Without the slightest pretence of authority or the right to dictate, he contrives to supply us with an infinite number of sound and healthy moral lessons, to reason with us so genially and with so frank an admission of his own equal frailty, that it is impossible to be angry with him, impossible not to love the gentle instructor. He has been accused of tolerance towards vice. That is, we think, a great error. Horace knew men too well to be severe; his is no trumpet-call, but a still small voice, which pleads but does not accuse. He was no doubt in his youth a lax liver; [67] he had adopted the Epicurean creed and the loose conduct that follows it. But he was struggling towards a purer ideal. Even in the Satires he is only half an Epicurean; in the Epistles he is not one at all: and in proportion as he has outlived the hot blood of youth, his voice becomes clearer and his faith in virtue stronger. The Epistles are to a great extent reflective; he has examined his own heart, and depicts his musings for our benefit. Many of them are moral essays filled with precepts of wisdom, the more precious as having been genuinely thought out by the writer for himself. Less dramatic, less vigorous, perhaps, than the Satires, they embody in choicest language the maturest results of his reflection. Their poetical merits are higher, their diction more chaste, their metre more melodious. With the Georgics they are ranked as the most perfect examples of the modulation of hexameter verse. Their movement is rippling rather than flowing, and satisfies the mind rather than the ear, but it is a delicious movement, full of suggestive grace. The diction, though classical, admits occasional colloquialisms. [68]
Several of the Satires, [69] and the three Epistles which form the second book, are devoted to literary criticism, and these have always been regarded as among the most interesting of Horace's compositions. His opinions on previous and contemporary poetry are given with emphasis, and as a rule ran counter to the opinion of his day. The technical dexterity in versification which had resulted from the feverish activity of the last forty years, had produced a disastrous consequence. All the world was seized with the mania for writing poetry:
"Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim."
The young Pisos were among the number. To them the poet gave this friendly counsel, to lock up their creations for nine years, and then publish, or as we may shrewdly suspect he meant—destroy them. Poetry is the one thing that, if it is to be done at all, must be done well:
"Mediocribus esse poetis
Non di, non homines, non concessere columnae."
In Horace's opinion none of the old poetry came up to this standard. When he quotes two lines of Ennius [70] as defying all efforts to make prose of them, we cannot help fancying he is indulging his ironical vein. He never speaks seriously of Ennius. In fact he thoroughly disliked the array of "old masters" that were at once confronted with him whenever he expressed a predilection. It was not only the populace who yawned over Accius's tragedies, or the critics who lauded the style of the Salian hymn, that moved his resentment. These he could afford to despise. It was rather the antiquarian prepossessions of such men as Virgil, Maecenas, and Augustus, that caused him so earnestly to combat the love of all that was old. In his zeal there is no doubt he has outrun justice. He had no sympathy for the untamed vigour of those rough but spirited writers; his fastidious taste could make no allowance for the circumstances against which they had to contend. To reply that the excessive admiration lavished by the multitude demanded an equally sweeping condemnation, is not to excuse Horace. One who wrote so cautiously would never have used exaggeration to enforce his words. The disparaging remarks must be regarded as expressing his real opinion, and we are not concerned to defend it.
His attitude towards the age immediately preceding his own is even less worthy of him. He never mentions Lucretius, though one or two allusions [71] show that he knew and was indebted to his writings; he refers to Catullus only once, and then in evident depreciation, [72] mentioning him and Calvus as the sole literature of a second-rate singer, whom he calls the ape of Hermogenes Tigellius. Moreover his boast that he was the first to introduce the Archilochian iambic [73] and the lyric metres, [74] though perhaps justifiable; is the reverse of generous, seeing that Catullus had treated before him three at least of the metres to which he alludes. Mr. Munro's assertion as to there being indications that the school of Lucretius and Catullus would have necessarily come into collision with that of the Augustan poets, had the former survived to their time, is supported by Horace's attitude. Virgil and Tibullus would have found many points of union, so probably would Gallus; but Horace, Propertius, and Ovid, would certainly have been antagonistic. It is unfortunate that the canons laid down by Horace found no followers. While Virgil had his imitators from the first, and Tibullus and Propertius served as models to young aspirants, Horace, strangely enough, found no disciples. Persius in a later age studied him with care, and tried to reproduce his style, but with such a signal want of success that in every passage where he imitates, he caricatures his master. He has, however, left us an appreciative and beautiful criticism on the Horatian method. [75]
It has often been supposed that the Ars Poetica was writen in the hope of regenerating the drama. This theory is based partly on the length at which dramatic subjects are treated, partly on the high pre-eminence which the critic assigns to that class of poetry. But he can hardly have so far deceived himself as to believe that any efforts of his could restore the popular interest in the legitimate drama which had now sunk to the lowest ebb. It should rather be considered as a deliberate expression of his views upon many important subjects connected with literary studies, written primarily for the young Pisos, but meant for the world at large, and not intended for an exhortation (adhortatio) so much as a treatise. Its admirable precepts have been approved by every age: and there is probably no composition in the world to which so few exceptions have been taken.
Here we leave Horace, and conclude the chapter with a very short account of some of his friends who devoted themselves to poetry. The first is C. VALGIUS RUFUS, who was consul in the year 12 B.C. and to whom the ninth Ode of the second book is addressed. Whether from his high position or from his genuine poetical promise, we find great expectations held regarding him. Tibullus (or rather, the author of the poem ascribed to him) [76] says that no other poet came nearer to Homer's genius, and Horace by asking him to celebrate the new trophies of Augustus implies that he cultivated an epic strain. [77] Besides loftier themes he treated erotic subjects in elegiac verse, translated the rhetoric of Apollodorus, [78] and wrote letters on grammar, probably in the form afterwards adopted by Seneca's moral epistles. ARISTIUS FUSCUS to whom the twenty-second Ode of the first book and the tenth Epistle are addressed, was a writer of some pretensions. It is not certain what line he followed, but in all probability the drama. He was an intimate acquaintance of Horace, and, it will be remembered, delivered him from the intrusive acquaintance on the Via Sacra. [79] FUNDANIUS, who is twice mentioned by Horace, and once in very complimentary terms as the best comic poet of the day, [80] has not been fortunate enough to find any biographer. TITUS, one of the younger men to whom so many of the epistles are addressed, was a very ambitious poet. He attempted Pindaric flights from which the genius of Horace shrank, and apparently he cultivated tragedy, but in a pompous and ranting manner. [81] ICCIUS, who is referred to in the ninth Ode of Book I., and in the twelfth Epistle, as a philosopher, may have written poems. JULIUS FLORUS, to whom two beautiful epistles (I. iii. II. ii.) are addressed, is rallied by Horace on his tendency to write love-poems, but apparently his efforts came to nothing. CELSUS ALBINOVANUS was, like Florus, a friend of Tiberius, to whom he acted as private secretary for some time; [82] he was given to pilfering ideas and Horace deals him a salutary caution:—
"Monitus multumque monendus
Privatas ut quaerat opes, et tangere vitet
Scripta Palatinus quaecunque recepit Apollo." [83]