GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

THOSE to whom the writings of Horace have given delight (and a great company they are, readers of various ages, countries, tastes, rispositions,) owe a debt of gratitude first of all to Horace's good ther, then to the poets Virgil and Varius, and then to his friend and patron Mæcenas; for without all of them the life of Horace had been quite different, and literature had been without one of its most charming authors. No doubt even the childhood of Horace had influence upon his future life. He was born near the source of one of the southern tributaries of the impetuous Aufidus, now called Ofanto, the river of Apulia, often mentioned by him, and so dear to his early recollections, that he exalts it to be a representative stream, as had been used the harmonious names of Mæander and Eurotas, and the other rivers of the poetry of Greece. Venusia, now Venosa, his birth-place, is situate in a beautiful country on the side of the Apennines towards the Adriatic. In this romantic region he wandered as a child near the pointed peaks of the mountain Vultur, or under Acherontia, built like a nest on a steep hill, or amid the woods and glens of Bantia, or by the lowly village of Forentum. The Apennines with their sombre forests of pine, and summits rising over each other, described so well in the Mysteries of Udolpho, had charms for Goethe, though a foreigner; and a poetic child born amongst them would find them a meet nurse. In the poetry of the ancients there are none of those elaborate and idealized descriptions of scenery found so often in modern writers; yet Horace, like Virgil, often gives a picture of places by epithets carefully chosen. When his fame as a poet was established, he would look back with a natural gratitude to the scenery of his childhood, and fancy that the gods protected the spirited boy from bears and serpents in his roamings among the hills, and that doves, the birds of Venus, like the robin redbreasts of later stories, threw on the sleeping child leaves of sacred myrtle and holy bay. Venusia had been an important Roman colony for upwards of 300 years, ever since the days of the Samnite Hither fled some of the Roman troops after the defeat at Cannæ. Nature never intended Horace for a soldier: but he, who

wars.

HOR.

was born in a military town, became for a short time a tribune or colonel in the Roman army, and often expresses an admiration for Roman courage in war.

Horace nowhere makes mention of his mother, and we do not know whether she was a freed-woman, or free-born; he only says in one place that he was the child of lowly parents. It is likely enough that she died when he was young; else Horace, whose character is marked by affectionate gratitude, would probably have mentioned her. There is hardly anything more beautiful in the writings f antiquity than the way in which he speaks of that good father, whom he says he would not change for any parent who had held high office in the state. His father spared no expense and pains in his education. By him was the boy guarded from every taint of evil. None of the other Roman poets (except Terence, who was a slave, but born at Carthage, and of what rank there we do not know,) sprang from so humble an origin. His father had been a slave. The man who enfranchised the father little thought what would be the consequence of that enfranchisement. No wonder, as Horace himself tells us, and as Suetonius in his Life of Horace observes, that his father's low estate and calling were made a reproach to the prosperous friend of Augustus and Mæcenas. How bravely Horace answered this taunt, every reader of the poet knows. Indeed, he owed all to his father. If he had not given his son such a liberal education, Horace would probably have passed his days in the obscure town of Venusia, engaged there in some petty trade, and been an entertaining companion at the suppers of the centurions and their families. A more striking example cannot be given of what may depend on some humble instrument, who at a certain time behaves with spirit and generosity. Horace must have profited much by the lessons which he had in Livius Andronicus, and the other early poets of Rome, though he did not, when a man, highly esteem those authors who had cost him many a flogging, even as he has caused many a flogging to schoolboys since. His teacher Orbilius was like many a teacher, sour-tempered, free-spoken, given to whipping, one who earned more fame than money, and had reason to complain of the interference of parents. But if Horace, when delivered from the rod of Orbilius the grammarian, had received no more education, he had never been the Lyric poet of Rome. To a school was to be added a University, and kindly Athens, the only city in the world that could do it, was to finish what Rome had begun,

and Greek literature was to crown Latin, that he, like his friend Mæcenas, might be learned in both tongues. How Horace's father obtained the means to send his son to Athens we may well wonder, when we consider the expense of an education at that fashionable University. Horace, at the time he left Italy for Greece, must have taken leave of the good father, whom he was never to see again.

At Athens Horace became familiar with Greek literature, he was a seeker after truth in the groves of Academus, he tried his hand at Greek verses, Greek Iambics perhaps, or Greek Elegiacs, or Greek Lyrics, till, as he playfully imagines, one night when he was sleeping, behold, the divine founder of Rome, who recognised in him a true son of Italy, no mere imitator or translator of Greek poetry, appeared in a dream that issued after midnight from the gate of horn, and forbade his attempting such a superfluous work. Thus, as the scenery of the Apennines, the liberality of his father, his early residence at Rome, the teaching of severe Orbilius, all tended to make Horace what he was destined to be, so did Athens contribute its share towards this end, both directly and indirectly; directly by teaching him Greek literature and philosophy, indirectly by the circumstances into which he was thrown owing to the public events which were then taking place. There is hardly any one in whose case it is more plainly to be seen how all kinds of different things concur in training a man to be what he is meant to be. Walckenaer and Rigault both remark, that while Horace was a student at Athens the news came of the assassination of Julius Cæsar, that at that time Cicero sent his treatise on the Offices to his son, who then was also a student at Athens, in which treatise Cicero expresses his admiration of the act of the conspirators; that the students were many of them the sons of senators, that the statues of Brutus and Cassius were crowned with flowers together with those of Harmodius and Aristogiton. Horace would be carried away by this enthusiasm. Youth is the age for republican impulses. When Brutus, Cato's son-in-law, came there, he would appear to the young Horace the true representative of republican principles. Even supposing that Horace was at that time an Epicurean, of which however we cannot be certain, his zeal for republicanism would prevent his taking offence at the Stoic opinions of Brutus. How Horace, so young and of such lowly origin, became a military tribune in the army of Brutus is as difficult to understand as many points in history must always be. That in the service of Brutus, in the midst of his military life, he had those

natural spirits and love of fun which were characteristic of his joyous nature, is plain from the seventh Satire of the first book, which is interesting, as being in all probability the earliest remaining production of the poet. The military career of Horace and his republican enthusiasm were soon terminated by the decisive defeat of Philippi, after which, as Tacitus says, the republic, as republic, fought no battles. To Horace the day was not fatal, as to many others: like the lyric poet of Lesbos, the future lyric poet of Italy threw away his shield, which was not well, as he himself confesses. But this short portion of the life of Horace, forming such a contrast to his earlier and latter days, contributed its part towards making him the writer he became. Three times has he mentioned Cato, the father-in-law of Brutus, speaking in one place of his unconquered spirit, in another of his virtue, in a third of his glorious death. The exploits of republican Rome are dear to the poet. The worthies of the ancient commonwealth, Regulus, Æmilius Paullus, Camillus and Fabricius, are not unsung by him. He has a feeling for the ancient simplicity, and a belief in the morality, of the days of old. No one sets forth more strongly than he does the madness and impiety of civil war. Had he not seen the evil with his own eyes, himself a part of it? patriotic poet.

A courtier he became afterwards, but still a

After the battle of Philippi he returned to Italy, with farm lost, humbled in hopes, like a bird whose wings are clipped. These were his dark days. He says that bold poverty drove him to write verses. To poverty we owe Rasselas and the Vicar of Wakefield. The same necessity gave the impulse to the genius of Smollett as a novelist. But of what verses does Horace speak? Indeed it is probable that he is half jesting. This is the opinion of August Arnold in his Life of Horace. Certainly the Epistle in which Horace speaks of these verses drawn forth by poverty is an Epistle full of jests and pleasant irony. It will not do to interpret Horace literally always. The same August Arnold thinks that it was then he enrolled himself in the company or guild of clerks: and Suetonius says that he obtained the place of secretary to a quæstor. With what means, whether the remains of his fortune, or borrowed money, or by some interest, is unknown. Arnold says that it is to his credit that he did not then take up the life of a parasite. A man of his natural wit might have got a livelihood more or less agreeable in this way, and been not unlike the parasites Vibidius and Balatro,

whom he himself so graphically describes in the last of the Satires. From the days of his poverty and obscurity he no doubt learnt something, as all wise men do. The remembrance of them would make him more grateful to the friend, who raised him from difficulties to competence and ease. Some of the sterner and more manly passages of his poetry, and those which recommend a spirit undisturbed by all the changes of fortune, owe something to his having known the hardships of adversity. However, the iron never entered deeply into his joyous soul. If it had, it might have crushed the poetic spirit and light heart within him. The evil days were few. Whether he knew Virgil in earlier days, or had met him at Athens, or whether Virgil, his elder by five years, had seen some of his youthful poems, he found in him and Varius friends in the hour of need. This was the turning-point of his life. Horace tells us shortly how he appeared before the great man on that eventful day so full of fate to Horace, to Mæcenas himself, to literature. He was diffident and shy, and his speech was broken and stammering. He told the simple truth of himself, his father, his means. Few were the words of the patron in reply. Mæcenas did not give his friendship lightly : but, nine months after, Horace became his friend. What Walter Scott imagines in Kenilworth when describing the meeting of Shakespeare and Leicester, may be applied here: the son of a freedman was honoured with an interview with the Emperor's great minister, so that age would have told the tale; in ours we should say, the immortal had done homage to the mortal. However, Horace owed not only the happiness of his life, but his fame as a poet and writer, to this interview with Mæcenas. Some poets, like Dante and Milton, may have been made greater by adversity, when the indignant Muse has drawn spirit and fire from misfortune, but such was not the case of Horace. Indignation could never make verses of the kind he wrote. The one or two Epodes which he probably wrote in the days of his adversity are not to be compared with the happy outpourings of his soul in the days of his prosperity. Juvenal was right, when he says that Horace was comfortable on the day that he burst out in the praises of the God Bacchus. A joyous, not a bitter spirit, was needed for the writer of the Satires and Epistles of Horace. His Sabine farm and his quiet valley inspired those of the Odes which breathe contentment and joy. The times of his adversity lasted about three years; the bright sun of prosperity shone upon him for full thirty years, and few and light were the