Horace Part 7

These hints of life and manners, all drawn from the pages of Horace, might be infinitely extended, and a ramble in the streets of Rome in the present day is consequently fuller of vivid interest to a man who has these pages at his fingers' ends than it can possibly be to any other person. Horace is so a.s.sociated with all the localities, that one would think it the most natural thing in the world to come upon him at any turning. His old familiar haunts rise up about us out of the dust of centuries. We see a short thick-set man come sauntering along, "more fat than bard beseems." As he pa.s.ses, lost in reverie, many turn round and look at him. Some point him out to their companions, and by what they say, we learn that this is Horace, the favourite of Maecenas, the frequent visitor at the unpretending palace of Augustus, the self-made man and famous poet. He is still within sight, when his progress is arrested. He is in the hands of a bore of the first magnitude. But what ensued, let us hear from his own lips (Satires, I. 9):--

THE BORE.

It chanced that I, the other day, Was sauntering up the Sacred Way, And musing, as my habit is, Some trivial random fantasies, That for the time absorbed me quite, When there comes running up a wight, Whom only by his name I knew; "Ha! my dear fellow, how d'ye do?"

Grasping my hand, he shouted. "Why, As times go, pretty well," said I; "And you, I trust, can say the same."

But after me as still he came, "Sir, is there anything," I cried, "You want of me?" "Oh," he replied, "I'm just the man you ought to know;-- A scholar, author!" "Is it so?

For this I'll like you all the more!"

Then, writhing to evade the bore, I quicken now my pace, now stop, And in my servant's ear let drop Some words, and all the while I feel Bathed in cold sweat from head to heel.

"Oh, for a touch," I moaned, in pain, "Bola.n.u.s, of thy madcap vein, To put this incubus to rout!"

As he went chattering on about Whatever he descries or meets, The crowds, the beauty of the streets, The city's growth, its splendour, size, "You're dying to be off," he cries; For all the while I'd been stock dumb.

"I've seen it this half-hour. But come, Let's clearly understand each other; It's no use making all this pother.

My mind's made up, to stick by you; So where you go, there I go, too."

"Don't put yourself," I answered, "pray, So very far out of your way.

I'm on the road to see a friend, Whom you don't know, that's near his end, Away beyond the Tiber far, Close by where Caesar's gardens are."

"I've nothing in the world to do, And what's a paltry mile or two?

I like it, so I'll follow you!"

Down dropped my ears on hearing this, Just like a vicious jacka.s.s's, That's loaded heavier than he likes; But off anew my torment strikes.

"If well I know myself, you'll end With making of me more a friend Than Viscus, ay, or Varius; for Of verses who can run off more, Or run them off at such a pace?

Who dance with such distinguished grace?

And as for singing, zounds!" said he, "Hermogenes might envy me!"

Here was an opening to break in.

"Have you a mother, father, kin, To whom your life is precious?" "None;-- I've closed the eyes of every one."

Oh, happy they, I inly groan.

Now I am left, and I alone.

Quick, quick, despatch me where I stand; Now is the direful doom at hand, Which erst the Sabine beldam old, Shaking her magic urn, foretold In days when I was yet a boy: "Him shall no poisons fell destroy, Nor hostile sword in shock of war, Nor gout, nor colic, nor catarrh.

In fulness of the time his thread Shall by a prate-apace be shred; So let him, when he's twenty-one, If he be wise, all babblers shun."

Now we were close to Vesta's fane, 'Twas hard on ten, and he, my bane, Was bound to answer to his bail, Or lose his cause if he should fail.

"Do, if you love me, step aside One moment with me here!" he cried.

"Upon my life, indeed, I can't, Of law I'm wholly ignorant; And you know where I'm hurrying to."

"I'm fairly puzzled what to do.

Give you up, or my cause?" "Oh, me, Me, by all means!" "I won't!" quoth he; And stalks on, holding by me tight.

As with your conqueror to fight Is hard, I follow. "How,"--anon He rambles off,--"how get you on, You and Maecenas? To so few He keeps himself. So clever, too!

No man more dexterous to seize And use his opportunities.

Just introduce me, and you'll see, We'd pull together famously; And, hang me then, if, with my backing, You don't send all your rivals packing!"

"Things in that quarter, sir, proceed In very different style, indeed.

No house more free from all that's base; In none cabals more out of place.

It hurts me not if others be More rich, or better read than me.

Each has his place!" "Amazing tact!

Scarce credible!" "But 'tis the fact."

"You quicken my desire to get An introduction to his set."

"With merit such as yours, you need But wish it, and you must succeed.

He's to be won, and that is why Of strangers he's so very shy."

"I'll spare no pains, no arts, no shifts!

His servants I'll corrupt with gifts.

To-day though driven from his gate, What matter? I will lie in wait, To catch some lucky chance; I'll meet Or overtake him in the street; I'll haunt him like his shadow. Nought In life without much toil is bought."

Just at this moment who but my Dear friend Aristius should come by?

My rattlebrain right well he knew.

We stop. "Whence, friends, and whither to?"

He asks and answers. Whilst we ran The usual courtesies, I began To pluck him by the sleeve, to pinch His arms, that feel but will not flinch, By nods and winks most plain to see Imploring him to rescue me.

He, wickedly obtuse the while, Meets all my signals with a smile.

I, choked with rage, said, "Was there not Some business, I've forgotten what, You mentioned, that you wished with me To talk about, and privately?"

"Oh, I remember! Never mind!

Some more convenient time I'll find.

The Thirtieth Sabbath this! Would you Affront the circ.u.mcised Jew?"

"Religious scruples I have none."

"Ah, but I have. I am but one Of the _canaille_--a feeble brother.

Your pardon. Some fine day or other I'll tell you what it was." Oh, day Of woeful doom to me! Away The rascal bolted like an arrow, And left me underneath the harrow; When, by the rarest luck, we ran At the next turn against the man, Who had the lawsuit with my bore.

"Ha, knave!" he cried with loud uproar, "Where are you off to? Will you here Stand witness?" I present my ear.

To court he hustles him along; High words are bandied, high and strong.

A mob collects, the fray to see: So did Apollo rescue me.

The Satires appear to have been completed when Horace was about thirty-five years old, and published collectively, B.C. 29. By this time his position in society was well a.s.sured. He numbered among his friends, as we have seen, the most eminent men in Rome,--

"Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place"--

men who were not merely ripe scholars, but who had borne and were bearing a leading part in the great actions of that memorable epoch.

Among such men he would be most at home, for there his wit, his shrewdness, his genial spirits, and high breeding would be best appreciated. But his own keen relish of life, and his delight in watching the lights and shades of human character, took him into that wider circle where witty and notable men are always eagerly sought after to grace the feasts or enliven the heavy splendour of the rich and the unlettered. He was still young, and happy in the animal spirits which make the exhausting life of a luxurious capital endurable even in spite of its pleasures. What Victor Hugo calls

"Le banquet des amis, et quelquefois les soirs, Le baiser jeune et frais d'une blanche aux yeux noirs,"

never quite lost their charm for him; but during this period they must often have tempted him into the elaborate dinners, the late hours, and the high-strung excitement, which made a retreat to the keen air and plain diet of his Sabine home scarcely less necessary for his body's than it was for his spirit's health. For, much as he prized moderation in all things, and extolled "the mirth that after no repenting draws,"

good wine, good company, and fair and witty women would be sure to work their spell on a temperament so bright and sympathetic, and to quicken his spirits into a brilliancy and force, dazzling for the hour, but to be paid for next day in headache and depression.

He was all the more likely to suffer in this way from the very fact that, as a rule, he was simple and frugal in his tastes and habits. We have seen him (p. 66), in the early days of his stay in Rome, at his "plain meal of pancakes, pulse, and pease," served on homely earthenware. At his farm, again, beans and bacon (p. 80) form his staple dish. True to the old Roman taste, he was a great vegetarian, and in his charming ode, written for the opening of the temple of Apollo erected by Augustus on Mount Palatine (B.C. 28), he thinks it not out of place to mingle with his prayer for poetic power an entreaty that he may never be without wholesome vegetables and fruit.

"Let olives, endive, mallows light, Be all my fare; and health Give thou, Apollo, so I might Enjoy my present wealth!

Give me but these, I ask no more, These, and a mind entire-- An old age, not unhonoured, nor Unsolaced by the lyre!"

Maecenas himself is promised (Odes, III. 28), if he will visit the poet at the Sabine farm, "simple dinners neatly dressed;" and when Horace invites down his friend Torquatus (Epistles, II. 5), he does it on the footing that this wealthy lawyer shall be content to put up with plain vegetables and homely crockery (_modica olus omne patella_). The wine, he promises, shall be good, though not of any of the crack growths. If Torquatus wants better, he must send it down himself. The appointments of the table, too, though of the simplest kind, shall be admirably kept--

"The coverlets of faultless sheen, The napkins scrupulously clean, Your cup and salver such that they Unto yourself yourself display."

Table-service neat to a nicety was obviously a great point with Horace. "What plate he had was made to look its best." "_Ridet argento domus_"--"My plate, newly-burnished, enlivens my rooms"--is one of the attractions held out in his invitation to the fair Phyllis to grace his table on Maecenas's birthday (Odes, IV. 11). And we may be very sure that his little dinners were served and waited on with the studied care and quiet finish of a refined simplicity. His rule on these matters is indicated by himself (Satires, II. 2):--

"The proper thing is to be cleanly and nice, And yet so as not to be over precise; To neither be constantly scolding your slaves, Like that old prig Albutus, as losels and knaves, Nor, like Naevius, in such things who's rather too easy, To the guests at your board present water that's greasy."

To a man of these simple tastes the elaborate banquets, borrowed from the Asiatic Greeks, which were then in fashion, must have been intolerable. He has introduced us to one of them in describing a dinner-party of nine given by one Nasidienus, a wealthy sn.o.b, to Maecenas and others of Horace's friends. The dinner breaks down in a very amusing way, between the giver's love of display and his parsimony, which prompted him, on the one hand, to present his guests with, the fashionable dainties, but, on the other, would not let him pay a price sufficient to secure their being good. The first course consists of a Lucanian wild boar, served with a garnish of turnips, radishes, and lettuce, in a sauce of anchovy-brine and wine-lees. Next comes an incongruous medley of dishes, including one

"Of sparrows' gall and turbots' liver, At the mere thought of which I shiver."

A lamprey succeeds, "floating vast and free, by shrimps surrounded in a sea of sauce," and this is followed up by a crane soused in salt and flour, the liver of a snow-white goose fattened on figs, leverets'

shoulders, and roasted blackbirds. This _menu_ is clearly meant for a caricature, but it was a caricature of a prevailing folly, which had probably cost the poet many an indigestion.

Against this folly, and the ruin to health and purse which it entailed, some of his most vigorous satire is directed. It furnishes the themes of the second and fourth Satires of the Second Book, both of which, with slight modifications, might with equal truth be addressed to the dinner-givers and diners-out of our own day. In the former of these the speaker is the Apulian yeoman Ofellus, who undertakes to show

"What the virtue consists in, and why it is great, To live on a little, whatever your state."

Before entering on his task, however, he insists that his hearers shall cut themselves adrift from their luxuries, and come to him fasting, and with appet.i.tes whetted by a sharp run with the hounds, a stiff bout at tennis, or some other vigorous gymnastics;--