('Pall Mall Gazette,'August 16, 1869.)
"Following a path along the brink of the torrent Digentia, we passed a towering rock, on which once stood Vacuna's shrine, and entered a pastoral region of well-watered meadow-lands, enamelled with flowers and studded with chestnut and fruit trees. Beneath their sheltering shade peasants were whiling away the noontide hours. Here sat Daphnis piping sweet witching melodies on a reed to his rustic Phidyle, whilst Lydia and she wove wreaths of wild-flowers, and Lyce sped down to the edge of the stream and brought us cooling drink in a bulging conca borne on her head. Its waters were as deliciously refreshing as they could have been when the poet himself gratefully recorded how often they revived his strength; and one longed to think, and hence half believed, that our homely Hebe, like her fellows, was sprung from the coloni who tilled his fields and dwelt in the five homesteads of which he sings. ... Near the little village of Licenza, standing like its loftier neighbour, Civitella, on a steep hill at the foot of Lucretilis, we turned off the path, crossed a thickly-wooded knoll, and came to an orchard, in which two young labourers were at work. We asked where the remains of Horace's farm were. 'A pie tui!' answered the nearest of them, in a dialect more like Latin than Italian. So saying, he began with a shovel to uncover a massive floor in very fair preservation; a little farther on was another, crumbling to pieces. Chaupy has luckily saved one all doubt as to the site of the farm, establishing to our minds convincingly that it could scarcely have stood on ground other than that on which at this moment we were. As the shovel was clearing the floors, we thought how applicable to Horace himself were the lines he addressed to Fuscus Aristius, 'Naturam expelles,' &c.—
'Drive Nature forth by force, she'll turn and rout
The false refinements that would keep her out;' (C.)
For here was just enough of his home left to show how nature, creeping on step by step, had overwhelmed his handiwork and reasserted her sway. Again, pure and Augustan in design as was the pavement before us, how little could it vie with the hues and odours of the grasses that bloomed around it!—'Deterius Libycis' &c.—
'Is springing grass less sweet to nose and eyes
Than Libyan marble's tesselated dyes?' (C.)
"Indeed, so striking were these coincidences that we were as nearly as possible going off on the wrong tack, and singing 'Io Paean' to Dame Nature herself at the expense of the bard; but we were soon brought back to our allegiance by a sense of the way in which all we saw tallied with the description of him who sang of nature so surpassingly well, who challenges posterity in charmed accents, and could shape the sternest and most concise of tongues into those melodious cadences that invest his undying verse with all the magic of music and all the freshness of youth. For this was clearly the 'angulus iste,' the nook which 'restored him to himself'—this the lovely spot which his steward longed to exchange for the slums of Rome. Below lay the greensward by the river, where it was sweet to recline in slumber. Here grew the vines, still trained, like his own, on the trunks and branches of trees. Yonder the brook which the rain would swell till it overflowed its margin, and his lazy steward and slaves were fain to bank it up; and above, among a wild jumble of hills, lay the woods where, on the Calends of March, Faunus interposed to save him from the falling tree, and where another miracle preserved him from the attack of the wolf as he strolled along unarmed, singing of the soft voice and sweet smiles of his Lalage! The brook is now nearly dammed up; a wall of close-fitting rough-hewn stones gathers its waters into a still, dark pool; its overflow gushes out in a tiny rill that rushed down beside our path, mingling its murmur with the hum of myriads of insects that swarmed in the air."
On this farm lovers of Horace have been fain to place the fountain of Bandusia, which the poet loved so well, and to which he prophesied, and truly, as the issue has proved, immortality from his song (Odes, III. 13). Charming as the poem is, there could be no stronger proof of the poet's hold upon the hearts of men of all ages than the enthusiasm with which the very site of the spring has been contested.
"Bandusia's fount, in clearness crystalline,
O worthy of the wine, the flowers we vow!
To-morrow shall be thine
A kid, whose crescent brow
"Is sprouting, all for love and victory,
In vain; his warm red blood, so early stirred,
Thy gelid stream shall dye,
Child of the wanton herd.
"Thee the fierce Sirian star, to madness fired,
Forbears to touch; sweet cool thy waters yield
To ox with ploughing tired,
And flocks that range afield.
"Thou too one day shall win proud eminence
'Mid honoured founts, while I the ilex sing
Crowning the cavern, whence
Thy babbling wavelets spring." (C.)
Several commentators maintain, on what appears to be very inconclusive grounds, that the fountain was at Palazzo, six miles from Venusia. But the poem is obviously inspired by a fountain whose babble had often soothed the ear of Horace, long after he had ceased to visit Venusia. On his farm, therefore, let us believe it to exist, whichever of the springs that are still there we may choose to identify with his description. For there are several, and the local guides are by no means dogmatic as to the "vero fonte." That known as the "Fonte della Corte" seems to make out the strongest case for itself. It is within a few hundred yards of the villa, most abundant, and in this respect "fit" to name the river that there takes its rise, which the others—at present, at least—certainly are not.
Horace is never weary of singing the praises of his mountain home—"Satis beatus unicis Sabinis,"