from its lofty
belvedere tower Nero is said to have enjoyed the spectacle of Rome in
flames beneath him. Voluptuary and dilettante as Maecenas was, he was
nevertheless, like most men of a sombre and melancholy temperament,
capable of great exertions; and he veiled under a cold exterior and
reserved manners a habit of acute observation, a kind heart, and,
in matters of public concern, a resolute will. This latent energy of
character, supported as it was by a subtle knowledge of mankind and a
statesmanlike breadth of view, contributed in no small degree to
the ultimate triumph of Octavius Caesar over his rivals, and to the
successful establishment of the empire in his hands. When the news of
Julius Caesar's assassination reached the young Octavius, then only
nineteen, in Apollonia, it has been said that Maecenas was in attendance
upon him as his governor or tutor. Be this so or not, as soon as
Octavius appears in the political arena as his uncle's avenger, Maecenas
is found by his side. In several most important negotiations he acted
as his representative. Thus (B.C. 40), the year before Horace was
introduced to him, he, along with Cocceius Nerva, negotiated with Antony
the peace of Brundusium, which resulted in Antony's ill-starred marriage
with Caesar's sister Octavia. Two years later he was again associated
with Cocceius in a similar task, on which occasion Horace and Virgil
accompanied him to Brundusium. He appears to have commanded in various
expeditions, both naval and military, but it was at Rome and in Council
that his services were chiefly sought; and he acted as one of the chief
advisers of Augustus down to about five years before his death, when,
either from ill health or some other unknown cause, he abandoned
political life. More than once he was charged by Augustus with the
administration of the civil affairs of Italy during his own absence,
intrusted with his seal, and empowered to open all his letters addressed
to the Senate, and, if necessary, to alter their contents, so as to
adapt them to the condition of affairs at home. His aim, like that of
Vipsanius Agrippa, who was in himself the Nelson and Wellington of the
age, seems to have been to build up a united and flourishing empire in
the person of Augustus. Whether from temperament or policy, or both,
he set his face against the system of cruelty and extermination which
disgraced the triumvirate. When Octavius was one day condemning man
after man to death, Maecenas, after a vain attempt to reach him on
the tribunal, where he sat surrounded by a dense crowd, wrote upon his
tablets, _Surge tandem, Carnifex_!--"Butcher, break off!" and flung
them across the crowd into the lap of Caesar, who felt the rebuke,
and immediately quitted the judgment-seat. His policy was that of
conciliation; and while bent on the establishment of a monarchy, from
what we must fairly assume to have been a patriotic conviction that
this form of government could alone meet the exigencies of the time, he
endeavoured to combine this with a due regard to individual liberty, and
a free expression of individual opinion.

At the time of Horace's introduction to him, Maecenas was probably
at his best, in the full vigour of his intellect, and alive with the
generous emotions which must have animated a man bent as he was on
securing tranquillity for the state, and healing the strife of factions,
which were threatening it with ruin. His chief relaxation from the
fatigues of public life was, to all appearance, found in the society of
men of letters, and, judging by what Horace says (Satires, I. 9),
the _vie intime_ of his social circle must have been charming. To
be admitted within it was a privilege eagerly coveted, and with good
reason, for not only was this in itself a stamp of distinction, but his
parties were well known as the pleasantest in Rome:--

  "No house more free from all that's base,
  In none cabals more out of place.
  It hurts me not, if others be
  More rich, or better read than me;
  Each has his place."

Like many of his contemporaries, who were eminent in political life,
Maecenas devoted himself to active literary work--for he wrote much,
and on a variety of topics. His taste in literature was, however, better
than his execution. His style was diffuse, affected, and obscure; but
Seneca, who tells us this, and gives some examples which justify the
criticism, tells us at the same time that his genius was massive and
masculine (_grande et virile_), and that he would have been eminent for
eloquence, if fortune had not spoiled him. However vicious his own style
may have been, the man who encouraged three such writers as Virgil,
Propertius, and Horace, not to mention others of great repute, whose
works have perished, was clearly a sound judge of a good style in
others.

As years went on, and the cares of public life grew less onerous, habits
of self-indulgence appear to have grown upon Maecenas. It will probably
be well, however, to accept with some reserve what has been said against
him on this head. Then, as now, men of rank and power were the victims
of calumnious gossips and slanderous pamphleteers. His health became
precarious. Incessant sleeplessness spoke of an overtasked brain and
shattered nerves. Life was full of pain; still he clung to it with a
craven-like tenacity. So, at least, Seneca asserts, quoting in support
of his statement some very bad verses by Maecenas, which may be thus
translated:--

  "Lame in feet, and lame in fingers,
    Crooked in back, with every tooth
    Rattling in my head, yet, 'sooth,
  I'm content, so life but lingers.
  Gnaw my withers, rack my bones,
  Life, mere life, for all atones."

In one view these lines may certainly be construed to import the
same sentiment as the speech of the miserable Claudio in "Measure for
Measure,"--

  "The weariest and most loathed worldly life
  That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
  Can lay on nature, is a paradise
  To what we fear of death."

But, on the other hand, they may quite as fairly be regarded as merely
giving expression to the tenet of the Epicurean philosophy, that however
much we may suffer from physical pain or inconvenience, it is still
possible to be happy. "We know what we are; we know not what we may be!"

Not the least misfortune of Maecenas was his marriage to a woman whom
he could neither live with nor without--separating from and returning
to her so often, that, according to Seneca, he was a thousand times
married, yet never had but one wife. Friends he had many, loyal and
devoted friends, on whose society and sympathy he leant more and more
as the years wore on. He rarely stirred from Rome, loving its smoke,
its thronged and noisy streets, its whirl of human passions, as Johnson
loved Fleet Street, or "the sweet shady side of Pall Mall," better than
all the verdure of Tivoli, or the soft airs and exquisite scenery of
Baiae. He liked to read of these things, however; and may have found as
keen a pleasure in the scenery of the 'Georgics,' or in Horace's little
landscape-pictures, as most men could have extracted from the scenes
which they describe.

Such was the man, ushered into whose presence, Horace, the reckless
lampooner and satirist, found himself embarrassed, and at a loss for
words. Horace was not of the MacSycophant class, who cannot "keep their
back straight in the presence of a great man;" nor do we think he had
much of the nervous apprehensiveness of the poetic temperament. Why,
then, should he have felt thus abashed? Partly, it may have been, from
natural diffidence at encountering a man to gain whose goodwill was
a matter of no small importance, but whose goodwill, he also knew by
report, was not easily won; and partly, to find himself face to face
with one so conspicuously identified with the cause against which he had
fought, and the men whom he had hitherto had every reason to detest.

Once admitted by Maecenas to the inner circle of his friends, Horace
made his way there rapidly. Thus we find him, a few months afterwards,
in the spring of B.C. 37, going to Brundusium with Maecenas, who
had been despatched thither on a mission of great public importance
(Satires, I. 6). The first term of the triumvirate of Antony, Octavius,
and Lepidus had expired at the close of the previous year. No fresh
arrangement had been made, and Antony, alarmed at the growing power of
Octavius in Italy, had appeared off Brundusium with a fleet of 300 sail
and a strong body of troops. The Brundusians--on a hint, probably, from
Octavius--forbade his landing, and he had to go on to Tarentum, where
terms were ultimately arranged for a renewal of the triumvirate. The
moment was a critical one, for an open rupture between Octavius and
Antony was imminent, which might well have proved disastrous to the
former, had Antony joined his fleet to that of the younger Pompey,
which, without his aid, had already proved more than a match for the
naval force of Octavius.

To judge by Horace's narrative, all the friends who accompanied Maecenas
on this occasion, except his coadjutor, Cocceius Nerva, who had three
years before been engaged with him on a similar mission to Brundusium,
were men whose thoughts were given more to literature than to politics.
Horace starts from Rome with Heliodorus, a celebrated rhetorician, and
they make their way very leisurely to Anxur (Terracina), where they are
overtaken by Maecenas.

  "'Twas fixed that we should meet with dear
  Maecenas and Cocceius here,
  Who were upon a mission bound,
  Of consequence the most profound;
  For who so skilled the feuds to close
  Of those, once friends, who now were foes?"

This is the only allusion throughout the poem, to the object of the
journey. The previous day, Horace had been baulked of his dinner, the
water being so bad, and his stomach so delicate, that he chose to fast
rather than run the risk of making himself ill with it. And now at
Terracina he found his eyes, which were weak, so troublesome, that he
had to dose them well with a black wash. These are the first indications
we get of habitual delicacy of health, which, if not due altogether to
the fatigues and exposure of his campaign with Brutus, had probably been
increased by them.

    "Meanwhile beloved Maecenas came,
    Cocceius too, and brought with them
    Fonteius Capito, a man
    Endowed with every grace that can
    A perfect gentleman attend,
    And Antony's especial friend."

They push on next day to Formiae, and are amused at Fundi (Fondi) on the
way by the consequential airs of the prefect of the place. It would
seem as if the peacock nature must break out the moment a man becomes a
prefect or a mayor.

  "There having rested for the night,
  With inexpressible delight
  We hail the dawn,--for we that day
  At Sinuessa, on our way
  With Plotius, [1] Virgil, Varius too,
  Have an appointed rendezvous;
  Souls all, than whom the earth ne'er saw
  More noble, more exempt from flaw,
  Nor are there any on its round
  To whom I am more firmly bound.
  Oh! what embracings, and what mirth!
  Nothing, no, nothing, on this earth,
  Whilst I have reason, shall I e'er
  With a true genial friend compare!"

[1]   Plotius Tucca, himself a poet, and associated by Virgil with Varius
   in editing the Aeneid after the poet's death.

Next day they reach Capua, where, so soon as their mules are unpacked,
away

  "Maecenas hies, at ball to play;
  To sleep myself and Virgil go,
  For tennis-practice is, we know,
  Injurious, quite beyond all question,
  Both to weak eyes and weak digestion."

With these and suchlike details Horace carries us pleasantly on with
his party to Brundusium. They were manifestly in no hurry, for they took
fourteen days, according to Gibbon's careful estimate, to travel 378
Roman miles. That they might have got over the ground much faster,
if necessary, is certain from what is known of other journeys. Caesar
posted 100 miles a-day. Tiberius travelled 200 miles in twenty-four
hours, when he was hastening to close the eyes of his brother Drusus;
and Statius (Sylv. 14, Carm. 3) talks of a man leaving Rome in the
morning, and being at Baiae or Puteoli, 127 miles off, before night.

  "Have but the will, be sure you'll find the way.
  What shall stop him, who starts at break of day
  From sleeping Rome, and on the Lucrine sails
  Before the sunshine into twilight pales?"

Just as, according to Sydney Smith, in his famous allusion to the
triumphs of railway travelling, "the early Scotchman scratches himself
in the morning mists of the North, and has his porridge in Piccadilly
before the setting sun."

Horace treats the expedition to Brundusium entirely as if it had been a
pleasant tour. Gibbon thinks he may have done so purposely, to convince
those who were jealous of his intimacy with the great statesman, "that
his thoughts and occupations on the event were far from being of a
serious or political nature." But it was a rule with Horace, in all his
writings, never to indicate, by the slightest word, that he knew any
of the political secrets which, as the intimate friend of Maecenas, he
could scarcely have failed to know. He hated babbling of all kinds.
A man who reported the private talk of friends, even on comparatively
indifferent topics,--

  "The churl, who out of doors will spread
  What 'mongst familiar friends is said,"--

(Epistle I. v. 24), was his especial aversion; and he has more than once
said, only not in such formal phrase, what Milton puts into the mouth of
his "Samson Agonistes,"

                            "To have revealed
  Secrets of men, the secrets of a friend,
  How heinous had the fact been! how deserving
  Contempt, and scorn of all, to be excluded
  All friendship, and avoided as a blab,
  The mark of fool set on his front!"

Moreover, reticence, the indispensable quality, not of statesmen merely,
but of their intimates, was not so rare a virtue in these days as in our
own; and as none would have expected Horace, in a poem of this kind,
to make any political confidences, he can scarcely be supposed to have
written it with any view to throwing the gossips of Rome off the scent.
The excursion had been a pleasant one, and he thought its incidents
worth noting. Hence the poem. Happily for us, who get from it most
interesting glimpses of some of the familiar aspects of Roman life and
manners, of which we should otherwise have known nothing. Here, for
example, is a sketch of how people fared in travelling by canal in those
days, near Rome. Overcrowding, we see, is not an evil peculiar to our
own days.

  "Now 'gan the night with gentle hand
  To fold in shadows all the land,
  And stars along the sky to scatter,
  When there arose a hideous clatter,
  Slaves slanging bargemen, bargemen slaves;
  'Ho, haul up here! how now, ye knaves,
  Inside three hundred people stuff?
  Already there are quite enough!'
  Collected were the fares at last,
  The mule that drew our barge made fast,
  But not till a good hour was gone.
  Sleep was not to be thought upon,
  The cursèd gnats were so provoking,
  The bull-frogs set up such a croaking.
  A bargeman, too, a drunken lout,
  And passenger, sang turn about,
  In tones remarkable for strength,
  Their absent sweethearts, till at length
  The passenger began to doze,
  When up the stalwart bargeman rose,
  His fastenings from the stone unwound,
  And left the mule to graze around;
  Then down upon his back he lay,
  And snored in a terrific way."

Neither is the following allusion to the Jews and their creed without
its value, especially when followed, as it is, by Horace's avowal,
almost in the words of Lucretius (B. VI. 56), of what was then his
own. Later in life he came to a very different conclusion. When the
travellers reach Egnatia, their ridicule is excited by being shown or
told, it is not very clear which, of incense kindled in the temple there
miraculously without the application of fire.

  "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):--

  "About my farm, dear Quinctius: You would know
  What sort of produce for its lord 'twill grow;
  Plough-land is it, or meadow-land, or soil
  For apples, vine-clad elms, or olive-oil?
  So (but you'll think me garrulous) I'll write
  A full description of its form and site.
  In long continuous lines the mountains run,
  Cleft by a valley, which twice feels the sun--
  Once on the right, when first he lifts his beams;
  Once on the left, when he descends in steams.
  You'd praise the climate; well, and what d'ye say
  To sloes and cornels hanging from the spray?
  What to the oak and ilex, that afford
  Fruit to the cattle, shelter to their lord?
  What, but that rich Tarentum must have been
  Transplanted nearer Rome, with all its green?
  Then there's a fountain, of sufficient size
  To name the river that takes thence its rise--
  Not Thracian Hebrus colder or more pure,
  Of power the head's and stomach's ills to cure.
  This sweet retirement--nay, 'tis more than sweet--
  Insures my health even in September's heat." (C.)

Here is what a last year's tourist found it:--

('Pall Mall Gazette,'August 16, 1869.)

"Following a path along the brink of the torrent Digentia, we passed
a towering rock, on which once stood Vacuna's shrine, and entered a
pastoral region of well-watered meadow-lands, enamelled with flowers and
studded with chestnut and fruit trees. Beneath their sheltering shade
peasants were whiling away the noontide hours. Here sat Daphnis piping
sweet witching melodies on a reed to his rustic Phidyle, whilst Lydia
and she wove wreaths of wild-flowers, and Lyce sped down to the edge of
the stream and brought us cooling drink in a bulging conca borne on her
head. Its waters were as deliciously refreshing as they could have been
when the poet himself gratefully recorded how often they revived his
strength; and one longed to think, and hence half believed, that our
homely Hebe, like her fellows, was sprung from the coloni who tilled his
fields and dwelt in the five homesteads of which he sings. ... Near
the little village of Licenza, standing like its loftier neighbour,
Civitella, on a steep hill at the foot of Lucretilis, we turned off the
path, crossed a thickly-wooded knoll, and came to an orchard, in which
two young labourers were at work. We asked where the remains of Horace's
farm were. '_A pie tui!_' answered the nearest of them, in a dialect
more like Latin than Italian. So saying, he began with a shovel to
uncover a massive floor in very fair preservation; a little farther on
was another, crumbling to pieces. Chaupy has luckily saved one all doubt
as to the site of the farm, establishing to our minds convincingly that
it could scarcely have stood on ground other than that on which at this
moment we were. As the shovel was clearing the floors, we thought how
applicable to Horace himself were the lines he addressed to Fuscus
Aristius, 'Naturam expelles,' &c.--

  'Drive Nature forth by force, she'll turn and rout
  The false refinements that would keep her out;' (C.)

For here was just enough of his home left to show how nature, creeping
on step by step, had overwhelmed his handiwork and reasserted her sway.
Again, pure and Augustan in design as was the pavement before us, how
little could it vie with the hues and odours of the grasses that bloomed
around it!--'Deterius Libycis' &c.--

  'Is springing grass less sweet to nose and eyes
  Than Libyan marble's tesselated dyes?' (C.)

"Indeed, so striking were these coincidences that we were as nearly as
possible going off on the wrong tack, and singing 'Io Paean' to Dame
Nature herself at the expense of the bard; but we were soon brought back
to our allegiance by a sense of the way in which all we saw tallied
with the description of him who sang of nature so surpassingly well, who
challenges posterity in charmed accents, and could shape the sternest
and most concise of tongues into those melodious cadences that invest
his undying verse with all the magic of music and all the freshness of
youth. For this was clearly the 'angulus iste,' the nook which 'restored
him to himself'--this the lovely spot which his steward longed to
exchange for the slums of Rome. Below lay the greensward by the river,
where it was sweet to recline in slumber. Here grew the vines, still
trained, like his own, on the trunks and branches of trees. Yonder the
brook which the rain would swell till it overflowed its margin, and his
lazy steward and slaves were fain to bank it up; and above, among a wild
jumble of hills, lay the woods where, on the Calends of March, Faunus
interposed to save him from the falling tree, and where another miracle
preserved him from the attack of the wolf as he strolled along unarmed,
singing of the soft voice and sweet smiles of his Lalage! The brook is
now nearly dammed up; a wall of close-fitting rough-hewn stones gathers
its waters into a still, dark pool; its overflow gushes out in a tiny
rill that rushed down beside our path, mingling its murmur with the hum
of myriads of insects that swarmed in the air."

On this farm lovers of Horace have been fain to place the fountain of
Bandusia, which the poet loved so well, and to which he prophesied, and
truly, as the issue has proved, immortality from his song (Odes, III.
13). Charming as the poem is, there could be no stronger proof of the
poet's hold upon the hearts of men of all ages than the enthusiasm with
which the very site of the spring has been contested.

  "Bandusia's fount, in clearness crystalline,
    O worthy of the wine, the flowers we vow!
  To-morrow shall be thine
    A kid, whose crescent brow

  "Is sprouting, all for love and victory,
    In vain; his warm red blood, so early stirred,
  Thy gelid stream shall dye,
    Child of the wanton herd.

  "Thee the fierce Sirian star, to madness fired,
    Forbears to touch; sweet cool thy waters yield
  To ox with ploughing tired,
    And flocks that range afield.

  "Thou too one day shall win proud eminence
    'Mid honoured founts, while I the ilex sing
  Crowning the cavern, whence
    Thy babbling wavelets spring." (C.)

Several commentators maintain, on what appears to be very inconclusive
grounds, that the fountain was at Palazzo, six miles from Venusia. But
the poem is obviously inspired by a fountain whose babble had often
soothed the ear of Horace, long after he had ceased to visit Venusia.
On his farm, therefore, let us believe it to exist, whichever of
the springs that are still there we may choose to identify with his
description. For there are several, and the local guides are by no means
dogmatic as to the "_vero fonte_." That known as the "Fonte della Corte"
seems to make out the strongest case for itself. It is within a few
hundred yards of the villa, most abundant, and in this respect "fit" to
name the river that there takes its rise, which the others--at present,
at least--certainly are not.

Horace is never weary of singing the praises of his mountain
home--"_Satis beatus unicis Sabinis_,"

  "With what I have completely blest,
  My happy little Sabine nest"--
                             Odes, II. 18.

are the words in which he contrasts his own entire happiness with the
restless misery of a millionaire in the midst of his splendour. Again,
in one of his Odes to Maecenas (III. 16) he takes up and expands the
same theme.

  "In my crystal stream, my woodland, though its acres are but few,
  And the trust that I shall gather home my crops in season due,
  Lies a joy, which he may never grasp, who rules in gorgeous state
  Fertile Africa's dominions. Happier, happier far my fate!
  Though for me no bees Calabrian store their honey, nor doth wine
  Sickening in the Laestrygonian amphora for me refine;
  Though for me no flocks unnumbered, browsing Gallia's pastures fair,
  Pant beneath their swelling fleeces, I at least am free from care;
  Haggard want with direful clamour ravins never at my door,
  Nor wouldst thou, if more I wanted, oh my friend, deny me more.
  Appetites subdued will make me richer with my scanty gains,
  Than the realms of Alyattes wedded to Mygdonia's plains.
  Much will evermore be wanting unto those who much demand;
  Blest, whom Jove with what sufficeth dowers, but dowers with sparing
hand."

It is the nook of earth which, beyond all others, has a charm for
him,--the one spot where he is all his own. Here, as Wordsworth
beautifully says, he

  "Exults in freedom, can with rapture vouch
  For the dear blessings of a lowly couch,
  A natural meal, days, months from Nature's hand,
  Time, place, and business all at his command,"

It is in this delightful retreat that, in one of his most graceful Odes,
he thus invites the fair Tyndaris to pay him a visit (I. 17):--

  "My own sweet Lucretilis ofttime can lure
From his native Lycaeus kind Faunus the fleet,
  To watch o'er my flocks, and to keep them secure
    From summer's fierce winds, and its rains, and its heat.

  "There the mates of a lord of too pungent a fragrance
    Securely through brake and o'er precipice climb,
  And crop, as they wander in happiest vagrance,
    The arbutus green, and the sweet-scented thyme.

  "Nor murderous wolf nor green snake may assail
    My innocent kidlings, dear Tyndaris, when
  His pipings resound through Ustica's low vale,
    Till each mossed rock in music makes answer again.

  "The muse is still dear to the gods, and they shield
    Me, their dutiful bard; with a bounty divine
  They have blessed me with all that the country can yield;
    Then come, and whatever I have shall be thine!

  "Here screened from the dog-star, in valley retired,
    Shalt thou sing that old song thou canst warble so well,
  Which tells how one passion Penelope fired,
    And charmed fickle Circe herself by its spell.

  "Here cups shalt thou sip, 'neath the broad-spreading shade
    Of the innocent vintage of Lesbos at ease;
  No fumes of hot ire shall our banquet invade,
    Or mar that sweet festival under the trees.

  "And fear not, lest Cyrus, that jealous young bear,
    On thy poor little self his rude fingers should set--
  Should pluck from thy bright locks the chaplet, and tear
    Thy dress, that ne'er harmed him nor any one yet."

Had Milton this Ode in his thought, when he invited his friend Lawes to
a repast,

                            "Light and choice,
  Of Attic taste with wine, whence we may rise,
  To hear the lute well touched, and artful voice
  Warble immortal notes, and Tuscan air"?

The reference in the last verse to the violence of the lady's
lover--a violence of which ladies of her class were constantly the
victims--rather suggests that this Ode, if addressed to a real personage
at all, was meant less as an invitation to the Sabine farm than as a
balm to the lady's wounded spirit.

In none of his poems is the poet's deep delight in the country life of
his Sabine home more apparent than in the following (Satires, II. 6),
which, both for its biographical interest and as a specimen of his best
manner in his Satires, we give entire:--

  "My prayers with this I used to charge,--
  A piece of land not very large,
  Wherein there should a garden be,
  A clear spring flowing ceaselessly,
  And where, to crown the whole, there should
  A patch be found of growing wood.
    All this, and more, the gods have sent,
  And I am heartily content.
  Oh son of Maia, that I may
  These bounties keep is all I pray.
  If ne'er by craft or base design
  I've swelled what little store is mine,
  Nor mean, it ever shall be wrecked
  By profligacy or neglect;
  If never from my lips a word
  Shall drop of wishes so absurd
  As,--'Had I but that little nook
  Next to my land, that spoils its look!
  Or--'Would some lucky chance unfold
  A crock to me of hidden gold,
  As to the man whom Hercules
  Enriched and settled at his ease,
  Who,--with, the treasure he had found,
  Bought for himself the very ground
  Which he before for hire had tilled!'
  If I with gratitude am filled
  For what I have--by this I dare
  Adjure you to fulfil my prayer,
  That you with fatness will endow
  My little herd of cattle now,
  And all things else their lord may own,
  Except his sorry wits alone,
  And be, as heretofore, my chief
  Protector, guardian, and relief!
  So, when from town and all its ills
  I to my perch among the hills
  Retreat, what better theme to choose
  Than satire for my homely Muse?
  No fell ambition wastes me there,
  No, nor the south wind's leaden air,
  Nor Autumn's pestilential breath,
  With victims feeding hungry death.
    Sire of the morn, or if more dear
  The name of Janus to thine ear,
  Through whom whate'er by man is done,
  From life's first dawning, is begun
  (So willed the gods for man's estate),
  Do thou my verse initiate!
  At Rome you hurry me away
  To bail my friend; 'Quick, no delay,
  Or some one--could worse luck befall you?--
  Will in the kindly task forestall you.'
  So go I must, although the wind
  Is north and killingly unkind,
  Or snow, in thickly-falling flakes,
  The wintry day more wintry makes.
  And when, articulate and clear,
  I've spoken what may cost me dear,
  Elbowing the crowd that round me close,
  I'm sure to crush somebody's toes.
  'I say, where are you pushing to?
  What would you have, you madman, you?'
  So flies he at poor me, 'tis odds,
  And curses me by all his gods.
  'You think that you, now, I daresay,
  May push whatever stops your way,
  When you are to Maecenas bound!'
  Sweet, sweet, as honey is the sound,
  I won't deny, of that last speech,
  But then no sooner do I reach
  The dusky Esquiline, than straight
  Buzz, buzz around me runs the prate
  Of people pestering me with cares,
  All about other men's affairs.
  'To-morrow, Roscius bade me state,
  He trusts you'll be in court by eight!'
  'The scriveners, worthy Quintus, pray,
  You'll not forget they meet to-day,
  Upon a point both grave and new,
  One touching the whole body, too.'
  'Do get Maecenas, do, to sign
  This application here of mine!'
  'Well, well, I'll try.' 'You can with ease
  Arrange it, if you only please.'
    Close on eight years it now must be,
  Since first Maecenas numbered me
  Among his friends, as one to take
  Out driving with him, and to make
  The confidant of trifles, say,
  Like this, 'What is the time of day?'
  'The Thracian gladiator, can
  One match him with the Syrian?'
  'These chilly mornings will do harm,
  If one don't mind to wrap up warm;'
  Such nothings as without a fear
  One drops into the chinkiest ear.
  Yet all this tune hath envy's glance
  On me looked more and more askance.
  From mouth to mouth such comments run:
  'Our friend indeed is Fortune's son.
  Why, there he was, the other day,
  Beside Maecenas at the play;
  And at the Campus, just before,
  They had a bout at battledore.'
  Some chilling news through lane and street
  Spreads from the Forum. All I meet
  Accost me thus--'Dear friend, you're so
  Close to the gods, that you must know:
  About the Dacians, have you heard
  Any fresh tidings? Not a word!'
  'You're always jesting!' 'Now may all
  The gods confound me, great and small,
  If I have heard one word!' 'Well, well,
  But you at any rate can tell,
  If Caesar means the lands, which he
  Has promised to his troops, shall be
  Selected from Italian ground,
  Or in Trinacria be found?'
  And when I swear, as well I can,
  That I know nothing, for a man
   Of silence rare and most discreet
  They cry me up to all the street.
    Thus do my wasted days slip by,
  Not without many a wish and sigh,
  When, when shall I the country see,
  Its woodlands green,--oh, when be free,
  With books of great old men, and sleep,
  And hours of dreamy ease, to creep
  Into oblivion sweet of life,
  Its agitations and its strife? [1]
  When on my table shall be seen
  Pythagoras's kinsman bean,
  And bacon, not too fat, embellish
  My dish of greens, and give it relish!
  Oh happy nights, oh feasts divine,
  When, with the friends I love, I dine
  At mine own hearth-fire, and the meat
  We leave gives my bluff hinds a treat!
  No stupid laws our feasts control,
  But each guest drains or leaves the bowl,
  Precisely as he feels inclined.
  If he be strong, and have a mind
  For bumpers, good! if not, he's free
  To sip his liquor leisurely.
  And then the talk our banquet rouses!
  But not about our neighbours' houses,
  Or if 'tis generally thought
  That Lepos dances well or not?
  But what concerns us nearer, and
  Is harmful not to understand,
  By what we're led to choose our friends,--
  Regard for them, or our own ends?
  In what does good consist, and what
  Is the supremest form of that?
  And then friend Cervius will strike in
  With some old grandam's tale, akin
  To what we are discussing. Thus,
  If some one have cried up to us
  Arellius' wealth, forgetting how
  Much care it costs him, 'Look you now,
  Once on a time,' he will begin,
  'A country mouse received within
  His rugged cave a city brother,
  As one old comrade would another.
  "A frugal mouse upon the whole,
  But loved his friend, and had a soul,"
  And could be free and open-handed,
  When hospitality demanded.
  In brief, he did not spare his hoard
  Of corn and pease, long coyly stored;
  Raisins he brought, and scraps, to boot,
  Half-gnawed, of bacon, which he put
  With his own mouth before his guest,
  In hopes, by offering his best
  In such variety, he might
  Persuade him to an appetite.
  But still the cit, with languid eye,
  Just picked a bit, then put it by;
  Which with dismay the rustic saw,
  As, stretched upon some stubbly straw,
  He munched at bran and common grits,
  Not venturing on the dainty bits.
  At length the town mouse; "What," says he,
  "My good friend, can the pleasure be,
  Of grubbing here, on the backbone
  Of a great crag with trees o'ergrown?
  Who'd not to these wild woods prefer
  The city, with its crowds and stir?
  Then come with me to town; you'll ne'er
  Regret the hour that took you there.
  All earthly things draw mortal breath;
  Nor great nor little can from death
  Escape, and therefore, friend, be gay,
  Enjoy life's good things while you may,
  Remembering how brief the space
  Allowed to you in any case."
  His words strike home; and, light of heart,
  Behold with him our rustic start,
  Timing their journey so, they might
  Reach town beneath the cloud of night,
  Which was at its high noon, when they
  To a rich mansion found their way,
  Where shining ivory couches vied
  With coverlets in purple dyed,
  And where in baskets were amassed
  The wrecks of a superb repast,
  Which some few hours before had closed.
  There, having first his friend disposed
  Upon a purple tissue, straight
  The city mouse begins to wait
  With scraps upon his country brother,
  Each scrap more dainty than another,
  And all a servant's duty proffers,
  First tasting everything he offers.
  The guest, reclining there in state,
  Rejoices in his altered fate,
  O'er each fresh tidbit smacks his lips,
  And breaks into the merriest quips,
  When suddenly a banging door
  Shakes host and guest into the floor.
  Prom room to room they rush aghast,
  And almost drop down dead at last,
  When loud through all the house resounds
  The deep bay of Molossian hounds.
  "Ho!" cries the country mouse, "this kind
  Of life is not for me, I find.
  Give me my woods and cavern! There
  At least I'm safe! And though both spare
  And poor my food may be, rebel
  I never will; so, fare ye well!"'"

[1]   Many have imitated this passage--none better than Cowley.

      "Oh fountains! when in you shall I
    Myself, eased of unpeaceful thoughts, espy?
    Oh fields! oh woods! when, when shall I be made
      The happy tenant of your shade?
      Here's the spring-head of pleasure's flood,
    Where all the riches be, that she
      Has coined and stamped for good."

   How like is this to Tennyson's--

    "You'll have no scandal while you dine,
    But honest talk and wholesome wine,
      And only hear the magpie gossip
    Garrulous, under a roof of pine."

It is characteristic of Horace that in the very next satire he makes his
own servant Davus tell him that his rhapsodies about the country and
its charms are mere humbug, and that, for all his ridicule of the
shortcomings of his neighbours, he is just as inconstant as they are in
his likings and dislikings. The poet in this way lets us see into his
own little vanities, and secures the right by doing so to rally his
friends for theirs. To his valet, at all events, by his own showing, he
is no hero.

  "You're praising up incessantly
  The habits, manners, likings, ways,
  Of people hi the good old days;
  Yet should some god this moment give
  To you the power, like them to live,
  You're just the man to say,' I won't!'
  Because in them you either don't
  Believe, or else the courage lack,
  The truth through thick and thin to back,
  And, rather than its heights aspire,
  Will go on sticking in the mire.
  At Rome you for the country sigh;
  When in the country to the sky
  You, flighty as the thistle's down,
  Are always crying up the town.
  If no one asks you out to dine,
  Oh, then the _pot-au-feu's_ divine!
  'You go out on compulsion only--
  'Tis so delightful to be lonely;
  And drinking bumpers is a bore
  You shrink from daily more and more.'
  But only let Maecenas send
  Command for you to meet a friend;
  Although the message comes so late,
  The lamps are being lighted, straight,
  'Where's my pommade? Look sharp!' you shout,
  'Heavens! is there nobody about?
  Are you all deaf?' and, storming high
  At all the household, off you fly.
  When Milvius, and that set, anon
  Arrive to dine, and find you gone,
  With vigorous curses they retreat,
  Which I had rather not repeat."

Who could take amiss the rebuke of the kindly satirist, who was so ready
to show up his own weaknesses? In this respect our own great satirist
Thackeray is very like him. Nor is this strange. They had many points
in common--the same keen eye for human folly, the same tolerance for the
human weaknesses of which they were so conscious in themselves, the same
genuine kindness of heart. Thackeray's terse and vivid style, too,
is probably in some measure due to this, that to him, as to Malherbe,
Horace was a kind of breviary.

CHAPTER V.

LIFE IN ROME.--HORACE'S BORE.--EXTRAVAGANCE OF THE ROMAN DINNERS.

It is one of the many charms of Horace's didactic writings, that he
takes us into the very heart of the life of Rome. We lounge with its
loungers along the Via Sacra; we stroll into the Campus Martius, where