ODE XXII.

TO ARISTIUS FUSCUS.

Of Aristius Fuscus Horace speaks (Epp. i. 10) with parti cular affection. He says 'they were almost twins in their

He of life without flaw, pure from sin, need not borrow
Or the bow or the darts of the Moor, O my Fuscus !
He relies for defence on no quiver that teems with
Poison-steept arrows;

Though his path be along sultry African Syrtes,
Or Caucasian ravines, where no guest finds a shelter,
Or the banks which Hydaspes, the River of Story,
Licks languid-flowing.

For as lately I strayed beyond pathways accustomed,
And with heart free from care was of Lalage singing,
A wolf in the thick of the deep Sabine forest

Met, and straight fled me,

tastes

All unarmed though I was; yet so deadly a monster Warlike Daunia ne'er bred in her wide acorned forests, Nor the thirst-raging nurse of the lion-swart Juba's African sand-realm.

Place me lone in the sterile wastes, where not a leaflet
Ever bursts into bloom in the breezes of summer;
Sunless side of the world, which the grim air oppresses,
Mist-clad and ice-bound;

tastes and sentiments.' Fuscus appears to have been an author, but there is some doubt as to what he wrote, Acron says Tragedies '-Porphyrion, Comedies;' which last supposition seems more in keeping with the humorous joke he plays upon Horace, Sat i. 9. Cruquius says he was a grammarian.

CARM. XXII.

Integer vitæ scelerisque purus
Non eget Mauris jaculis, neque arcu,
Nec venenatis gravida sagittis,
Fusce, pharetra ;

Sive per Syrtes iter æstuosas,
Sive facturus per inhospitalem
Caucasum, vel quæ loca fabulosus
Lambit Hydaspes.

Namque me silva lupus in Sabina,
Dum meam canto Lalagen, et ultra
Terminum curis vagor expeditis,
Fugit inermem;

Quale portentum neque militaris
Daunias latis alit æsculetis,

Nec Juba tellus generat, leonum
Arida nutrix.

Pone me, pigris ubi nulla campis

Arbor æstiva recreatur aura,

Quod latus mundi nebulæ malusque
Juppiter urget:

Place me lone where the earth is denied to man's dwelling, All so near to its breast glows the car of the day-god; And I still should love Lalage-her the sweet-smiling, Her the sweet-talking.1

If I might have allowed myself to expand the literal words of the original into what seems to me the sense implied by the poet, I should have proposed to translate the lines thus :

I still should love Lalage-see her, sweet smiling;

Hear her, sweet talking.'

For I take it that Horace does not merely mean that he would still love Lalage'sweetly smiling' and 'sweetly talking'-an assurance which seems in itself to belong to a school of poetry vulgarly called namby-pamby-but rather that, however solitary, still, and lifeless be the place to which he might be transported, he would still be so true to her image, that in the solitude he would see her sweetly smiling, and amidst the silence hear her sweetly talking. So Constance, in Shakespeare, says :

'Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in her bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on her pretty looks, repeats her words.'"

Pone sub curru nimium propinqui Solis, in terra domibus negata : Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo, Dulce loquentem.1

G

ODE XXIII.

TO CHLOE.

This ode has the appearance of being imitated, though but slightly, from a fragment in Anacreon preserved in 'Athenæus,' ix. p. 396. But it is not the less an illustration of the native grace with which Horace invests his more trivial compositions.

Like a fawn dost thou fly from me, Chloë,
Like a fawn that, astray on the hill-tops,

Her shy mother misses and seeks,

Vaguely scared by the breeze and the forest.

Shudders Spring,' newly born, thro' quick leaflets?
Slips the green lizard stirring a bramble?

She is seized with a panic of fear,

And her knees and her heart are one tremble.

Nay, but not as a merciless tiger,

Or an African lion I chase thee;

Ah! cling to a mother no more,

When thy girlhood is ripe for a lover.

'Munro, though preserving 'veris' in the text, argues (Introduction, p. xxi) in favour of the reading vepris, commended by Bentley and some earlier commentators. The main reason for his preference is, 'that the advent of Spring must mean when the genitabilis aura Favoni begins to blow freshly and steadily; that is, on some day in the month of February: but in the Italian forests the lightly moving leaves come almost, or quite, as late as in the English, and the zephyr blowing steadily for days together would be the last thing to startle a fawn.'

This criticism is founded on nice observation of details in external