XXV.

The Songs of Horace.

(Fraser's Magazine, December, 1836.)

[Oddly associated with this concluding instalment of the Songs of Horace done into English by Mahony, through the mere coincidence of their appearing in the same number of Regina, is Croquis' comical etching of Buckstone, the low comedian, seated by his fireside, with aids to reflection as suggestive as a little cluster of glasses and decanters. This, the last of the Prout Papers, held the place of honour in Regina's closing number for 1836, standing, that is to say, at the forefront of the Magazine.]

DECADE THE FIFTH.

"NIL ADMIRARI prope res est una Numici
Solaque quæ possit facere et servare beatum."

HOR., Lib. I. Epist. VI.

"NOT TO ADMIRE is all the art I know

To make men happy, and to keep them so'

Plain truth, dear Murray, needs no flowers of speech:

So take it in the very words of CREECH.'

POPE'S Epistle to Lord Mansfield.

"But, had none admired,

Would POPE have sung, or HORACE been inspired?...
Gad! I must say I ne'er could see the very

Great happiness of this 'NIL ADMIRARI.'"

BYRON, Juan, canto v. st. 100, 101.

If the sentiment sought to be conveyed by the deepest moralist, as well as the sweetest songster of Rome, be correctly given "in the words of Creech," we must confess our utter inability to comprehend, and our decided repugnance to adopt it; for, in the catalogue of pleasurable sensations which help to make life endurable, we would rank at its very highest value that delightful and exalted feeling which in psychology is termed ADMIRATION. We hold the legitimate indulgence of that faculty to constitute a most refined species of intellectual enjoyment-not the less to be prized, for that the objects which call it forth happen to be scarce, and that opportunities are seldom afforded of yielding up the soul to its delightful influence. Other and opposite emotions

can be felt at every hand's turn. Take, for example, those of PITY or CONTEMPT. Fit objects of compassion abound: Palmerston, for instance (like the poor), we have with us always; and as for the rest of the crawling set, from Russell to Rice, from Melbourne to Mulgrave, they seem, day after day, but to exist that the world may not lack a public exhibition of all that is truly despicable. LAUGHTER, also, may be enjoyed at a cheap rate. "Boz" wields (and long may he flourish it!) an indefatigable pen; Reeve is come back; and our old favourite, Brougham, is busy bottling up a rich stock of buffoonery quæ mox depromat among the Lords. But ADMIRATION bides her time: her visits, angelic fashion, are few and far between. Yet is her presence ever sure to be felt while calm philosophy, pellucid reason, and patriot eloquence flow from the lips of LYNDHURST.

In literature, we are accused of being over fastidious; forasmuch, perhaps, as we value our admiration too highly to lavish it on every passing scribbler. The North American Review is here peculiarly amusing. In its October number, just received, and now lying in our waste-paper box, much comical indignation is vented on OLIVER YORKE for slighting a poor creature who some time ago pencilled his way among us, and has been since forgotten. All we can remember about the man was his publishing what he called a poem, "edited" by " Barry Cornwall," a fictitious name, under which one Proctor, a commissioner of lunacy in our courts, thought it part of his official functions to usher him into notice. We did not advert to that circumstance at the time, or we should have taken the hint, and adopted towards him, not the severity of justly provoked criticism, but the mild indulgence suited to his case. For we did not require the evidence of this "reviewer's" article to convince us that rational rebuke is wasted when the mind of the recipient is unsound. We are glad, however, of the opportunity afforded us, by this casual reference to American matters, for placing on record our unfeigned and cordial admiration of EDWIN FORREST, whom night after night we have seen tread our stage after a fashion which none but the disingenuous can hesitate to admire and to applaud.

It was observed of Charlemain, that greatness had so mixed itself up with his character, that it eventually compenetrated his very name, till magnificence and Charles were blended into the sound of CARLOMAGNE. The sentiment of ADMIRATION has similarly worked itself into individual nomenclature on two occasions: viz. in the case of St. Gregory, Thaumaturge," and in that of an accomplished cavalier who burst on the close of the sixteenth century "the admirable Crichton." To the story of that gallant scholar we have, in another part of our current Number, taken an opportunity of alluding; and having therein, as we think, fairly plucked out the heart of the mystery, we shall not here stop to notice a book which will probably be the μɛya davμa of the season.

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But returning to the " words of Creech," do they fairly give the meaning of Horace? We don't believe it. The plain English of the maxim is, "Let nothing take you by surprise;" and its practical effect would merely go to preserve the equilibrium of the mind from any sudden and violent upset. The translation of Creech affords one of the many instances in which to be literal is to misinterpret. Old Roger Bacon attributes the subtle fooleries of scholastic wrangling which arose in his day to the bad Latin versions of Aristotle. A Greek term was Latinized into one apparently synonymous, and the metaphysical niceties of the original vanished in the process. Vulgus studentium ASININAT circà male translata are the words in which he of the brazen head ridicules contemporary disputation. The delicate subtleties of poetical diction are still more evanescent; and of translations which render with mere verbal fidelity, it may be said, when they appear side by side with the text, that, though VENUS may preside over the graceful original, the clumsy version

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hobbles with all the awkwardness of VULCAN. Such was the idea of a French wit, on perusing Abbé Pélégrin's translation of our poet

"L'on devrait (soit dit entre nous)

A deux divinités offrir les deux HORACES:
Le latin à Venus la déese des graces,

Et le françois...à son époux."

LA MONNAYE.

In a Venetian folio edition, published by the celebrated Denis Lambinus (whose style of writing was so tedious, that lambiner" became French for "to loiter"), there are some complimentary verses addressed to him, which he has taken care to print, and which are too good to be forgotten. Therein Horace is represented as consulting a saga, or Roman gipsy, concerning the future fate of his works; when, alluding to the ophthalmic affection under which he is known to have laboured, the prophetic hag maketh the vaticination following

Talia respondit motâ vates anus urnâ-

"Dura parens genuit te lippum, Flacce; noverca
"Durior eripiet mox ætas lumen utrumque,
"Nec teipsum agnosces nec cognosceris ab ullo.
"At tibi LAMBINI raptum collyria lumen

Inlita restituent: clarusque interprete tanto
"Nec lippus nec cæcus eris sed et integer ore."

Whereupon Denis triumphantly exclaims that what she foretold has come to pass, since, by the operation of his commentaries, such additional perspicuity has been shed over the text as to have materially improved the poet's eyesight

"Verum dixit anus,-HÆ sunt COLLYRIA CHARTÆ !”

The personal infirmity thus alluded to had procured for the Latin lyrist a sobriquet well known among his contemporaries, viz. "the weeping Flaccus :" nor can we refuse the merit of ingenuity to him who could make so unpoetical an idea the groundwork of so flattering a compliment. It is singular enough that these obscure lines should have suggested a celebrated epigram; for when Lefranc de Pompignan, in his Poesies Sacrées," versified the Lamentations of

Jeremiah, he received a testimonial exceedingly analogous from Voltaire

'Scavez vous pourquoi Jeremie,

A tant pleuré pendant sa vie?
C'est qu'en prophete il prevoyait,
Qu'un jour Lefranc le traduerait.

Know ye why JEREMY, that holy man,
Spent all his days in lamentations bitter?
Prophetic soul! he knew that Pompignan
One day would bring him out in Gallic metre.

That the labours of the father may call forth a similar congratulatory effusion is more than we dare conjecture in these critical times. Yet we trust that, notwithstanding the general depreciation of all sorts of scrip, with exchequer bills at such an alarming discount, Prout paper may be still negotiated.

OLIVER YORKE.

REGENT STREET, Nov. 20.

WATERGRASSHILL; after Vespers.

A few years previous to the outbreak of civil war between Octavius and Marc Antony, the poet Horace and a Greek professor of elocution (Heliodorus) received an intimation from Mecenas of his wish to enjoy their company on a trip connected with some diplomatic mission (missi magnis de rebus) to the port of Benevento. The proposal was readily accepted by these hommes de

lettres, who accordingly started from Rome toward the close of autumn, anno U.C. 720. Their intelligent patron had appointed to meet them at ANXUR, a place better known by its more musical name of TERRACINA, -(two popular productions contributing to its celebrity, viz. "Horatii Opera," and the opera of "Fra Diavolo")-whence, having received an important accession to their party by the arrival of VIRGIL and VARIUS, they proceeded by easy ages along the whole line of the Via Appia, to the utmost terminus of that immortal causeway on the Adriatic.

Such excursions were frequent enough among the cockneys of Rome; and forming, as these things did, part of the ordinary occurrences of commonplate life, had intrinsically little to recommend them to the poet or the historian as subjects for story or for song. The proverbial difficulty of raising up such matters to the level of elegant composition-proprié communia dicere (Ep. ad. Pison.)-was here pre-eminent. But genius is, perhaps, as frequently displayed in the selection of the objects on which to exercise its faculty as in the working out of its once adopted conceptions; and mediocrity would no more have first chosen such a theme for its musings, than it would have afterwards treated it in the manner it has been executed by Horace.

"Cose in prosa mai dette ne in rima"

formed the aspiration of Ariosto; Milton gloried in grappling with

"Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme;"

and both exhibited originality, not only in the topics they fixed upon, but in their method of handling them. The iter Brundusii was without precedent in all the range of previously existing literature; it has remained unrivalled amid all the sketches of a similar kind which have been called into existence by its felicitous example.

"

There was, doubtless, nothing very new or wondrous in the practice of keeping a note-book while on a journey, or in registering duly each trivial incident of roadside experience. But when this ex-colonel of a legion at Philippi, in one of his leisure hours, at the remote outport whither he had accompanied an illustrious friend, conceived the idea of embodying the contents of his pugillaria into the graceful shape which they now wear (Lib. I. Sat. V.), giving them a local habitation and a permanency among his works, he did more than merely delight his travelling companions, immortalize the villages along the route, and electrify by his graphic touch the listless idlers of the capital; he positively founded a new SECT-he propounded the KORAN of a new creedhe established the great SCHOOL of 'peripatetic" writers; furnishing the precious prototype on which thousands of disciples would, in after time, systematically model their literary compositions. By thus showing that. the mere personal occurrences and anecdotes of a pleasure trip were capable of being wrought into so interesting a narrative, he unconsciously, by opening a new department in the theory of bookmaking, furnished a new field for the industry of the pen. There is no conjecturing how far a simple hint may be improved on in this quarter. Had not the African enthusiasm of St. Augustin suggested to that most impassioned of the Fathers the idea of publishing his "Confessions," the practice of composing personal memoirs, the art of autobiography, which of late years has taken such wide extension, would, perhaps, have never been attempted. Peter Abelard would not have mustered courage to enlighten the dark ages, as he has done, with a full and true account of his doleful catastrophe (historia calamitatum suarum"); and a later age would not, in all probability, have been favoured with the confessions of the maniac Rousseau. May it not be similarly predicated of this famous Itinerary, that had it not given the first impulse, the world had wanted many an idle "TOUR?"