Horace and His Influence Part 3

T_hy wiser heir will soon drain to their lees_ T_he casks now kept beneath a hundred keys_; T_he proud old Caecuban will stain the floor_, M_ore fit at pontiffs' solemn feasts to pour_.

Nor is there a beyond filled with brightness for the victim of fate to look to. Orcus is unpitying. Mercury's flock of souls is of sable hue, and Proserpina's realm is the hue of the dusk. Black Care clings to poor souls even beyond the grave. Dull and persistent, it is the only substantial feature of the insubstantial world of shades. Sappho still sighs there for love of her maiden companions, the plectrum of Alcaeus sounds its chords only to songs of earthly hards.h.i.+ps by land and sea, Prometheus and Tantalus find no surcease from the pangs of torture, Sisyphus ever rolls the returning stone, and the Danaids fill the ever-emptying jars.

_ii_. THE PLEASURES OF THIS WORLD

The picture is dark with shadow, and must be relieved with light and color. The hasty conclusion should not be drawn that this is the philosophy of gloom. The tone of Horace is neither that of the cheerless skeptic nor that of the despairing pessimist. He does not rise from his contemplation with the words or the feeling of Lucretius:

O miserable minds of men, O blind hearts! In what obscurity and in what dangers is pa.s.sed this uncertain little existence of yours!

He would have agreed with the philosophy of pessimism that life contains striving and pain, but he would not have shared in the gloom of a Schopenhauer, who in all will sees action, in all action want, in all want pain, who looks upon pain as the essential condition of will, and sees no end of suffering except in the surrender of the will to live.

The vanity of human wishes is no secret to Horace, but life is not to him "a soap-bubble which we blow out as long and as large as possible, though each of us knows perfectly well it must sooner or later burst."

No, life may have its inevitable pains and its inevitable end, but it is far more substantial in composition than a bubble. For those who possess the secret of detecting and enjoying them, it contains solid goods in abundance.

What is the secret?

The first step toward enjoyment of the human lot is acquiescence. Of course existence has its evils and bitter end, but these are minimized for the man who frankly faces them, and recognizes the futility of struggling against the fact. How much better to endure whatever our lot shall impose. Quintilius is dead: it is hard; but patience makes lighter the ill that fate will not suffer us to correct.

And then, when we have once yielded, and have ceased to look upon perfect happiness as a possibility, or upon any measure of happiness as a right to be demanded, we are in position to take the second step; namely, to make wise use of life's advantages:

M_id all thy hopes and all thy cares, mid all thy wraths and fears_, T_hink every s.h.i.+ning day that dawns the period to thy years_.

T_he hour that comes unlooked for is the hour that doubly cheers_.

Because there are many things to make life a pleasure. There is the solace of literature; Black Care is lessened by song. There are the riches of philosophy, there is the diversion of moving among men. There are the delights of the country and the town. Above all, there are friends with whom to share the joy of mere living in Italy. For what purpose, if not to enjoy, are the rose, the pine, and the poplar, the gus.h.i.+ng fountain, the generous wine of Formian hill and Ma.s.sic slope, the villa by the Tiber, the peaceful and healthful seclusion of the Sabines, the pleasing change from the sharp winter to the soft zephyrs of spring, the apple-bearing autumn,--"season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"? What need to be unhappy in the midst of such a world?

And the man who is wise will not only recognize the abounding possibilities about him, but will seize upon them before they vanish.

Who knows whether the G.o.ds above will add a tomorrow to the to-day? Be glad, and lay hand upon the gifts of the pa.s.sing hour! Take advantage of the day, and have no silly faith in the morrow. It is as if Omar were translating Horace:

"W_aste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit_ 0_f This and That endeavor and dispute;_ B_etter be jocund with the fruitful Grape_ T_han sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit._

"A_h! fill the Cup: what boots it to repeat_ H_ow Time is slipping underneath our Feet:_ U_nborn tomorrow, and dead yesterday,_ W_hy fret about them if today be sweet!"_

The goods of existence must be enjoyed here and now, or never, for all must be left behind. What once is enjoyed is forever our very own. Happy is the man who can say, at each day's close, "I have lived!" The day is his, and cannot be recalled. Let Jove overcast with black cloud the heavens of to-morrow, or let him make it bright with clear suns.h.i.+ne,--as he pleases; what the flying hour of to-day has already given us he never can revoke. Life is a stream, now gliding peacefully onward in mid-channel to the Tuscan sea, now tumbling upon its swirling bosom the wreckage of flood and storm. The pitiful human being on its banks, ever looking with greedy expectation up the stream, or with vain regret at what is past, is left at last with nothing at all. The part of wisdom and of happiness is to keep eyes on that part of the stream directly before us, the only part which is ever really seen.

Y_ou see how, deep with gleaming snow,_ S_oracte stands, and, bending low,_ Y_on branches droop beneath their burden,_ A_nd streams o'erfrozen have ceased their flow._

A_way with cold! the hearth pile high_ W_ith blazing logs; the goblet ply_ W_ith cheering Sabine, Thaliarchus;_ D_raw from the cask of long years gone by._

A_ll else the G.o.ds entrust to keep,_ W_hose nod can lull the winds to sleep,_ V_exing the ash and cypress aged,_ O_r battling over the boiling deep._

S_eek not to pierce the morrow's haze,_ B_ut for the moment render praise;_ N_or spurn the dance, nor love's sweet pa.s.sion,_ E_re age draws on with its joyless days._

N_ow should the campus be your joy,_ A_nd whispered loves your lips employ,_ W_hat time the twilight shadows gather,_ A_nd tryst you keep with the maiden coy._

F_rom near-by nook her laugh makes plain_ W_here she had meant to hide, in vain!_ H_ow arch her struggles o'er the token_ F_rom yielding which she can scarce refrain!_

_iii_. LIFE AND MORALITY

But Horace's Epicureanism never goes to the length of Omar's. He would have shrunk from the Persian as extreme:

"YESTERDAY _This Day's Madness did prepare_, TOMORROW'S _Silence, Triumph, or Despair_, _Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why_: D_rink! for you know not why you go, nor where_."

The Epicureanism of Horace is more nearly that of Epicurus himself, the saintly recluse who taught that "to whom little is not enough, nothing is enough," and who regarded plain living as at the same time a duty and a happiness. The lives of too liberal disciples have been a slander on the name of Epicurus. Horace is not among them. With degenerate Epicureans, whose philosophy permitted them "To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty," he had little in common. The extraction from life of the honey of enjoyment was indeed the highest purpose, but the purpose could never be realized without the exercise of discrimination, moderation, and a measure of spiritual culture. Life was an art, symmetrical, unified, reposeful,--like the poem of perfect art, or the statue, or the temple. In actual conduct, the hedonist of the better type differed little from the Stoic himself.

The gracious touch and quiet humor with which Horace treats even the most serious themes are often misleading. This effect is the more possible by reason of the presence among his works of pa.s.sages, not many and for the most part youthful, in which he is guilty of too great freedom.

Horace is really a serious person. He is even something of a preacher, a praiser of the time when he was a boy, a censor and corrector of his youngers. So far as popular definitions of Stoic and Epicurean are concerned, he is much more the former than the latter.

For Horace's counsel is always for moderation, and sometimes for austerity. He is not a wine-bibber, and he is not a total abstainer. To be the latter on principle would never have occurred to him. The vine was the gift of G.o.d. Prefer nothing to it for planting in the mellow soil of Tibur, Varus; it is one of the compensations of life:

"I_ts magic power of wit can spread_ T_he halo round a dullard's head_, C_an make the sage forget his care_, H_is bosom's inmost thoughts unbare_, A_nd drown his solemn-faced pretense_ B_eneath its blithesome influence_.

B_right hope it brings and vigor back_ T_o minds outworn upon the rack_, A_nd puts such courage in the brain_ A_s makes the poor be men again_, W_hom neither tyrants' wrath affrights_, N_or all their bristling satellites_."

When wine is a curse, it is not so because of itself, but because of excess in its use. The cup was made for purposes of pleasure, but to quarrel over it,--leave that to barbarians! Take warning by the Thracians, and the Centaurs and Lapiths, never to overstep the bounds of moderation. Pleasure with after-taste of bitterness is not real pleasure. Pleasure purchased with pain is an evil.

Upon women he looks with the same philosophic calm as upon wine. Love, too, was to be regarded as one of the contributions to life's pleasure.

To dally with golden-haired Pyrrha, with Lyce, or with Glycera, the beauty more brilliant than Parian marble, was not in his eyes to be blamed in itself. What he felt no hesitation in committing to his poems for friends and the Emperor to read, they on their part felt as little hesitation in confessing to him. The fault of love lay not in itself, but in abuse. This is not said of adultery, which was always an offense because it disturbed the inst.i.tution of marriage and rotted the foundation of society.

There is thus no inconsistency in the Horace of the love poems and the Horace of the _Secular Hymn_ who pet.i.tions Our Lady Juno to prosper the decrees of the Senate encouraging the marriage relation and the rearing of families. Of the illicit love that looked to Roman women in the home, he emphatically declares his innocence, and against it directs the last and most powerful of the six _Inaugural Odes_; for this touched the family, and, through the family, the State. This, with neglect of religion, he cla.s.ses together as the two great causes of national decay.

Horace is not an Ovid, with no sense of the limits of either indulgence or expression. He is not a Catullus, tormented by the furies of youthful pa.s.sion. The flame never really burned him. We search his pages in vain for evidence of sincere and absorbing pa.s.sion, whether of the flesh or of the spirit. He was guilty of no breach of the morals of his time, and it is likely also, in spite of Suetonius, that he was guilty of no excess. He was a supporter in good faith of the Emperor in his attempts at the moral improvement of the State. If Virgil in the writing of the _Georgics_ or the _Aeneid_ was conscious of a purpose to second the project of Augustus, it is just as likely that his intimate friend Horace also wrote with conscious moral intent. Nothing is more in keeping with his conception of the end and effect of literature:

It shapes the tender and hesitating speech of the child; it straight removes his ear from shameless communication; presently with friendly precepts it moulds his inner self; it is a corrector of harshness and envy and anger; it sets forth the righteous deed; it instructs the rising generations with the familiar example; it is a solace to the helpless and the sick at heart.

_iv_. LIFE AND PURPOSE

Horace's philosophy of life is thus based upon something deeper than the principle of seizing upon pleasure. His definition of pleasure is not without austerity; he preaches the positive virtues of performance as well as the negative virtue of moderation. He could be an unswerving follower and guardian of true virtue, and could bend self to circ.u.mstance.

He stands for domestic purity, and for patriotic devotion. _Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_,--to die for country is a privilege and a glory. His hero is Regulus, returning steadfastly through the ranks of protesting friends to keep faith with the pitiless executioners of Carthage. Regulus, and the Scauri, and Paulus, who poured out his great spirit on the disastrous field of Cannae, and Fabricius, of simple heart and absolute integrity, he holds up as examples to his generation. In praise of the st.u.r.dy Roman qualities of courage and steadfastness he writes his most inspired lines:

The righteous man of unswerving purpose is shaken in his solid will neither by the unworthy demands of inflamed citizens, nor by the frowning face of the threatening tyrant, nor by the East-wind, turbid ruler of the restless Adriatic, nor by the great hand of fulminating Jove himself. If the heavens should fall asunder, the cras.h.i.+ng fragments would descend upon him unterrified.

He preaches the gospel of faithfulness not only to family, country, and purpose, but to religion. He will shun the man who violates the secrets of the mysteries. The curse of the G.o.ds is upon all such, and pursues them to the day of doom.

Faithfulness to friends.h.i.+p stands out with no less distinctness. While Horace is in his right mind, he will value nothing so highly as a delightful friend. He is ready, whenever fate calls, to enter with Maecenas even upon the last journey. Among the blest is he who is unafraid to die for dear friends or native land.

Honor, too,--the fine spirit of old Roman times, that refused bribes, that would not take advantage of an enemy's weakness, that asked no questions save the question of what was right, that never turned its back upon duty, that swore to its own hurt and changed not; the same lofty spirit the recording of whose manifestations never fails to bring the glow to Livy's cheek and the gleam to his eye,--honor is also first and foremost in Horace's esteem. Regulus, the self-sacrificing; Curius, despising the Samnite gold; Camillus, yielding private grievance to come to his country's aid; Cato, dying for his convictions after Thapsus, are his inspirations. The hero of his ideal fears disgrace worse than death.

The diadem and the laurel are for him only who can pa.s.s on without the backward glance upon stores of treasure.

Finally, not least among the qualities which enter into the ideal of Horace is the simplicity of the olden time, when the armies of Rome were made up of citizen-soldiers, and the eye of every Roman was single to the glory of the State, and the selfishness of luxury was yet unknown.

S_cant were their private means, the public, great_; 'T_was still a commonwealth, that State_; N_o portico, surveyed with private rule_, A_ssured one man the shady cool_.

T_he laws approved the house of humble sods_; 'T_was only to the homes of G.o.ds_, T_he structures reared with earnings of the nation_, T_hey gave rich marble decoration_.