INTRODUCTION. ON THE CAUSES OF HORACE'S POPULARITY. No one denies that there are greater poets than Horace; and much has been said in disparagement even of some of the merits most popularly assigned to him, by scholars who have, nevertheless, devoted years of laborious study to the correction of his text or the elucidation of his meaning. But whatever his faults or deficiencies, he has remained unexcelled in that special gift of genius which critics define by the name of charm. No collection of small poems, ancient or modern, has so universally pleased the taste of all nations as Horace's Odes, or been so steadfastly secure from all the capricious fluctuations of time and fashion. In vain have critics insisted on the superior genius evinced in the scanty relics left to us of the Greek lyrists, and even on the more spontaneous inspiration which they detect in the exquisite delicacy of form that distinguishes the muse of Catullus. Horace still reigns supreme as the lyrical singer most enthroned in the affections, most congenial to the taste, of the complex multitude of students in every land and in every age. It is an era in the life of the schoolboy when he first commences his acquaintance with Horace. He gets favorite passages by heart with a pleasure which (Homer alone excepted) no other ancient poet inspires. Throughout life the lines so learnt remain on his memory, rising up alike in gay and in grave moments, and applying themselves to varieties of incident and circumstance with the felicitous suppleness of proverbs. Perhaps in the interval between boyhood and matured knowledge of the world, the attractive influence of Horace is suspended in favor of some bolder poet adventuring far beyond the range of his temperate though sunny genius, into the extremes of heated passion or frigid metaphysics "Visere gestiens Qua parte debacchentur ignes, But as men advance in years they again return to Horaceagain feel the young delight in his healthful wisdom, his manly sense, his exquisite combination of playful irony and cordial earnestness. They then discover in him innumerable beauties before unnoticed, and now enjoyed the more for their general freedom from those very efforts at intense emotion and recondite meaning for which, in the revolutionary period of youth, they admired the writers who appear to them, when reason and fancy adjust their equilibrium in the sober judgment of maturer years, feverishly exaggerated or tediously speculative. That the charm of Horace is thus general and thus imperishable, is a proposition which needs. no proof. It is more interesting and less trite to attempt to analyze the secrets of that charm, and see how far the attempt may suggest hints of art to the numberless writers of those poems which aim at the title of lyrical composition, and are either the trinkets of a transitory fashion, or the ornaments of enduring vogue, according as they fail or succeed in concentrating the rays of poetry into the compactness and solidity of imperishable gems. The first peculiar excellence of Horace is in his personal character and temperament rather than his intellectual capacities; it is in his genial humanity. He touches us on so many sides of our common nature; he has sympathies with such infinite varieties of men; he is so equally at home with us in town and country, in our hours of mirth, in our moments of dejection. Are we poor? he disarms our envy of the rich by greeting as a special boon of the Deity the suffisance which He bestows with a thrifty hand; and, distinguishing poverty from squalor, shows what attainable elegance can embellish a home large enough to lodge content. Are we rich? he inculcates moderation, and restrains us from purse-pride with the kindliness of a spirit free from asceticism, and sensitive to the true enjoyments of life. His very defects and weaknesses of character serve to increase his attraction; he is not too much elevated above our own erring selves. With Next to the charm of his humanity is that of his inclination towards the agreeable aspects of our mortal state. He invests the virtues of patience amidst the trials of adversity with the dignity of a serene sweetness, and exalts even the frivolities of worldly pleasure with associations of heartfelt friendship and the refinements of music and song. Garlands entwined with myrtle, and wine-cups perfumed with nard, seem fit emblems of the banqueter who, when he indulges his Genius, invokes the Muse and invites the Grace. this tender humanity and with this pleasurable temperament is blended a singular manliness of sentiment. In no poet can be found lines that more rouse, or more respond to, the generous impulse of youth towards fortitude and courage, sincerity and honor, devoted patriotism, the superiority of mind over the vicissitudes of fortune, and a healthful reliance on the wisdom and goodness of the one divine providential Power, who has no likeness and no second, even in the family of Olympus. Though at times he speaks as the Epicurean, at other times as the Stoic, and sometimes as both in the same poem, he belongs exclusively to neither school. Out of both he has poetized a practical philosophy which, even in its inconsistencies, establishes a harmony with our own inconsistent natures; for most men are to this day in part Epicurean, in part Stoic. Horace is the poet of Eclecticism. From the width of his observation, and the generalizing character of his reasoning powers, Horace is more emphatically the representative of civilization than any other extant lyrical poet. Though describing the manners of his own time, he deals in types and pictures, sentiments and opinions, in which every civilized time finds likeness and expression. Hence men of the world claim him as one of their order, and they cheerfully accord to him an admiration which they scarcely concede to any other poet. It is not only the easy good-nature of his philosophy, and his lively wit, that secure to him this distinction, but he owes much also to that undefinable air of good-breeding which is independent of all conventional fashions, and is recognized in every society where the qualities that constitute good-breeding are esteemed. Catullus has quite as much wit, and is at least as lax, where he appears in the character of a man of pleasure -Catullus is equally intimate with the great men of his time, and in grace of diction is by many preferred to Horace ; yet Catullus has never attained to the same oracular eminence as Horace among men of the world, and does not, in their eyes, command the same rank in that high class of gentlemen-thorough-bred authors. For if we rightly interpret genius by ingenium—viz., the inborn spirit which accommodates all conventional circumstances around it to its own native property of form and growth-there is a genius of gentleman as there is a genius of poet. That which his countrymen called urbanitas, in contradistinction to provincial narrowness of mind or vulgarity of taste, to false finery and affected pretense, is the essential attribute of the son of the Venusian freedman. And with this quality, which needs for brilliant development familiar converse with the types of mind formed by a polished metropolis, Horace preserves, in a degree unknown to those who, like Pope and Boileau, re semble him more or less on the town-bred side of his character, the simple delight in rural nature, which makes him. the favorite companion of those whom cool woodlands, peopled with the beings of fable, "set apart from the crowd." He might be as familiar with Sir Philip Sidney in the shades of Penshurst, as with Lord Chesterfield in the saloons of Mayfair. And out of this rare combination of practical wisdom and poetical sentiment there grows that noblest part of his moral teaching which is distinct from schools and sects, and touches at times upon chords more spiritual than those who do not look below the surface would readily detect. Hence, in spite of his occasional sins, he has always found indulgent favor with the clergy of every Church. Among、 the dozen books which form the library of the village curé of France, Horace is sure to be one; and the greatest dignitaries of our own Church are among his most sedulous critics and his warmest panegyrists. With all his melancholy conceptions of the shadow-land beyond the grave, and the halfsportive, half-pathetic injunction, therefore, to make the most of the passing hour, there lies deep within his heart a consciousness of nobler truths, which ever and anon finds impressive utterance, suggesting precepts and hinting consolations that elude the rod of Mercury, and do not accompany the dark flock to the shores of the Styx: ** "Virtus recludens immeritis mori Thus we find his thoughts interwoven with Milton's later meditations; and Condorcet, baffled in aspirations of human perfectibility on earth, dies in his dungeon with Horace by his side, open at the verse which says, by what arts of constancy and fortitude in mortal travail Pollux and Hercules attained to the citadels of light. It is, then, mainly to this large and many-sided nature in * See Milton's Sonnet xxi., To Cyriac Skinner. |