Only five days, I said, I should be gone;
Yet August's past, and still I linger on.
'Tis true I've broke my promise. But if you
Would have me well, as I am sure you do,
Grant me the same indulgence, which, were I
Laid up with illness, you would not deny,
Although I claim it only for the fear
Of being ill, this deadly time of year,
When autumn's clammy heat and early fruits
Deck undertakers out, and inky mutes;
When young mammas, and fathers to a man,
With terrors for their sons and heirs are wan;
When stifling anteroom, or court, distils
Fevers wholesale, and breaks the seals of wills.
Should winter swathe the Alban fields in snow,
Down to the sea your poet means to go,
To nurse his ailments, and, in cosy nooks
Close huddled up, to loiter o'er his books.
But once let zephyrs blow, sweet friend, and then,
If then you'll have him, he will quit his den,
With the first swallow hailing you again.
When you bestowed on me what made me rich,
Not in the spirit was it done, in which
Your bluff Calabrian on a guest will thrust
His pears: "Come, eat, man, eat—you can, you must!"
"Indeed, indeed, my friend, I've had enough."
"Then take some home!" "You're too obliging." "Stuff!
If you have pockets full of them, I guess,
Your little lads will like you none the less."
"I really can't—thanks all the same!" "You won't?
Why then the pigs shall have them, if you don't."
'Tis fools and prodigals, whose gifts consist
Of what they spurn, or what is never missed:
Such tilth will never yield, and never could,
A harvest save of coarse ingratitude.
A wise good man is evermore alert,
When he encounters it, to own desert;
Nor is he one, on whom you'd try to pass
For sterling currency mere lackered brass.
For me, 'twill be my aim myself to raise
Even to the flattering level of your praise;
But if you'd have me always by your side,
Then give me back the chest deep-breathed and wide,
The low brow clustered with its locks of black,
The flow of talk, the ready laugh, give back,
The woes blabbed o'er our wine, when Cinara chose
To teaze me, cruel flirt—ah, happy woes!
Through a small hole a field-mouse, lank and thin,
Had squeezed his way into a barley bin,
And, having fed to fatness on the grain,
Tried to get out, but tried and squeezed in vain.
"Friend," cried a weasel, loitering thereabout,
"Lean you went in, and lean you must get out."
Now, at my head if folks this story throw,
Whate'er I have I'm ready to forego;
I am not one, with forced meats in my throat,
Fine saws on poor men's dreamless sleep to quote.
Unless in soul as very air I'm free,
Not all the wealth of Araby for me.
You've ofttimes praised the reverent, yet true
Devotion, which my heart has shown for you.
King, father, I have called you, nor been slack
In words of gratitude behind your back;
But even your bounties, if you care to try,
You'll find I can renounce without a sigh.
Not badly young Telemachus replied,
Ulysses' son, that man so sorely tried:
"No mettled steeds in Ithaca we want;
The ground is broken there, the herbage scant.
Let me, Atrides, then, thy gifts decline,
In thy hands they are better far than mine!"
Yes, little things fit little folks. In Rome
The Great I never feel myself at home.
Let me have Tibur, and its dreamful ease,
Or soft Tarentum's nerve-relaxing breeze.
Philip, the famous counsel, on a day—
A burly man, and wilful in his way—
From court returning, somewhere about two,
And grumbling, for his years were far from few,
That the Carinae {1} were so distant, though
But from the Forum half a mile or so,
Descried a fellow in a barber's booth,
All by himself, his chin fresh shaved and smooth,
Trimming his nails, and with the easy air
Of one uncumbered by a wish or care.
"Demetrius!"—'twas his page, a boy of tact,
In comprehension swift, and swift in act,
"Go, ascertain his rank, name, fortune; track
His father, patron!" In a trice he's back.
"An auction-crier, Volteius Mena, sir,
Means poor enough, no spot on character,
Good or to work or idle, get or spend,
Has his own house, delights to see a friend,
Fond of the play, and sure, when work is done,
Of those who crowd the Campus to make one."
"I'd like to hear all from himself. Away,
Bid him come dine with me—at once—to-day!"
Mena some trick in the request divines,
Turns it all ways, then civilly declines.
"What! Says me nay?" "'Tis even so, sir. Why?
Can't say. Dislikes you, or, more likely, shy."
Next morning Philip searches Mena out,
And finds him vending to a rabble rout
Old crazy lumber, frippery of the worst,
And with all courtesy salutes him first.
Mena pleads occupation, ties of trade,
His service else he would by dawn have paid,
At Philip's house,—was grieved to think, that how
He should have failed to notice him till now.
"On one condition I accept your plea.
You come this afternoon, and dine with me."
"Yours to command." "Be there, then, sharp at four!
Now go, work hard, and make your little more!"
At dinner Mena rattled on, expressed
Whate'er came uppermost, then home to rest.
The hook was baited craftily, and when
The fish came nibbling ever and again,
At morn a client, and, when asked to dine,
Not now at all in humour to decline,
Philip himself one holiday drove him down,
To see his villa some few miles from town.
Mena keeps praising up, the whole way there,
The Sabine country, and the Sabine air;
So Philip sees his fish is fairly caught,
And smiles with inward triumph at the thought.
Resolved at any price to have his whim,—
For that is best of all repose to him,—
Seven hundred pounds he gives him there and then,
Proffers on easy terms as much again,
And so persuades him, that, with tastes like his,
He ought to buy a farm;—so bought it is.
Not to detain you longer than enough,
The dapper cit becomes a farmer bluff,
Talks drains and subsoils, ever on the strain
Grows lean, and ages with the lust of gain.
But when his sheep are stolen, when murrains smite
His goats, and his best crops are killed with blight,
When at the plough his oxen drop down dead,
Stung with his losses, up one night from bed
He springs, and on a cart-horse makes his way,
All wrath, to Philip's house, by break of day.
"How's this?" cries Philip, seeing him unshorn
And shabby. "Why, Vulteius, you look worn.
You work, methinks, too long upon the stretch."
"Oh, that's not it, my patron. Call me wretch!
That is the only fitting name for me.
Oh, by thy Genius, by the gods that be
Thy hearth's protectors, I beseech, implore,
Give me, oh, give me back my life of yore!"
If for the worse you find you've changed your place,
Pause not to think, but straight your steps retrace.
In every state the maxim still is true,
On your own last take care to fit your shoe!
{1} The street where he lived, or, as we should say, "Ship Street." The
name was due probably to the circumstance of models of ships being
set up in it.
CHAPTER X.
DELICACY OF HORACE'S HEALTH.—HIS CHEERFULNESS.—LOVE OF BOOKS.—HIS PHILOSOPHY PRACTICAL.—EPISTLE TO AUGUSTUS.—DEATH.
Horace had probably passed forty when the Epistle just quoted was written. Describing himself at forty-four (Epistles, I. 20), he says he was "prematurely grey,"—his hair, as we have just seen, having been originally black,—adding that he is
"In person small, one to whom warmth is life,
In temper hasty, yet averse from strife."
His health demanded constant care; and we find him writing (Epistles, I. 15) to a friend, to ask what sort of climate and people are to be found at Velia and Salernum,—the one a town of Lucania, the other of Campania,—as he has been ordered by his doctor to give up his favourite watering-place, Baiae, as too relaxing. This doctor was Antonius Musa, a great apostle of the cold-water cure, by which he had saved the life of Augustus when in extreme danger. The remedy instantly became fashionable, and continued so until the Emperor's nephew, the young Marcellus, died under the treatment. Horace's inquiries are just such as a valetudinarian fond of his comforts would be likely to make:—
"Which place is best supplied with corn, d'ye think?
Have they rain-water or fresh springs to drink?
Their wines I care not for, when at my farm
I can drink any sort without much harm;
But at the sea I need a generous kind
To warm my veins, and pass into my mind,
Enrich me with new hopes, choice words supply,
And make me comely in a lady's eye.
Which tract is best for game? on which sea-coast
Urchins and other fish abound the most?
That so, when I return, my friends may see
A sleek Phaeacian {1} come to life in me:
These things you needs must tell me, Vala dear,
And I no less must act on what I hear." (C.)