INTRODUCTION THE PLACE OF HORACE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY It is not the glory of the poets of the age of Queen Anne to have discovered Horace for English literature. Since the reawakening of interest in the classics, his influence has been running like a silver thread through the works of the English writers, to reach its culminating point when it produced Pope's brilliant satires, and at the same time to begin to grow weaker because of the use to which his writings were debased by those lesser wits, many of whom found their fitting niche in Pope's Dunciad. Horace did not seize upon the imagination of English authors so quickly or so strongly as did Ovid and Virgil; nor has his influence ever been so direct as has Cicero's through his philosophy, and through his power of eloquence. Even the early satirists, such as Donne and Hall, though they made use of him, found more of what they sought in Persius and Juvenal. But by the qualities which have prevented his becoming a cult of any one class or period-his catholicity of taste and his lack of dogmatic insistence he has appealed to all kinds of men as no other classic writer, even Virgil, has done; and from the time of Chaucer onward we find allusions to him growing more frequent. Sometimes the interest is manifestly personal-as a friend and companion he is the most used of classic authors; sometimes it is as a moralist, sometimes as a satirist, or as a singer of exquisite lyrics, that he makes his appeal. Ben Jonson is one of the first to translate the Ars Poetica into English. He translates some of the Odes, and inserts the famous Ninth Satire of the First Book as a scene in the Poetaster. To him the Roman poet is "Thine own Horace." But Ben Jonson has already something of the classical type of mind of the Augustans. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, draws upon him steadily for reference and quotation. Robert Herrick has frequently found in the Odes inspiration for his graver poetry, and he is fond of ending a poem with an allusion to Horace. Sir Thomas Browne turns to him in his most serious moments. In my solitary and retired imagination,' he writes in the Religio Medici,2 (neque enim cum porticus aut me Lectulus accepit, desum mihi,)3 I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to contemplate Him and His Attributes Who is ever with me, especially those two mighty ones, His Wisdom and Eternity.' And he refers lightly to him for illustration when he speaks of the painstaking efforts of the grammarians: 'I have seen a Grammarian towr and plume himself over a single line in Horace, and shew more pride in the construction of one Ode, than the Author in the composure of the whole book." Milton has added a beautiful contribution to Horatian English poetry by translating the Fifth Ode of the First Book into blank verse. Cowley's translations and paraphrases of Horace are well known. And in Dryden already appears the critical attitude which was the striking characteristic of the early 1 Ode (To Himself) (Cunningham-Gifford edition of Jonson's Wks. 5. 416). For a survey of Jonson's use of Horace, see Ben Jonsons Poetik und seine Beziehungen zu Horaz, by H. Reinsch, Leipzig, 1899. 2 Ed. W. A. Greenhill, 1881, Pt. 1, Sect. 11. 3 S. 1. 4. 133-134. 4 Pt. 2, Sect. 8. [Neque enim, cum lectulus aut me Porticus excepit, desum mihi]. eighteenth century, and which found in Horace's precepts a useful vehicle of expression. The translation of the Odes, Satires, and Epistles has been a never-failing allurement to the poets of every age of English literature. And every theory of translation has been exemplified in some English rendering of Horace. It remained for the least imaginative and most critical period in English literature, the first half of the eighteenth century, to give full appreciation to Horace. His rules for poetry, known directly from his writings, and transmitted through such French authors as Boileau, were accepted, even more widely than the laws of Aristotle, ast the standard of critical judgment. Addison and Steele by their choice of mottos for their periodicals, Prior by his adoption of a type of lyric that has since his time been designated as Horatian, and Pope with his imposing series of Imitations, gave such an impulse to the already widespread interest that it was carried on through the whole of the century. Where the full extent of this interest may be seen, but at the same time where Horace has been degraded to a use unworthy of him, is in the innumerable critical pamphlets of the day. Such writings are saturated with classical allusion, especially Horatian; Swift, in his Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind, has cleverly held up to ridicule the lengths to which such quotation and allusion had been carried. Instances of some of the best of these pamphlets are: Critical Remarks on Mr. Rowe's last Play, call'd Ulysses, which appeared in 1706; Charles Gildon's New Rehearsal, in 1714; Remarks on the Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey, in 1715. All these are criticisms of Rowe's plays. The many pamphlets of which Pope was the stormcentre, and John Dennis the best known author, are filled with allusions to Horace; and such a reputable piece of criticism as Joseph Warton's Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope refers constantly to the authority of Aristotle, Longinus, Virgil, Horace, Quintilian, and the French exponent of Horace's art of poetry, Boileau. The Earl of Orrery, in his Remarks on the Life and Writings of Swift, and Deane Swift, in his Essay upon the Life, Writings, and Character of Swift, show complete dependence on the classic authors in general, and on Horace in particular. In the best writers of the century there is less dependence on the authority of mere classical quotation, and greater depth of understanding of the classic authors. Certain qualities were peculiar to the writers of the eighteenth century, and these they both consciously and unconsciously strove to perfect. Most of these qualities may be found exemplified in Horace, and naturally therefore they turned to him for sympathy and for guidance, and, as naturally, his influence reacted upon them, and confirmed the tendencies already inherent in the spirit of the time. Horace's correctness and carefulness of diction, his desire for perfection of form, his very commonplaceness, and his lack of romance or ideal above the ordinary, everyday rules of living, were closely akin to the attitude of the eighteenth century. Among the writers of the century the passionate spirit of such a poet as Catullus is nowhere to be found. They would read him, probably, and set him aside, with little sympathy or understanding. Among them there was no mysticism; religious aspirations were in abeyance; it was a sceptical, not a heroic age. That Pope was a Roman Catholic is a matter of history, but the fact could not be learned through his poetry. Wesley fought against the inertness of the church, and the result was Methodism, which, because it ranged itself alongside of matter-of-fact, everyday happenings, took a strong hold upon the people. The classes whom Wesley could not reach were inclined to be indifferent to matters religious; some, like Bolingbroke, were more or less sincere deists. Such a poet as Horace, with his confession, Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens, which is only a definite statement of what all his writings evince, would naturally appeal to a generation that, after intense religious dissensions, and after a revolt against Puritan repression, had felt a reaction, and fallen into religious apathy. The influence of Horace is apt to be subtle and indefinite. There are many reasons for this. In the writings of the preceding century, he had already been so frequently put to use that many of his teachings were handed on to the eighteenth century as traditions of English literature, rather than as something distinctively Horatian. Much, too, had been absorbed into their literature by French writers, who at this time led Europe as arbiters of the art of writing, so that many of his rules were accepted in England with the stamp of French authority. Horace was taught piecemeal in the schools, and many a writer flaunted bits that had stuck in his memory, though they were nothing more to him, or to his readers, than fashionable and meaningless tags. Such tags were passed from hand to hand, in the voluminous pamphlets of the day, and in the letters that had become so great a fashion in literary circles; and as they became more frequently quoted, they grew more meaningless and inept. Another cause of the elusive quality of the influence of Horace lies in his own writings. His Satires and Epistles consist of a galaxy of brilliant apophthegms, rather than of sustained arguments. Even in his Odes, which, by their brevity, make for concentrated unity of subject, striking phrases and sayings may be culled at random, and in ין |