THE REBIRTH OF HORACE
The national character of the Aeneid gave Virgil a greater appeal than Horace in ancient Roman times. In the Middle Age, his qualities as story-teller and poet of the compassionate heart, together with his fame as necromancer and prophet, made still more pronounced the favor in which he was held. The ignorance of the earlier centuries of the period could not appreciate Horace the logical, the intellectual, the difficult, while the schematized religion and knowledge of the later were not attracted by Horace the philosophical and individual.
With the Renaissance and its quickening of intellectual life in general, and in particular the value it set upon personality and individualism, the positions of the poets were reversed. For four hundred years now it can hardly be denied that Horace rather than Virgil has been the representative Latin poet of humanism.
This is not to say that Horace is greater than Virgil, or that he is as great. Virgil is still the poet of stately movement and golden narrative, the poet of the grand style. Owing to the greater facility with which he may be read, he is also still the poet of the young and of greater numbers. With the coming of the new era he did not lose in the esteem that is based upon the appreciation of literary art, but rather gained.
It will be better to say that Horace finally came more fully into his own. This was not because he changed. He did not change. The times changed. The barriers of intellectual sloth and artificiality fell away, and men became accessible to him. Virgil lost nothing of his old-time appeal to the fancy and to the ear, but Horace's virtues also were discovered: his distinction in word and phrase, his understanding of the human heart. Virgil lost nothing of his charm for youth and age, but Horace was discovered as the poet of the riper and more thoughtful mind. Virgil remained the admired, but Horace became the friend. Virgil remained the guide, but Horace became the companion. "Virgil," says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "has been the object of an adoration amounting almost to worship, but he will often be found on the shelf, while Horace lies on the student's table, next his hand."
The nature and extent of Horace's influence upon modern letters and life will be best brought into relief by a brief historical review. It is not necessary to this purpose, nor would it be possible, within ordinary limits, to enter into a detailed account. It will be appropriate to begin with Italy.
i. IN ITALY
Horace did not spring immediately into prominence with the coming of the Renaissance, whether elsewhere or in Italy. As might be expected, the essentially epic and medieval Dante found inspiration in Virgil rather than in Horace, though the Ars Poetica was known to him and quoted more than once as authority on style. "This is what our master Horace teaches," runs one of the passages, "when at the beginning of Poetry he says, 'Choose a subject, etc.'" The imperfect idea of Horace formed in Dante's mind is indicated by the one verse in the Divina Commedia which refers to him:
L' altro è Orazio satiro che viene,—
The other coming is Horace the satirist.