Horace Part 8

"And when the hard work has your squeamishness routed, When you're parched up with thirst, and your hunger's undoubted, Then spurn simple food if you can, or plain wine, Which no honied gums from Hymettus refine."

His homily then proceeds in terms which would not be out of place if addressed to a _gourmet_ of modern London or Paris:--

"When your butler's away, and the weather's so bad That there is not a morsel of fish to be had, A crust with some salt will soothe not amiss The ravening stomach. You ask, how is this?

Because for delight, at the best, you must look To yourself, and not to your wealth or your cook [1]

Work till you perspire. Of all sauces 'tis best.

The man that's with over-indulgence oppressed, White-livered and pursy, can relish no dish, Be it ortolans, oysters, or finest of fish.

Still I scarcely can hope, if before you there were A peac.o.c.k and capon, you would not prefer With the peac.o.c.k to tickle your palate, you're so Completely the dupes of mere semblance and show.

For to buy the rare bird only gold will avail, And he makes a grand show with his fine painted tail.

As if this had to do with the matter the least!

Can you make of the feathers you prize so a feast?

And, when the bird's cooked, what becomes of its splendour?

Is his flesh than the capon's more juicy or tender?

Mere appearance, not substance, then, clearly it is, Which bamboozles your judgment. So much, then, for this."

[1] "Pour l'amour de Dieu, un sou pour acheter un pet.i.t pain. J'ai si faim!" "Comment!" responded the cloyed sensualist, in search of an appet.i.te, who was thus accosted; "tu as faim, pet.i.t drole! Tu es bien heureux!" The readers of Pope will also remember his lines on the man who "Called 'happy dog' the beggar at his door, And envied thirst and hunger to the poor."

Don't talk to me of taste, Ofellus continues--

"Will it give you a notion If this pike in the Tiber was caught, or the ocean?

If it used 'twixt the bridges to glide and to quiver, Or was tossed to and fro at the mouth of the river?"

Just as our epicures profess to distinguish, by flavour a salmon fresh, run from the sea from one that has been degenerating for four-and-twenty hours in the fresh water of the river--with this difference, however, that, unlike the salmon with us, the above-bridge pike was considered at Rome to be more delicate than his sea-bred and leaner brother.

Ofellus next proceeds to ridicule the taste which prizes what is set before it for mere size or rarity or cost. It is this, he contends, and not any excellence in the things themselves, which makes people load their tables with the sturgeon or the stork. Fashion, not flavour, prescribes the rule; indeed, the more perverted her ways, the more sure they are to be followed.

"So were any one now to a.s.sure us a treat In cormorants roasted, as tender and sweet, The young men of Rome are so p.r.o.ne to what's wrong, They'd eat cormorants all to a man, before long."

But, continues Ofellus, though I would have you frugal, I would not have you mean--

"One vicious extreme it is idle to shun, If into its opposite straightway you run;"

ill.u.s.trating his proposition by one of those graphic sketches which give a distinctive life to Horace's Satires.

"There is Avidienus, to whom, like a burr, Sticks the name he was righteously dubbed by, of 'Cur,'

Eats beechmast and olives five years old, at least, And even when he's robed all in white for a feast On his marriage or birth day, or some other very High festival day, when one likes to be merry, What wine from the chill of his cellar emerges-- 'Tis a drop at the best--has the flavour of verjuice; While from a huge cruet his own sparing hand On his coleworts drops oil which no mortal can stand, So utterly loathsome and rancid in smell, it Defies his stale vinegar even to quell it."

Let what you have he simple, the best of its kind, whatever that may be, and served in the best style. And now learn, continues the rustic sage,

"In what way and how greatly you'll gain By using a diet both sparing and plain.

First, your health will be good; for you readily can Believe how much mischief is done to a man By a great ma.s.s of dishes,--remembering that Plain fare of old times, and how lightly it sat.

But the moment you mingle up boiled with roast meat, And sh.e.l.lfish with thrushes, what tasted so sweet Will be turned into bile, and ferment, not digest, in Your stomach exciting a tumult intestine.

Mark, from a bewildering dinner how pale Every man rises up! Nor is this all they ail, For the body, weighed down by its last night's excesses, To its own wretched level the mind, too, depresses, And to earth chains that spark of the essence divine; While he, that's content on plain viands to dine, Sleeps off his fatigues without effort, then gay As a lark rises up to the tasks of the day.

Yet he on occasion will find himself able To enjoy without hurt a more liberal table, Say, on festival days, that come round with the year, Or when his strength's low, and cries out for good cheer, Or when, as years gather, his age must be nursed With more delicate care than he wanted at first.

But for you, when ill health or old age shall befall, Where's the luxury left, the relief within call, Which has not been forestalled in the days of your prime, When you scoffed, in your strength, at the inroads of time?

"'Keep your boar till it's rank!' said our sires; which arose, I am confident, not from their having no nose, But more from the notion that some of their best Should be kept in reserve for the chance of a guest: And though, ere he came, it grew stale on the shelf, This was better than eating all up by one's self.

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 friendship, 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."