and Nietzsche to compare the atmosphere of the Satires and Epistles to the "geniality of a warm winter day"; and Wordsworth to be attracted by his appreciation of "the value of companionable friendship"; and Andrew Lang to address to him the most personal of literary letters; and Austin Dobson to give his Horatian poems the form of personal address; and countless students and scholars and men out of school and immersed in the cares of life to carry Horace with them in leisure hours. Circum praecordia ludit, "he plays about the heartstrings," said Persius, long before any of these, when the actual Horace was still fresh in the memory of men.
If we were to take detailed account of certain qualities missed in Horace by the modern reader, we should be even more deeply convinced of his power of personal attraction. He is not a Christian poet, but a pagan. Faith in immortality and Providence, penitence and penance, and humanitarian sentiment, are hardly to be found in his pages. He is sometimes too unrestrained in expression. The unsympathetic or unintelligent critic might charge him with being commonplace.
Yet these defects are more apparent than real, and have never been an obstacle to souls attracted by Horace. His pages are charged with sympathy for men. His lapses in taste are not numerous, and are, after all, less offensive than those of European letters today, after the coming of sin with the law. And he is not commonplace, but universal. His content is familiar matter of today as well as of his own time. His delightful natural settings are never novel, romantic, or forced; we have seen them all, in experience or in literature, again and again, and they make familiar and intimate appeal. Phidyle is neither ancient nor modern, Latin nor Teuton; she is all of them at once. The exquisite expressions of friendship in the odes to a Virgil, or a Septimius, are applicable to any age or nationality, or any person. The story of the town mouse and country mouse is always old and always new, and always true. Mutato nomine de te may be said of it, and of all Horace's other stories; alter the names, and the story is about you. Their application and appeal are universal.
"Without sustained inspiration, without profundity of thought, without impassioned song," writes Duff, "he yet pierces to the universal heart.... His secret lies in sanity rather than impetus. Kindly and shrewd observer of the manifold activities of life, he draws vignettes therefrom and passes judgments thereon which awaken undying interest. Non omnis moriar—he remains fresh because he is human."
Horace's philosophy of life may be imperfect for the militant humanitarian and the Christian, but, as a matter of fact, it is a complete and perfect thing in itself. Horace does not fret or fume. He is not morbid or unpleasantly melancholy. It is true that "his tempered and polished expression of common experience, free from transports and free from despairs, speaks more forcibly to ripe middle age than to youth," but it is not without its appeal also to youth. Horace sums up an attitude toward existence which all men, of whatever nation or time, can easily understand, and which all, at some moment or other, sympathize with. Whether they believe in his philosophy of life or not, whether they put it into practice or not, it is always and everywhere attractive,—attractive because founded on clear and sympathetic vision of the joys and sorrows that are the common lot of men, attractive because of its frankness and manly courage, and, above all, attractive because of its object. So long as the one great object of human longing is peace of mind and heart, no philosophy which recognizes it will be without followers. The Christian is naturally unwilling to adopt the Horatian philosophy as a whole, but with its summum bonum, and with many of its recommendations, he is in perfect accord. Add Christian faith to it, or add it, so far as is consonant, to Christian faith, and either is enriched.
We are better able now to appreciate the dynamic power of Horace the person. We may see it at work in the fostering of friendly affection, in the deepening of love for favorite spots of earth, in the encouragement of righteous purpose, in the true judging of life's values.
Horace is the poet of friendship. With his address to "Virgil, the half of my soul," his references to Plotius, Varius, and Virgil as the purest and whitest souls of earth, his affectionate messages in Epistle and Ode, he sets the heart of the reader aglow with love for his friends. "Nothing, while in my right mind, would I compare to the delight of a friend!" What numbers of men have had their hearts stirred to deeper love by the matchless ode to Septimius:
"Septimius, who with me would brave
Far Gades, and Cantabrian land
Untamed by Rome, and Moorish wave