Horace and His Influence

by Grant Showerman

III. HORACE THE DYNAMIC

The Cultivated Few

We have followed in such manner and at such length as is possible for our purpose the fortunes of Horace through the ages from his death and the death of the Empire in whose service his pen was employed to our own times. We have seen that he never was really forgotten, and that there never was a time of long duration when he ceased to be of real importance to some portion of mankind.

The recital of historical fact is at best a narration of circumstance to which there clings little of the warmth of life. An historical event itself is but the cumulated and often frigid result of intimate original forces that may have meant long travail of body and soul before the act of realization became possible. The record of the event in chronicle or its commemoration in monument is only the sign that at some time there occurred a significant moment rendered inevitable by previous stirrings of life whose intensity, if not whose very identity, are forgotten or no longer realized.

Thus the enumeration of manuscript revisions, translations, imitations, and scholastic editions of Horace may also seem at first sight the narrative of cold detail. There may be readers who, remembering the scant stream of the cultivated few who tided the poet through the centuries of darkness, and the comparative rareness of cultivated men at all times, will be slow to be convinced of any real impress of Horace upon the life of men. They especially who reflect that during all the long sweep of time the majority of those who have known him, and even of those who have been stirred to enthusiasm by him, have known him through the compulsion of the school, and who reflect farther on the artificialities, the insincerities, the pettinesses, the abuses, and the hatreds of the class-room, the joy with which at the end the text-book is dropped or bidden an even more violent farewell, and the apparently total oblivion that follows, will be inclined to view as exaggeration the most moderate estimate of our debt to him.

Yet skepticism would be without warrant. The presence of any subject in an educational scheme represents the sincere, and often the fervent, conviction that it is worthy of the place. In the case of literary subjects, the nearer the approach to pure letters, the less demonstrable the connection between instruction and the winning of livelihood, the more intense the conviction. The immortality of literature and the arts, which surely has been demonstrated by time, the respect in which they are held by a world so intent on mere living that of its own motion it would never heed, is the work of the passionate few whose enthusiasms and protestations never allow the common crowd completely to forget, and keep forever alive in it the uneasy sense of imperfection. That Horace was preserved for hundreds of years by monastery and school, that the fact of acquaintance with him is due to his place in modern systems of education, are not mere statements empty of life. They represent the noble enthusiasms of enlightened men. The history of human progress has been the history of enthusiasms. Without enthusiasms, the fabric of civilization would collapse in a day into the chaos of barbarism.

To give greater completeness and reality to our account of Horace's place among men, ancient and modern, we must in some way add to the narrative of formal fact the demonstration of his influence in actual operation. In the case of periods obscure and remote, this is hardly possible. In the case of modern times it is not so difficult. For the recent centuries, as proof of the peculiar power of Horace, we have the abundant testimony of literature and biography.

Let us call this influence the Dynamic Power of Horace. Dynamic power is the power that explodes men, so to speak, into physical or spiritual action, that operates by inspiration, expansion, fertilization, vitalization, and results in the living of a fuller life. If we can be shown concrete instances of Horace enriching the lives of men by increasing their love and mastery of art or multiplying their means of happiness, we shall not only appreciate better the poet's meaning for the present day, but be better able to imagine his effect upon men in the remoter ages whose life is less open to scrutiny.

Our purpose will best be accomplished by demonstrating the very specific and pronounced effect of Horace, first, upon the formation of the literary ideal; second, upon the actual creation of literature; and, third, upon living itself.

1. Horace and the Literary Ideal

There is no better example of the direct effect of Horace than the part played in the discipline of letters by the Ars Poetica. This work is a literary causerie inspired in part by the reading of Alexandrian criticism, but in larger part by experience. In it the author's uppermost themes, as in characteristic manner he allows himself to be led on from one thought to another, are unity, consistency, propriety, truthfulness, sanity, and carefulness. Such has been its power by reason of inner substance and outward circumstance that it has been at times exalted into a court of appeal hardly less authoritative than Aristotle himself, from whom in large part it ultimately derives.

We have seen how the Pleiad, with Du Bellay and Ronsard leading, seized upon the classics as a means of elevating the literature of France, and how the treatise of Du Bellay which was put forth as their manifesto was full of matter from the Ars Poetica, which two years previously has served Sibilet also, whose work Du Bellay attacked. A century later, Boileau's L'Art Poétique testifies again to the inspiration of Horace, who is made the means of riveting still more firmly upon French drama, for good or ill, the strict rules that have always governed it; and by the time of Boileau's death the program of the Pleiad is revived a second time by Jean Baptiste Rousseau. Opitz and Gottsched in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are for Germany what Du Bellay and Boileau were for France in the sixteenth and seventeenth. Literary Spain of the latter fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was under the same influence. The Spanish peninsula, according to Menéndez y Pelayo, has produced no fewer than forty-seven translations of the Ars Poetica. Even in England, always less tractable in the matter of rules than the Latin countries, Ben Jonson and his friends are in some sort another Pleiad, and the treatise possesses immense authority throughout the centuries. We turn the pages of Cowl's The Theory of Poetry in England, a book of critical extracts illustrating the development of poetry "in doctrines and ideas from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century," and note Ben Jonson and Wordsworth referring to or quoting Horace in the section on Poetic Creation; Dryden and Temple appealing to him and Aristotle on the Rules; Hurd quoting him on Nature and the Stage; Roger Ascham, Ben Jonson, and Dryden citing him as an example on Imitation; Dryden and Chapman calling him master and law-giver on Translation; Samuel Johnson referring to him on the same subject; and Ben Jonson and Dryden using him on Functions and Principles of Criticism. "Horace," writes Jonson, "an author of much civility, ... an excellent and true judge upon cause and reason, not because he thought so, but because he knew so out of use and experience." Pope, in the Essay on Criticism, describes with peculiar felicity both Horace's critical manner and the character of the authority, persuasive rather than tyrannical, which he exercises over Englishmen:

"Horace still charms with graceful negligence,

And without method talks us into sense;

Will, like a friend, familiarly convey

The truest notions in the easiest way."

But the dynamic power of the Ars Poetica will be still better appreciated if we assemble some of its familiar principles. Who has not heard of and wondered at the hold the "Rules" have had upon modern drama, especially in France,—the rule of five acts, no more and no less; the rule of three actors only, liberalized into the rule of economy; the rule of the unities in time, place, and action; the rule against the mingling of the tragic and comic "kinds"; the rule against the artificial dénouement? Who has not heard of French playwrights composing "with one eye on the clock" for fear of violating the unity of time, or of their delight in the writing of drama as in "a difficult game well played?" If Alexandrian criticism, and, back of it, Aristotle, were ultimately responsible for the rules, Horace was their disseminator in later times, and was looked up to as final authority. Who has not heard and read repeatedly the now common-place injunctions to be appropriate and consistent in character-drawing; to avoid, on the one hand, clearness at the cost of diffuseness, and, on the other, brevity at the cost of obscurity; to choose subject-matter suited to one's powers; to respect the authority of the masterpiece and to con by night and by day the great Greek exemplars; to feel the emotion one wishes to rouse; to stamp the universal with the mark of individual genius; to be straightforward and rapid and omit the unessential; to be truthful to life; to keep the improbable and the horrible behind the scenes; to be appropriate in meter and diction; to keep clear of the fallacy of poetic madness; to look for the real sources of successful writing in sanity, depth of knowledge, and experience with men; to remember the mutual indispensability of genius and cultivation; to combine the pleasant and the useful; to deny one's self the indulgence of mediocrity; never to compose unless under inspiration; to give heed to solid critical counsel; to lock up one's manuscript for nine years before giving it to the world; to destroy what does not measure up to the ideal; to take ever-lasting pains; to beware of the compliments of good-natured friends? Not less familiar are the apt figurative illustrations of the woman beautiful above and an ugly fish below, the purple patch, the painter who would forever put in his cypress tree, the amphora that came out a pitcher, the dolphin in the wood and the boar in the waters, the sesquipedalian word, the mountains in travail and the birth of the ridiculous mouse, the plunge in medias res, the praiser of the good old times, the exclusion of sane poets from Helicon, the counsellor who himself can write nothing, but will serve as whetstone for genius, the nodding of Homer.

Nor did the effects of this diffusion of Horatian precept consist merely in restraint upon the youthful and the impulsive, or confine themselves to the drama, with which the Ars Poetica was mainly concerned. The persuasive and authoritative counsels of the Roman poet have entered, so to speak, into the circulatory system of literary effort and become part of the life-blood of modern enlightenment. Their great effect has been formative: the cultivation of character in literature.

2. Horace and Literary Creation

i. THE TRANSLATOR'S IDEAL

Besides the invisible, and the greatest, effect of Horace in the moulding of character in literature, is the visible effect in literary creation. His inspiration wrought by performance as well as by precept. The numerous essays in verse and prose on the art of letters which have been prompted by the Ars Poetica are themselves examples of this effect. They are not alone, however, though perhaps the most apparent. The purer literature of the lyric also inspired to creation, with results that are far more charming, if less substantial.

In the case of the lyric inspired by the Odes, as well as in the case of the critical essay inspired by the Ars Poetica, it is not always easy to distinguish adaptation or imitation from actual creation. Bernardo Tasso's Ode, for example, and Giovanni Prati's Song of Hygieia, while really independent poems, are so charged with Horatian matter and spirit that one hesitates to call them original. The same is true of the many inspirations traceable to the famous Beatus Ille Epode, which, with such Odes as The Bandusian Spring, Pyrrha, Phidyle, and Chloe, have captured the fancy of modern poets. Pope's Solitude, on the other hand, while surely an inspiration of the second Epode, shows hardly a mark affording proof of the fact.

To some of the most manifest imitations and adaptations, it is impossible to deny originality. The Fifth Book of Horace, by Kipling and Graves, is an example. Thackeray's delightful Ad Ministram is another example which must be classed as adaptation, yet such is its spontaneity that not to see in it an inspiration would be stupid and unjust:

AD MINISTRAM

Dear Lucy, you know what my wish is—

I hate all your Frenchified fuss:

Your silly entrées and made dishes

Were never intended for us.

No footman in lace and in ruffles

Need dangle behind my arm-chair;

And never mind seeking for truffles

Although they be ever so rare.

But a plain leg of mutton, my Lucy,

I prithee get ready at three:

Have it smoking, and tender, and juicy,

And what better meat can there be?

And when it has feasted the master,

'Twill amply suffice for the maid;

Meanwhile I will smoke my canaster,

And tipple my ale in the shade.

In similar strain of exquisite humor are the adaptations of the Whichers, American examples of spirit and skill not second to that of Thackeray:

MY SABINE FARM

LAUDABUNT ALII

Some people talk about "Noo Yo'k";

Of Cleveland many ne'er have done;

They sing galore of Baltimore,

Chicago, Pittsburgh, Washington.

Others unasked their wit have tasked

To sound unending praise of Boston—

Of bean-vines found for miles around

And crooked streets that I get lost on.

Give me no jar of truck or car,

No city smoke and noise of mills;

Rather the slow Connecticut's flow

And sunny orchards on the hills.

There like the haze of summer days

Before the wind flee care and sorrow.

In sure content each day is spent,

Unheeding what may come to-morrow.

VITAS HINNULEO

DONE BY MR. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I met a little Roman maid;

She was just sixteen (she said),

And O! but she was sore afraid,

And hung her modest head.

A little fawn, you would have vowed,

That sought her mother's side,

And wandered lonely as a cloud

Upon the mountain wide.

Whene'er the little lizards stirred

She started in her fear;

In every rustling bush she heard

Some awful monster near.

"I'm not a lion; fear not so;

Seek not your timid dam."—

But Chloe was afraid, and O!

She knows not what I am:

A creature quite too bright and good

To be so much misunderstood.

Again, in Austin Dobson's exquisite Triolet, whether the inspiration of the poem itself is in Horace, or the inspiration, so far as Horace is concerned, lies in the choice of title after the verses were written, we must in either case confess a debt of great delight to the author of the Ars Poetica:

URCEUS EXIT

I intended an Ode,

And it turned to a Sonnet.

It began à la mode,

I intended an Ode;

But Rose crossed the road

In her latest new bonnet;

I intended an Ode,

And it turned to a Sonnet.

The same observation applies equally to the same author's Iocosa Lyra:

IOCOSA LYRA

In our hearts is the great one of Avon

Engraven,

And we climb the cold summits once built on

By Milton;

But at times not the air that is rarest

Is fairest,

And we long in the valley to follow

Apollo.

Then we drop from the heights atmospheric

To Herrick,

Or we pour the Greek honey, grown blander,

Of Landor,

Or our cosiest nook in the shade is

Where Praed is,

Or we toss the light bells of the mocker

With Locker.

O the song where not one of the Graces

Tightlaces,—

Where we woo the sweet Muses not starchly,

But archly,—

Where the verse, like a piper a-Maying

Comes playing,—

And the rhyme is as gay as a dancer

In answer,—

It will last till men weary of pleasure

In measure!

It will last till men weary of laughter ...

And after!

Whatever we may say of the indebtedness of things like these to the letter of the ancient poet, we must acknowledge them all alike as examples of the dynamic power of Horace.

ii. CREATION

But there are other examples whose character as literary creation is still farther beyond question. Such a one, to mention one brilliant specimen in prose, is the letter of Andrew Lang to Horace. In verse, Austin Dobson again affords one of the happiest examples:

TO Q.H.F.

"Horatius Flaccus, b.c. 8,"

There's not a doubt about the date,—

You're dead and buried:

As you observed, the seasons roll;

And 'cross the Styx full many a soul

Has Charon ferried,

Since, mourned of men and Muses nine,

They laid you on the Esquiline.

And that was centuries ago!

You'd think we'd learned enough, I know,

To help refine us,

Since last you trod the Sacred Street,

And tacked from mortal fear to meet

The bore Crispinus;

Or, by your cold Digentia, set

The web of winter birding-net.

Ours is so far-advanced an age!

Sensation tales, a classic stage,

Commodious villas!

We boast high art, an Albert Hall,

Australian meats, and men who call

Their sires gorillas!

We have a thousand things, you see,

Not dreamt in your philosophy.

And yet, how strange! Our "world," today,

Tried in the scale, would scarce outweigh

Your Roman cronies;

Walk in the Park,—you'll seldom fail

To find a Sybaris on the rail

By Lydia's ponies,

Or hap on Barrus, wigged and stayed,

Ogling some unsuspecting maid.

The great Gargilius, then, behold!

His "long-bow" hunting tales of old

Are now but duller;

Fair Neobule too! Is not

One Hebrus here,—from Aldershot?

Aha, you colour!

Be wise. There old Canidia sits;

No doubt she's tearing you to bits.

And look, dyspeptic, brave, and kind,

Comes dear Maecenas, half behind

Terentia's skirting;

Here's Pyrrha, "golden-haired" at will;

Prig Damasippus, preaching still;

Asterie flirting,—

Radiant, of course. We'll make her black,—

Ask her when Gyges' ship comes back.

So with the rest. Who will may trace

Behind the new each elder face

Defined as clearly;

Science proceeds, and man stands still;

Our "world" today's as good or ill,—

As cultured (nearly),

As yours was, Horace! You alone,

Unmatched, unmet, we have not known.

But it is not only to comparatively independent creation that we must look. The dynamic power of Horace is to be found at work even in the translation of the poet. The fact that he has had more translators than any other poet, ancient or modern, is itself an evidence of inspirational quality, but a greater proof lies in the variety and character of his translators and the quality of their achievement. A list of those who have felt in this way the stirrings of the Horatian spirit would include the names not only of many great men of letters, but of many great men of affairs, whose successes are to be counted among examples of genuine inspiration. Translation at its best is not mere craftsmanship, but creation,—in Roscommon's lines,

'Tis true, composing is the Nobler Part,

But good Translation is no easy Art.

Theodore Martin's rendering of I. 21, To a Jar of Wine, already quoted in part, is an example. Another brilliant success is Sir Stephen E. De Vere's I. 31, Prayer to Apollo, quoted in connection with the poet's religious attitude. No less felicitous are Conington's spirited twelve lines, reproducing III. 26, Vixi puellis:

VIXI PUELLIS NUPER IDONEUS

For ladies' love I late was fit,

And good success my warfare blest;

But now my arms, my lyre I quit,

And hang them up to rust or rest.

Here, where arising from the sea

Stands Venus, lay the load at last,

Links, crowbars, and artillery,

Threatening all doors that dared be fast.

O Goddess! Cyprus owns thy sway,

And Memphis, far from Thracian snow:

Raise high thy lash, and deal me, pray,

That haughty Chloe just one blow!

To translate in this manner is beyond all doubt to deserve the name of poet.

We may go still farther and claim for Horace that he has been a dynamic power in the art of translation, not only as it concerned his own poems, but in its concern of translation as a universal art. No other poet presents such difficulties; no other poet has left behind him so long a train of disappointed aspirants. "Horace remains forever the type of the untranslatable," says Frederic Harrison. Milton attempts the Pyrrha ode in unrhymed meter, and the light and bantering spirit of Horace disappears. Milton is correct, polished, restrained, and pure, but heavy and cold. An exquisite jeu d'esprit has been crushed to death:

What slender youth, bedew'd with liquid odours,

Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,

Pyrrha? For whom bind'st thou

In wreaths thy golden hair,

Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he

On faith and changèd gods complain, and seas

Rough with black winds and storms

Unwonted shall admire!

Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,

Who, always vacant, always amiable

Hopes thee, of flattering gales

Unmindful! Hapless they

To whom thou untried seem'st fair! Me in my vowed

Picture, the sacred wall declares to have hung

My dank and dropping weeds

To the stern God of Sea.

But let the attempt be made to avoid the ponderous movement and excessive sobriety of Milton, and to communicate the Horatian airiness, and there is a loss in conciseness and reserve:

What scented youth now pays you court,

Pyrrha, in shady rose-strewn spot

Dallying in love's sweet sport?

For whom that innocent-seeming knot

In which your golden strands you dress

With all the art of artlessness?

Deluded lad! How oft he'll weep

O'er changèd gods! How oft, when dark

The billows roughen on the deep,

Storm-tossed he'll see his wretched bark!

Unused to Cupid's quick mutations,

In store for him what tribulations!

But now his joy is all in you;

He thinks your heart is purest gold;

Expects you'll always be love-true,

And never, never, will grow cold.

Poor mariner on summer seas,

Untaught to fear the treacherous breeze!

Ah, wretched whom your Siren call

Deludes and brings to watery woes!

For me—yon plaque on Neptune's wall

Shows I've endured the seaman's throes.

My drenchèd garments hang there, too:

Henceforth I shun the enticing blue.

It is not improbable that the struggle of the centuries with the difficulties of rendering Horace has been a chief influence in the development of our present exacting ideal of translation; so exacting indeed that it has defeated its purpose. By emphasis upon the impossibility of rendering accurately the content of poetry in the form of poetry, scholastic discussion of the theory of translation has led first to despair, and next from despair to the scientific and unaesthetic principle of rendering into exact prose all forms of literature alike. The twentieth century has thus opened again and settled in opposite manner the old dispute of the French D'Alembert and the Italian Salvini in the seventeen-hundreds, which was resolved by actual results in favor of D'Alembert and fidelity to spirit as opposed to Salvini and fidelity to letter.

In what we have said thus far of the dynamic power of Horace in literary creation, we have dealt with visible results. We should not be misled, however, by the satisfaction of seeing plainly in imitation, adaptation, translation, quotation, or real creation, the mark of Horatian influence. The discipline of the literary ideal in the individual, and the moulding of character in literature as an organism, are effects less clearly visible, but, after all, of greater value. If the bread and meat of human sustenance should appear in the body as recognizable bread and meat, it would hardly be a sign of health. Its value is in the strength conferred by assimilation. With all respect and gratitude for creation manifestly due to Horace, we must also realize that this is but a superficial result as compared with the chastening restraint of expression and the health and vigor of content that have been encouraged by allegiance to him, but are known by no special marks. It is no bad sign when we turn the pages of the Oxford Selections of Verse in the various modern languages and find but few examples of the visible sort of Horatian influence. To detect the more invisible sort requires the keen eye and the sensitive spirit of the poet-scholar, but the reader not so specially qualified may have faith that it exists. With Goethe writing of Horace as a "great, glowing, noble poet, full of heart, who with the power of his song sweeps us along, lifts us, and inspires us," with Menéndez y Pelayo in Spain defining the Horatian lyric, whether Christian or pagan, by "sobriety of thought, rhythmic lightness, the absence of artificial adornment, unlimited care in execution, and brevity," and holding this ideal aloft as the influence needed by the modern lyric, and with no countries or periods without leaders in poetry and criticism uttering similar sentiments and exhortations, it would be difficult not to believe in a substantial Horatian effect on literary culture, however slight the external marks.

3. Horace in the Living of Men

Let us take leave of these illustrations of the dynamic power of Horace in letters, and consider in conclusion his power as shown directly in the living of men.

First of all, we may include in the dynamic working of the poet his stirring of the heart by pure delight. If this is not the highest and the ultimate effect of poetry, it is after all the first and the essential effect. Without the giving of pleasure, no art becomes really the possession of men and the instrument of good. As a matter of fact, many of the most frequently and best translated Odes are devoid both of moral intent, and, in the ordinary sense, of moral effect. To Pyrrha, Soracte Covered with Snow, Carpe Diem, To Glycera, Integer Vitae, To Chloe, Horace and Lydia, The Bandusian Spring, Faunus, To an Old Wine-Jar, The End of Love, and Beatus Ille are merely jeux-d'esprit of the sort that for the moment lighten and clear the spirit. The same may be said of The Bore and the Journey to Brundisium among the Satires, and of many of the Epistles.

But these trifles light as air are nevertheless of the sort for which mankind is eternally grateful, because men are convinced, without process of reason, that by them the fibre of life is rested and refined and strengthened. We may call this familiar effect by the less familiar name of re-creative. What lover of Horace has not felt his inmost being cleansed and refreshed by the simple and exquisite art of The Bandusian Spring, whose cameo of sixty-eight Latin words in four stanzas is an unapproachable model of vividness, elegance, purity, and restraint:

O crystal-bright Bandusian Spring,

Worthy thou of the mellow wine

And flowers I give to thy pure depths:

A kid the morrow shall be thine.

The day of lustful strife draws on,

The starting horn begins to gleam;

In vain! His red blood soon shall tinge

The waters of thy clear, cold stream.

The dog-star's fiercely blazing hour

Ne'er with its heat doth change thy pool;

To wandering flock and ploughworn steer

Thou givest waters fresh and cool.

Thee, too, 'mong storied founts I'll place,

Singing the oak that slants the steep,

Above the hollowed home of rock

From which thy prattling streamlets leap.

Or who does not live more abundant life at reading the Chloe Ode, with its breath of the mountain air and its sense of the brooding forest solitude, and its exquisite suggestion of timid and charming girlhood?

"You shun me, Chloe, wild and shy

As some stray fawn that seeks its mother

Through trackless woods. If spring-winds sigh,

It vainly strives its fears to smother;—

"Its trembling knees assail each other

When lizards stir the bramble dry;—

You shun me, Chloe, wild and shy

As some stray fawn that seeks its mother.

"And yet no Libyan lion I,—

No ravening thing to rend another;

Lay by your tears, your tremors by,—

A husband's better than a brother;

Nor shun me, Chloe, wild and shy

As some stray fawn that seeks its mother."

But there are those who demand of poetry a usefulness more easily measurable than that of recreation. In their opinion, it is improvement rather than pleasure which is the end of art, or at least improvement as well as pleasure. In this, indeed, the poet himself is inclined to agree: "He who mingles the useful with the pleasant by delighting and likewise improving the reader, will get every vote."

Let us look for these more concrete results, and see how Horace the person still lives in the character of men, as well as Horace the poet in the character of literature.

To appreciate this better, we must return to the theme of Horace's personal quality. We have already seen that in no other poet so fully as in Horace is the reality of personal contact to be felt. The lyrics, as well as the Epistles and Satires, are almost without exception addressed to actual persons. So successful is this attempt of the poet to speak from the page that it needs but the slightest touch of imagination to create the illusion that we ourselves are addressed. We feel, as if at first hand, all the qualities that went to make up Horace's character,—his good will, good faith, and good-nature, the depth and constancy of his friendship, his glow of admiration for the brave deed, the pure heart, and the steadfast purpose, his patient endurance of ill, his delight in men and things, his affection for what is simple and sincere, his charity for human weakness, his mildly ironical mood, as of one who is aware that he himself is not undeserving of the good-humored censure he passes on others, his clear vision of the sources of happiness, his reposeful acquiescence, and his elusive humor, which never bursts into laughter and yet is never far away from it. We are taken into his confidence, like old friends. He describes himself and his ways; he lets us share in his own vision of himself and in his amusement at the bustling and self-deluded world, and subtly conciliates us by making us feel ourselves partakers with him in the criticism of life. There is no better example in literature of personal magnetism.

And he is more than merely personal. He is sincere and unreserved. Were he otherwise, the delight of intimate acquaintance with him would be impossible. It is the real Horace whom we meet,—not a person on the literary stage, with buskins, pallium, and mask. Horace holds the mirror up to himself; rather, not to himself, but to nature in himself. Every side of his personality appears: the artist, and the man; the formalist, and the skeptic; the spectator, and the critic; the gentleman in society, and the son of the collector; the landlord of five hearths, and the poet at court; the stern moralist, and the occasional voluptuary; the vagabond, and the conventionalist. He is independent and unhampered in his expression. He has no exalted social position to maintain, and blushes neither for parentage nor companions. His philosophy is not School-made, and the fear of inconsistency never haunts him. His religion requires no subscription to dogma; he does not even take the trouble to define it. Politically, his duties have come to be also his desires. He will accept the favors of the Emperor and his ministers if they do not compromise his liberty or happiness. If they withdraw their gifts, he knows how to do without them, because he has already done without them. He conceals nothing, pretends to nothing, makes no excuses, suffers from no self-consciousness, exercises no reserve. There are few expressions of self in all literature so spontaneous and so complete. Horace has left us a portrait of his soul much more perfect than that of his person. It is a truthful portrait, with both shadow and light.

And there is a corollary to Horace's frankness that constitutes another element in the charm of his personality. His very unreserve is the proof of an open and kindly heart. To call him a satirist at all is to necessitate his own definition of satire, "smilingly to tell the truth." At least in his riper work, there is no trace of bitterness. He laughs with some purpose and to some purpose, but his laughter is not sardonic. Sane judgment and generous experience tell him that the foibles of mankind are his own as well as theirs, and are not to be changed by so slight a means as a railing tongue. He reflects that what in himself has produced no very disastrous results may without great danger be forgiven also in them.

It is this intimate and warming quality in Horace that prompts Hagedorn to call him "my friend, my teacher, my companion," and to take the poet with him on country walks as if he were a living person:

Horaz, mein Freund, mein Lehrer, mein Begleiter,

Wir gehen aufs Land. Die Tage sind so heiter;

and Nietzsche to compare the atmosphere of the Satires and Epistles to the "geniality of a warm winter day"; and Wordsworth to be attracted by his appreciation of "the value of companionable friendship"; and Andrew Lang to address to him the most personal of literary letters; and Austin Dobson to give his Horatian poems the form of personal address; and countless students and scholars and men out of school and immersed in the cares of life to carry Horace with them in leisure hours. Circum praecordia ludit, "he plays about the heartstrings," said Persius, long before any of these, when the actual Horace was still fresh in the memory of men.

If we were to take detailed account of certain qualities missed in Horace by the modern reader, we should be even more deeply convinced of his power of personal attraction. He is not a Christian poet, but a pagan. Faith in immortality and Providence, penitence and penance, and humanitarian sentiment, are hardly to be found in his pages. He is sometimes too unrestrained in expression. The unsympathetic or unintelligent critic might charge him with being commonplace.

Yet these defects are more apparent than real, and have never been an obstacle to souls attracted by Horace. His pages are charged with sympathy for men. His lapses in taste are not numerous, and are, after all, less offensive than those of European letters today, after the coming of sin with the law. And he is not commonplace, but universal. His content is familiar matter of today as well as of his own time. His delightful natural settings are never novel, romantic, or forced; we have seen them all, in experience or in literature, again and again, and they make familiar and intimate appeal. Phidyle is neither ancient nor modern, Latin nor Teuton; she is all of them at once. The exquisite expressions of friendship in the odes to a Virgil, or a Septimius, are applicable to any age or nationality, or any person. The story of the town mouse and country mouse is always old and always new, and always true. Mutato nomine de te may be said of it, and of all Horace's other stories; alter the names, and the story is about you. Their application and appeal are universal.

"Without sustained inspiration, without profundity of thought, without impassioned song," writes Duff, "he yet pierces to the universal heart.... His secret lies in sanity rather than impetus. Kindly and shrewd observer of the manifold activities of life, he draws vignettes therefrom and passes judgments thereon which awaken undying interest. Non omnis moriar—he remains fresh because he is human."

Horace's philosophy of life may be imperfect for the militant humanitarian and the Christian, but, as a matter of fact, it is a complete and perfect thing in itself. Horace does not fret or fume. He is not morbid or unpleasantly melancholy. It is true that "his tempered and polished expression of common experience, free from transports and free from despairs, speaks more forcibly to ripe middle age than to youth," but it is not without its appeal also to youth. Horace sums up an attitude toward existence which all men, of whatever nation or time, can easily understand, and which all, at some moment or other, sympathize with. Whether they believe in his philosophy of life or not, whether they put it into practice or not, it is always and everywhere attractive,—attractive because founded on clear and sympathetic vision of the joys and sorrows that are the common lot of men, attractive because of its frankness and manly courage, and, above all, attractive because of its object. So long as the one great object of human longing is peace of mind and heart, no philosophy which recognizes it will be without followers. The Christian is naturally unwilling to adopt the Horatian philosophy as a whole, but with its summum bonum, and with many of its recommendations, he is in perfect accord. Add Christian faith to it, or add it, so far as is consonant, to Christian faith, and either is enriched.

We are better able now to appreciate the dynamic power of Horace the person. We may see it at work in the fostering of friendly affection, in the deepening of love for favorite spots of earth, in the encouragement of righteous purpose, in the true judging of life's values.

Horace is the poet of friendship. With his address to "Virgil, the half of my soul," his references to Plotius, Varius, and Virgil as the purest and whitest souls of earth, his affectionate messages in Epistle and Ode, he sets the heart of the reader aglow with love for his friends. "Nothing, while in my right mind, would I compare to the delight of a friend!" What numbers of men have had their hearts stirred to deeper love by the matchless ode to Septimius:

"Septimius, who with me would brave

Far Gades, and Cantabrian land

Untamed by Rome, and Moorish wave

That whirls the sand;

"Fair Tibur, town of Argive kings,

There would I end my days serene,

At rest from seas and travelings,

And service seen.

"Should angry Fate those wishes foil,

Then let me seek Galesus, sweet

To skin-clad sheep, and that rich soil,

The Spartan's seat.

"Oh, what can match the green recess,

Whose honey not to Hybla yields,

Whose olives vie with those that bless

Venafrum's fields?

"Long springs, mild winters glad that spot

By Jove's good grace, and Aulon, dear

To fruitful Bacchus, envies not

Falernian cheer.

"That spot, those happy heights desire

Our sojourn; there, when life shall end,

Your tear shall dew my yet warm pyre,

Your bard and friend."

And what numbers of men have taken to their hearts from the same ode the famous

Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes

Angulus ridet,—

Yonder little nook of earth

Beyond all others smiles on me,—

and expressed through its perfect phrase the love they bear their own beloved nook of earth. "Happy Horace!" writes Sainte-Beuve on the margin of his edition, "what a fortune has been his! Why, because he once expressed in a few charming verses his fondness for the life of the country and described his favorite corner of earth, the lines composed for his own pleasure and for the friend to whom he addressed them have laid hold on the memory of all men and have become so firmly lodged there that one can conceive no others, and finds only those when he feels the need of praising his own beloved retreat!"

To speak of sterner virtues, what a source of inspiration to righteousness and constancy men have found in the apt and undying phrases of Horace! "Cornelius de Witt, when confronting the murderous mob; Condorcet, perishing in the straw of his filthy cell; Herrick, at his far-away old British revels; Leo, during his last days at the Vatican, and a thousand others," strengthened their resolution by repeating Iustum et tenacem:

"The man of firm and noble soul

No factious clamors can control

No threat'ning tyrant's darkling brow

Can swerve him from his just intent....

Ay, and the red right arm of Jove,

Hurtling his lightnings from above,

With all his terrors then unfurl'd,

He would unmoved, unawed behold:

The flames of an expiring world

Again in crashing chaos roll'd,

In vast promiscuous ruin hurl'd,

Must light his glorious funeral pile:

Still dauntless midst the wreck of earth he'd smile."

Of this passage Stemplinger records thirty-one imitations. How many have had their patriotism strengthened by Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, the verse which is aptly found in modern Rome on the monument to those who fell at Dogali. How many have been supported and comforted in calamity and sorrow by the poet's immortal words of consolation on the death of Quintilius:

Durum: sed levius fit patientia

Quicquid corrigere est nefas,—

Ah, hard it is! but patience lends

Strength to endure what Heaven sends.

The motto of Warren Hastings was Mens aequa in arduis,—An even temper in times of trial. Even humorous use of these phrases has served a purpose. The French minister, compelled to resign, no doubt drew substantial consolation from Virtute me involvo, when he turned it to fit his case:

In the robe of my virtue I wrap me round

A solace for loss of all I had;

But ah! I realize I've found

What it really means to be lightly clad!

But the most pronounced effect of Horace's dynamic power is its inspiration to sane and truthful living. Life seems a simple thing, yet there are many who miss the paths of happiness and wander in wretched discontent because they are not bred to distinguish between the false and the real. We have seen the lesson of Horace: that happiness is not from without, but from within; that it is not abundance that makes riches, but attitude; that the acceptation of worldly standards of getting and having means the life of the slave; that the fraction is better increased by division of the denominator than by multiplying the numerator; that unbought riches are better possessions than those the world displays as the prizes most worthy of striving for. No poet is so full of inspiration as Horace for those who have glimpsed these simple and easy yet little known secrets of living. Men of twenty centuries have been less dependent on the hard-won goods of this world because of him, and lived fuller and richer lives. Surely, to give our young people this attractive example of sane solution of the problem of happy living is to leaven the individual life and the life of the social mass.