Part 6 (2/2)

Goethe praises Horace for lyric charm and for understanding of art and life, and studies his meters while composing the _Elegies_. Nietzsche's letters abound in quotation and phrase. Even the Church in Germany shows the impress of Horace in some of her greatest hymns, which are in Alcaics and Sapphics of Horatian origin. To speak of the German editors, commentators, and critics of the nineteenth century would be almost to review the history of Horace in modern school and university; such has been the ardor of the German soul and the industry of the German mind.

_iv_. IN SPAIN

A glance at the use of Horace in Spain will afford not the least edifying of modern examples. The inventories of Spanish libraries in the Middle Age rarely contain the name of Horace, or the names of his lyric brethren, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. Virgil, Lucan, Martial, Seneca, and Pliny are much more frequent. It was not until the fifteenth century that reminiscences of the style and ideas of Horace began to appear in quant.i.ty. Imitation rather than translation was the vehicle of Spanish enthusiasm. The fountain of Horatianism in Spain was the imitation of _Epode II_, _Beatus Ille_, by the Marquis de Santillana, one of Castile's two first sonneteers, in the first half of the fifteenth century. Garcilaso also produced many imitations of the _Odes_. The Horatian lyric seemed especially congenial to the Spanish spirit and language. Fray Luis de Leon, of Salamanca, the first real Spanish poet, and the most inspired of all the Spanish lovers of Horace, was an example of the poet translating the poet where both were great men. He not only brought back to life once more ”that marvelous sobriety, that rapidity of idea and conciseness of phrase, that terseness and brilliance, that sovereign calm and serenity in the spirit of the artist,” which characterized the ancient poet, but added to the Horatian lyre the new string of Christian mysticism, and thus wedded the ancient and the modern. ”Luis de Leon is our great Horatian poet,” says Menendez y Pelayo. Lope de Vega wrote an _Ode to Liberty_, and was influenced by the _Epistles_. The _Flores de Poetas il.u.s.tres de Espana_, arranged by Pedro Espinosa and published in 1605 at Valladolid, included translations of eighteen odes. Hardly a lyric poet of the eighteenth century failed to turn some part of Horace into Spanish. Salamanca perfected the ode, Seville the epistle, Aragon the satire. Mendoza in his nine _Epistles_ shows his debt to Horace. In 1592, Luis de Zapata published at Lisbon a not very successful verse translation of the _Ars Poetica_. In 1616, Francisco de Cascales of Murcia published _Fablas Poeticas_, containing in dialogue the substance of the same composition, which had been translated by Espinel, 1551-1624, and which was translated again in 1684, twice in 1777, and in 1827. Seville founded a Horatian Academy. The greatest of the Spanish translators of Horace entire was Javier de Burgos, whose edition of four volumes, 1819-1844, is called by Menendez y Pelayo the only readable complete translation of Horace, ”one of the most precious and enviable jewels of our modern literature,” and ”perhaps the best of all Horaces in the neo-Latin tongues.” The nearest rival of Burgos was Martinez de la Rosa. The greatest Spanish scholar and critic of Horace is Menendez y Pelayo, editor of the _Odes_, 1882, and author of _Horacio en Espana_, 1885.

In the index of _Horacio en Espana_ are to be found the names of 165 Castilian translators of the poet, 50 Portuguese, 10 Catalan, 2 Asturian, and 1 Galician. There appear the names of 29 commentators. Of complete translations, there are 6 Castilian and 1 Portuguese; of complete translations of the _Odes_, 6 Castilian and 7 Portuguese; of the _Satires_, 1 Castilian and 2 Portuguese; of the _Epistles_, 1 Castilian and 1 Portuguese; of the _Ars Poetica_, 35 Castilian, 11 Portuguese, and 1 Catalan. The sixteenth century translators were distinguished in general by facility and grace, the freshness and abandon of youth, and a considerable degree of freedom, or even license.

Those of the eighteenth show a gain in accuracy and a loss in spirit.

_v_. IN ENGLAND

The appeal of Horace in England and English-speaking countries has been as fruitful as elsewhere in scholars.h.i.+p, with the possible exception of Germany. In its effect upon the actual fibre of literature and life, it has been more fruitful.

A review of Horatian study in England would include the names of Talbot and Baxter, but, above all, of the incomparably brilliant Richard Bentley, despite his excesses, themselves due to his very genius, the most famous and most stimulating critic and commentator of Horace the world has seen. His edition, appearing in 1711, provoked in 1717 the anti-Bentleian rejoinder of Richard Johnson, and in 1721 the more ambitious but equally unsuccessful attempt to discredit him by the Scotch Alexander Cunningham. The primacy in the study of Horace which Bentley conferred upon England had been enjoyed previously by the Low Countries and France, to which it had pa.s.sed from Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century. The immediate sign of this transfer of the center to northern lands was the publication in 1561 at Lyons of the edition containing the text revision and critical notes of Lambinus and the commentary of the famous Cruquius of Bruges. The celebrated Scaliger was unfavorably disposed to Horace, who found a defender in Heinsius, another scholar of the Netherlands. D'Alembert, who became a sort of _Ars Poetica_ to translators, published his _Observations_ at Amsterdam in 1763.

An account of the English translations of the poet would include many renderings of individual poems, such as those of Dryden, Sir Stephen E.

De Vere, and John Conington, and the version of Theodore Martin, probably the most successful complete metrical translation of Horace in any language. It is literally true that ”every theory of translation has been exemplified in some English rendering of Horace.”

It is in the field of literature, however, that the manifestations of Horace's hold upon the English are most numerous and most significant.

Even Shakespeare's ”small Latin” includes him, in _t.i.tus Andronicus_:

Demetrius.

W_hat's here? A scroll, and written round about!_ L_et's see_:

Integer vitae scelerisque purus Non eget Mauri jaculis nec arcu.

Chiron.

O_, 'tis a verse in Horace; I know it well_: I_ read it in the grammar long ago_.

The mere mention of English authors in poetry and prose who were touched and kindled by the Horatian flame would amount to a review of the whole course of English literature. It would begin princ.i.p.ally with Spenser and Ben Jonson, who in some measure represented in their land what the Pleiad meant in France, and Opitz and his following in Germany. ”Steep yourselves in the cla.s.sics,” was Jonson's counsel, and his countrymen did thus steep themselves to such a degree that it is possible for the student to say of Milton's times: ”The door to English literature and history of the seventeenth century is open wide to those who are at ease in the presence of Latin. Many writings and events of the time may doubtless be understood and enjoyed by readers ignorant of the cla.s.sics, but to them the heart and spirit of the period as a whole will hardly be revealed. Poetry, philosophy, history, biography, controversy, sermons, correspondence, even conversation,--all have come down to us from the age of Milton either written in or so touched with Latin that one is compelled to enter seventeenth century England by way of Rome as Rome must be entered by way of Athens.”

Great as was the vogue of Latin in the earlier centuries, it was the first half of the eighteenth, the most critical period in English letters, that realized to the full the virtues of Horace. His words in the _Ars Poetica_ ”were accepted, even more widely than the laws of Aristotle, as the standard of critical judgment. Addison and Steele by their choice of mottoes for their periodicals, Prior by his adoption of a type of lyric that has since his time been designated as Horatian, and Pope with his imposing series of _Imitations_, gave such an impulse to the already widespread interest that it was carried on through the whole of the century.” ”Horace may be said to pervade the literature of the eighteenth century in three ways: as a teacher of political and social morality; as a master of the art of poetry; and as a sort of _elegantiae arbiter_.” Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, and Fielding, Gay, Samuel Johnson, Chesterfield, and Walpole, were all familiar with and fond of Horace, and took him unto themselves.

In the nineteenth century, Wordsworth has an intimate familiarity with Virgil, Catullus, and Horace, but loves Horace best; Coleridge thinks highly of his literary criticism; Byron, who never was greatly fond of him, frequently quotes him; Sh.e.l.ley reads him with pleasure; Browning's _The Ring and the Book_ contains many quotations from him; Thackeray makes use of phrases from the _Odes_ ”with an ease and facility which nothing but close intimacy could produce”; Andrew Lang addresses to him the most charming of his _Letters to Dead Authors_; and Austin Dobson is inspired by him in many of his exquisite poems in lighter vein. These names, and those in the paragraphs preceding, are not all that might be mentioned. The literature of England is honey-combed with the cla.s.sic authors in general, and Horace is among the foremost. Without him and without the cla.s.sics, a great part of our literary patrimony is of little use.

_vi_. IN THE SCHOOLS

Of the place of Horace in the schools and universities of all these countries, and of the world of western civilization in general, it is hardly necessary to speak. The enlightened sentiment of the five hundred years since the death of Petrarch has been enthusiastic in the conviction that the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics are indispensable to instruction of the first quality, and that among them Horace is of exceeding value as a model of poetic taste and as an influence in the formation of a philosophy of life. If his place has been less secure in latter days, it is due less to alteration of that conviction than to extension of the educational system to the utilitarian arts and sciences, and to the pa.s.sing of educational control from the few to the general average.

III. HORACE THE DYNAMIC

THE CULTIVATED FEW

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