Part 4 (2/2)
F_orego the dirge; let no one raise the cry_, O_r make unseemly show of grief and gloom_, N_or think o'er me, who shall not really die_, T_o rear the empty honor of the tomb_.
His real self will remain among men, ever springing afresh in their words of praise:
N_ot lasting bronze nor pyramid upreared_ B_y princes shall outlive my powerful rhyme_.
T_he monument I build, to men endeared_, N_ot biting rain, nor raging wind, nor time_, E_ndlessly flowing through the countless years_, S_hall e'er destroy. I shall not wholly die_; T_he grave shall have of me but what appears_; F_or me fresh praise shall ever multiply_.
A_s long as priest and silent Vestal wind_ T_he Capitolian steep, tongues shall tell o'er_ H_ow humble Horace rose above his kind_ W_here Aufidus's rus.h.i.+ng waters roar_ I_n the parched land where rustic Daunus reigned_, A_nd first taught Grecian numbers how to run_ I_n Latin measure. Muse! the honor gained_ I_s thine, for I am thine till time is done_.
G_racious Melpomene, O hear me now_, A_nd with the Delphic bay gird round my brow_.
Yet Horace does not always refer to his poetry in this serious vein; if indeed we are to call serious a manner of literary prophecy which has always been more or less conventional. His frequent disclaimers of the higher inspiration are well known. The Muse forbids him to attempt the epic strain or the praise of Augustus and Agrippa. In the face of grand themes like these, his genius is slight. He will not essay even the strain of Simonides in the lament for an Empire stained by land and sea with the blood of fratricidal war. His themes shall be rather the feast and the mimic battles of revelling youths and maidens, the making of love in the grots of Venus. His lyre shall be jocose, his plectrum of the lighter sort.
He not only half-humorously disclaims the capacity for lofty themes, but, especially as he grows older and more philosophic, and perhaps less lyric, half-seriously attributes whatever he does to persevering effort.
He has
”N_or the pride nor ample pinion_ T_hat the Theban eagle bear_, S_ailing with supreme dominion_ T_hrough the azure deep of air_;”
he is the bee, with infinite industry flitting from flower to flower, the unpretending maker of verse, fas.h.i.+oning his songs with only toil and patience. He believes in the file, in long delay before giving forth to the world the poem that henceforth can never be recalled. The only inspiration he claims for _Satire_ and _Epistle_, which, he says, approximate the style of spoken discourse, lies in the aptness and patience with which he fas.h.i.+ons his verses from language in ordinary use, giving to words new dignity by means of skillful combination. Let anyone who wishes to be convinced undertake to do the same; he will find himself perspiring in a vain attempt.
And if Horace did not always conceive of his inspiration as purely ethereal, neither did he always dream of the path to immortality as leading through the s.p.a.cious reaches of the upper air. At forty-four, he is already aware of a more pedestrian path. He has observed the ways of the public with literature, as any writer must observe them still, and knows also of a certain use to which his poems are being put. Perhaps with some secret pride, but surely with a philosophic resignation that is like good-humored despair, he sees that the path is pedagogical. In reproachful tones, he addresses the book of _Epistles_ that is so eager to try its fortune in the big world: But if the prophet is not blinded by disgust at your foolishness, you will be prized at Rome until the charm of youth has left you. Then, soiled and worn by much handling of the common crowd, you will either silently give food to vandal worms, or seek exile in Utica, or be tied up and sent to Ilerda. The monitor you did not heed will laugh, like the man who sent his balky a.s.s headlong over the cliff; for who would trouble to save anyone against his will?
This lot, too, you may expect: for a stammering old age to come upon you teaching children to read in the out-of-the-way parts of town.
2. HORACE AND ANCIENT ROME
That Horace refers to being pointed out by the pa.s.ser-by as the minstrel of the Roman lyre, or, in other words, as the laureate, that his satire provokes sufficient criticism to draw from him a defense and a justification of himself against the charge of cynicism, and that he finally records a greater freedom from the tooth of envy, are all indications of the prominence to which he rose. That Virgil and Varius, poets of recognized worth, and their friend Plotius Tucca, third of the whitest souls of earth, introduced him to the attention of Maecenas, and that the discriminating lover of excellence became his patron and made him known to Augustus, are evidences of the appeal of which he was capable both as poet and man. In the many names of worthy and distinguished men of letters and affairs to whom he addresses the individual poems, and with whom he must therefore have been on terms of mutual respect, is seen a further proof. Even Virgil contains pa.s.sages disclosing a more than ordinary familiarity with Horace's work, and men like Ovid and Propertius, of whose personal relations with Horace nothing is known, not only knew but absorbed his poems.
If still further evidence of Horace's worth is required, it may be seen in his being invited to commemorate the exploits of Drusus and Tiberius, the royal stepsons, against the hordes of the North, and the greatness of Augustus himself, ever-present help of Italy, and imperial Rome; and in the Emperor's expression of disappointment, sometime before the second book of _Epistles_ was published, that he had been mentioned in none of the ”Talks.” And, finally, if there remained in the minds of his generation any shadow of doubt as to the esteem in which he was held by the foremost men in the State, who were in most cases men of letters as well as patrons of letters, it was dispelled when, in the year 17, Horace was chosen to write the _Secular Hymn_, for use in the greatest religious and patriotic festival of the times.
These facts receive greater significance from an appreciation of the poet's sincerity and independence. He will restore to Maecenas his gifts, if their possession is to mean a curb upon the freedom of living his nature calls for. He declines a secretarys.h.i.+p to the Emperor himself, and without offense to his imperial friend, who bids him be free of his house as if it were his own.
But Horace must submit also to the more impartial judgment of time. Of the two innovations which gave him relief against the general background, one was the amplification of the crude but vigorous satire of Lucilius into a more perfect literary character, and the other was the persuasion of the Greek lyric forms into Roman service. Both examples had their important effects within the hundred years that followed on Horace's death.
The satire and epistle, which Horace hardly distinguished, giving to both the name of _Sermo_, or ”Talk,” was the easier to imitate. Persius, dying in the year 62, at the age of twenty-eight, was steeped in Horace, but lacked the gentle spirit, the genial humor, and the suavity of expression that make Horatian satire a delight. In Juvenal, writing under Trajan and Hadrian, the tendency of satire toward consistent aggressiveness which is present in Horace and further advanced in Persius, has reached its goal. With Juvenal, satire is a matter of the lash, of vicious cut and thrust. Juvenal may tell the truth, but the smiling face of Horatian satire has disappeared. With him the line of Roman satire is extinct, but the nature of satire for all time to come is fixed. Juvenal, employing the form of Horace and subst.i.tuting for his content of mellow contentment and good humor the bitterness of an outraged moral sense, is the last Roman and the first modern satirist.
The _Odes_ found more to imitate them, but none to rival. The most p.r.o.nounced example of their influence is found in the choruses of the tragic poet Seneca, where form and substance alike are constantly reminiscent of Horace. Two comments on the _Odes_ from the second half of the first century are of even greater eloquence than Seneca's example as testimonials to the impression made by the Horatian lyric. Petronius, of Nero's time, speaks of the poet's _curiosa felicitas_, meaning the gift of arriving, by long and careful search, at the inevitable word or phrase. Quintilian, writing his treatise on Instruction, sums him up thus: ”Of our lyric poets, Horace is about the only one worth reading; for he sometimes reaches real heights, and he is at the same time full of delightfulness and grace, and both in variety of imagery and in words is most happily daring.” To these broad strokes the modern critic has added little except by way of elaboration.
The _Life of Horace_, written by Suetonius, the secretary of Hadrian, contains evidence of another, and perhaps a stronger, character regarding the poet's power. We see that doubtful imitations are beginning to circulate. ”I possess,” says the imperial secretary, ”some elegies attributed to his pen, and a letter in prose, supposed to be a recommendation of himself to Maecenas, but I think that both are spurious; for the elegies are commonplace, and the letter is, besides, obscure, which was by no means one of his faults.”
The history of Roman literature from the end of the first century after Christ is the story of the decline of inspiration, the decline of taste, the decline of language, the decline of intellectual interest. Beneath it all and through it all there is spreading, gradually and silently, the insidious decay that will surely crumble the const.i.tution of the ancient world. Pagan letters are uncreative, and, with few exceptions, without imagination and dull. The literature of the new religion, beginning to push green shoots from the ruins of the times, is a mingling of old and new substance under forms that are always old.
In the main, neither Christian nor pagan will be attracted by Horace.
The Christian will see in his gracious resignation only the philosophy of despair, and in his light humors only careless indulgence in the vanities of this world and blindness to the eternal concerns of life.
The pagan will not appreciate the delicacy of his art, and will find the abundance of his literary, mythological, historical, and geographical allusion, the compactness of his expression, and the maturity and depth of his intellect, a barrier calling for too much effort. Both will prefer Virgil--Virgil of ”arms and the man,” the story-teller, Virgil the lover of Italy, Virgil the glorifier of Roman deeds and destiny, Virgil the readily understood, Virgil who has already drawn aside, at least partly, the veil that hangs before the mystic other-world, Virgil the almost Christian prophet, with the almost Biblical language, Virgil the spiritual, Virgil the comforter.
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