Mr. Bayfield's Criticism
Soon after the event, I informed the Rev. M. A. Bayfield, ex-headmaster of Eastbourne College, fully of the facts, as an interesting S.P.R. incident (saying at the same time that Myers had not been able to 'ward off' the blow); and he was good enough to send me a careful note in reply:—
"Horace does not, in any reference to his escape, say clearly whether the tree struck him, but I have always thought it did. He says Faunus lightened the blow; he does not say 'turned it aside.' As bearing on your terrible loss, the meaning seems to be that the blow would fall but would not crush; it would be 'lightened' by the assurance, conveyed afresh to you by a special message from the still living Myers, that your boy still lives.
"I shall be interested to know what you think of this interpretation. The 'protect' I take to mean protect from being overwhelmed by the blow, from losing faith and hope, as we are all in danger of doing when smitten by some crushing personal calamity. Many a man when so smitten has, like Merlin, lain
'as dead,
And lost to life and use and name and fame.'
That seems to me to give a sufficiently precise application to the word (on which Myers apparently insists) and to the whole reference to Horace."
In a postscript he adds the following:—
"In Carm. iii. 8, Horace describes himself as prope funeratus arboris ictu, 'wellnigh killed by a blow from a tree.' An artist in expression, such as he was, would not have mentioned any 'blow' if there had been none; he would have said 'well nigh killed by a falling tree'—or the like. It is to be noted that in both passages he uses the word ictus. And in ii. 13. 11 (the whole ode is addressed to the tree) he says the man must have been a fellow steeped in every wickedness 'who planted thee an accursed lump of wood, a thing meant to fall (this is the delicate meaning of caducum—not merely "falling") on thine undeserving master's head.' Here again the language implies that he was struck, and struck on the head.
"Indeed, the escape must have been a narrow one, and it is to me impossible to believe that Horace would have been so deeply impressed by the accident if he had not actually been struck. He refers to it four times:—
Carm.ii. 13.—(Ode addressed to the tree—forty lines long.)
ii. 17. 27.
iii. 4. 27.—(Here he puts the risk he ran on a parallel with that of the rout at Philippi, from which he escaped.)
iii. 8. 8.
"I insist on all this as strengthening my interpretation, and also as strengthening the assignment of the script to Myers, who would of course be fully alive to all the points to be found in his reference to Faunus and Horace—and, as I have no doubt, believed that Horace did not escape the actual blow, and that it was a severe one."