Horace and His Influence

by Grant Showerman

A glance at the use of Horace in Spain will afford not the least edifying of modern examples. The inventories of Spanish libraries in the Middle Age rarely contain the name of Horace, or the names of his lyric brethren, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. Virgil, Lucan, Martial, Seneca, and Pliny are much more frequent. It was not until the fifteenth century that reminiscences of the style and ideas of Horace began to appear in quantity. Imitation rather than translation was the vehicle of Spanish enthusiasm. The fountain of Horatianism in Spain was the imitation of Epode II, Beatus Ille, by the Marquis de Santillana, one of Castile's two first sonneteers, in the first half of the fifteenth century. Garcilaso also produced many imitations of the Odes. The Horatian lyric seemed especially congenial to the Spanish spirit and language. Fray Luís de León, of Salamanca, the first real Spanish poet, and the most inspired of all the Spanish lovers of Horace, was an example of the poet translating the poet where both were great men. He not only brought back to life once more "that marvelous sobriety, that rapidity of idea and conciseness of phrase, that terseness and brilliance, that sovereign calm and serenity in the spirit of the artist," which characterized the ancient poet, but added to the Horatian lyre the new string of Christian mysticism, and thus wedded the ancient and the modern. "Luís de León is our great Horatian poet," says Menéndez y Pelayo. Lope de Vega wrote an Ode to Liberty, and was influenced by the Epistles. The Flores de Poetas ilustres de España, arranged by Pedro Espinosa and published in 1605 at Valladolid, included translations of eighteen odes. Hardly a lyric poet of the eighteenth century failed to turn some part of Horace into Spanish. Salamanca perfected the ode, Seville the epistle, Aragon the satire. Mendoza in his nine Epistles shows his debt to Horace. In 1592, Luís de Zapata published at Lisbon a not very successful verse translation of the Ars Poetica. In 1616, Francisco de Cascales of Murcia published Fablas Poeticas, containing in dialogue the substance of the same composition, which had been translated by Espinel, 1551-1624, and which was translated again in 1684, twice in 1777, and in 1827. Seville founded a Horatian Academy. The greatest of the Spanish translators of Horace entire was Javier de Burgos, whose edition of four volumes, 1819-1844, is called by Menéndez y Pelayo the only readable complete translation of Horace, "one of the most precious and enviable jewels of our modern literature," and "perhaps the best of all Horaces in the neo-Latin tongues." The nearest rival of Burgos was Martinez de la Rosa. The greatest Spanish scholar and critic of Horace is Menéndez y Pelayo, editor of the Odes, 1882, and author of Horacio en España, 1885.

In the index of Horacio en España are to be found the names of 165 Castilian translators of the poet, 50 Portuguese, 10 Catalan, 2 Asturian, and 1 Galician. There appear the names of 29 commentators. Of complete translations, there are 6 Castilian and 1 Portuguese; of complete translations of the Odes, 6 Castilian and 7 Portuguese; of the Satires, 1 Castilian and 2 Portuguese; of the Epistles, 1 Castilian and 1 Portuguese; of the Ars Poetica, 35 Castilian, 11 Portuguese, and 1 Catalan. The sixteenth century translators were distinguished in general by facility and grace, the freshness and abandon of youth, and a considerable degree of freedom, or even license. Those of the eighteenth show a gain in accuracy and a loss in spirit.

v. IN ENGLAND

The appeal of Horace in England and English-speaking countries has been as fruitful as elsewhere in scholarship, with the possible exception of Germany. In its effect upon the actual fibre of literature and life, it has been more fruitful.

A review of Horatian study in England would include the names of Talbot and Baxter, but, above all, of the incomparably brilliant Richard Bentley, despite his excesses, themselves due to his very genius, the most famous and most stimulating critic and commentator of Horace the world has seen. His edition, appearing in 1711, provoked in 1717 the anti-Bentleian rejoinder of Richard Johnson, and in 1721 the more ambitious but equally unsuccessful attempt to discredit him by the Scotch Alexander Cunningham. The primacy in the study of Horace which Bentley conferred upon England had been enjoyed previously by the Low Countries and France, to which it had passed from Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century. The immediate sign of this transfer of the center to northern lands was the publication in 1561 at Lyons of the edition containing the text revision and critical notes of Lambinus and the commentary of the famous Cruquius of Bruges. The celebrated Scaliger was unfavorably disposed to Horace, who found a defender in Heinsius, another scholar of the Netherlands. D'Alembert, who became a sort of Ars Poetica to translators, published his Observations at Amsterdam in 1763.

An account of the English translations of the poet would include many renderings of individual poems, such as those of Dryden, Sir Stephen E. De Vere, and John Conington, and the version of Theodore Martin, probably the most successful complete metrical translation of Horace in any language. It is literally true that "every theory of translation has been exemplified in some English rendering of Horace."

It is in the field of literature, however, that the manifestations of Horace's hold upon the English are most numerous and most significant. Even Shakespeare's "small Latin" includes him, in Titus Andronicus:

Demetrius.

What's here? A scroll, and written round about!
Let's see:

Integer vitae scelerisque purus