Horace and His Influence

SPECTATOR A

en interest in the piece, but his prevailing mood is that of mild amusement. In time past, he has himself assumed more than one of the r?les, and has known personally many of the actors. He 040 knows perfectly well that there is a great dea

hat his "meddling with any practical

nd artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband, or a father, and can discern the errors in the e

the life of men with as clear vis

d blindly wandering in mistaken paths in the search for the way of life, striving one with another in the contest of wits, emulous in dis

humaine. He uses himself, so to speak, for illustrative purposes,-to point the moral of the genuine; to demonstrate the indispensability of hard work as well as genius; to afford concrete proof of the possibility of happiness without wealth. He is almost as objective to himself as the landscape of the Sabine farm. Horace the spectator sees Horace the man against the background of human life just as 042 he sees snow-mantled Soracte, or the cold Digentia, or the restless Adriatic, or

critic and an interpreter. He looks forth upon life with a keen vision for

as little degree an Ennius, composing merely to gratify the taste for entertainment. There are some, as a matter of fact, to whom in satire he seems to go beyond the limit of good-nature. At vice in pronounced form, at all forms of unmanliness, he does indeed strike out, like Lucilius the knight of Campania, his predecessor and pattern, gracious only to virtue and to the friends of v

ue of intention than because of the mere fact that he is a spectator. To look upon life with the eye of understan

ts in philosophic detachment on the serene height

ne it is to give the meaning of the word Horatian as far as content is concern

NITY OF H

hrong; either with greed for money or with miserable ambition for power, his soul is in travail. Some are dazzled by fine silver, some lose their senses over bronze. Some are ever straining after the prizes of public life. There are many who love not wisely, but

e at the pleasures of the bronze-trimmed yacht. It pursues them everywhere, swifter than the deer, swifter than the wind that drives before it the storm-cloud. Not even those who are most happy are entirely so. No lot is wholly blest. Perfect happiness is unattainable. Tithonus, with the

he nobly-born. The poor are as inconstant as the rich. What of the man who is not rich? You may well smile. He changes 046 from garret to garre

m. Friends prove faithless, once the cask is drained to the lees. Death, unforeseen and unexpected, lurks in ambush for them in a thousand places. Some are swallowed up by the greedy sea

e proud of power. The same night awaits all; everyone must tread once for all the path of death. The summons is delivered impartially at the hovels of the poor and the turreted

stumus, ala

ars: nor can d

age one mome

oment death's

h thrice a hun

prayest Plut

ears, who threef

eneath the da

ll must one d

eathe within th

t with princel

asant's lowly

from murderou

n the storms o

ar the poison

ry south-wind, f

ering stream w

s' waters, b

race of Danaus

, from labor

4

t,-lands, home,

d when we have

e, of all tho

ee,-the cypress

will soon dra

kept beneath a

Caecuban will

ntiffs' solemn

ouls even beyond the grave. Dull and persistent, it is the only substantial feature of the insubstantial world of shades. Sappho still sighs there for love of her maiden companions, the plectrum of Alcaeus sounds its

EASURES OF

rawn that this is the philosophy of gloom. The tone of Horace is neither that of the cheerless skeptic nor that

n what obscurity and in what dangers is pas

l action want, in all want pain, who looks upon pain as the essential condition of will, and sees no end of suffering except in the surrender of the will to live. The vanity of human wish

far more substantial in composition than a bubble. For those who possess th

s the

imized for the man who frankly faces them, and recognizes the futility of struggling against the fact. How much better to endure what

as a possibility, or upon any measure of happiness as a right to be demanded, we are

all thy cares, mid all

day that dawns the

nlooked for is the ho

5

. Above all, there are friends with whom to share the joy of mere living in Italy. For what purpose, if not to enjoy, are the rose, the pine, and the poplar, the gushing fountain, the generous wine of Formian hill and Massic slope, the villa by the Tib

vanish. Who knows whether the gods above will add a tomorrow to the to-day? Be glad, and lay hand upon the gifts of the pa

Hour, nor in t

That endeavo

und with the

fter none, or

Cup: what boot

lipping under

row, and dea

t them if tod

rrow, or let him make it bright with clear sunshine,--as he pleases; what the flying hour of to-day has already given us he never can revoke. Life is a stream, now gliding peacefully onward in mid-channel to the Tuscan sea, now tumbling upon its swirling bosom the wreckage of flood and storm. The pi

deep with g

nds, and, b

droop beneath

rfrozen have ce

ld! the hear

g logs; the

ng Sabine,

cask of long

e gods entr

n lull the w

ash and c

over the b

pierce the m

moment ren

ance, nor love'

on with its

the campus

d loves your

e twilight s

keep with th

5

nook her laug

d meant to h

struggles o

which she can

FE AND

to the length of Omar's. He would hav

s Day's Madnes

lence, Triump

now not whence y

know not why yo

ame of Epicurus. Horace is not among them. With degenerate Epicureans, whose philosophy permitted them "To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty," he had little in common. The extraction from life of the honey of enjoyment was indeed the highest 055 purpose, but the purpose could never be real

ften misleading. This effect is the more possible by reason of the presence among his works of

time when he was a boy, a censor and corrector of his youngers. So far as popular defi

t a total abstainer. To be the latter on principle would never have occurred to him. The vine was the gift of God

power of wi

ound a dul

e sage forg

inmost tho

is solemn-f

blithesome

it brings an

utworn upo

ch courage

he poor be

tyrants' wr

r bristling

, but to quarrel over it,-leave that to barbarians! Take warning by the Thracians, and the Centaurs and Lapiths, never to overste

uty more brilliant than Parian marble, was not in his eyes to be blamed in itself. What he felt no hesitation in committing to his poems for friends and the Emperor to read, they on their part felt as little hesitation

relation and the rearing of families. Of the illicit love that looked to Roman women in the home, he emphatically declares his innocence, and against it directs the last and most powerfu

the flesh or of the spirit. He was guilty of no breach of the morals of his time, and it is likely also, in spite of Suetonius, that he was guilty of no excess. He was a supporter in good faith of the Emperor in his attempts at the moral improvement of the State. If Virgil in

ith friendly precepts it moulds his inner self; it is a corrector of harshness and envy and anger; it sets forth the righteous

FE AND

ition of pleasure is not without austerity; he preaches the positive virtues of performance as well as the negative vi

he ranks of protesting friends to keep faith with the pitiless executioners of Carthage. Regulus, and the Scauri, and Paulus, who poured out his great spirit on the disastrous field of Cannae, and

060 the frowning face of the threatening tyrant, nor by the East-wind, turbid ruler of the restless Adriatic, nor by the great

, but to religion. He will shun the man who violates the secrets of the mysteri

l value nothing so highly as a delightful friend. He is ready, whenever fate calls, to enter with Maecenas

lofty spirit the recording of whose manifestations never fails to bring the glow to 061 Livy's cheek and the gleam to his eye,-honor is also first and foremost in Horace's esteem. Regulus, the self-sacrificing; Curius, despising the Samnite gold; Camillus, yielding private

of the olden time, when the armies of Rome were made up of citizen-soldiers, and the eye of ev

private means,

commonwealth

urveyed with

e man the

ved the house

to the ho

eared with earni

ich marble

6

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 th

URCES OF

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 h

re 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'

storms of the Aegean, the mad Thracian, the Mede with quiver at his back. But peace is not to be purchased. Neither gems no

ove nor consul'

tumult from th

ares that draw

ling hangs o'er

vail to fly to lands warmed by other suns? What exile ever escaped himself? It is the sou

not themselve

to cross

little Ulubrae in the Latin marshes as easily as in great ci

ure this pe

s freedom. The only safety lies in refusing the rein to passion 065 of any kind. "To gaze upon nothing to lust 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

rd 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 God has given barely enough. Let him to whom fate, fortune, 066 or his own effort has given this enough, desire no more. If the

irs. 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

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.

n, from the fear of death and the passion of anger, to laugh at superstition, to enjoy the happy return of his birthday, to be

enjoy the b

a mind uncl

heart; a wi

ed age;

6