Part 8 (2/2)

Oh, would I had only on earth found a place In the days of that n.o.ble heroic old race!”

So much as a question of mere health and good feeling. But now our moralist appeals to higher considerations:--

”Do you set any store by good name, which we find Is more welcome than song to the ears of mankind?

Magnificent turbot, plate richly embossed, Will bring infinite shame with an infinite cost.

Add kinsmen and neighbours all furious, your own Disgust with yourself, when you find yourself groan For death, which has shut itself off from your hope, With not even a sou left to buy you a rope.

”'Most excellent doctrine!' you answer, 'and would, For people like Trausius, be all very good; But I have great wealth, and an income that brings In enough to provide for the wants of three kings.'

But is this any reason you should not apply Your superfluous wealth to ends n.o.bler, more high?

You so rich, why should any good honest man lack?

Our temples, why should they be tumbling to wrack?

Wretch, of all this great heap have you nothing to spare For our dear native land? Or why should you dare To think that misfortune will never o'ertake you?

Oh, then, what a b.u.t.t would your enemies make you!

Who will best meet reverses? The man who, you find, Has by luxuries pampered both body and mind?

Or he who, contented with little, and still Looking on to the future, and fearful of ill, Long, long ere a murmur is heard from afar, In peace has laid up the munitions of war?”

Alas for the wisdom, of Ofellus the sage! Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and the spectacle is still before us of the same selfishness, extravagance, and folly, which he rebuked so well and so vainly, but pushed to even greater excess, and more widely diffused, enervating the frames and ruining the fortunes of one great section of society, and helping to inspire another section, and that a dangerous one, with angry disgust at the hideous contrast between the opposite extremes of wretchedness and luxury which everywhere meets the eye in the great cities of the civilised world.

In the fourth Satire of the Second Book, Horace ridicules, in a vein of exquisite irony, the _gourmets_ of his day, who made a philosophy of flavours, with whom sauces were a science, and who had condensed into aphorisms the merits of the poultry, game, or fish of the different and often distant regions from which they were brought to Rome. Catius has been listening to a dissertation by some Brillat-Savarin of this cla.s.s, and is hurrying home to commit to his tablets the precepts by which he professes himself to have been immensely struck, when he is met by Horace, and prevailed upon to repeat some of them in the very words of this philosopher of the dinner-table. Exceedingly curious they are, throwing no small light both upon the materials of the Roman cuisine and upon the treatment by the Romans of their wines. Being delivered, moreover, with the epigrammatic precision of philosophical axioms, their effect is infinitely amusing. Thus:--

”Honey Aufidius mixed with strong Falernian; he was very wrong.”

”The flesh of kid is rarely fine, That has been chiefly fed on vine.”

”To meadow mushrooms give the prize, And trust no others, if you're wise.”

”Till I had the example shown, The art was utterly unknown Of telling, when you taste a dish, The age and kind of bird or fish.”

Horace professes to be enraptured at the depth of sagacity and beauty of expression in what he hears, and exclaims,--

”Oh, learned Catius, prithee, by Our friends.h.i.+p, by the G.o.ds on high, Take me along with you, to hear Such wisdom, be it far or near!

For though you tell me all--in fact, Your memory is most exact-- Still there must be some grace of speech, Which no interpreter can reach.

The look, too, of the man, the mien!

Which you, what fortune! having seen, May for that very reason deem Of no account; but to the stream, Even at its very fountain-head, I fain would have my footsteps led, That, stooping, I may drink my fill, Where such life-giving saws distil.”

Manifestly the poet was no gastronome, or he would not have dealt thus sarcastically with matters so solemn and serious as the gusts, and flavours, and ”sacred rage” of a highly-educated appet.i.te. At the same time, there is no reason to suppose him to have been insensible to the attractions of the ”_haute cuisine_,” as developed by the genius of the Vattel or Francatelli of Maecenas, and others of his wealthy friends.

Indeed, he appears to have been p.r.o.ne, rather than otherwise, to attack these with a relish, which his feeble digestion had frequent reason to repent. His servant Davus more than hints as much in the pa.s.sage above quoted (p. 83); and the consciousness of his own frailty may have given additional vigour to his a.s.saults on the ever-increasing indulgence in the pleasures of the table, which he saw gaining ground so rapidly around him.

CHAPTER VI.

HORACE'S LOVE POETRY.

When young, Horace threw himself ardently into the pleasures of youth; and his friends being, for the most part, young and rich, their banquets were sure to be sumptuous, and carried far into the night. Nor in these days did the ”_blanche aux yeux noirs_,” whose beauty and accomplishments formed the crowning grace of most bachelors' parties, fail to engage a liberal share of his attention. He tells us as much himself (Epistles, I. 14), when contrasting to the steward of his farm the tastes of his maturer years with the habits of his youth.

”He, whom fine clothes became, and glistering hair, Whom Cinara welcomed, that rapacious fair, As well you know, for his own simple sake, Who on from noon would wine in b.u.mpers take, Now quits the table soon, and loves to dream And drowse upon the gra.s.s beside a stream,”

adding, with a sententious brevity which it is hopeless to imitate, ”_Nec lusisse pudet, sed non incidere ludum_,”--

”Nor blushes that of sport he took his fill; He'd blush, indeed, to be tomfooling still.”

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