thought which enters into all his meditations on life, but by danger apparently from failing health or accident threatening his own life, and by anxieties for one whose life was as dear to him as his own. The love poems, by which the prevailing tone of pensive melancholy is relieved, are absolutely free from any trace of personal passion. They are humorous and ironical, and composed in the spirit of one Cuius octavum trepidavit aetas and who finds amusement in contemplating the affairs of his younger associates. The general character of the book is marked by greater independence in his art, greater maturity of thought, and a deepening of seriousness in his personal relations and in the feeling with which he contemplates life. Non usitata nec tenui ferar Penna, is the self-assertion of a poet who wished himself to be regarded as something more than the 'idle singer of an empty day.' There is greater maturity of thought and feeling in the Odes of the third book; and still more prominence is given in them to the graver interests of life. He assumes in its opening stanza the office of the priest of the Muses, the prophetic teacher of the new generation. The world has entered on its new life. There are no longer regrets for the past, except in so far as the corruption of the age calls for a remedy. In this book he is, like Virgil, the national and religious poet of Imperial Rome. There is accordingly a severer tone in his moral teaching ('Intactis opulentior,' iii. 24), and a graver and more imaginative utterance of his philosophy of life (‘Tyrrhena regum progenies,' iii. 29); yet in all his art, as in his life, he aims at tempering the grave interests of life with its gaiety and charm. In those which express this charm, whether in human and social relations, or in nature (as 7, 13, and 23), there is a purer and more disinterested feeling. He shows not only greater maturity of art, but is conscious of a more powerful inspiration ('Quo me, Bacche, rapis,' iii. 25). He is more proudly conscious of the greatness of his task, and of the success with which he has accomplished it. In his last poem he associates the eternity of his fame (as Virgil does in the ninth Aeneid) with the great symbol of the eternity of Rome— dum Capitolium Scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex. The fourth book and the Carmen Seculare were tasks which he was called upon to perform on a great public occasion and in celebration of great victories. The serious and national tone is naturally that which predominates in them. The Odes inspired by public feeling are relieved by others, either the direct expression of personal feeling, or dealing with the old subjects of love and wine; but these are evidently subsidiary to those referring to public events. The composition of his Odes may therefore be considered as having extended over nearly the whole of his literary career. But it was in the eight or ten years following the battle of Actium, when the national mind was most stirred, and the conditions of his own life were most favourable to lyrical inspiration, that his art was most mature. It is uncertain whether any of the Odes were in any way published at the time of their composition, and if so, what was the mode of their publication. In his Satires he declares his aversion to the practice of public recitation, but he was willing to gratify a select audience nobilium scriptorum auditor et ultor. It is natural to suppose that the Odes addressed to individuals should have been sent to them, and should thus have obtained some currency before they were published collectively. It is possible also that there may have been some partial publication of some collection of his Odes before the completion of the first three books. But the Epilogue, when compared with the Prologue, shows that these three books were finally published as a collective whole, and were so regarded by the poet. They were so arranged also as to give a different character to each of the three books, and to make them representative of the earlier, middle, and mature period of his lyrical activity. Yet this purpose is modified by his strong determination to avoid harping too long on the same string. Thus some of his slightest pieces, expressive of his most careless moods, are interspersed among the graver utterances of the third book. So, too, whilst the great mass of the Odes in the first book belong to his earliest period, one at least (i. 24), if we can trust the date given by Jerome for the death of Quintilius, must have been composed seven years after the battle of Actium. But there are several about which we can speak with considerable confidence as reflecting the public sentiment during particular phases of the national fortunes, or as representative of the poet's art at different stages of its maturity, and of his personal feelings at different stages of his career. There is one of these (i. 3) the date of which has excited much controversy; as on the view taken of it depends the view taken of the date of the publication of the three books. Two views are held about this date: one that the poems were not given to the world in their present shape till about the middle of the year 19 B. C.; the other that they appeared some time in 23 B. C. The first opinion rests mainly on the opinion formed as to the occasion of the composition of the Ode, 'Sic te diva potens Cypri.' That Ode is addressed to the ship which was to bear Virgil on his voyage to Athens. We know that Virgil sailed to Athens in the spring of the year 19, and, on his return in September of the same year, died on landing at Brundisium. We know of no other voyage to Greece made or contemplated by him. But we know very little of the events of his life from the time that he retired to Naples about 37 B. C. We hear vaguely that he visited and lived for some time in Sicily; and passages in the third and fourth books of the Aeneid seem to reproduce the impressions of an eye-witness of the scenes there described. There is at least no improbability that Virgil made an earlier voyage to Greece, the impressions of which may perhaps be traced in the account of the voyage of Aeneas among the islands of the Aegean and past the shores of Epirus. If the Ode refers to his last voyage, it must have been composed immediately before the publication of the three books, which must then have taken place in the interval between the departure of Virgil and his death in the following September. The position assigned to it among Odes all referring to the earlier period of Horace's art, would in that case be very remarkable. It is urged that Horace wished to introduce his work to the world with Odes indicative of his relations to Maecenas, Augustus, and the greatest poet of the age. If it was intended to do special honour to Virgil by this juxtaposition, that purpose might have been served by placing there the twenty-fourth Ode, which is a truer tribute to his worth. If the poem were really written after the completion of the Georgics and Aeneid, we should have expected not only an expression of personal affection, but some reference to Virgil's pre-eminence as a poet. Different opinions may be formed as to the relative merits of the poem. It certainly shows imaginative power and concentrated energy of expression. But the thought is conventional and unreal. It is essentially the old theological thought of the sinfulness of human enterprise, to which Hesiod first gave expression, and which Virgil has himself reproduced in the fourth Eclogue Pauca tamen suberunt priscae vestigia fraudis, It is true that even in Horace's maturest art the thought is often obvious and commonplace. But then it is in accordance with fact, and is a comment on real experience. A somewhat similar thought is expressed in iii. 24 si neque fervidis Pars inclusa caloribus Mundi nec Boreae finitimum latus Durataeque solo nives Mercatorem abigunt, horrida callidi Vincunt aequora navitae. There is solidity and reality in the thought that the stimulus to all the enterprise of the time is the passion for luxury. That an event so ordinary as a voyage from Brundisium to Greece should suggest the thought that the wickedness of man will not allow Jove to lay aside his angry thunderbolts, is so little in keeping with the moderation of Horace in the maturest period of his art, that it has been explained as irony. Yet it is still more improbable that in this Ode, bidding god-speed to the friend of whom he speaks as 'animae dimidium meae,' he is rallying him on his timidity. The lines in ii. 9. 18-24 et potius nova Cantemus Augusti tropaea, have been thought to refer to the results obtained from the Parthians in the year 20 B.C. But a comparison of the stanza. Medumque flumen gentibus additum Intraque praescriptum Gelonos Exiguis equitare campis, with Virgil's description of Caesar's great triumph on his return from the East in 28 B. C. (Aen. viii. 725), Hic Lelegas Carasque sagittiferosque Gelonos Finxerat; Euphrates ibat iam mollior undis, renders it much more probable that these lines refer to the events in the East following the capture of Alexandria, which produced a great impression at Rome; and that the poem was written in the year 27 B.C., immediately after Caesar received the title of Augustus. While therefore the evidence afforded in these two Odes does not require the date of publication to be deferred to the year 19 B.C., the evidence of the first book of the Epistles points to the conclusion that that book was given to the world not later than 19 B.C., and that it appeared at some considerable interval of time after the appearance of the Odes. In the first Epistle Horace speaks of himself as having laid aside versus et cetera ludicra.' He excuses himself to Maecenas, who wished him to resume his old task, with the plea, Non eadem est aetas, non mens. |