Read Ebook: Horace and His Influence by Showerman Grant

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But it is not only to comparatively independent creation that we must look. The dynamic power of Horace is to be found at work even in the translation of the poet. The fact that he has had more translators than any other poet, ancient or modern, is itself an evidence of inspirational quality, but a greater proof lies in the variety and character of his translators and the quality of their achievement. A list of those who have felt in this way the stirrings of the Horatian spirit would include the names not only of many great men of letters, but of many great men of affairs, whose successes are to be counted among examples of genuine inspiration. Translation at its best is not mere craftsmanship, but creation,--in Roscommon's lines,

To translate in this manner is beyond all doubt to deserve the name of poet.

But let the attempt be made to avoid the ponderous movement and excessive sobriety of Milton, and to communicate the Horatian airiness, and there is a loss in conciseness and reserve:

But there are those who demand of poetry a usefulness more easily measurable than that of recreation. In their opinion, it is improvement rather than pleasure which is the end of art, or at least improvement as well as pleasure. In this, indeed, the poet himself is inclined to agree: "He who mingles the useful with the pleasant by delighting and likewise improving the reader, will get every vote."

Let us look for these more concrete results, and see how Horace the person still lives in the character of men, as well as Horace the poet in the character of literature.

And he is more than merely personal. He is sincere and unreserved. Were he otherwise, the delight of intimate acquaintance with him would be impossible. It is the real Horace whom we meet,--not a person on the literary stage, with buskins, pallium, and mask. Horace holds the mirror up to himself; rather, not to himself, but to nature in himself. Every side of his personality appears: the artist, and the man; the formalist, and the skeptic; the spectator, and the critic; the gentleman in society, and the son of the collector; the landlord of five hearths, and the poet at court; the stern moralist, and the occasional voluptuary; the vagabond, and the conventionalist. He is independent and unhampered in his expression. He has no exalted social position to maintain, and blushes neither for parentage nor companions. His philosophy is not School-made, and the fear of inconsistency never haunts him. His religion requires no subscription to dogma; he does not even take the trouble to define it. Politically, his duties have come to be also his desires. He will accept the favors of the Emperor and his ministers if they do not compromise his liberty or happiness. If they withdraw their gifts, he knows how to do without them, because he has already done without them. He conceals nothing, pretends to nothing, makes no excuses, suffers from no self-consciousness, exercises no reserve. There are few expressions of self in all literature so spontaneous and so complete. Horace has left us a portrait of his soul much more perfect than that of his person. It is a truthful portrait, with both shadow and light.

And there is a corollary to Horace's frankness that constitutes another element in the charm of his personality. His very unreserve is the proof of an open and kindly heart. To call him a satirist at all is to necessitate his own definition of satire, "smilingly to tell the truth." At least in his riper work, there is no trace of bitterness. He laughs with some purpose and to some purpose, but his laughter is not sardonic. Sane judgment and generous experience tell him that the foibles of mankind are his own as well as theirs, and are not to be changed by so slight a means as a railing tongue. He reflects that what in himself has produced no very disastrous results may without great danger be forgiven also in them.

It is this intimate and warming quality in Horace that prompts Hagedorn to call him "my friend, my teacher, my companion," and to take the poet with him on country walks as if he were a living person:

Horaz, mein Freund, mein Lehrer, mein Begleiter, Wir gehen aufs Land. Die Tage sind so heiter;

If we were to take detailed account of certain qualities missed in Horace by the modern reader, we should be even more deeply convinced of his power of personal attraction. He is not a Christian poet, but a pagan. Faith in immortality and Providence, penitence and penance, and humanitarian sentiment, are hardly to be found in his pages. He is sometimes too unrestrained in expression. The unsympathetic or unintelligent critic might charge him with being commonplace.

We are better able now to appreciate the dynamic power of Horace the person. We may see it at work in the fostering of friendly affection, in the deepening of love for favorite spots of earth, in the encouragement of righteous purpose, in the true judging of life's values.

And what numbers of men have taken to their hearts from the same ode the famous

Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes Angulus ridet,--

and expressed through its perfect phrase the love they bear their own beloved nook of earth. "Happy Horace!" writes Sainte-Beuve on the margin of his edition, "what a fortune has been his! Why, because he once expressed in a few charming verses his fondness for the life of the country and described his favorite corner of earth, the lines composed for his own pleasure and for the friend to whom he addressed them have laid hold on the memory of all men and have become so firmly lodged there that one can conceive no others, and finds only those when he feels the need of praising his own beloved retreat!"

Durum: sed levius fit patientia Quicquid corrigere est nefas,--

But the most pronounced effect of Horace's dynamic power is its inspiration to sane and truthful living. Life seems a simple thing, yet there are many who miss the paths of happiness and wander in wretched discontent because they are not bred to distinguish between the false and the real. We have seen the lesson of Horace: that happiness is not from without, but from within; that it is not abundance that makes riches, but attitude; that the acceptation of worldly standards of getting and having means the life of the slave; that the fraction is better increased by division of the denominator than by multiplying the numerator; that unbought riches are better possessions than those the world displays as the prizes most worthy of striving for. No poet is so full of inspiration as Horace for those who have glimpsed these simple and easy yet little known secrets of living. Men of twenty centuries have been less dependent on the hard-won goods of this world because of him, and lived fuller and richer lives. Surely, to give our young people this attractive example of sane solution of the problem of happy living is to leaven the individual life and the life of the social mass.

We have visualized the person of Horace and made his acquaintance. We have seen in his character and in the character of his times the sources of his greatness as a poet. We have seen in him the interpreter of his own times and the interpreter of the human heart in all times. We have traced the course of his influence through the ages as both man and poet. We have seen in him not only the interpreter of life, but a dynamic power that makes for the love of men, for righteousness, and for happier living. We have seen in him an example of the word made flesh. "He has forged a link of union," writes Tyrrell, "between intellects so diverse as those of Dante, Montaigne, Bossuet, La Fontaine, Voltaire, Hooker, Chesterfield, Gibbon, Wordsworth, Thackeray."

To know Horace is to enter into a great communion of twenty centuries,--the communion of taste, the communion of charity, the communion of sane and kindly wisdom, the communion of the genuine, the communion of righteousness, the communion of urbanity and of friendly affection.

"Farewell, dear Horace; farewell, thou wise and kindly heathen; of mortals the most human, the friend of my friends and of so many generations of men."

NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following groups of references are not meant as annotations in the usual sense. Those to the text of the poet are for such persons as wish to increase their acquaintance with Horace by reading at first hand the principal poems which have inspired the essayist's conclusions. The others are for those who desire to view in detail the working of the Horatian influence.

Besides the works mentioned above, reference should be made to:

and, also, to the two following works, cited and quoted in the text:

Our Debt to Greece and Rome

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