Sir Theodore Martin

“ SHE.—I dote on Calaïs—and I Am all his passion, all his care, For whom a double death I'd die, So fate the darling boy would spare! HE.—What, if our ancient love return, And bind us with a closer tie, If I the fair-haired Chloë spurn, And as of old, for Lydia sigh? SHE.—Though lovelier than yon star is he, And lighter thou than cork—ah why? More churlish, too, than Adria's sea, With thee I'd live, with thee I'd die!"
In this graceful trifle Horace is simply dealing with one of the commonplaces of poetry, most probably only transplanting a Greek flower into the Latin soil. ”

“ In the midst of the public cares and perplexities of the time, the Queen had to face, at the end of 1871, a deeper anxiety than all other in the dangerous illness of the Prince of Wales. To place herself by his bedside, to cheer and to encourage, and never to surrender hope, however dread the symptoms, was characteristic of her strong, loving nature and brave spirit. ”

“ Only after they are dead, do misunderstanding and malice give way to admiration and love. Rome, it is true, has been more just. It has appreciated, and it avows, how much it owes to Augustus. But the very same people who have shown themselves wise and just in this are unable to extend the same principle to living literary genius. A poet must have been long dead and buried, or he is nought. The very flaws of old writers are cried up as beauties by pedantic critics, while the highest excellence in a writer of the day meets with no response. ”

“ Nor shall I stoop my birth to vindicate, By charging, like the herd, the wrong on Fate, That I was not of noble lineage sprung: Far other creed inspires my heart and tongue. For now should Nature bid all living men Retrace their years, and live them o'er again, Each culling, as his inclination bent, His parents for himself, with mine content, I would not choose whom men endow as great With the insignia and seats of state; And, though I seemed insane to vulgar eyes, Thou wouldst perchance esteem me truly wise, In thus refusing to assume the care Of irksome state I was unused to bear. ”

“ People did not then know, as they know now, how heavy a weight of labour and anxiety had been thrown upon the Queen by the death of the Prince. During his life her labours as Sovereign had been lightened by the constant presence at her side of a counsellor to whom the welfare of the Empire was as dear as to herself, whose life was merged in hers, on whose strong brain and constant devotion she had, for over twenty years, been accustomed to lean for support and guidance. While he lived, the cares of Royalty pressed comparatively lightly upon the Queen. ”

“ Both thou and I Must quickly die! Content thee, then, nor madly hope To wrest a false assurance from Chaldean horoscope. "Far nobler, better were it, Whate'er may be in store, With soul serene to bear it, If winters many more Jove spare for thee, Or this shall be The last, that now with sullen roar Scatters the Tuscan surge in foam upon the rock-bound shore. "Be wise, your spirit firing With cups of tempered wine, And hopes afar aspiring In compass brief confine, Use all life's powers; The envious hours Fly as we talk; then live to-day, Nor fondly to to-morrow trust more than you must or may." ”

“ Every inch a Queen as she was, and careful that the Royal authority which she inherited should suffer no detriment in her hands, there ran through Her Majesty's nature a vein of modest humility as to her own knowledge and powers in things of common life, a seeking for guidance and help, which was infinitely touching. ”

“ At any hour that great leveller may sweep you away into darkness and dust, and what will it then avail you, that you have wasted all your hours, and foregone all wholesome pleasure, in adding ingot to ingot, or acre to acre, for your heirs to squander? Set a bound, then, to your desires: think not of how much others have, but of how much which they have you can do perfectly well without. Be not the slave of show or circumstance, "but in yourself possess your own desire." Do not lose the present in vain perplexities about the future. If fortune lours to-day, she may smile to-morrow ”

“ The Queen has received Mr Martin's most kind letter of the 3rd.... She really is at a loss to say how much she feels his constant and invariable kindness to her, and how deeply grateful she is for it. In the Queen's position, though it might sound strange, as she has so many to serve her, she feels the assistance rendered her by others in private matters, in which her official servants, from one cause or another, seem to feel little interest and to be very helpless, is of immense value; and she considers it most fortunate, to say the least, to have found so kind a friend as Mr Martin. ”

“ For Maecenas, my friend, dates from this happy morning The life which has swelled to a lustrous career. You sigh for young Telephus: better forget him! His rank is not yours, and the gaudier charms Of a girl that's both wealthy and wanton benet him, And hold him the fondest of slaves in her arms. "Remember fond Phaëthon's fiery sequel, And heavenward-aspiring Bellerophon's fate; And pine not for one who would ne'er be your equal, But level your hopes to a lowlier mate. ”

“ The Queen rejoices to think that the great character of her dear old Baron will be known now as it ought to be. Indeed, the greatest worth is often not known. [8] No one feels this so strongly as the Queen has done and does. What worth, what talent, what real greatness exist, unknown and unimagined, though not by the Great Judge of all men! ”

“ 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 mass 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 shellfish 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! ”

“ But he told them, in every variety of phrase and illustration—in ode, in satire, and epistle—that without self-control and temperance in all things, there would be no joy without remorse, no pleasure without fatigue—that it is from within that happiness must come, if it come at all, and that unless the mind has schooled itself to peace by the renunciation of covetous desires,
"We may be wise, or rich, or great, But never can be blest." ”

“ When young mammas, and fathers to a man, With terrors for their sons and heirs are wan; When stifling anteroom, or court, distils Fevers wholesale, and breaks the seals of wills. Should winter swathe the Alban fields in snow, Down to the sea your poet means to go, To nurse his ailments, and, in cosy nooks Close huddled up, to loiter o'er his books. But once let zephyrs blow, sweet friend, and then, If then you'll have him, he will quit his den, With the first swallow hailing you again. ”

“ The deadening influence of mere sensuality, and of the prevalent low tone of morals, must indeed have been great, when a man "so singularly susceptible," as Lord Lytton has truly described him, "to amiable, graceful, gentle, and noble impressions of man and of life," could write of a woman whom he had once loved in a strain like this:—
"The gods have heard, the gods have heard my prayer; Yes, Lyce! you are growing old, and still You struggle to look fair; You drink, and dance, and trill Your songs to youthful love, in accents weak With wine, and age, and passion. Youthful Love! ”

“ At Rome you for the country sigh; When in the country to the sky You, flighty as the thistle's down, Are always crying up the town. If no one asks you out to dine, Oh, then the pot-au-feu's divine! 'You go out on compulsion only— 'Tis so delightful to be lonely; And drinking bumpers is a bore You shrink from daily more and more.' But only let Maecenas send Command for you to meet a friend ”

“ I've roses, too, for wreaths to twine, And Nubian nut, that for thy hair An oil shall yield of fragrance rare.
"The plenty quit, that only palls, And, turning from the cloud-capped pile That towers above thy palace halls, Forget to worship for a while The privileges Rome enjoys, Her smoke, her splendour, and her noise. "It is the rich who relish best To dwell at times from state aloof; And simple suppers, neatly dressed, Beneath a poor man's humble roof, With neither pall nor purple there, Have smoothed ere now the brow of care. ”

“ You fret yourself to acquire your wealth—you fret yourself lest you should lose it. It robs you of your health, your ease of mind, your freedom of thought and action. Riches will not bribe inexorable death to spare you. ”

“ Not all his regard for Maecenas himself, deep as it was, could induce him to stay in town to enliven the leisure hours of the statesman by his companionship at the expense of those calm seasons of communion with nature and the books of the great men of old, in which he could indulge his irresistible craving for some solution of the great problems of life and philosophy. ”

“ True love, we know, is blind; defects, that blight The loved one's charms, escape the lover's sight, Nay, pass for beauties; as Balbinus shows A passion for the wen on Agna's nose. Oh, with our friendships that we did the same, And screened our blindness under virtue's name! For we are bound to treat a friend's defect With touch most tender, and a fond respect ”

“ The craven and the hopeless here on their ill-starred beds may loll. Ye who can feel and act like men, this woman's wail give o'er, And fly to regions far away beyond the Etruscan shore! The circling ocean waits us; then away, where nature smiles, To those fair lands, those blissful lands, the rich and happy Isles! Where Ceres year by year crowns all the untilled land with sheaves, And the vine with purple clusters droops, unpruned of all her leaves; Where the olive buds and burgeons, to its promise ne'er untrue, And the russet fig adorns the tree, that graffshoot never knew ”

“ Accordingly, of all those infinitely varied chords of deep emotion and imaginative tenderness, of which occasional traces are to be found in the literature of antiquity, and with which modern poetry, from Dante to Tennyson, is familiar, no hint is to be found in his pages. His deepest feeling is at best but a ferment of the blood; it is never the all-absorbing devotion of the heart. ”

“ A foreign foe, alas! shall tread The City's ashes down, And his horse's ringing hoofs shall smite her places of renown, And the bones of great Quirinus, now religiously enshrined, Shall be flung by sacrilegious hands to the sunshine and the wind. And if ye all from ills so dire ask how yourselves to free, Or such at least as would not hold your lives unworthily, No better counsel can I urge, than that which erst inspired The stout Phocaeans when from their doomed city they retired, Their fields, their household gods, their shrines surrendering as a prey To the wild boar and the ravening wolf ”

“ For when thy face, like spring-tide's gleam, "Its brightness on the people sheds, Then glides the day more sweetly by, A brighter blue pervades the sky, The sun a richer radiance spreads! "As on her boy the mother calls, Her boy, whom envious tempests keep Beyond the vexed Carpathian deep, From his dear home, till winter falls, "And still with vow and prayer she cries, Still gazes on the winding shore, So yearns the country evermore For Caesar, with fond, wistful eyes. ”

“ But all the more delightful to these men must it have been to come into intimate contact with a man who, while perfectly appreciating their special gifts and aims, could bring them back from the stir and excitement of their habitual life to think of other things than social or political successes,—to look into their own hearts, and to live for a time for something better and more enduring than the triumphs of vanity or ambition. ”

“ Maecenas, Virgil, Varius,—if I please In my poor writings these and such as these,— If Plotius, Valgius, Fuscus will commend, And good Octavius, I've achieved my end. You, noble Pollio (let your friend disclaim All thoughts of flattery, when he names your name) , Messala and his brother, Servius too, And Bibulus, and Furnius kind and true, With others, whom, despite their sense and wit, And friendly hearts, I purposely omit; Such I would have my critics; men to gain Whose smiles were pleasure, to forget them pain. ”

“ Nor if a man shall write, like me, things nigh to prose akin, Shall he, however well he write, the name of poet win? To genius, to the man-whose soul is touched with fire divine, Whose voice speaks like a trumpet-note, that honoured name assign. 'Tis not enough that you compose your verse In diction irreproachable, pure, scholarly, and terse, Which, dislocate its cadence, by anybody may Be spoken like the language of the father in the play. ”

“ The lines have been often imitated; and in Sir Robert Aytoun's poem on "Woman's Inconstancy," the imitation has a charm not inferior to the original.
"Yet do thou glory in thy choice, Thy choice of his good fortune boast; I'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice To see him gain what I have lost; The height of my disdain shall be To laugh at him, to blush for thee; To love thee still, yet go no more A-begging to a beggar's door." ”

“ Genius is much, but genius without art will not win immortality; "for a good poet's made, as well as born." There must be a working up to the highest models, a resolute intolerance of anything slight or slovenly, a fixed purpose to put what the writer has to express into forms at once the most beautiful, suggestive, and compact. The mere trick of literary composition Horace holds exceedingly cheap. Brilliant nonsense finds no allowance from him. Truth—truth in feeling and in thought—must be present, if the work is to have any value. ”

“ 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 ”

“ He rarely stirred from Rome, loving its smoke, its thronged and noisy streets, its whirl of human passions, as Johnson loved Fleet Street, or "the sweet shady side of Pall Mall," better than all the verdure of Tivoli, or the soft airs and exquisite scenery of Baiae. He liked to read of these things, however; and may have found as keen a pleasure in the scenery of the 'Georgics,' or in Horace's little landscape-pictures, as most men could have extracted from the scenes which they describe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the wisdom of life consists of commonplaces, which we should all be much the better for working into our practice, instead of complacently sneering at them as platitudes. Horace abounds in commonplaces, and on no theme more than this. He has no divine law of duty to appeal to, as we have—no assured hereafter to which he may point the minds of men; but he presses strongly home their folly, in so far as this world is concerned. To what good, he asks, all this turmoil and disquiet? No man truly possesses more than he is able thoroughly to enjoy. ”

“ He does not fall into the common error of didactic writers, of laying upon life more than it will bear; but he insists that it shall at least bear the fruits of integrity, truth, honour, justice, self-denial, and brotherly charity. Over and above the mere literary charm of his works, too—and herein, perhaps, lies no small part of the secret of his popularity—the warm heart and thoroughly urbane nature of the man are felt instinctively by his readers, and draw them to him as to a friend. ”

“ To this theme many of Horace's finest Odes are strung. Of these, not the least graceful is that addressed to Dellius (II. 3) :—
"Let not the frowns of fate Disquiet thee, my friend, Nor, when she smiles on thee, do thou, elate With vaunting thoughts, ascend Beyond the limits of becoming mirth; For, Dellius, thou must die, become a clod of earth! "Whether thy days go down In gloom, and dull regrets, Or, shunning life's vain struggle for renown, Its fever and its frets, Stretch'd on the grass, with old Falernian wine, Thou giv'st the thoughtless hours a rapture all divine. ”

“ Poor Lyce might at least have claimed his silence, if he could not do, what Thackeray says every honest fellow should do, "think well of the woman he has once thought well of, and remember her with kindness and tenderness, as a man remembers a place where he has been very happy."
Horace's better self comes out in his playful appeal to his friend Xanthias (Odes, II. 4) not to be ashamed of having fallen in love with his handmaiden Phyllis. That she is a slave is a matter of no account. A girl of such admirable qualities must surely come of a good stock, and is well worth any man's love. ”

“ Horace—who, from the other side of the table, with an amused smile in his eyes, watches him, as he "sighs like furnace," while Neaera, to the accompaniment of her lyre, sings one of Sappho's most passionate odes—whispers something in the ear of the brilliant vocalist, which visibly provokes a witty repartee, with a special sting in it for Horace himself, at which the little man winces—for have there not been certain love-passages of old between Neaera and himself? The wine circulates freely. ”

“ With characteristic irony Horace puts his fancies into the mouth of Alphius, a miserly money-lender. No one yearns so keenly for the country and its imagined peace as the overworked city man, when his pulse is low and his spirits weary with bad air and the reaction of over-excitement; no one, as a rule, is more apt to tire of the homely and uneventful life which the country offers, or to find that, for him at least, its quietude does not bring peace. ”

“ We seek in them in vain for the tenderness, the negation of self, the passion and the pathos, which are the soul of all true love-poetry.
At the same time, Horace had a subtle appreciation of the beauty and grace, the sweetness and the fascination, of womanhood. Poet as he was, he must have delighted to contemplate the ideal elevation and purity of woman, as occasionally depicted in the poetry of Greece, and of which he could scarcely fail to have had some glimpses in real life. ”