He remained amongst his native mountains until his eleventh or twelfth year, when his father, wisely wishing to secure for him the benefits of a liberal education, which the neighbouring village school of Flavius did not furnish, removed with him to Rome.[594] Thus he quitted Venusia for ever, of which place many passages in his works prove that he retained very vivid recollections.[595]
At Rome he was placed under the instruction of Orbilius Pupillus, a grammarian, who had been formerly in the army, and had migrated from Beneventum to the capital. He was celebrated as a schoolmaster, but still more for his severity, for he was commonly called the flogging Orbilius (Plagosus Orbilius.[596]) With him young Horace read in his own language the poems of Livius Andronicus and Ennius; and in the Greek, the Iliad of Homer, whose divine poetry he soon learnt to enjoy.[597]
Whilst his father took this care of his intellectual education, he enabled him by dress and a retinue of slaves to associate on terms of equality with boys far above him in rank and station;[598] and, what was still more important, he kept him under his own roof, and thus secured for his son the benefits of home influences, sage and prudent advice, and the watchful care of the parental eye.[599] For his father’s liberality, good example, and constant attention, Horace expresses the deepest gratitude,[600] and to him he acknowledges himself indebted for all the good points of his character. The practical nature of this indulgent and devoted father’s instruction—how he delighted to teach by example rather than by precept—is simply told by Horace himself[601] in one of his satires.
Before he arrived at man’s estate, it is probable that he lost his wise adviser, for he never mentions his father except in connexion with the years of his boyhood. Perhaps this is the reason why, in his earlier poetry, his genial freedom so often degenerated into licentiousness, and his love of pleasure tempted him to adopt the dissolute manners of a corrupt age. His moral sense was accurate and just—he could see what was useful and approve it; he could censure the vices of his contemporaries—but he had lost that wise counsel which had hitherto preserved him pure.
Athens was at that period the university of Rome. Thither the Roman youth resorted to learn language, art, science, and philosophy:—
Horace commenced his residence there at a great political crisis, and the politics of Rome created a vivid interest in the young students at Athens. He had not lived there long, when Julius Cæsar was assassinated; and many of his fellow students, as was natural to youthful and ardent minds, zealously embraced the republican party. Horace, now twenty-two years of age, joined the army of Brutus, and served under him until the battle of Philippi in the rank of a military tribune.[603] He must have already become distinguished, since nothing but merit could have recommended the son of a freedman to Brutus for so high a military command. But the event proved that he had sadly mistaken his vocation, for he was totally unfit for the position either of an officer or a soldier.
With the rest of the vanquished he fled from the field of Philippi; and in a beautiful and affectionate ode[604] to Pompeius Varus, he confesses that he even threw away his shield; nor was he one of those who rallied, although his friend was carried back again into the bloody conflict of the tide of war. So at any rate he himself tells the story. It may have been, however, that his vanity prompted him to pretend a resemblance in this respect to his favourite Alcæus, or perhaps he wished to address a piece of courtly flattery to the conqueror. Varus was one of his earliest friends: together they had spent days of study and of festivity; and when troublous times had separated them, nothing can exceed the wild and tumultuous joy with which Horace looks forward to a reunion with his friend.
On his return to Rome he found that his father was dead, and his patrimony confiscated.[605] In order to obtain a livelihood, he purchased a clerk’s place under the quæstor.[606] For its duties he must have been totally unfit, for he hated business[607] and loved pleasure and literary ease. But on the income of this office, and the kindness of his friends, he lived a life of frugality and poverty.[608] It is possible that even then he gained some profit from his poems, for he says,[609] “Audacious poverty drove me to write verses.” Perhaps when he became more prosperous, he resigned his place, for he does not mention it in the account he gives to Mæcenas of the usual, daily avocations of his careless and sauntering life.[610]
Soon, however, his fortunes began to brighten. His talents recommended him, when about twenty-four years of age, to Virgil and Varius.[611] They were then the leading poets at Rome; and Mæcenas, the polished but somewhat effeminate friend of Augustus, was the powerful patron of genius and the head of literary society. These two poets were warmly attached to Horace, whose affection for them was equally strong,[612] and to them he owed his introduction to the favourite of the emperor.[613] He felt rather timid at the interview: Mæcenas spoke to him with his usual reserved and curt manner, took no notice of him for nine months, and then sent for him and enrolled him in the number of his friends. Thenceforth Horace enjoyed uninterruptedly his friendship and intimacy—of the affectionate nature of which many evidences may be found in those poetical pieces which Horace addressed to him.
As Mæcenas rose in influence and favour with Augustus, he also procured the advancement of his friend. When he was sent by Augustus on the delicate mission of effecting a reconciliation with Anthony, Horace accompanied him;[614] and it is not impossible that his shipwreck off Cape Palinurus occurred when he was sailing with Mæcenas on his expedition against S. Pompey.
At this period of his life he commenced the composition of his first book of Satires.[615] The knowledge of human life which he had begun to acquire when he lived, as it were, upon the town, and became acquainted with the manners, habits and modes of thinking of the masses, was afterwards cultivated, refined and matured by intercourse with the best literary society. His observant mind found ample materials for satire at the table of the courtly Mæcenas, and amidst the brilliant circle by which he was surrounded. In this, his first publication, he also introduces himself to the reader’s notice, draws a lively picture of his youth, and describes the life which was congenial to his tastes, and which his change of circumstances permitted him to lead.
But it must not be supposed that he wrote nothing at that time except satire. Some of his odes, which display the strength of youthful passions and the loosest morality, were probably written as separate fugitive pieces, and circulated privately amongst his friends. The ode to Canidia narrates a circumstance in the early part of his poetical career. The Epodes breathe the spirit of the satirist rather than of the lyric poet; and therefore the coarsest of them[616] also may belong to the same period,[617] although the book which bears that name was not completed and published as a whole until some years subsequently.
The bitterness of some of the Epodes is more suitable to his years of adversity, and the hard struggles by which the temper is soured, than to that life of ease and comfort which patronage enabled him to lead. Then his temper resumed its wonted placidity, whilst his moral taste was refined; his Archilochian iambics became less cutting, and his ideas less gross; personal invective was laid aside, and his indignation was only aroused by the prospect of political troubles and the horrors of civil commotions.
Mæcenas accompanied his friendship with substantial favours. He gave him, or procured for him by his influence, the public grant of his Sabine farm. It was situated in a beautiful valley near Digentia (Licenza.) Being about fifteen miles from Tibur (Tivoli,) it was sufficiently near the capital to suit the fickle poet, who, when there, often regretted the luxury, and gossip, and brilliant society of Rome, and, when at Rome, sighed for the frugal table, the quiet retirement, the rural employment of his country abode. The rapid alternation of town and country life, which the possession of this estate enabled Horace to enjoy, gives a peculiar charm to his poetry. The scene is ever changing: his mind reflects the tenor of his life; simple pictures of rural life, and the elegant refinements of polished society, relieve one another, and prevent dulness and satiety. The property was neither extensive nor fertile, but it was sufficient for his moderate wants and wishes, which are so beautifully expressed in his sixth Satire—a poem which has found many modern imitators.
At Rome, Horace occupied a house on the pleasant and healthful heights of the Esquiline. Here he resided during the winter and spring, with the exception of occasional sojourns at Baiæ, or other places of fashionable resort, on the southern coast of Italy. Summer and autumn he passed at his Sabine farm, where he was a great favourite with his simple neighbours, and where he found all that he ever wished for, and even more.
He coveted not his neighbour’s field,[619] even though it disfigured his own. He never prayed that chance might throw in his way a buried vase of silver.[620] The calm of his life contrasted favourably with the hundred affairs—not so much his own as of other people—which tormented him at Rome;[621] the importunities of his friends that he would use his influence in their behalf with Mæcenas;[622] the growing envy to which his good fortune subjected him:[623] his only cares were to store up provisions for his frugal maintenance during the year,[624] so that he might live in sweet forgetfulness of how he lived.[625] His days were divided between the books of the ancients,[626] the philosophy of Plato, and the lively scenes of Menander.[627]
The pleasing labours of the farm served him by way of exercise, although his town habits and awkwardness, and perhaps his short and stout figure, panting and perspiring under the heat and exertion, sometimes provoked good-humoured laughter.[628] At times, although he confessed how dangerous was the siren voice of sloth, he would spend hours of musing idleness on the margin of his favourite stream, listening to its murmurs, and to the music of the shepherd’s reed as it echoed through the Arcadian glen.[629] The evenings were devoted to social converse with honest and virtuous friends, from which scandal and gossip were banished; the conversation usually turning on moral and philosophical discussion,[630] whilst its seriousness was occasionally relieved by witty anecdotes and pointed fables, of which those of the town and country mice, and of the madman who, when cured, complained that his friends had destroyed all the happiness of his dreamy life, furnish examples. At these petits soupers, which he called “suppers of the gods,” the guests drank as much or as little as they pleased of his old wine, and enjoyed perfect freedom from the absurd laws which Roman custom permitted the chairman (arbiter bibendi) on such occasions to impose.
Sometimes, when the heat of summer was intense, he retired to the lofty Præneste (Palestrina,) where the climate was always cool and refreshing.[631] At some period of his life, also, he became possessed of a villa at Tibur (Tivoli,) of which the shady groves and roaring waterfalls furnished him a delightful refreshment after “the smoke, and magnificence, and noise of Rome.” Here he wrote many of his satires, and thus achieved the reputation as a satirist of which he had laid the foundation already; and was enabled to boast that, though earnestly desirous of peace with the world, it were better not to provoke him; that he who dared to offend him should smart for it, and be the laughing-stock of the whole city.[632]
The composition and arrangement of the second book of Satires probably occupied the thirtieth, thirty-first, and thirty-second years of the poet’s life,[633] and it was not published until the following year. This date will allow time for the expiration of more than seven or eight years since his intimacy with Mæcenas commenced.[634] The Satires were followed by the publication of the Epodes, very soon after the battle of Actium,[635] for the ninth is evidently an epinician ode on the occasion of that victory. Many of them contain noble sentiments, patriotic advice, burning indignation against the oriental self-indulgence of Antony,[636] the servility of Rome, its civil strife, and the degeneracy of the age; and remind us that, before Horace became an Epicurean and a courtier, he had fought against a tyrant in the ranks of freedom.[637] The first Epode was written just before the battle of Actium; the second and third at the period when he first exchanged the life of a fashionable man about town for that of a country gentleman. We see in one the delight which he derived from the consciousness that his estate was his own; that he had no pecuniary embarrassments any longer; his anticipations of the happiness to be enjoyed in the regularly-recurring labours of rural life; in the absence of all care; in the kind-hearted anticipations of humble domestic felicity; the superiority of a healthful meal to all the luxuries that wealth could purchase. In the other, notwithstanding all these professions of sentiment, he shows that his refined urbanity is shocked by the grossness of rural habits. His delicate nose cannot endure the smell of garlic: to him it is nothing less than poison, such as Canidia or Medea might have used. It is more deadly than the malaria of Apulia, or the envenomed robe steeped in the blood of Nessus. Nay, in the same spirit Johnson said that “He who would make a pun would pick a pocket,” he does not scruple to affirm that a garlic-eater would commit parricide.
The seventh Epode is a burst of indignant expostulation against the fratricidal madness which, at the bidding of an unprincipled woman, armed Romans against each other in that tragical episode, the Perugian war, when the first struggle took place between the civilians and the soldiers for political influence and power. In the Epodes the spirit is that of the satirist exaggerated. The outward form which he had modelled by a careful study of the Archilochian verse, prepared him for the cultivation of that poetry in which he stands pre-eminent. It was the state of transition through which he passed before he became a lyric poet.
With their publication concludes the first period of Horace’s literary life. It was now flowing on calmly and peaceably, undisturbed by anxiety either about himself or his country. Although the civil wars were not yet ended, or the peace of the world solemnly and finally proclaimed, until the temple of Janus was closed,[638] the course of Octavius to universal empire lay plain and open before him. Rome was at his feet, and owed to him its safety and prosperity.
Public and private well-doing developed a new phase of Horace’s genius. His muse soared to heights which had only been attempted by Pindar and the other Greek lyric poets. It cannot, of course, be supposed that he lived to the age of thirty-five years without having written many of those odes, which are so full of a youthful sprightliness and burning passion; but it is certain that many more were written, and the first three books published, during the period of eight years included between his thirty-fifth and forty-second years;[639] some when he was approaching, others when he had passed, his eighth lustre. In these three books it is probable that Horace intended all the products of his lyric muse should be comprised: to this purpose the last ode of the third book[640] seems to point. He considered his work done; and he was not insensible to the successful manner in which he had accomplished it. With conscious pride, and in a prophetic spirit, he exclaimed—
He intended his beloved friend and patron, Mæcenas, to be the subject of his last, as he was of his first, song. His introductory satire—the commencement of his published works—was addressed to him; the last ode in the book[641] (except that final one which proclaims his task finished) is a noble farewell, breathing the language of affectionate compliment;[642] and in the introduction to his new work, the labour of his maturer years, the fruit of careful judgment respecting men and things, he states his determination to finish his career as a poet, and to devote his last verses to his patron.
A few years after the first three books of the Odes, Horace published the first book of the Epistles. Bentley assigns the appearance of these finished and elaborate compositions to B. C. 19, Clinton to B. C. 20. The Carmen Seculare, which appeared B. C. 17, on the occasion of the celebration of the Secular Games, and the fourth book of the Odes, which was published B. C. 13, were written at the personal request of the Emperor. He wished him to celebrate the victories gained over Vindelici by his step-sons, Tiberius and Drusus. His compliance with the wishes of Augustus was a graceful return for the regard and affection which the letters of the Emperor show that he felt for the poet.[643] The warm admiration which, these odes express, the praises which are lavished in them, upon Augustus and his step-sons Tiberius and Drusus, may seem inconsistent with the poet’s former republicanism; but who could withstand the proffered friendship, the winning courtesy, the good-tempered condescension of his patron?
Besides, the experience of the past years must have forced him conscientiously to believe that the reign of Augustus was indeed a blessing to his country, and that his countrymen were totally unfit for real liberty, as they showed themselves quite content with the empty shadow of the constitution. He felt peace and repose were to be purchased by almost any sacrifice except that of honourable principle; that not only all the enjoyments of life were secured to himself to an extent equalling, if not surpassing, the wishes of his contented spirit, but that a similar measure of happiness was pretty generally diffused. He could not sympathize with political ambition, which had been the fruitful source of civil anarchy, and it was only the ambitious who had any cause to be dissatisfied. Doubtless the older he grew the stronger was the obligation which he felt to him who, by the lofty position which he had attained, had apparently prevented even the possibility of revolution or change. It is certain that the second book of the Epistles, and that addressed to the Pisos, which is commonly called the Art of Poetry, were written and published during the last years of his life; but the date cannot be exactly determined. He had long bid adieu to the excitements of politics; nor do these, his latest works, exhibit traces of his fondness for discussing questions of moral science, or for the profounder speculations of natural philosophy. He limits himself to the neutral ground of literature; and writes only as a writer whose judgment would be undisputed, because his works in their several departments had actually formed the taste of his contemporaries.
In November, B. C. 8, A. U. C. 746, Horace was seized with a sudden attack of illness, and died in the fifty-seventh year of his age. His old friend Mæcenas had expired but a few months before. They were buried near one another on the slope of the Esquiline.
His death was so sudden that he was unable to write a will; he had but just time before he expired to nominate, according to a common custom, the Emperor his heir.
Horace was never married; he was too general an admirer, and his tastes and habits were too much those of a bachelor, to appreciate the happiness of a wedded life. In this respect his feelings resembled those of the voluptuous and selfish society of his times. He was of small and slight figure,[644] but afterwards he grew corpulent.[645] The vigour which he enjoyed in early youth[646] was diminished by ill health; he became prematurely gray,[647] and a passage in one of his Odes seems to imply that he was a valetudinarian at forty.[648]
The life of Horace is especially instructive, as a mirror in which is reflected a faithful image of the manners of his day. He is the representative of Roman refined society, as Virgil is of the national mind. He who understands Horace and his works can picture to himself the society in which he lived and moved. One cannot sympathize with Petrarch, when he says “Se ex nullo poeta Latino evasisse meliorem quam ex Horatio,” or exclaim with the devoted Mæcenas,
but still it is scarcely possible not to feel an affection for him. Notwithstanding his selfish Epicureanism, he possessed those elements of character which constitute the popularity of men of the world. He was a gentleman in taste and sentiments. He would not have denied himself any gratification for the sake of others; but he would not willingly have caused any one a moment’s uneasiness, nor was he ever ungrateful to those who were kind to him. He was a pleasant friend and a good-humoured associate, adroit in using the language of compliment, but not a flatterer, because he was candid and sincere. He changed his politics, but he had good cause for so doing. The circumstances of the times furnished ample justification. His morals were lax, but not worse than those of his contemporaries: all that can be said is, that he was not in advance of his age. His principles will not bear comparison with a high moral standard; but he had good qualities to compensate for his moral deficiencies. He looked at virtue and vice from a worldly, not a moral point of view. With him the former was prudence, the latter folly. Vice, therefore, provoked a sneer of derision, and not indignation at the sin or compassion for the sinner; and for the same reason he was incapable of entertaining a holy enthusiasm for virtue.
Good-tempered as a man, he nevertheless showed that he belonged to the genus irritabile vatum. He was jealous of his poetical reputation; not, indeed, towards his contemporaries, but towards the poets of former ages. He either could not or would not see any merit in old Roman poetry. His prejudice cannot be ascribed only to his enthusiasm for Greek literature, for he did not even appreciate the excellences which the old school of poetry had in common with the Greeks. Party spirit had somewhat to do with it, for a feud on the subject divided the literary society of the day,[649] and hence Horace took his side warmly and uncompromisingly.
But the principal cause was jealousy—unless he ignored Lucilius and Catullus, he could not claim to have been the first follower of Archilochus of whom Rome could boast; or, as the representative of Roman lyric poetry, to have first tuned his lyre to Æolian song.
The scenes in which Horace passed his life are so interesting to every reader of his works, that a few words respecting his villa at Tivoli and his Sabine farm will not be out of place here. Tibur[650] is situated on one of the spurs of the Appennines, about fifteen or sixteen miles from Rome, on the left bank of the Anio (Teverone.) The river winds gently by the town, separating it from the villa of Horace, and then, falling in a sheet of water over an escarped rock, disappears beneath a rocky cavern. Its roaring echoes are heard far and wide, and justifies the epithet (resonans,) which Horace gives to the dwelling of Albunea, the Tiburtine Sibyl. The villa commanded fine views, and a garden sloped down from it to the river’s bank. From its grounds was visible the palace of Mæcenas: on the opposite shore the wooded Sabine hills sheltered it from the north; and the domain of the poet’s friend, Quintilius Varus, formed its western boundary.
About fifteen miles north-east of Tibur, nestling amongst the roots of Mount Lucretilis, lay the Sabine farm. Fragments of white marble, and mosaic, which have been found there, show that, notwithstanding the simple frugality which Horace delights to describe, it was built and embellished with elegance and taste. From the mountain side, which rises behind the house, trickles a clear stream, the source of which is now called Fonte Bello, and which afterwards becomes the river Digentia (Licenza,) and waters the beautiful valley of the sloping Ustica (Usticæ Cubantis.) This rill, the parent of Horace’s favourite river, the embellisher of that “riant angle of the earth,” is interesting as being probably the fountain of Bandusia, “more transparent than glass,”[651] with whose fresh and sparkling waters the poet tempered his wine.
M. de Chaupy[652] assumes that the Bandusian fountain, mentioned by Horace, was situated near the birthplace of Horace, on the Lucano-Apulian border. His opinion rests on the words of a grant made by Pope Pascal II. to the abbot of the Bantine monastery; and Mr. Hobhouse[653] considers this document as decisive in ascertaining its position. It is decisive as to the existence of a Bandusian fountain near Venusia; but it must be remembered that Horace never saw it after the days of his childhood, when his paternal estate passed away from him for ever, whilst he speaks of his Bandusian fountain as near him, when he writes, and promises to sacrifice a kid to the guardian genius of the spring. What, then, is more probable than the suggestion of Mr. Dunlop,[654] that the same pleasing recollections of his early years, which inspired him to relate his touching adventure, led him to “name the clearest and loveliest stream of his Sabine retreat after that fountain which lay in Apulia, and on the brink of which he had no doubt often sported in infancy?”[655] He has in one of his odes alluded to this affectionate desire to perpetuate reminiscences of home—a desire which is illustrated by the topographical nomenclature which has been adopted by colonists of every age and country.
Mr. Dennis, however, in a letter written at Licenza,[656] in sight of the pleasant shades of M. Lucretilis, although he makes no doubt of the Bandusian fountain being in the neighbourhood, does not identify it with the “Fonte Bello.” He asserts that, although he has traced every streamlet in the neighbourhood, the only one which answers to the classical description is one now called “Fonte Blandusia.” It rises in a narrow glen which divides the Mount Lucretilis from Ustica, which probably derives its modern name Valle Rustica from a corruption of the classical appellation. As you ascend the glen it contracts into a ravine with bare cliffs on either side; the streamlet with difficulty winds its way between mossy rocks (musco circumlita saxa,) overshadowed with dense woods which effectually exclude the heat of the blazing Dog-star. The water issues from a rock, and trickles into two successive natural basins. “The water is indeed splendidior vitro; nothing, not even the Thracian Hebrus, can exceed it in purity, coolness, and sweetness: ‘its loquacious waters still bubble;’ the very ilices still overhang the hollow rocks whence it springs.”
A reference to Horace’s description[657] will prove to the modern traveller through this classic region with what fidelity and accuracy the poet has described the natural features of the scenery. The mountain chain is continuous and unbroken (continui montes,) save by the well wooded and therefore shady valley of the Digentia, which intersects it in such a direction that—
Another valley meets it, and on an exposed height, at the point of junction, stands Bardela, in Horace’s time Mandela, and well described by him as rugosus frigore pagus.[658] Corn grows on the sunny field (apricum pratum) which slopes from the farm to the river: the ruins of other dwellings mark the spot occupied by five domestic hearths, and sending five honest representatives to the municipal council of the neighbourhood:—
A comparison of the truthful and descriptive verses of Horace identify the spot which he loved. Nature is the same now as it was then; but human skill and perseverance have adorned with the purple clusters of the vine that “little corner of the world” which Horace said would bear pepper and frankincense more quickly than grapes.[660]
The Satires of Horace occupy the position of the comedy of manners and the fashionable novel. They are much more appropriately described by the title Sermones (Discourses) which is also given to them. They are, in fact, desultory didactic essays, in which the topics are discussed just as they present themselves. In them is sketched boldly but good-humouredly a picture of Roman social life with its vices and follies. His object was (to use his own words)—
Vices, however, are treated as follies; and the man of wit and pleasure seldom uses a weapon more keen than the shafts of ridicule:—
There is nothing of the political bitterness of Lucilius,[662] the love of purity and honour which adorns Persius, or the burning indignation which Juvenal pours forth at the loathsome corruption of morals. Horace had been a politician and a warm champion of liberty; but the struggle was now over, both with himself and his country. Ease and tranquillity were insured to both by the new régime; and his contented temper disposed him to acquiesce in a state of things which gave Rome time to rest from the horrors of civil war, and did not interfere with the independence of the individual. Hence the circumstances of the times, as well as his own temper, rendered his satires social and not political. Lucilius wrote when the strife between nobles and people was still raging, and the latter had not as yet succumbed. He, therefore, breathed the spirit of the old Athenian comic poets whom he followed and emulated; and the war of public opinion furnished him with topics similar to those which were discussed in the republican commonwealth of Athens.
Circumstances also influenced, in some degree, the tone of Horace’s strictures on the habits of social life. Immoral as society was, its most salient features were luxury, frivolity, extravagance, and effeminacy. Vice had not reached that appalling height which it attained in the time of the emperor who succeeded Augustus. Deficient in moral purity, an Epicurean and a debauchee, nothing would strike him as deserving censure, except such success as would actually defeat the object which he proposed to himself—namely, the utmost enjoyment of life. The dictates of prudence, therefore, would be his highest standard and his strongest check. He saw that public morals were already deteriorated, and threatened to become worse; but though they were bad enough to provoke derision, they did not shock or revolt one who was, and who professed to be, a man of the world. Had Horace lived in the time of Persius or Lucilius, even his satire would probably have been pointed and severe.
Often his satires are only accidentally didactic; he contents himself with graphic delineations of character and manners, and leaves them to produce their own moral effect upon the reader. In one[663] he holds up the superstition of the Romans to ridicule by a minute narrative of the absurd ceremonies performed by Canidia and another sorceress in their incantations. In another,[664] amusingly describes the annoyance to which he was exposed by the importunities of a gossiping trifler. In the journey to Brundisium he seems to have had no view beyond entertainment; although two incidents give him an opportunity of exposing the pomposity of a municipal official and the superstitious follies of a country town.[665] In others, his subjects are the scenery and neighbouring society of his Sabine valley;[666] the way in which he is wont to spend his day when at Rome; his own autobiography;[667] a laughable trial in Asia;[668] an essay on cookery;[669] and a candid exposure of his own faults and inconsistencies. Not that he is forgetful of his moral duties as a satirist. He exposes to merited contempt the prevailing iniquities of the day. The meanness of legacy-hunting; the absurdity of pretension and foppery; the folly of an inordinate passion for amassing wealth;[670] the dangers of adultery;[671] the unfairness of uncharitably misinterpreting the conduct of others.[672]
Such are the varied subjects contained in the Sermones or Satires of Horace. The Epistles are still more desultory and unrestrained. Epistolary writing is especially a Roman accomplishment. The Romans thought their correspondents deserved that as much pains should be bestowed on that which was addressed to them as on that which was intended for the public eye; and, in addition to the careful polish of which Cicero set the example, Horace brought to the task the embellishment of poetry. In the Epistles, he lays aside the character of a moral teacher or censor. He treats his correspondent as an equal. He opens his heart unreservedly: he gives advice, but in a kind and gentle spirit, not with sneering severity. The satire is delivered ex cathedrâ;—the epistle with the freedom with which he would converse with an intimate friend.
The subjects of the first books are moral, those of the second critical. The Ars Poetica is but a poetical epistle addressed to the Pisos, who had been bitten by the prevailing mania for tragic poetry. The usual title claims a far greater extent of subject than the poet intended. It is not a treatise on poetry, but simply an outline of the history of the Greek drama, and the principles of criticism applicable to it. It harmonizes well with the literary subjects treated of in the second book of the Epistles, and might well be included in it. It is, indeed, longer and more elaborate: a synopsis of so extensive a subject required more careful treatment; but it is impossible to form a correct estimate of the taste and judgment which it displays, unless it is considered as nothing more than an epistle.
The versification of these compositions is more smooth than that of the Satires, but only in proportion to the superior neatness of the style generally. In neither does the metrical harmony rise to the height of poetry, properly speaking. Doubtless this was the poet’s deliberate intention. It cannot be supposed that he who could so successfully introduce all the beautiful Greek lyric metres, and in some cases improve the delicacy of their structure, was incapable of reproducing the rhythm of the Greek hexameter. He felt that in subjects belonging to the prosaic realities of life, and hitherto treated with the conversational facility of the iambic measure, some appearance of negligence and even roughness could alone render the stately hexameter appropriate, and therefore tolerable. But, admirable as the Satires are for their artistic and dramatic power, and the Epistles for their correct taste, lively wit, and critical elegance, it is in his inimitable Odes that the genius of Horace as a poet is especially displayed. They have never been equalled in beauty of sentiment, gracefulness of language, and melody of versification. They comprehend every variety of subject suitable to the lyric muse. They rise without effort to the most elevated topics—the grandest subjects of history, the most gorgeous legends of mythology, the noblest aspirations of patriotism: they descend to the simplest joys and sorrows of every-day life. At one time they burn with indignation, at another they pour forth accents of the tenderest emotions. They present in turn every phase of the author’s character: some remind us that he was a philosopher and a satirist; and although many are sensuous and self-indulgent, they are full of gentleness, kindness, and spirituality. Not only do they evince a complete mastery over the Greek metres, but also show that Horace was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Greek poetry, and had profoundly studied Greek literature, especially the writings of Pindar and the lyric poets. Numerous as the instances are in which he has imitated them, and introduced by a happy adaptation their ideas, epithets, and phrases, his imitations are not mere plagiarisms or purple patches—they are made so completely his own, and are invested with so much novelty and originality, that, when compared with the original, we receive additional gratification from discovering the resemblance. The sentiments which are paraphrased seem improved: the expressions which are translated seem so appropriate, and harmonize so exactly with the context, that a poet, whose memory was stored with them, would have been guilty of bad taste if he had substituted any others. Greek feelings, sentiments, and imagery, are so naturally amalgamated with Roman manners, that they seem to have undergone a transmigration, and to animate a Roman form. The following are some of the most striking parallelisms:[673]—