We left Horace installed as one of Maecenas's circle. This position naturally gained him many enemies; nor was his character one to conciliate his less fortunate rivals. He was choleric and sensitive, prompt to resent an insult, though quite free from malice or vindictiveness. He had not yet reached that high sense of his position when he could afford to treat the envious crowd with contempt. [24] He records in the satires which he now wrote, painting with inimitable humour each incident that arose, the attempts of the outsiders to obtain from him an introduction to Maecenas, [25] or some of that political information of which he was supposed to be the confidant. [26] At this period of his career he lived a good deal with his patron both in Rome and at his Tiburtine villa. Within a few years, however (probably 31 B.C.), he was put in possession of what he had always desired, [27] a small competence of his own. This was the Sabine estate in the valley of Ustica, not far from Tivoli, given him by Maecenas, the subject of many beautiful allusions, and the cause of his warmest gratitude. [28] Here he resided during some part of each year [29] in the enjoyment of that independence which was to him the greatest good; and during the seven years that followed he wrote, and at their close published, the first three books of the Odes. [30] The death of Virgil, which happened when Horace was forty-six years of age, and soon afterwards that of Tibullus, threw his affections once more upon his early patrons. He now resided more frequently at Rome, and was often to be seen at the palace. How he filled the arduous position of a courtier may be gathered from many, of the Epistles of the first book. The one which introduces Septimus to Tiberius is a masterpiece; [31] and those to Scaeva and Lellius [32] are models of high-bred courtesy. No one ever mingled compliment and advice with such consummate skill. Horace had made his position at court for himself, and though he still loved the country best, [33] he found both interest and profit in his daily intercourse with the great.
In the year 17 B.C. Augustus found an opportunity of testifying his regard for Horace. The secular games, which were celebrated in that year, included the singing of a hymn to Apollo and Diana by a chorus of 27 boys and the same number of girls, selected from the highest families in the state. The composition of this hymn was intrusted to Horace, much to his own legitimate pride, and to our instruction and pleasure, for not only is it a poem of high intrinsic excellence, but it is the only considerable extant specimen of the lyrical part of Roman worship. Some scholars include under it besides the Carmen Saeculare proper, various other odes, some of which unquestionably bear on the same subject, though, there is no direct evidence of their having been sung together. [34] Whether Horace had any Roman models in this style before him is not very clear. We have seen that Livius Andronicus was selected to celebrate the victory of Sena, [35] and there is an ode of Catullus [36] which seems to refer to some similar occasion. Doubtless the main lines in which the composition moved were indicated by custom; but the treatment was left to the individual genius of the poet. In this case we observe the poet's happy choice of a metre. Of all the varied lyric rhythms none, at least to our ears, lends itself so readily to a musical setting as the Sapphic; and the many melodies attached to odes in this metre by the monks of the Middle Ages attest its special adaptability to choir-singing. Augustus was highly pleased with the poet's performance, and two years' afterwards he commanded him to celebrate the victory of his step-sons Drusus and Tiberius over the Rhaeti and Vindelici. [37] This circumstance turned his attention once more to lyric poetry, which for six years he had quite discontinued. [38] It is not conclusively proved that he wrote all the odes which compose the fourth book at this period; two or three bear the impress of an earlier date, and were doubtless improved by re-writing or revision, but the majority were the production of his later years, and present to us the fruits of his matured judgment and taste. They show no diminution of lyric power, but the reverse; nor is there any ode in the first three books which surpasses or even equals the fourth poem in this collection. Horace's attention was, during the last few years of his life, given chiefly to literary subjects; the treatise on poetry and the epistle to Julius Florus were written probably between 14 and 11 B.C. That to Augustus is the last composition that issued from his pen; we may refer it to 10 B.C. two years before his death.
Horace's health had long been the reverse of strong. Whether from early delicacy, or from exposure to hardships in Asia, his constitution was never able to respond to the demands made upon it by the society of the capital. The weariness he expresses was often the result of physical prostration. The sketch he has left of himself [39] suggests a physique neither interesting nor vigorous. He was at 44 short, fat, and good- natured looking (rallied, we learn, by Augustus on his obesity), blear- eyed, somewhat dyspeptic, and prematurely grey; and ten years, we may be sure, had not improved the portrait. In the autumn of 8 B.C. Maecenas, who had long been himself a sufferer, succumbed to the effects of his devoted and arduous service. His last message confided Horace to the Emperor's care: "Horatii flacci ut mei esto memor." But the legacy was not long a burden. The prophetic anticipations of affection that in death the poet would not be parted from his friend [40] were only too faithfully realised. Within a month of Maecenas's death Horace was borne to his rest, and his ashes were laid beside those of his patron on the Esquiline (November 29, 8 B.C.).
As regards the date of publication of his several books, several theories have been propounded, for which the student is referred to the many excellent editions of Horace that discuss the question. We shall content ourselves with assigning those dates which seem to us the most probable. All agree in considering the first book of the Satires to have been his earliest effort. This may have been published in 34 B.C.; and in 29 B.C. the two books of Satires together, and perhaps the Epodes. In 24 B.C. probably appeared the first two books of Odes, which open and close with a dedication to Maecenas, and in 23 B.C. the three books of Odes complete; though some suppose that all appeared at once and for the first time in this later year. In 21 B.C. perhaps, but more probably in 20, the first book of the Epistles was published; in 14 B.C. the fourth book of the Odes, though it is possible that the last ode of that book was written at a later date. The second book of Epistles, in which may have been included the Ars Poetica, could not have appeared before 10 B.C. It is clear that the latter poem is not complete, but whether Horace intended to finish it more thoroughly it is impossible to say.
In approaching the criticism of Horace, the first thing which strikes us is, that in him we see two different poets. There is the lyricist winning renown by the importation of a new kind of Greek song; and there is the observant critic and man of the world, entrusting to the tablets, his faithful companions, his reflections on men and things. The former poet ran his course through the Epodes to the graceful pieces which form the great majority of his odes, and culminated in the loftier vein of lyric inspiration that characterises his political odes. The latter began with a somewhat acrimonious type of satire, which he speedily deserted for a lighter and more genial vein, and finally rested in the sober, practical, and healthy moralist and literary critic of the Epistles. It was in the former aspect that he assumed the title of poet; with characteristic modesty he relinquishes all claim to it with regard to his Epistles and Satires. We shall consider him briefly under these two aspects.
No writer believed so little in the sufficiency of the poetic gift by itself to produce a poet. Had he trusted the maxim Poeta nascitur, non fit, he would never have written his Odes. Looking back at his early attempts at verse we find in them few traces of genuine inspiration. Of the Epodes a large number are positively unpleasing; others interest us from the expression of true feeling; a few only have merits of a high order. The fresh and enthusiastic, though somewhat diffuse, descriptions of country enjoyments in the second and sixteenth Epodes, and the vigorous word-painting in the fifth, bespeak the future master; and the patriotic emotion in the seventh, ninth, and sixteenth, strikes a note that was to thrill with loftier vibrations in the Odes of the third and fourth books. But as a whole the Epodes stand far below his other works. Their bitterness is quite different from the genial irony of the Satires, and, though occasionally the subjects of them merited the severest handling, [41] yet we do not like to see Horace applying the lash. It was not his proper vocation, and he does not do it well. He is never so unlike himself as when he is making a personal attack. Nevertheless to bring himself into notice, it was necessary to do something of the kind. Personal satire is always popular, and Horace had to carve his own way to fame. It is evident that the series of sketches of which Canidia is the heroine, [42] were received with unanimous approval by the beau monde. This wretched woman, singled out as the representative of a class which was gaining daily influence in Rome, [43] he depicts in colours detestable and ignominious, which do credit to his talent but not to his courteous feeling. Horace has no true respect for woman. Nothing in all Latin poetry is so unpleasant as his brutal attacks on those hetaerae (the only ladies of whom he seems to have had any knowledge) whose caprice or neglect had offended him. [44] This is the one point in which he did not improve. In all other respects his constant self-culture opened to him higher and ever widening paths of excellence.
The glimpses of real feeling which the Epodes allow us to gain are as a rule carefully excluded from the Odes. This is at first sight a matter for surprise. Our idea of a lyric poem is that of a warm and passionate outpouring of the heart. Such are those of Burns; such are those of nearly all the writers who have gained the heart of modern times. In the grand style of dithyrambic song, indeed, the bard is rapt into an ideal world, and soars far beyond his subjective emotions or desires; but to this Pindaric inspiration Horace made no pretension. He was content to be an imitator of Alcaeus and Sappho, who had attuned to the lyre their own hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows of their own chequered life. But in imitating their form he has altogether changed their spirit. Where they indulged feeling, he has controlled it; what they effect by intensity of colour, he attains by studied propriety of language. He desires not to enlist the world to sympathy with himself, but to put himself in sympathy with the world. Hence the many-sidedness, the culture, the broad human stand-point after which he ceaselessly strives. If depth must be sacrificed to attain this, he is ready to sacrifice it. He finds a field wide enough in the network of aims, interest, and feelings, which give society its hold on us, and us our union with society. And he feels that the writer who shall make his poem speak with a living voice to the largest number of these, will meet with most earnest heed, and be doing best the poet's true work. At the same time we must not forget that Horace's public was not our public. The unwieldy mass of labouring millions, shaken to its depths by questionings of momentous interest, cannot be drawn to listen except by an emotion vast as its own; but the society for whom Horace wrote was homogeneous in tone, limited in number, cultivated in intellect, and deeply absorbed in a race of ambition, some of whose prizes, at least, each might hope to win. He was, has been, and intended himself to be, the poet of men of the world.
Among such men at all times, and to an immeasurably greater extent in antiquity than now, staunch friendship has been considered one of the chief of virtues. Whatever were Horace's relations to the other sex, no man whom he had once called a friend had any cause to complain. Admirable indeed in their frankness, their constancy, their sterling independence, are the friendships it has delighted him to record. From the devoted, almost passionate tribute to Maecenas—
"Ibimus ibimus
Uteunque praecedes supremum
Carpere iter comites parati,"
to the raillery so gracefully flung at an Iccius or Xanthias, for whom yet one discerns the kindest and tenderest feeling, these memorials of Roman intercourse place both giver and receiver in a truly amiable light. We can understand Augustus's regret that he had not been honoured with a regard of which he well knew the value. For the poet was rich who could dispense gifts like these.