Neither is there in his pleading the tone of earnest entreaty which marks the wooer, in a similar plight, of Burns's "Let me in this ae nicht"—
"Thou hear'st the winter wind and weet,
Nae star blinks through the driving sleet;
Tak pity on my weary feet,
And shield me frae the rain, jo."
There can be no mistake as to the seriousness of this appeal. Horace's is a mere jeu-d'esprit:—
"Though your drink were Tanais, chillest of rivers,
And your lot with some conjugal savage were cast,
You would pity, sweet Lycè, the poor soul that shivers
Out here at your door in the merciless blast.
"Only hark how the doorway goes straining and creaking,
And the piercing wind pipes through the trees that surround
The court of your villa, while Hack frost is streaking
With ice the crisp snow that lies thick on the ground!
"In your pride—Venus hates it—no longer envelop ye,
Or haply you'll find yourself laid on the shelf;
You never were made for a prudish Penelope,
'Tis not in the blood of your sires or yourself.
"Though nor gifts nor entreaties can win a soft answer,
Nor the violet pale of my love-ravaged cheek,
To your husband's intrigue with a Greek ballet-dancer,
Though you still are blind, and forgiving and meek;
"Yet be not as cruel—forgive my upbraiding—
As snakes, nor as hard as the toughest of oak;
To stand out here, drenched to the skin, serenading
All night may in time prove too much of a joke."
It is not often that Horace's poetry is vitiated by bad taste. Strangely enough, almost the only instances of it occur where he is writing of women, as in the Ode to Lydia (Book I. 25) and to Lyce (Book IV. 13). Both ladies seem to have been, former favourites of his, and yet the burden of these poems is exultation in the decay of their charms. The deadening influence of mere sensuality, and of the prevalent low tone of morals, must indeed have been great, when a man "so singularly susceptible," as Lord Lytton has truly described him, "to amiable, graceful, gentle, and noble impressions of man and of life," could write of a woman whom he had once loved in a strain like this:—
"The gods have heard, the gods have heard my prayer;
Yes, Lyce! you are growing old, and still
You struggle to look fair;
You drink, and dance, and trill
Your songs to youthful love, in accents weak
With wine, and age, and passion. Youthful Love!
He dwells in Chia's cheek,
And hears her harp-strings move.
Rude boy, he flies like lightning o'er the heath
Past withered trees like you; you're wrinkled now;
The white has left your teeth,
And settled on your brow.
Your Coan silks, your jewels bright as stars—
Ah no! they bring not back the days of old,
In public calendars
By flying time enrolled.
Where now that beauty? Where those movements? Where
That colour? What of her, of her is left,
Who, breathing Love's own air,
Me of myself bereft,
Who reigned in Cinara's stead, a fair, fair face,
Queen of sweet arts? But Fate to Cinara gave
A life of little space;
And now she cheats the grave
Of Lyce, spared to raven's length of days,
That youth may see, with laughter and disgust,
A firebrand, once ablaze,
Now smouldering in grey dust."
What had this wretched Lyce done that Horace should have prayed the gods to strip her of her charms, and to degrade her from a haughty beauty into a maudlin hag, disgusting and ridiculous? Why cast such very merciless stones at one who, by his own avowal, had erewhile witched his very soul from him? Why rejoice to see this once beautiful creature the scoff of all the heartless young fops of Rome? If she had injured him, what of that? Was it so very strange that a woman trained, like all the class to which she belonged, to be the plaything of man's caprice, should have been fickle, mercenary, or even heartless? Poor Lyce might at least have claimed his silence, if he could not do, what Thackeray says every honest fellow should do, "think well of the woman he has once thought well of, and remember her with kindness and tenderness, as a man remembers a place where he has been very happy."
Horace's better self comes out in his playful appeal to his friend Xanthias (Odes, II. 4) not to be ashamed of having fallen in love with his handmaiden Phyllis. That she is a slave is a matter of no account. A girl of such admirable qualities must surely come of a good stock, and is well worth any man's love. Did not Achilles succumb to Briseis, Ajax to Tecmessa, Agamemnon himself to Cassandra? Moreover,
"For aught that you know, the fair Phyllis may be
The shoot of some highly respectable stem;
Nay, she counts, never doubt it, some kings in her tree,
And laments the lost acres once lorded by them.
Never think that a creature so exquisite grew
In the haunts where but vice and dishonour are known,
Nor deem that a girl so unselfish, so true,
Had a mother 'twould shame thee to take for thine own."
Here we have the true Horace; and after all these fascinating but doubtful Lydés, Neaeras, and Pyrrhas, it is pleasant to come across a young beauty like this Phyllis, sic fidelem, sic lucro aversam. She, at least, is a fresh and fragrant violet among the languorous hothouse splendours of the Horatian garden.