Horace Part 12

[1] Galaesus (Galaso), a river; Aulon, a hill near Tarentum.

Septimius was himself a poet, or thought himself one, who,

"Holding vulgar ponds and runnels cheap, At Pindar's fount drank valiantly and deep,"

as Horace says of him in an Epistle (I. 3) to Julius Florus; adding, with a sly touch of humour, which throws more than a doubt on the poetic powers of their common friend,--

"Thinks he of me? And does he still aspire To marry Theban strains to Latium's lyre, Thanks to the favouring muse? Or haply rage And mouth in bombast for the tragic stage?"

When this was written Septimius was in Armenia along with Florus, on the staff of Tiberius Claudius Nero, the future emperor. For this appointment he was probably indebted to Horace, who applied for it, at his request, in the following Epistle to Tiberius (I. 9), which Addison ('Spectator,' 493) cites as a fine specimen of what a letter of introduction should be. Horace was, on principle, wisely chary of giving such introductions.

"Look round and round the man you recommend, For yours will be the shame if he offend," (C.)

is his maxim on this subject (Epistles, I. 18, 76); and he was sure to be especially scrupulous in writing to Tiberius, who, even in his youth--and he was at this time about twenty-two--was so morose and unpleasant in his manners, to say nothing of his ample share of the hereditary pride of the Claudian family, that even Augustus felt under constraint in his company:--

"Septimius only understands, 'twould seem, How high I stand in, Claudius, your esteem: For when he begs and prays me, day by day, Before you his good qualities to lay, As not unfit the heart and home to share Of Nero, who selects his friends with care; When he supposes you to me extend The rights and place of a familiar friend, Far better than myself he sees and knows, How far with you my commendation goes.

Pleas without number I protest I've used, In hope he'd hold me from the task excused, Yet feared the while it might be thought I feigned Too low the influence I perchance have gained, Dissembling it as nothing with my friends, To keep it for my own peculiar ends.

So, to escape such dread reproach, I put My blushes by, and boldly urge my suit.

If then you hold it as a grace, though small, To doff one's bashfulness at friendship's call, Enrol him in your suite, a.s.sured you'll find A man of heart in him, as well as mind."

We may be very sure that, among the many pleas urged by Horace for not giving Septimius the introduction he desired, was the folly of leaving his delightful retreat at Tarentum to go once more abroad in search of wealth or promotion. Let others "cross, to plunder provinces, the main,"

surely this was no ambition for an embryo Pindar or half-developed Aeschylus. Horace had tried similar remonstrances before, and with just as little success, upon Iccius, another of his scholarly friends, who sold off his fine library and joined an expedition into Arabia Felix, expecting to find it an El Dorado. He playfully asks this studious friend (Odes, I. 29), from whom he expected better things--"_pollicitus meliora_"--if it be true that he grudges the Arabs their wealth, and is actually forging fetters for the hitherto invincible Sabaean monarchs, and those terrible Medians? To which of the royal damsels does he intend to throw the handkerchief, having first cut down her princely betrothed in single combat? Or what young "oiled and curled" Oriental prince is for the future to pour out his wine for him? Iccius, like many another Raleigh, went out to gather wool, and came back shorn. The expedition proved disastrous, and he was lucky in being one of the few who survived it. Some years afterwards we meet with him again as the steward of Agrippa's great estates in Sicily. He has resumed his studies,--

"On themes sublime alone intent,-- What causes the wild ocean sway, The seasons what from June to May, If free the constellations roll, Or moved by some supreme control; What makes the moon obscure her light, What pours her splendour on the night."

Absorbed in these and similar inquiries, and living happily on "herbs and frugal fare," Iccius realises the n.o.ble promise of his youth; and Horace, in writing to him (Epist., I. 12), encourages him in his disregard of wealth by some of those hints for contentment which the poet never tires of reproducing:--

"Let no care trouble you; for poor That man is not, who can insure Whate'er for life is needful found.

Let your digestion be but sound, Your side unwrung by spasm or st.i.tch, Your foot unconscious of a twitch; And could you be more truly blest, Though of the wealth of kings possessed?"

It must have been pleasant to Horace to find even one among his friends ill.u.s.trating in his life this modest Socratic creed; for he is so constantly enforcing it, in every variety of phrase and metaphor, that while we must conclude that he regarded it as the one doctrine most needful for his time, we must equally conclude that he found it utterly disregarded. All round him wealth, wealth, wealth, was the universal aim: wealth, to build fine houses in town, and villas at Praeneste or Baiae; wealth, to stock them with statues, old bronzes (mostly fabrications from the Wardour Streets of Athens or Rome), ivories, pictures, gold plate, pottery, tapestry, stuffs from the looms of Tyre, and other _articles de luxe_; wealth, to give gorgeous dinners, and wash them down with the costliest wines; wealth, to provide splendid equipages, to forestall the front seats in the theatre, as we do opera-boxes on the grand tier, and so get a few yards nearer to the Emperor's chair, or gain a closer view of the favourite actor or dancer of the day; wealth, to secure a wife with a fortune and a pedigree; wealth, to attract gadfly friends, who will consume your time, eat your dinners, drink your wines, and then abuse them, and who will with amiable candour regale their circle by quizzing your foibles, or slandering your taste, if they are even so kind as to spare your character. "A dowried wife," he says (Epistles, I. 6),

"Friends, beauty, birth, fair fame, These are the gifts of money, heavenly dame; Be but a moneyed man, persuasion tips Your tongue, and Venus settles on your lips." (C.)

And to achieve this wealth, no sacrifice was to be spared--time, happiness, health, honour itself. "_Rem facias, rem! Si possis recte, si non, quocunque modo rem:_"--

"Get money, money still, And then let Virtue follow, if she will."

Wealth sought in this spirit, and for such ends, of course brought no more enjoyment to the contemporaries of Horace than we see it doing to our own. And not the least evil of the prevailing mania, then as now, was, that it robbed life of its simplicity, and of the homely friendliness on which so much of its pleasure depends. People lived for show--to propitiate others, not to satisfy their own better instincts or their genuine convictions; and straining after the shadow of enjoyment, they let the reality slip from their grasp. They never "were, but always to be, blest." It was the old story, which the world is continually re-enacting, while the sage stands by, and marvels at its folly, and preaches what we call commonplaces, in a vain endeavour to modify or to prevent it. But the wisdom of life consists of commonplaces, which we should all be much the better for working into our practice, instead of complacently sneering at them as plat.i.tudes. Horace abounds in commonplaces, and on no theme more than this. He has no divine law of duty to appeal to, as we have--no a.s.sured hereafter to which he may point the minds of men; but he presses strongly home their folly, in so far as this world is concerned. To what good, he asks, all this turmoil and disquiet? No man truly possesses more than he is able thoroughly to enjoy. Grant that you roll in gold, or, by acc.u.mulating land, become, in Hamlet's phrase, "s.p.a.cious in the possession of dirt." What pleasure will you extract from these, which a moderate estate will not yield in equal, if not greater, measure? You fret yourself to acquire your wealth--you fret yourself lest you should lose it. It robs you of your health, your ease of mind, your freedom of thought and action. Riches will not bribe inexorable death to spare you. At any hour that great leveller may sweep you away into darkness and dust, and what will it then avail you, that you have wasted all your hours, and foregone all wholesome pleasure, in adding ingot to ingot, or acre to acre, for your heirs to squander? Set a bound, then, to your desires: think not of how much others have, but of how much which they have you can do perfectly well without. Be not the slave of show or circ.u.mstance, "but in yourself possess your own desire." Do not lose the present in vain perplexities about the future. If fortune lours to-day, she may smile to-morrow; and when she lavishes her gifts upon you, cherish an humble heart, and so fortify yourself against her caprice. Keep a rein upon all your pa.s.sions--upon covetousness, above all; for once that has you within its clutch, farewell for ever to the light heart and the sleep that comes unbidden, to the open eye that drinks in delight from the beauty and freshness and infinite variety of nature, to the unclouded mind that judges justly and serenely of men and things. Enjoy wisely, for then only you enjoy thoroughly. Live each day as though it were your last.

Mar not your life by a hopeless quarrel with destiny. It will be only too brief at the best, and the day is at hand when its inequalities will be redressed, and king and peasant, pauper and millionaire, be huddled, poor shivering phantoms, in one undistinguishable crowd, across the melancholy Styx, to the judgment-hall of Minos. To this theme many of Horace's finest Odes are strung. Of these, not the least graceful is that addressed to Dellius (II. 3):--

"Let not the frowns of fate Disquiet thee, my friend, Nor, when she smiles on thee, do thou, elate With vaunting thoughts, ascend Beyond the limits of becoming mirth; For, Dellius, thou must die, become a clod of earth!

"Whether thy days go down In gloom, and dull regrets, Or, shunning life's vain struggle for renown, Its fever and its frets, Stretch'd on the gra.s.s, with old Falernian wine, Thou giv'st the thoughtless hours a rapture all divine.

"Where the tall spreading pine And white-leaved poplar grow, And, mingling their broad boughs in leafy twine, A grateful shadow throw, Where down its broken bed the wimpling stream Writhes on its sinuous way with many a quivering gleam,

"There wine, there perfumes bring, Bring garlands of the rose, Fair and too shortlived daughter of the spring, While youth's bright current flows Within thy veins,--ere yet hath come the hour When the dread Sisters Three shall clutch thee in their power.

"Thy woods, thy treasured pride, Thy mansion's pleasant seat, Thy lawns washed by the Tiber's yellow tide, Each favourite retreat, Thou must leave all--all, and thine heir shall run In riot through the wealth thy years of toil have won.

"It recks not whether thou Be opulent, and trace Thy birth from kings, or bear upon thy brow Stamp of a beggar's race; In rags or splendour, death at thee alike, That no compa.s.sion hath for aught of earth, will strike.

"One road, and to one bourne We all are goaded. Late Or soon will issue from the urn Of unrelenting Fate The lot, that in yon bark exiles us all To undiscovered sh.o.r.es, from which is no recall."

In a still higher strain he sings (Odes, III. 1) the ultimate equality of all human souls, and the vanity of enc.u.mbering life with the anxieties of ambition or wealth:--

"Whate'er our rank may be, We all partake one common destiny!

In fair expanse of soil, Teeming with rich returns of wine and oil, His neighbour one outvies; Another claims to rise To civic dignities, Because of ancestry and n.o.ble birth, Or fame, or proved pre-eminence of worth, Or troops of clients, clamorous in his cause; Still Fate doth grimly stand, And with impartial hand The lots of lofty and of lowly draws From that capacious urn Whence every name that lives is shaken in its turn.

"To him, above whose guilty head, Suspended by a thread, The naked sword is hung for evermore, Not feasts Sicilian shall With all their cates recall That zest the simplest fare could once inspire; Nor song of birds, nor music of the lyre Shall his lost sleep restore: But gentle sleep shuns not The rustic's lowly cot, Nor mossy bank o'ercanopied with trees, Nor Tempe's leafy vale stirred by the western breeze.

"The man who lives content with whatsoe'er Sufficeth for his needs, The storm-tossed ocean vexeth not with care, Nor the fierce tempest which Arcturus breeds, When in the sky he sets, Nor that which Hoedus, at his rise, begets: Nor will he grieve, although His vines be all laid low Beneath the driving hail, Nor though, by reason of the drenching rain, Or heat, that shrivels up his fields like fire, Or fierce extremities of winter's ire, Blight shall o'erwhelm his fruit-trees and his grain, And all his farm's delusive promise fail.

"The fish are conscious that a narrower bound Is drawn the seas around By ma.s.ses huge hurled down into the deep.

There, at the bidding of a lord, for whom Not all the land he owns is ample room, Do the contractor and his labourers heap Vast piles of stone, the ocean back to sweep.

But let him climb in pride, That lord of halls unblest, Up to their topmost crest, Yet ever by his side Climb Terror and Unrest; Within the brazen galley's sides Care, ever wakeful, flits, And at his back, when forth in state he rides.

Her withering shadow sits.

"If thus it fare with all, If neither marbles from the Phrygian mine, Nor star-bright robes of purple and of pall, Nor the Falernian vine, Nor costliest balsams, fetched from farthest Ind, Can soothe the restless mind, Why should I choose To rear on high, as modern spendthrifts use, A lofty hall, might be the home for kings, With portals vast, for Malice to abuse, Or Envy make her theme to point a tale; Or why for wealth, which new-born trouble brings, Exchange my Sabine vale?"

CHAPTER VIII.

PREVAILING BELIEF IN ASTROLOGY.--HORACE'S VIEWS OF A HEREAFTER.--RELATIONS WITH MAECENAS.--BELIEF IN THE PERMANENCE OF HIS OWN FAME.

"When all looks fair about," says Sir Thomas Browne, "and thou seest not a cloud so big as a hand to threaten thee, forget not the wheel of things; think of sudden, vicissitudes, but beat not thy brains to foreknow them." It was characteristic of an age of luxury that it should be one of superst.i.tion and mental disquietude, eager to penetrate the future, and credulous in its belief of those who pretended to unveil its secrets. In such an age astrology naturally found many dupes. Rome was infested with professors of that so-called science, who had flocked thither from the East, and were always ready, like other oracles, to supply responses acceptable to their votaries. In what contempt Horace held their prognostications the following Ode (I. 11) very clearly indicates. The women of Rome, according to Juvenal, were great believers in astrology, and carried manuals of it on their persons, which they consulted before they took an airing or broke their fast. Possibly on this account Horace addressed the ode to a lady. But in such things, and not under the Roman Empire only, there have always been, as La Fontaine says, "_bon nombre d'hommes qui sont femmes_." If Augustus, and his great general and statesman Agrippa, had a Theogenes to forecast their fortunes, so the first Napoleon had his Madame Lenormand.

"Ask not--such lore's forbidden-- What destined term may be Within the future hidden For us, Leuconoe.

Both thou and I Must quickly die!

Content thee, then, nor madly hope To wrest a false a.s.surance from Chaldean horoscope.

"Far n.o.bler, better were it, Whate'er may be in store, With soul serene to bear it, If winters many more Jove spare for thee, Or this shall be The last, that now with sullen roar Scatters the Tuscan surge in foam upon the rock-bound sh.o.r.e.

"Be wise, your spirit firing With cups of tempered wine, And hopes afar aspiring In compa.s.s brief confine, Use all life's powers; The envious hours Fly as we talk; then live to-day, Nor fondly to to-morrow trust more than you must or may."

In the verses of Horace we are perpetually reminded that our life is compa.s.sed round with darkness, but he will not suffer this darkness to overshadow his cheerfulness. On the contrary, the beautiful world, and the delights it offers, are made to stand out, as it were, in brighter relief against the gloom of Orcus. Thus, for example, this very gloom is made the background in the following Ode (I. 4) for the brilliant pictures which crowd on the poet's fancy with the first burst of Spring.

Here, he says, oh Sestius, all is fresh and joyous, luxuriant and lovely! Be happy, drink in "at every pore the spirit of the season,"

while the roses are fresh within your hair, and the wine-cup flashes ruby in your hand. Yonder lies Pluto's meagrely-appointed mansion, and filmy shadows of the dead are waiting for you there, to swell their joyless ranks. To that unlovely region you must go, alas! too soon; but the golden present is yours, so drain it of its sweets.

"As biting Winter flies, lo! Spring with sunny skies, And balmy airs; and barks long dry put out again from sh.o.r.e; Now the ox forsakes his byre, and the husbandman his fire, And daisy-dappled meadows bloom where winter frosts lay h.o.a.r.

"By Cytherea led, while the moon shines overhead, The Nymphs and Graces, hand-in-hand, with alternating feet Shake the ground, while swinking Vulcan strikes the sparkles fierce and red From the forges of the Cyclops, with reiterated beat.

"'Tis the time with myrtle green to bind our glistening locks, Or with flowers, wherein the loosened earth herself hath newly dressed, And to sacrifice to Faunus in some glade amidst the rocks A yearling lamb, or else a kid, if such delight him best.

"Death comes alike to all--to the monarch's lordly hall, Or the hovel of the beggar, and his summons none shall stay.