William Tuckwell

“ He was forty years old when most of his amorous Odes were written; an age at which, as George Eliot has reminded us, the baptism of passion is by aspersion rather than immersion. Something he must have known of love, or he could not write as he has done; but it is the superficial gallantry of a flirt rather than the impassioned self-surrender of a lover; of a gay bachelor, with roving critical eye, heart whole yet fancy free, too practised a judge of beauty to become its slave. ”

“ Maecenas was in failing health and out of favour. Old age had come to himself before its time; love, and wine, and festal crown of flowers had lost their zest:
Soon palls the taste for noise and fray,
When hair is white and leaves are sere.
But he rallies his life-long philosophy to meet the change; patience lightens the inevitable; while each single day is his he will spend and enjoy it in such fashion that he may say at its conclusion, "I have lived" (Od. III, xxix, 41) . His health had never been good, undermined, he believed, by the hardships of his campaign with Brutus ”

“ So, slowly, the wasting lyric fire revives; we get the martial odes to conquering Drusus and to Lollius, the panegyrics on Augustus and Tiberius, all breathing proud consciousness that "the Muse opens the good man's grave and lifts him to the gods"; that immortality can be won only by the poet's pen, and that it is in his own power to confer it. ”

“ All things are ready, a cask of Alban nine years old is broached, the servants are in a stir, the altar wreathed for sacrifice, the flames curling up the kitchen chimney, ivy and parsley gathered to make a wreath for Phyllis' hair. Come then, sweet girl, last of my loves; for never again shall this heart take fire at a woman's face—come, and learn of me a tune to sing with that dear voice, and drive away dull care. I am told that every man in making love assures the charmer that no woman shall ever succeed her in his regards ”

“ We will have a long summer evening of talk, and you can sleep afterwards as late as you like, for to morrow is Augustus' birthday, and there will be no business in the courts. I told you the wine is good, and there is nothing like good drink. It unlocks reticence, unloads hearts, encourages the shy, makes the tongue-tied eloquent and the poor opulent. I have chosen my company well: there will be no blab to repeat our conversation out of doors. Butra and Septimius are coming, and I hope Sabinus. ”

“ We walk with them the streets of Rome. We watch the connoisseurs gazing into the curiosity shops and fingering the bronzes or the silver statuettes; the naughty boys jeering the solemn Stoic as he walks along, staid, superior, absent; the good boys coming home from school with well-thumbed lesson books; the lovers in the cookshops or restaurants shooting apple pips from between finger and thumb, rejoicing in the good omen if they strike the ceiling; the stores of Sulpicius the wine merchant and of Sosius the bookseller ”

“ Never think that a creature so exquisite grew
In the haunts where but vice and dishonour are known,
Nor deem that a girl so unselfish, so true,
Had a mother 'twould shame thee to take for thine own.
Several of his correspondents we can only name; the poet Valgius, the tragedians Pollio and Fuscus; Sallust, grandson of the historian; Pompeius, his old comrade in the Brutus wars; Lollius, defeated in battle and returning home in disgrace. Nor need we labour to identify a host of others; Iccius, Grosphus, Dellius; who figure as mere dedicatory names ”

“ There Maecenas set out his books and his gems and his Etruscan ware, entertained his literary and high born friends, poured forth his priceless Caecuban and Chian wines. There were drops of bitter in these cups. His beautiful wife Terentia tormented him by her temper and her infidelities; he put her away repeatedly, as often received her back. It was said of him that he had been married a hundred times, though only to a single wife: "What is the latest conjugal news?" men asked as his sumptuous litter passed by, "is it a marriage or a divorce?" ”

“ Horace says, "your creed is to live according to Nature. Do you expect to find her in the town or in the country? whether of the two yields more peaceful nights and sweeter sleep? is a marble floor more refreshing to the eyes than a green meadow? water poured through leaden pipes purer than the crystal spring? Even amid your Corinthian columns you plant trees and shrubs; though you drive out Nature she will [43] silently return and supplant your fond caprices. Do interpose a little ease and recreation amid the money-grubbing which confines you to the town. ”

“ During six years he had lived in Rome, first as an impecunious clerk, then as a client of Maecenas. To all Roman homes of quality and consequence clients were a necessary adjunct: men for the most part humble and needy, who attended to welcome the patron when issuing from his chamber in the morning, preceded and surrounded his litter in the streets, clearing a way for it through the crowd; formed, in short, his court, rewarded by a daily basket of victuals or a small sum of money. If a client was involved in litigation, his patron would plead his cause in person or by deputy ”

“ They tell us that life is brief and death is sure, that light loves and ancient wines are good, that riches are burdensome, and enough is better than a feast, that country life is delightful, that old age comes on us apace, that our friends leave us sorrowing and our sorrow does not bring them back. ”

“ The origin and development of Roman poetry made it certain that perfection must come late. He assumes that Augustus champions the moderns, and compliments him on the discernment which preferred a Virgil and a Varius (and so, by implication, a Horace) to the Plautuses and Terences of the past.
The "Art of Poetry" is thought to be an unfinished work. Unmethodical and without proportion, it may have been either compiled clumsily after the poet's death, or put together carelessly by himself amid the indolence which grows sometimes upon old age. ”

“ Nature, if spared by man, remains unaltered; the heights and recesses of the Digentian valley meet our eye to-day scarce changed in twenty centuries, but the busy, crowded Rome of Horace is now only a desolate excavation. ”

“ Some are rather dedicated than written to the persons whose names they bear; some are thrown for literary purposes into epistolary form; some again are definitely and personally addressed to friends. "Sermons" he calls them himself as he called the Satires, and their motive is mostly the same; like those, they are Conversations, only with absent correspondents instead of with present interlocutors, real or imagined. He follows in them the old theme, the art of living, the happiness of moderation and contentment ”

“ The Christian has his Bible; the scholar his Homer; Port Royal lived on St. Augustine; an earlier philosophy on Montaigne; Horace comes within the range of all: in reading him we break not in any way with modernity, yet retain our hold upon antiquity. I know nothing more delightful as one grows in years, when the [52] mind retains its subtlety, but is conscious of increasing languor, than to test the one and brace the other by companionship with a book familiar and frequently re-read: we walk thereby with a supporting staff, stroll leaning upon a friendly arm. ”

“ But patient, daily survey, educated by the restorations of a Lanciani, enables us to piece together these encumbering ruins, until with tolerable clearness we can follow Horace in his walk along the Via Sacra towards Caesar's gardens, and can fairly reconstruct the objects which must have met his view. Everywhere is haunted ground: there is the bronze wolf of the Capitol, "thunder-stricken nurse of Rome," and the Tarpeian rock, from which "the Traitor's leap cured all ambition." ”

“ Julius Florus, poet and orator, presses him to write more lyrics (Ep. II, ii) . For many reasons, no, he answers. I no longer want money. I am getting old. Lyrics are out of fashion. No one can write in Rome. I have become fastidious. His sketch of the ideal poet is believed to portray the writings of his friend Virgil. It is nobly paraphrased by Pope:
But how severely with themselves proceed
The men, who write such verse as we can read! ”

“ But if the gods are beyond our ken, and if the world to come is misty, we still have this world with us; a world not always to be daffed aside with love and wine and comradeship, since behind its frolic wantonness lie the ennobling claims of duty and of conscience. ”

“ Dear friend, I tell you what you want, contentment with the present hour. Try and imagine that each day which dawns upon you is your last; then each succeeding day will come unexpected and delightful. ”

“ Sick men travel for health, but you are well. Sad men travel for change, but change diverts not sadness, yachts and chaises bring no happiness; their skies they change, but not their souls who cross the sea. ”

“ Even here he is not weaned from the tricks of mocking irony manifest in his early writings and born perhaps of his early struggles; for he puts this delicious pastoral, which tinkles through the page like Milton's "L'Allegro," into the mouth of a Roman capitalist, who, bitten by transient passion for a country life, calls in all his money that he may buy a farm, pines in country [54] retirement for the Stock Exchange, sells his estate in quick disgust, and returns to city life ”

“ Then into his life at this time came an influence which helped to shape his character, but had nearly wrecked his fortunes. Brutus, fresh from Caesar's murder, was at Athens, residing, as we should say, in his old University, and drawing to himself the passionate admiration of its most brilliant undergraduates; among the rest, of the younger Cicero and of Horace. Few characters in history are more pathetically interesting than his. ”

“ It is curious that the great poet of one age, reading the greater poet of another, should fasten his attention, not on the poetry, but on the ethics of his predecessor. The remaining letter is called out by Lollius' appointment as confidential secretary to some man of great consequence; an office such as Horace himself declined when offered by Augustus. The post, he says, is full of difficulty, and endangering to self-respect: the servility it exacts will be intolerable to a man so truthful, frank, and independent as his friend. ”