What makes a happy life, dear friend,
If thou would'st briefly learn, attend—
An income left, not earned by toil;
Some acres of a kindly soil;
The pot unfailing on the fire;
No lawsuits; seldom town attire;
Health; strength with grace; a peaceful mind;
Shrewdness with honesty combined;
Plain living; equal friends and free;
Evenings of temperate gaiety:
A wife discreet, yet blythe and bright;
Sound slumber, that lends wings to night.
With all thy heart embrace thy lot,
Wish not for death and fear it not.
PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH.
This exquisite echo of the Horatian 'beatus ille qui procul negotiis' sets forth no very lofty ideal. It is frankly, though restrainedly, hedonistic. But it depicts a life that is full of charm and free from evil. Martial, in his heart of hearts, hates the Rome that he depicts so vividly. Rome with its noise, its expense, its bustling snobbery, its triviality, and its vice, where he and his friend Julius waste their days:
nunc vivit necuter sibi, bonosque soles effugere atque abire sentit, qui nobis pereunt et imputantur (v. 20. 11).
Dead to our better selves we see
The golden hours take flight,
Still scored against us as they flee.
Then haste to live aright.
PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH
He longs to escape from the world of the professional lounger and the parasite to an ampler air, where he can breathe freely and find rest. He is no philosopher, but it is at times a relief to get away from the rarified atmosphere and the sense of strain that permeates so much of the aspirations towards virtue in this strange age of contradictions.
Martial at last found the ease and quiet that his soul desired in his
Spanish home:
hic pigri colimus labore dulci Boterdum Plateamque (Celtiberis haec sunt nomina crassiora terris): ingenti fruor inproboque somno quem nec tertia saepe rumpit hora, et totum mihi nunc repono quidquid ter denos vigilaveram per annos. ignota est toga, sed datur petenti rupta proxima vestis a cathedra. surgentem focus excipit superba vicini strue cultus iliceti, * * * * * sic me vivere, sic iuvat perire. (xii. 18. 10).
Busy but pleas'd and idly taking pains,
Here Lewes Downs I till and Ringmer plains,
Names that to each South Saxon well are known,
Though they sound harsh to powdered beaux in town.
None can enjoy a sounder sleep than mine;
I often do not wake till after nine;
And midnight hours with interest repay
For years in town diversions thrown away.
Stranger to finery, myself I dress
In the first coat from an old broken press.
My fire, as soon as I am up, I see
Bright with the ruins of some neighbouring tree.
* * * * *
Such is my life, a life of liberty;
So would I wish to live and so to die.
HAY.
Martial has a genuine love for the country. Born at a time when detailed descriptions of the charms of scenery had become fashionable, and the cultivated landscape at least found many painters, he succeeds far better than any of his contemporaries in conveying to the reader his sense of the beauties which his eyes beheld. That sense is limited, but exquisite. It does not go deep; there is nothing of the almost mystical background that Vergil at times suggests; there is nothing of the feeling of the open air and the wild life that is sometimes wafted to us in the sensuous verse of Theocritus. But Martial sees what he sees clearly, and he describes it perfectly. Compare his work with the affected prettiness of Pliny's description of the source of the Clitumnus or with the more sensuous, but over-elaborate, craftsmanship of Statius in the Silvae. Martial is incomparably their superior. He speaks a more human language, and has a far clearer vision. Both Statius and Martial described villas by the sea. We have already mentioned Statius' description of the villa of Pollius at Sorrento; Martial shall speak in his turn:
o temperatae dulce Formiae litus, vos, cum severi fugit oppidum Martis et inquietas fessus exuit curas, Apollinaris omnibus locis praefert. * * * * * hic summa leni stringitur Thetis vento: nec languet aequor, viva sed quies ponti pictam phaselon adiuvante fert aura, sicut puellae lion amantis aestatem mota salubre purpura venit frigus. nec saeta longo quaerit in mari praedam, sed a cubili lectuloque iactatam spectatus alte lineam trahit piscis. * * * * * frui sed istis quando, Roma, permittis? quot Formianos imputat dies annus negotiosis rebus urbis haerenti? o ianitores vilicique felices! dominis parantur ista, serviunt vobis[663] (x. 30).