merely expressing the fancy, the penchant, the seriousness, or the levity of the moment. He has his serious side; "deep moralist" is one of the titles a modern poet[1] has emphatically bestowed upon him; and Mr. Landor, we remember, appears to suspect him of being rather malignant and morose at heart than gay and riant, observing that his lighter touches were less agreeable to his own nature than to the nature of Augustus and Mecænas, both of them fond of trifling.[2] Dean Milman, in comparing the poetry of Horace with the later Grecian comedy, recognises in the former a fund of "serious thought, which is always at the bottom of the playful expression,"[3] and which is more consonant to the sterner practical genius of the Roman people; a people who, in their idlest moods, seemed to "condescend" to amusement not to consider it, like the Greeks, one of the common necessities, the ordinary occupations of life. In Horace, "the masculine and practical common sense, the natural but not undignified urbanity, the stronger if not sounder[4] moral tone, the greater solidity, in short, of the whole style of thought and observation, compensate for the more lively imagination, the greater quickness and fluency, and more easy elegance of the Greek."
If he imitated the Greek, it was with originality. He owes it little but in the article of metre. Such grace and wit, such elegance and finish as his, come not at second-hand; no loan from abroad is what Margaret Fuller hailed in him as that "perfume and raciness, which makes life a banquet."[5] He was the prototype, according to Archdeacon Hare, and hence has ever been the favourite of, wits and fine gentlemen—of those who count it a point of good breeding to seem pleased with everything,
- ↑
Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse.
Although no deeper moralist rehearse
Our little life, &c. Childe Harold, c. iv. - ↑ Salomon.—You will, however, allow that we have no proof of gravity in Horace or Plautus?Alfieri.—On the contrary, I think we have many. Horace, like all the pusillanimous, was malignant; like all courtiers, he yielded to the disposition of his masters. … That he was libidinous is no proof that he was playful, for often sock men are even melancholic.—Imaginary Converations.It may be worth adding, in respect of the last sentence, that there are those who are sceptical as to the reality of Horace's list of favourite fair ones. Thus a recent Edinburgh Reviewer asserts that, of all the poets of the time, Horace alone had no individual mistress—that his amours, if numerous as those of Cowley, were also as fabulous—that the very names of his mistresses betray their origin; not being natives of the Vicus Tuscus, of the Palatine or the Suburra, but damsels who had been serenaded centuries before in the streets of Mytilene and Athens. "That Horace was at one time of his life a lover may be taken for granted; and we suspect Canidia to have been the subject of his passion, and that she jilted him."—See Edinburgh Review, October, 1850.
- ↑ Milman's Horaoe (Life).
- ↑ Milman, whom we here quote, is speaking of the Satires and Epistles.
- ↑ "Horace," says Mdme. Ossoli, "was a great deal to me then (in youth), and is so still. Though his words do not abide in memory, his presence does; serene, courtly, of darting hazel eye, a self-sufficient grace, and an appreciation of the world of stern realities, sometimes pathetic, never tragic. He is the natural man of the world."—Autobiography of Margaret Fuller.
