Horace and His Influence Part 4

The healthful repose of heart which comes from unity of purpose and simple devotion to plain duty, he sees existing still, even in his own less strenuous age, in the remote and peaceful countryside. Blessed is the man far from the busy life of affairs, like the primeval race of mortals, who tills with his own oxen the acres of his fathers! Horace covets the gift earnestly for himself, because his calm vision a.s.sures him that it, of all the virtues, lies next to happy living.

_v_. THE SOURCES OF HAPPINESS

Here we have arrived at the kernel of Horace's philosophy, the key which unlocks the casket containing his message to all men of every generation. In actual life, at least, mankind storms the citadel of happiness, as if it were something material and external, to be taken by violent hands. Horace locates the citadels of happiness in his own breast. It is the heart which is the source of all joy and all sorrow, of all wealth and all poverty. Happiness is to be sought, not outside, but within. Man does not create his world; he _is_ his world.

Men are madly chasing after peace of heart in a thousand wrong ways, all the while over-looking the right way, which is nearest at hand. To observe their feverish eagerness, the spectator might be led to think happiness identical with possession. And yet wealth and happiness are neither the same nor equivalent. They may have nothing to do one with the other. Money, indeed, is not an evil in itself, but it is not essential except so far as it is a mere means of life. Poor men may be happy, and the wealthy may be poor in the midst of their riches. A man's wealth consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesseth. More justly does he lay claim to the name of rich man who knows how to use the blessings of the G.o.ds wisely, who is bred to endurance of hard want, and who fears the disgraceful action worse than he fears death.

Real happiness consists in peace of mind and heart. Everyone desires it, and everyone prays for it,--the sailor caught in the storms of the Aegean, the mad Thracian, the Mede with quiver at his back. But peace is not to be purchased. Neither gems nor purple nor gold will buy it, nor favor. Not all the externals in the world can help the man who depends upon them alone.

N_ot treasure trove nor consul's stately train_ D_rives wretched tumult from the troubled brain_; S_warming with cares that draw unceasing sighs_, T_he fretted ceiling hangs o'er sleepless eyes_.

Nor is peace to be pursued and laid hold of, or discovered in some other clime. Of what avail to fly to lands warmed by other suns? What exile ever escaped himself? It is the soul that is at fault, that never can be freed from its own bonds. The sky is all he changes:

T_he heavens, not themselves, they change_ W_ho haste to cross the seas_.

The happiness men seek for is in themselves, to be found at little Ulubrae in the Latin marshes as easily as in great cities, if only they have the proper att.i.tude of mind and heart.

But how insure this peace of mind?

At the very beginning, and through to the end, the searcher after happiness must recognize that unhappiness is the result of slavery of some sort, and that slavery in turn is begotten of desire. The man who is overfond of anything will be unwilling to let go his hold upon it.

Desire will curb his freedom. The only safety lies in refusing the rein to pa.s.sion of any kind. "To gaze upon nothing to l.u.s.t after it, Numicius, is the simple way of winning and of keeping happiness." He who lives in either desire or fear can never enjoy his possessions. He who desires will also fear; and he who fears can never be a free man. The wise man will not allow his desires to become tyrants over him. Money will be his servant, not his master. He will attain to wealth by curbing his wants. You will be monarch over broader realms by dominating your spirit than by adding Libya to far-off Gades.

The poor man, in spite of poverty, may enjoy life more than the rich. It is possible under a humble roof to excel in happiness kings and the friends of kings. Wealth depends upon what men want, not upon what men have. The more a man denies himself, the greater are the gifts of the G.o.ds to him. One may hold riches in contempt, and thus be a more splendid lord of wealth than the great landowner of Apulia. By contracting his desires he may extend his revenues until they are more than those of the gorgeous East. Many wants attend those who have many ambitions. Happy is the man to whom G.o.d has given barely enough. Let him to whom fate, fortune, or his own effort has given this enough, desire no more. If the liquid stream of Fortune should gild him, it would make his happiness nothing greater, because money cannot change his nature.

To the man who has good digestion and good lungs and is free from gout, the riches of a king could add nothing. What difference does it make to him who lives within the limits of nature whether he plow a hundred acres or a thousand?

As with the pa.s.sion of greed, so with anger, love, ambition for power, and all the other forms of desire which lodge in the human heart. Make them your slaves, or they will make you theirs. Like wrath, they are all forms of madness. The man who becomes avaricious has thrown away the armor of life, has abandoned the post of virtue. Once let a man submit to desire of an unworthy kind, and he will find himself in the case of the horse that called a rider to help him drive the stag from their common feeding-ground, and received the bit and rein forever.

So Horace will enter into no entangling alliances with ambition for power, wealth, or position, or with the more personal pa.s.sions. By some of them he has not been altogether untouched, and he has not regret; but to continue, at forty-five, would not do. He will be content with just his home in the Sabine hills. This is what he always prayed for, a patch of ground, not so very large, with a spring of ever-flowing water, a garden, and a little timberland. He asks for nothing more, except that a kindly fate will make these beloved possessions forever his own. He will go to the ant, for she is an example, and consider her ways and be wise, and be content with what he has as soon as it is enough. He will not enter the field of public life, because it would mean the sacrifice of peace. He would have to keep open house, submit to the attentions of a body-guard of servants, keep horses and carriage and a coachman, and be the target for shafts of envy and malice; in a word, lose his freedom and become the slave of wretched and burdensome ambition.

The price is too great, the privilege not to his liking. Horace's prayer is rather to be freed from the cares of empty ambition, from the fear of death and the pa.s.sion of anger, to laugh at superst.i.tion, to enjoy the happy return of his birthday, to be forgiving of his friends, to grow more gentle and better as old age draws on, to recognize the proper limit in all things:

"H_ealth to enjoy the blessings sent_ F_rom heaven; a mind unclouded, strong_; A_ cheerful heart; a wise content_; A_n honored age; and song_."

II. HORACE THROUGH THE AGES

INTRODUCTORY

Thus much we have had to say in the interpretation of Horace. Our interpretation has centered about his qualities as a person: his broad experience, his sensitiveness, his responsiveness, his powers of a.s.similation, his gift of expression, his concreteness as a representative of the world of culture, as a son of Italy, as a citizen of eternal Rome, as a member of the universal human family.

Let us now tell the story of Horace in the life of after times. It will include an account of the esteem in which he was held while still in the flesh; of the fame he enjoyed and the influence he exercised until Rome as a great empire was no more and the Roman tongue and Roman spirit alike were decayed; of the way in which his works were preserved intact through obscure centuries of ignorance and turmoil; and of their second birth when men began to delight once more in the luxuries of the mind.

This will prepare the way for a final chapter, on the peculiar quality and manner of the Horatian influence.

1. HORACE THE PROPHET

Horace is aware of his qualities as a poet. In an interesting blend, of which the first and larger part is detached and judicial estimation of his work, a second part literary convention, and the third and least a smiling and inoffensive self-a.s.sertion, he prophesies his own immortality.

From infancy he has been set apart as the child of the Muses. At birth Melpomene marked him for her own. The doves of ancient story covered him over with the green leaves of the Apulian wood as, lost and overcome by weariness, he lay in peaceful slumber, and kept him safe from creeping and four-footed things, a babe secure in the favor of heaven. The sacred charm that rests upon him preserved him in the rout at Philippi, rescued him from the Sabine wolf, saved him from death by the falling tree and the waters of shipwreck. He will abide under its shadow wherever he may go,--to his favorite haunts in Latium, to the far north where fierce Britons offer up the stranger to their G.o.ds, to the far east and the blazing sands of the Syrian desert, to rude Spain and the streams of Scythia, to the treeless, naked fields of the frozen pole, to homeless lands under the fiery car of the too-near sun. He will rise superior to the envy of men. The pinions that bear him aloft through the clear ether will be of no usual or flagging sort. For him there shall be no death, no Stygian wave across which none returns:

F_orego the dirge; let no one raise the cry_, O_r make unseemly show of grief and gloom_, N_or think o'er me, who shall not really die_, T_o rear the empty honor of the tomb_.

His real self will remain among men, ever springing afresh in their words of praise:

N_ot lasting bronze nor pyramid upreared_ B_y princes shall outlive my powerful rhyme_.

T_he monument I build, to men endeared_, N_ot biting rain, nor raging wind, nor time_, E_ndlessly flowing through the countless years_, S_hall e'er destroy. I shall not wholly die_; T_he grave shall have of me but what appears_; F_or me fresh praise shall ever multiply_.

A_s long as priest and silent Vestal wind_ T_he Capitolian steep, tongues shall tell o'er_ H_ow humble Horace rose above his kind_ W_here Aufidus's rushing waters roar_ I_n the parched land where rustic Daunus reigned_, A_nd first taught Grecian numbers how to run_ I_n Latin measure. Muse! the honor gained_ I_s thine, for I am thine till time is done_.

G_racious Melpomene, O hear me now_, A_nd with the Delphic bay gird round my brow_.

Yet Horace does not always refer to his poetry in this serious vein; if indeed we are to call serious a manner of literary prophecy which has always been more or less conventional. His frequent disclaimers of the higher inspiration are well known. The Muse forbids him to attempt the epic strain or the praise of Augustus and Agrippa. In the face of grand themes like these, his genius is slight. He will not essay even the strain of Simonides in the lament for an Empire stained by land and sea with the blood of fratricidal war. His themes shall be rather the feast and the mimic battles of revelling youths and maidens, the making of love in the grots of Venus. His lyre shall be jocose, his plectrum of the lighter sort.

He not only half-humorously disclaims the capacity for lofty themes, but, especially as he grows older and more philosophic, and perhaps less lyric, half-seriously attributes whatever he does to persevering effort.

He has

"N_or the pride nor ample pinion_ T_hat the Theban eagle bear_, S_ailing with supreme dominion_ T_hrough the azure deep of air_;"

he is the bee, with infinite industry flitting from flower to flower, the unpretending maker of verse, fashioning his songs with only toil and patience. He believes in the file, in long delay before giving forth to the world the poem that henceforth can never be recalled. The only inspiration he claims for _Satire_ and _Epistle_, which, he says, approximate the style of spoken discourse, lies in the aptness and patience with which he fashions his verses from language in ordinary use, giving to words new dignity by means of skillful combination. Let anyone who wishes to be convinced undertake to do the same; he will find himself perspiring in a vain attempt.

And if Horace did not always conceive of his inspiration as purely ethereal, neither did he always dream of the path to immortality as leading through the s.p.a.cious reaches of the upper air. At forty-four, he is already aware of a more pedestrian path. He has observed the ways of the public with literature, as any writer must observe them still, and knows also of a certain use to which his poems are being put. Perhaps with some secret pride, but surely with a philosophic resignation that is like good-humored despair, he sees that the path is pedagogical. In reproachful tones, he addresses the book of _Epistles_ that is so eager to try its fortune in the big world: But if the prophet is not blinded by disgust at your foolishness, you will be prized at Rome until the charm of youth has left you. Then, soiled and worn by much handling of the common crowd, you will either silently give food to vandal worms, or seek exile in Utica, or be tied up and sent to Ilerda. The monitor you did not heed will laugh, like the man who sent his balky a.s.s headlong over the cliff; for who would trouble to save anyone against his will?

This lot, too, you may expect: for a stammering old age to come upon you teaching children to read in the out-of-the-way parts of town.

2. HORACE AND ANCIENT ROME

That Horace refers to being pointed out by the pa.s.ser-by as the minstrel of the Roman lyre, or, in other words, as the laureate, that his satire provokes sufficient criticism to draw from him a defense and a justification of himself against the charge of cynicism, and that he finally records a greater freedom from the tooth of envy, are all indications of the prominence to which he rose. That Virgil and Varius, poets of recognized worth, and their friend Plotius Tucca, third of the whitest souls of earth, introduced him to the attention of Maecenas, and that the discriminating lover of excellence became his patron and made him known to Augustus, are evidences of the appeal of which he was capable both as poet and man. In the many names of worthy and distinguished men of letters and affairs to whom he addresses the individual poems, and with whom he must therefore have been on terms of mutual respect, is seen a further proof. Even Virgil contains pa.s.sages disclosing a more than ordinary familiarity with Horace's work, and men like Ovid and Propertius, of whose personal relations with Horace nothing is known, not only knew but absorbed his poems.

If still further evidence of Horace's worth is required, it may be seen in his being invited to commemorate the exploits of Drusus and Tiberius, the royal stepsons, against the hordes of the North, and the greatness of Augustus himself, ever-present help of Italy, and imperial Rome; and in the Emperor's expression of disappointment, sometime before the second book of _Epistles_ was published, that he had been mentioned in none of the "Talks." And, finally, if there remained in the minds of his generation any shadow of doubt as to the esteem in which he was held by the foremost men in the State, who were in most cases men of letters as well as patrons of letters, it was dispelled when, in the year 17, Horace was chosen to write the _Secular Hymn_, for use in the greatest religious and patriotic festival of the times.

These facts receive greater significance from an appreciation of the poet's sincerity and independence. He will restore to Maecenas his gifts, if their possession is to mean a curb upon the freedom of living his nature calls for. He declines a secretaryship to the Emperor himself, and without offense to his imperial friend, who bids him be free of his house as if it were his own.

But Horace must submit also to the more impartial judgment of time. Of the two innovations which gave him relief against the general background, one was the amplification of the crude but vigorous satire of Lucilius into a more perfect literary character, and the other was the persuasion of the Greek lyric forms into Roman service. Both examples had their important effects within the hundred years that followed on Horace's death.

The satire and epistle, which Horace hardly distinguished, giving to both the name of _Sermo_, or "Talk," was the easier to imitate. Persius, dying in the year 62, at the age of twenty-eight, was steeped in Horace, but lacked the gentle spirit, the genial humor, and the suavity of expression that make Horatian satire a delight. In Juvenal, writing under Trajan and Hadrian, the tendency of satire toward consistent aggressiveness which is present in Horace and further advanced in Persius, has reached its goal. With Juvenal, satire is a matter of the lash, of vicious cut and thrust. Juvenal may tell the truth, but the smiling face of Horatian satire has disappeared. With him the line of Roman satire is extinct, but the nature of satire for all time to come is fixed. Juvenal, employing the form of Horace and subst.i.tuting for his content of mellow contentment and good humor the bitterness of an outraged moral sense, is the last Roman and the first modern satirist.

The _Odes_ found more to imitate them, but none to rival. The most p.r.o.nounced example of their influence is found in the choruses of the tragic poet Seneca, where form and substance alike are constantly reminiscent of Horace. Two comments on the _Odes_ from the second half of the first century are of even greater eloquence than Seneca's example as testimonials to the impression made by the Horatian lyric. Petronius, of Nero's time, speaks of the poet's _curiosa felicitas_, meaning the gift of arriving, by long and careful search, at the inevitable word or phrase. Quintilian, writing his treatise on Instruction, sums him up thus: "Of our lyric poets, Horace is about the only one worth reading; for he sometimes reaches real heights, and he is at the same time full of delightfulness and grace, and both in variety of imagery and in words is most happily daring." To these broad strokes the modern critic has added little except by way of elaboration.

The _Life of Horace_, written by Suetonius, the secretary of Hadrian, contains evidence of another, and perhaps a stronger, character regarding the poet's power. We see that doubtful imitations are beginning to circulate. "I possess," says the imperial secretary, "some elegies attributed to his pen, and a letter in prose, supposed to be a recommendation of himself to Maecenas, but I think that both are spurious; for the elegies are commonplace, and the letter is, besides, obscure, which was by no means one of his faults."

The history of Roman literature from the end of the first century after Christ is the story of the decline of inspiration, the decline of taste, the decline of language, the decline of intellectual interest. Beneath it all and through it all there is spreading, gradually and silently, the insidious decay that will surely crumble the const.i.tution of the ancient world. Pagan letters are uncreative, and, with few exceptions, without imagination and dull. The literature of the new religion, beginning to push green shoots from the ruins of the times, is a mingling of old and new substance under forms that are always old.

In the main, neither Christian nor pagan will be attracted by Horace.

The Christian will see in his gracious resignation only the philosophy of despair, and in his light humors only careless indulgence in the vanities of this world and blindness to the eternal concerns of life.

The pagan will not appreciate the delicacy of his art, and will find the abundance of his literary, mythological, historical, and geographical allusion, the compactness of his expression, and the maturity and depth of his intellect, a barrier calling for too much effort. Both will prefer Virgil--Virgil of "arms and the man," the story-teller, Virgil the lover of Italy, Virgil the glorifier of Roman deeds and destiny, Virgil the readily understood, Virgil who has already drawn aside, at least partly, the veil that hangs before the mystic other-world, Virgil the almost Christian prophet, with the almost Biblical language, Virgil the spiritual, Virgil the comforter.