The taste of honey

by Edna Worthley Underwood

No other writer has taken his measure so justly. Common sense was basis of his genius. With pride he insists it is his province to sing lightly. He was greater for the justice of his mind than for his poetry. Many have written poetry as good, but where is the person who has seen with vision nothing could dim! He understood he was neither an imaginative nor dramatic poet when he writes: I am only a little bee gathering thyme by the dewy shores of Tiber. This is memorable for unenvious grace. Nor did he permit himself to philosophize long enough to forget it is a poet’s province to amuse. There have been few of such balance. And he had been child of fortune, too. He had become friend of Ruler of the World. There was only one world, then, and its center was Rome. Yet upon his face we feel sure there was none of that pallor which Juvenal declares is engendered by wretched friendship with the great.

He resisted the invitation of Augustus to live at court. He knew simple life was better. He realized that to create, it would be well to live humbly, dream richly.

After he became star of the court of Augustus, he did not grow scornful nor inclined to underrate the homely middle-class. He was gracious. There is no better preacher than Horace against money-mad modernness, its absence of leisure, false standards. He is teacher of the simple life. As he grew older he preached it. He proclaimed it boldly to decadent Rome. To be sure, as Juvenal scornfully says: Well plied with food and wine was Horace when he shouts his evoe! Evidently meaning to insinuate that well he might be happy, whom the tragedy of life could not touch. Yet it was a small income, the Sabine farm, gift of Maecenas. But he had become rich in the developed resources of mind. He knew wealth is not without, but within. He valued taste above gold. So plain, so persistent was his consciousness of this, that wealth beyond satisfaction of daily needs was folly, useless wasting of life to acquire. It was base prostitution of energy. The life bounded by horizon of the dollar can see no vast horizon. The poet’s gift was superior to what gold gives. One of his illuminating sayings is: One may be poor amid great wealth.

At the same time he had no high ideals; no passionate convictions. He was not interested enough in anything to struggle because he felt struggle useless. As satirist he is inferior to Juvenal and Persius. As philosopher, as artist, he is greater. But as a satirist he lacked conviction. He lacked decision. The satires of Horace have neither the eloquence, fire, nor the stern scorn of Juvenal. Bitterness was not in his heart. They are better art but less powerful humanly. Juvenal reaches heights that equal Tyrtæus. Juvenal and Persius wished to make the world better. Horace did not care. He was artist, social exquisite; not moralist, nor reformer. He cared about men’s taste, their appreciation of beauty, the things that make for refined living. He cared nothing about morals if manners were good. He looked at everything with laughing, indifferent disdain. He believed nothing mattered since the end is alike for all. Therefore be kind to your neighbor. Be happy if you can. He was critic of art, not morals. Even to the dissipations of that luxurious age he gave himself with good humored disdain. He lent himself to dissipation with a tolerant smile, without caring one way or the other.

Horace lacked the commanding power of greatness, its one sidedness. He never compels us. He wins by grace, good temper. He is a charming companion for the rich. I can fancy him an admirable causeur, perhaps an ideal talker, whose conversation was greater, imaginatively, more fancifully attractive, than the written word. His temperament needed stimulus of admiration, applause, the moment. He needed candles and love and pretty women and music and wine. He could have said of himself with the oriental lyrist: None know thee, Hafiz, save when candles shine!

Horace insists on nothing. He has no interest in teaching. He tells us, to be sure, that gold is a false standard, that there are better things. Life and manners were simpler, in an early age, as Dante told his Florentines. But he does not care whether we believe it or not. Life was more beautiful when less complicated; money multiplies bad taste, is the extent of his interest. He did not get far from beauty as standard.

His philosophizing is that of a graceful dilettante. But in knowing, in understanding this, he preserved his Epicurean existence, freedom from work. Perhaps there was another Horace whom his writing dared not show. Perhaps this serene, laughing existence was the price paid for ease. Horace’s age, we must remember, was one when men were busy forgetting the bloody wars of Augustus; they were bowing to a tyrannical demi-god.

Early a note of weariness creeps into his verses, a regretful, late-autumn splendor. It is like light upon rich fields of grain that have been reaped. His life was loveless, given over to men. This was not unusual in his age. Was it this that made his nature cold, and nothing worth while? Love was possible in pagan days and wrought havoc. Catullus knew how to love. So did Propertius, Tibullus. It was not wholly the age. We get impression that he feels old and is weary, even of pleasure, song, when we know he must have been under fifty. Was it because his body was delicate, frail, as we find hint now and then, or were his senses superfine, easily sated? Or had the excessive dissipation of the age made him old before his time?

When he says, somewhere in last of the Epistles, that the only way to be happy is to admire nothing, we know what years have done. Cultivation had enervated him. It had weakened zest for life, or he echoed the age that was growing weary with too much living. That is why Christianity overpowered the pagan world. It was worn out with joy. It had lived too much. It was ready for penitence. It was weakened with luxurious learning.