In the midst of these sorrows, Horace himself felt that he was growing old. The hour when one finds one's self face to face with age is a serious one. Cicero, when approaching it, tried to give himself courage in advance, and being accustomed to console himself for everything by writing, he composed his 'De Senectute,' a charming book in which he tries to deck the closing years of life with certain beauties. He had not to make use of the consolations which he prepared for himself, so we do not know whether he would have found them sufficient when the moment came. That spirit, so young, so full of life, would I fear have resigned itself with difficulty to the inevitable decadences of age. Nor did Horace love old age, and in his 'Ars Poetica' he has drawn a somewhat gloomy picture of it. He had all the more reason to detest it because it came to him rather early. In one of those passages where he so willingly gives us the description of his person, he tells us that his hair whitened quickly. As a climax of misfortune he had grown very fat, and being short, his corpulence was very unbecoming to him. Augustus, in a letter, compares him to one of those measures of liquids which are broader than they are high. If, in spite of these too evident signs which warned him of his age, he had tried to deceive himself, there was no lack of persons to disabuse him. There was the porter of Neæra, who no longer allowed his slave to enter; an affront which Horace was obliged to put up with without complaining. "My hair whitening," said he, "warns me not to quarrel. I should not have been so patient in the time of my boiling youth, when Plancus was consul." Then it was Neæra herself who declined to come when he summoned her, and again resigning himself with a good enough grace, the poor poet found that after all she was right, and that it was natural love should prefer youth to ripened age.
"Ahi,
Quo blandæ juvenum te revocant preces."
Fortunately he was not of a melancholy disposition, like his friends Tibullus and Virgil. He even had opinions on the subject of melancholy which differ widely from ours. Whereas, since Lamartine, we have assumed the habit of regarding sadness as one of the essential elements of poetry, he thought on the contrary that poetry has the privilege of preventing us from being sad. "A man protected by the Muses," said he, "flings cares and sorrows to the winds to bear away." His philosophy had taught him not to revolt against inevitable ills. However painful they be, one makes them lighter by bearing them. So he accepted old age because it cannot be eluded, and because no means have yet been found of living long without growing old. Death itself did not frighten him. He was not of those who reconcile themselves to it as well as they can by never thinking about it. On the contrary, he counsels us to have it always in mind. "Think that the day which lights you is the last you have to live. The morrow will have more charm for you if you have not hoped to see it:"--
"Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum;
Grata superveniet quæ non sperabitur hora."
This is not, as might be supposed, one of those bravadoes of the timid, who shout before Death in order to deaden the sound of his footsteps. Horace was never more calm, more energetic, more master of his mind and of his soul, than in the works of his ripe age. The last lines of his that remain to us are the firmest and most serene he ever wrote.
Then, more than ever, must he have loved the little Sabine valley. When we visit these beautiful tranquil spots, we tell ourselves that they appear made to shelter the declining years of a sage. It seems as if with old servants, a few faithful friends, and a stock of well-chosen books, the time must pass there without sadness. But I must stop. Since Horace has not taken us into his confidence respecting his last years, and nobody after him has told us of them, we are reduced to form conjectures, and we should put as few of them as possible into the life of a man who loved truth so well.
Copyrighted by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.