Horace Part 16

CHAPTER X.

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

Horace had probably pa.s.sed forty when the Epistle just quoted was written. Describing himself at forty-four (Epistles, I. 20), he says he was "prematurely grey,"--his hair, as we have just seen, having been originally black,--adding that he is

"In person small, one to whom warmth is life, In temper hasty, yet averse from strife."

His health demanded constant care; and we find him writing (Epistles, I.

15) to a friend, to ask what sort of climate and people are to be found at Velia and Salernum,--the one a town of Lucania, the other of Campania,--as he has been ordered by his doctor to give up his favourite watering-place, Baiae, as too relaxing. This doctor was Antonius Musa, a great apostle of the cold-water cure, by which he had saved the life of Augustus when in extreme danger. The remedy instantly became fas.h.i.+onable, and continued so until the Emperor's nephew, the young Marcellus, died under the treatment. Horace's inquiries are just such as a valetudinarian fond of his comforts would be likely to make:--

"Which place is best supplied with corn, d'ye think?

Have they rain-water or fresh springs to drink?

Their wines I care not for, when at my farm I can drink any sort without much harm; But at the sea I need a generous kind To warm my veins, and pa.s.s into my mind, Enrich me with new hopes, choice words supply, And make me comely in a lady's eye.

Which tract is best for game? on which sea-coast Urchins and other fish abound the most?

That so, when I return, my friends may see A sleek Phaeacian [1] come to life in me: These things you needs must tell me, Vala dear, And I no less must act on what I hear." (C.)

[1] The Phaeacians were proverbially fond of good living.

Valetudinarian though he was, Horace maintains, in his later as in his early writings, a uniform cheerfulness. This never forsakes him; for life is a boon for which he is ever grateful. The G.o.ds have allotted him an ample share of the means of enjoyment, and it is his own fault if he suffers self-created worries or desires to vex him. By the questions he puts to a friend in one of the latest of his Epistles (II. 2), we see what was the discipline he applied to himself--

"You're not a miser: has all other vice Departed in the train of avarice?

Or do ambitious longings, angry fret, The terror of the grave, torment you yet?

Can you make sport of portents, gipsy crones, Hobgoblins, dreams, raw head and b.l.o.o.d.y bones?

Do you count up your birthdays year by year, And thank the G.o.ds with gladness and blithe cheer, O'erlook the failings of your friends, and grow Gentler and better as your sand runs low?" (C.)

And to this beautiful catalogue of what should be a good man's aims, let us add the picture of himself which Horace gives us in another and earlier Epistle (I. 18):--

"For me, when freshened by my spring's pure cold, Which makes my villagers look pinched and old, What prayers are mine? 'O may I yet possess The goods I have, or, if heaven pleases, less!

Let the few years that Fate may grant me still Be all my own, not held at others' will!

Let me have books, and stores for one year hence, Nor make my life one flutter of suspense!'

But I forbear; sufficient 'tis to pray To Jove for what he gives and takes away; Grant life, grant fortune, for myself I'll find That best of blessings--a contented mind." (C.)

"Let me have books!" These play a great part in Horace's life. They were not to him, what Montaigne calls them, "a languid pleasure," but rather as they were to Wordsworth--

"A substantial world, both fresh and good, Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness may grow."

Next to a dear friend, they were Horace's most cherished companions. Not for amus.e.m.e.nt merely, and the listless luxury of the self-wrapt lounger, were they prized by him, but as teachers to correct his faults, to subdue his evil propensities, to develop his higher nature, to purify his life (Epistles, I. 1), and to help him towards attaining "that best of blessings, a contented mind:"--

"Say, is your bosom fevered with the fire Of sordid avarice or unchecked desire?

Know there are spells will help you to allay The pain, and put good part of it away.

You're bloated by ambition? take advice; Yon book will ease you, if you read it _thrice_.

Run through the list of faults; whate'er you be, Coward, pickthank, spitfire, drunkard, debauchee, Submit to culture patiently, you'll find Her charms can humanise the rudest mind." (C.)

Horace's taste was as catholic in philosophy as in literature. He was of no school, but sought in the teachings of them all such principles as would make life easier, better, and happier: "_Condo et compono, quae mox depromere possum_"--

"I search and search, and where I find I lay The wisdom up against a rainy day." (C.)

He is evermore urging his friends to follow his example;--to resort like himself to these "spells,"--the _verba et voces_, by which he brought his own restless desires and disquieting aspirations into subjection, and fortified himself in the bliss of contentment. He saw they were letting the precious hours slip from their grasp,--hours that might have been so happy, but were so weighted with disquiet and weariness; and he loved his friends too well to keep silence on this theme. We, like them, it has been admirably said, [Footnote: etude Morale et Litteraire sur les Epitres d'Horace; par J. A. Estienne. Paris, 1851. P.212.]

are "possessed by the ambitions, the desires, the weariness, the disquietudes, which pursued the friends of Horace. If he does not always succeed with us, any more than with them, in curing us of these, he at all events soothes and tranquillises us in the moments which we spend with him. He augments, on the other hand, the happiness of those who are already happy; and there is not one of us but feels under obligation to him for his gentle and salutary lessons,--_verbaque et voces_,--for his soothing or invigorating balsams, as much as though this gifted physician of soul and body had compounded them specially for ourselves."

When he published the First Book of Epistles he seems to have thought the time come for him to write no more lyrics (Epistles, I. 1):--

"So now I bid my idle songs adieu, And turn my thoughts to what is just and true." (C.)

Graver habits, and a growing fastidiousness of taste, were likely to give rise to this feeling. But a poet can no more renounce his lyre than a painter his palette; and his fine "Secular Hymn," and many of the Odes of the Fourth Book, which were written after this period, prove that, so far from suffering any decay in poetical power, he had even gained in force of conception, and in that _curiosa felicitas_, that exquisite felicity of expression, which has been justly ascribed to him by Petronius. Several years afterwards, when writing of the mania for scribbling verse which had beset the Romans, as if, like Dogberry's reading and writing, the faculty of writing poetry came by nature, he alludes to his own sins in the same direction with a touch of his old irony (Epistles, II. 1):--

"E'en I, who vow I never write a verse, Am found as false as Parthia, maybe worse; Before the dawn I rouse myself and call For pens and parchment, writing-desk, and all.

None dares be pilot who ne'er steered a craft; No untrained nurse administers a draught; None but skilled workmen handle workmen's tools; But verses all men scribble, wise or fools." (C.)

Or, as Pope with a finer emphasis translates his words--

"But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble to a man."

It was very well for Horace to laugh at his own inability to abstain from verse-making, but, had he been ever so much inclined to silence, his friends would not have let him rest. Some wanted an Ode, some an Epode, some a Satire (Epistles, II. 2)--

"Three hungry guests for different dishes call, And how's one host to satisfy them all?" (C.)

And there was one friend, whose request it was not easy to deny. This was Augustus. Ten years after the imperial power had been placed in his hands (B.C. 17) he resolved to celebrate a great national festival in honour of his own successful career. Horace was called on to write an Ode, known in his works as "The Secular Hymn," to be sung upon the occasion by twenty-seven boys and twenty-seven girls of n.o.ble birth.

"The Ode," says Macleane, "was sung at the most solemn part of the festival, while the Emperor was in person offering sacrifice at the second hour of the night, on the river side, upon three altars, attended by the fifteen men who presided over religious affairs. The effect must have been very beautiful, and no wonder if the impression on Horace's feelings was strong and lasting." He was obviously pleased at being chosen for the task, and not without pride,--a very just one,--at the way it was performed. In the Ode (IV. 6), which seems to have been a kind of prelude to the "Secular Hymn," he antic.i.p.ates that the virgins who chanted it will on their marriage-day be proud to recall the fact that they had taken part in this oratorio under his baton:--

"When the cyclical year brought its festival days, My voice led the hymn of thanksgiving and praise, So sweet, the immortals to hear it were fain, And 'twas HORACE THE POET who taught me the strain!"

It was probably at the suggestion of Augustus, also, that he wrote the magnificent Fourth and Fourteenth Odes of the Fourth Book. These were written, however, to celebrate great national victories, and were pitched in the high key appropriate to the theme. But this was not enough for Augustus. He wanted something more homely and human, and was envious of the friends to whom Horace had addressed the charming Epistles of the First Book, a copy of which the poet had sent to him by the hands of a friend (Epistles, I. 13), but only to be given to the Caesar,

"If he be well, and in a happy mood, And ask to have them,--be it understood."

And so he wrote to Horace--the letter is quoted by Suetonius--"Look you, I take it much amiss that none of your writings of this cla.s.s are addressed to me. Are you afraid it will damage your reputation with posterity to be thought to have been one of my intimates?" Such a letter, had Horace been a vain man or an indiscreet, might have misled him into approaching Augustus with the freedom he courted. But he fell into no such error. There is perfect frankness throughout the whole of the Epistle, with which he met the Emperor's request (II. 1), but the social distance between them is maintained with an emphasis which it is impossible not to feel. The Epistle opens by skilfully insinuating that, if the poet has not before addressed the Emperor, it is that he may not be suspected of encroaching on the hours which were due to the higher cares of state:--

"Since you, great Caesar, singly wield the charge Of Rome's concerns, so manifold and large,-- With sword and s.h.i.+eld the commonwealth protect, With morals grace it, and with laws correct,-- The bard, methinks, would do a public wrong, Who, having gained your ear, should keep it long." (C.)

It is not while they live, he continues, that, in the ordinary case, the worth of the great benefactors of mankind is recognised. Only after they are dead, do misunderstanding and malice give way to admiration and love. Rome, it is true, has been more just. It has appreciated, and it avows, how much it owes to Augustus. But the very same people who have shown themselves wise and just in this are unable to extend the same principle to living literary genius. A poet must have been long dead and buried, or he is nought. The very flaws of old writers are cried up as beauties by pedantic critics, while the highest excellence in a writer of the day meets with no response.

"Had Greece but been as carping and as cold To new productions, what would now be old?

What standard works would there have been, to come Beneath the public eye, the public thumb?" (C.)

Let us then look the facts fairly in the face; let us "clear our minds of cant." If a poem be bad in itself, let us say so, no matter how old or how famous it be; if it be good, let us be no less candid, though the poet be still struggling into notice among us.

Thanks, he proceeds, to our happy times, men are now devoting themselves to the arts of peace. "_Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit_"--"Her ruthless conqueror Greece has overcome." The Romans of the better cla.s.s, who of old thought only of the triumphs of the forum, or of turning over their money profitably, are now bitten by a literary furor.

"Pert boys, prim fathers, dine in wreaths of bay, And 'twixt the courses warble out the lay." (C.)

But this craze is no unmixed evil; for, take him all in all, your poet can scarcely be a bad fellow. Pulse and second bread are a banquet for him. He is sure not to be greedy or close-fisted; for to him, as Tennyson in the same spirit says, "Mellow metres are more than ten per cent." Neither is he likely to cheat his partner or his ward. He may cut a poor figure in a campaign, but he does the state good service at home.

"His lessons form the child's young lips, and wean The boyish ear from words and tales unclean; As years roll on, he moulds the ripening mind, And makes it just and generous, sweet and kind; He tells of worthy precedents, displays The examples of the past to after days, Consoles affliction, and disease allays." (C.)