They show the yearning human
affection
of the great patron of
Roman letters for the man of genius whose best work he had made
possible, and who had returned his bounty so nobly.
Roman letters for the man of genius whose best work he had made
possible, and who had returned his bounty so nobly.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v13 - Her to Hux
7605 (#415) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7605
C
ODE TO MELANCHOLY
OME, let us set our careful breasts,
Like Philomel, against the inward thorn,
To aggravate the inward grief
That makes her accents so forlorn;
The world has many cruel points
Whereby our bosoms have been torn,
And there are dainty themes of grief,
In sadness to outlast the morn:
True honor's dearth, affection's death,
Neglectful pride, and cankering scorn,
With all the piteous tales that tears
Have watered since the world was born.
The world! -it is a wilderness,
Where tears are hung on every tree;
For thus my gloomy phantasy
Makes all things weep with me.
Come, let us sit and watch the sky,
And fancy clouds where no clouds be;
Grief is enough to blot the eye,
And make heaven black with misery.
Why should birds sing such merry notes,
Unless they were more blest than we?
No sorrow ever chokes their throats-
Except sweet nightingale; for she
Was born to pain our hearts the more,
With her sad melody.
Why shines the sun, except that he
Makes gloomy nooks for Grief to hide,
And pensive shades for Melancholy,
When all the earth is bright beside?
Let clay wear smiles, and green grass wave:
Mirth shall not win us back again,
Whilst man is made of his own grave,
And fairest clouds but gilded rain!
I saw my mother in her shroud;
Her cheek was cold and very pale:
And ever since I've looked on all
As creatures doomed to fail!
Why do buds ope, except to die?
Aye, let us watch the roses wither,
And think of our loves' cheeks;
## p. 7606 (#416) ###########################################
7606
THOMAS HOOD
And oh, how quickly time doth fly
To bring death's winter hither!
Minutes, hours, days, and weeks,
Months, years, and ages, shrink to naught—
An age is but a thought!
Aye, let us think of him awhile
That, with a coffin for a boat,
Rows daily o'er the Stygian moat;
And for our table choose a tomb.
There's dark enough in any skull
To charge with black a raven plume;
And for the saddest funeral thoughts
A winding-sheet hath ample room,
Where Death, with his keen-pointed style,
Hath writ the common doom.
How wide the yew-tree spreads its gloom,
And o'er the dead lets fall its dew,
As if in tears it wept for them-
The many human families
That sleep around its stem!
How cold the dead have made these stones,
With natural drops kept ever wet!
Lo! here the best, the worst, the world
Doth now remember or forget,
Are in one common ruin hurled;
And love and hate are calmly met,-
The loveliest eyes that ever shone,
The fairest hands, and locks of jet.
Is 't not enough to vex our souls
And fill our eyes, that we have set
Our love upon a rose's leaf,
Our hearts upon a violet?
Blue eyes, red cheeks, are frailer yet;
And sometimes, at their swift decay
Beforehand we must fret.
The roses bud and bloom again;
But love may haunt the grave of love,
And watch the mold, in vain.
Oh clasp me, sweet, whilst thou art mine,
And do not take my tears amiss;
For tears must flow to wash away
A thought that shows so stern as this.
## p. 7607 (#417) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7607
Forgive if somewhile I forget,
In woe to come, the present bliss.
As frighted Proserpine let fall
Her flowers at the sight of Dis,
Even so the dark and bright will kiss,
The sunniest things throw sternest shade;
And there is even a happiness
That makes the heart afraid.
Now let us with a spell invoke
The full-orbed moon to grieve our eyes;
Not bright, not bright-but, with a cloud
Lapped all about her, let her rise
All pale and dim, as if from rest
The ghost of the late buried sun
Had crept into the skies.
The moon! she is the source of sighs,
The very face to make us sad,
If but to think in other times
The same calm, quiet look she had,
As if the world held nothing base,
Of vile and mean, of fierce and bad-
The same fair light that shone in streams,
The fairy lamp that charmed the lad;
For so it is, with spent delights
She taunts men's brains, and makes them mad.
—
All things are touched with melancholy,
Born of the secret soul's mistrust
To feel her fair ethereal wings
Weighed down with vile, degraded dust.
Even the bright extremes of joy
Bring on conclusions of disgust –
Like the sweet blossoms of the May,
Whose fragrance ends in must.
Oh give her, then, her tribute just,
Her sighs and tears, and musings holy!
There is no music in the life
That sounds with idiot laughter solely;
There's not a string attuned to mirth,
But has its chord in melancholy.
## p. 7608 (#418) ###########################################
7608
THOMAS HOOD
THE DEATH-BED
E WATCHED her breathing through the night,
WⓇ Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
So silently we seemed to speak,
So slowly moved about,
As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.
Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied:
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.
For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed. - she had
Another morn than ours.
-
I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER
REMEMBER, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn:
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day;
But now I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!
I remember, I remember
The roses red and white;
The violets and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light;
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday —
That tree is living yet!
I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
## p. 7609 (#419) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7609
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing:
My spirit flew in feathers then,
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow!
I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.
STANZAS
F
AREWELL, Life! my senses swim,
And the world is growing dim;
Thronging shadows cloud the light,
Like the advent of the night.
Colder, colder, colder still,
Upward steals a vapor chill;
Strong the earthy odor grows -
I smell the mold above the rose!
Welcome, Life! the spirit strives!
Strength returns and hope revives;
Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
Fly like shadows at the morn.
O'er the earth there comes a bloom;
Sunny light for sullen gloom,
Warm perfume for vapor cold-
I smell the rose above the mold!
## p. 7610 (#420) ###########################################
7610
PIETER CORNELISZOON HOOFT
(1581-1647)
IETER CORNELISZOON HOOFT, who has been called "the father
of Dutch poetry," was born March 16th, 1581, at Amsterdam,
Holland, where his father was burgomaster. He received a
liberal education at home, and traveled extensively in France, Italy,
and Germany. Subsequently he studied literature and law at the
University of Leyden. In 1609 he was appointed to the influential
position of bailiff of Muiden, and from this time on for many years
he spent the summer months at the castle of Muiden, a short dis-
tance from Amsterdam.
Hooft's position in the literary history of
Holland is due not only to his own writings,
but also to the unmistakable influence that
he exerted upon the whole literary develop-
ment of the time. As bailiff at Muiden,
whither he brought his young wife the year
after his appointment, he kept open house,
and gathered about him the flower of Hol-
land in politics, in art, literature, and learn-
ing, known since in Dutch history as the
"Muiden circle," who were held together
by Hooft's own attractive personality and
social position as well as by his literary
talents. Some of the most notable names of
Holland are connected with Hooft at Muiden. Vondel and Coster
were there together, and in the long list of other names are to be
found Grotius, Brederoo, Vos, and Ansloo, Constantin Huygens, and
before all, Anna and Maria Tesselschade, the daughters of Roemer
Visscher. Hooft was twice married. For his life of Henry IV. of
France, written in 1626, he was ennobled by the French king. He
died on the 25th of May, 1647, at The Hague, whither he had gone
to attend a royal funeral.
Hooft's literary career began early. In his sixteenth year he had
joined, according to the custom of the day, one of the rhetorical
"chambers," and wrote at this time several minor poems and the
tragedy 'Achilles and Polyxena,' his first important literary work.
His numerous lyrics, a series of dramas, and his historical works
PIETER HOOFT
## p. 7611 (#421) ###########################################
PIETER CORNELISZOON HOOFT
7611
show that his official duties did not seriously interfere with his lit-
erary pursuits. His plays, besides the one already noticed, are the
tragedies 'Geraardt van Velzen,' Theseus and Ariadne,' and 'Baeto';
the pastoral Granida'; and the comedy 'Warenaer,' after the 'Aulu-
laria' of Plautus.
(
Hooft's first historical work was the life of Henry IV. , already
mentioned. This and a translation of Tacitus consciously served,
however, but as a preparation for his greatest work, the 'History
of the Netherlands' (Nederlandsche Historien), which was written
during the years 1628-38, and finally published in 1642. He expended
on this work his very best powers. A vast deal of time was spent
upon the careful collection and study of sources, and upon the purity
of the vocabulary and the literary form, which received extraordinary
praise from his contemporaries, and have made this work a classic
in the literature of Holland. He had planned a continuation of the
history, but died before it was completed.
Hooft's best poetical work was lyrical. His dramas are altogether
lacking in originality, and not one of them has kept the stage. It is
as a historian that his fame is most firmly founded.
ANACREONTIC
TH
HREE long years have o'erwhelmed me in sadness,
Since the sun veiled his vision of gladness:
Sorrow be banished, for sorrow is dreary;
Sorrow and gloom but outweary the weary.
In my heart I perceive the day breaking;
I cannot resist its awaking.
On my brow a new sun is arisen,
And bright is its glance o'er my prison;
Gayly and grandly it sparkles about me,
Flowingly shines it within and without me:
Why, why should dejection disarm me,
My fears or my fancies alarm me?
Laughing lightly, lovely life, in the heaven
Of thy forehead is virtue engraven;
Thy red coral lips, when they breathe an assenting,
To me are a dawn which Apollo is painting;
Thy eyes drive the gloom, with their sparkling,
Where sadness and folly sit darkling.
Lovely eyes, then the beauties have bound them,
And scattered their shadows around them;
## p. 7612 (#422) ###########################################
7612
PIETER CORNELISZOON HOOFT
Stars, in whose twinklings the virtues and graces,
Sweetness and meekness, all hold their high places:
But the brightest of stars is but twilight
Compared with that beautiful eye-light.
Fragrant mouth, all the flowers spring is wreathing
Are dull to the sweets thou art breathing;
The charms of thy song might summon the spirit
To sit on the ears all-enchanted to hear it:
What marvel, then, if in its kisses
My soul is o'erwhelmed with sweet blisses?
Oh how blest, how divine the employment!
How heavenly, how high the enjoyment!
Delicate lips and soft amorous glances,
Kindling and quenching and fanning sweet fancies,
Now, now to my heart's centre rushing,
And now through my veins they are gushing.
Dazzling eyes, that but laugh at our ruin,
Nor think of the wrongs ye are doing,
Fountains of gladness and beacons of glory,
How do ye scatter the dark mists before ye!
Can my weakness your tyranny bridle ?
Oh no! all resistance is idle.
Ah! my soul-ah! my soul is submitted;
Thy lips-thy sweet lips-they are fitted
With a kiss to dissolve into joy and affection
The dreamings of hope and of gay recollection:
And sure never triumph was purer;
And sure never triumph was surer.
I am bound to your beauty completely,
I am fettered and fastened so sweetly;
And blessed are the tones, and the looks, and the mind
too,
Which my senses control, and my heart is inclined to;
While virtue, the holiest and brightest,
Has fastened love's fetters the tightest.
Translated by Sir John Bowring.
## p. 7613 (#423) ###########################################
7613
THEODORE HOOK
(1788-1841)
T
T IS impossible to draw the figure of Theodore Hook without
his cap and bells. In London society he filled the place of
the court jester; and the extraordinary vogue of his books
in the London world of letters, art, and fashion was due doubtless to
his personal agreeableness. He had a remarkable gift for improvis-
ing verse and music, and for throwing off farces, burlesques, and jeux
d'esprit, which made him an invaluable guest, and gave him a famous
name. Much of the volatile aroma of his literary work, the distilla-
tion of the hour, has now evaporated.
Theodore Edward Hook was born in London September 22d, 1788,
the son of James Hook, a popular composer. The father, discovering
his son's peculiar talent for making verses, took him from school and
set him to turning rhymes for his own musical compositions. This de-
lighted the indolent boy, who greatly preferred the praise of the clev-
erest actors, authors, and wits in London to the dull routine of Harrow.
For this appreciative audience he played, sang, made puns, flashed
epigrams, or laughed at dignitaries, and caricatured greatness. These
private entertainments soon expanded into farces and comic operas,
successfully presented on the stage before Hook reached the age of
twenty. At thirty he founded and edited a Tory paper called John
Bull, publishing in this The Ramsbotham Papers,' in which Mrs.
Ramsbotham anticipated the ingenious Mrs. Partington in the fun
which arises from the grotesque misapplication of words.
In 1824 Hook published his first series of Sayings and Doings,'
tales that delighted his contemporaries. The jester lacked the con-
structive faculty, and therefore his novels may be called literary
improvisations, conceived in the same happy-go-lucky spirit as his
farces. In his own day they were much esteemed, and they still mir-
ror faithfully the bygone fashions and manners and reigning follies
of the London of George IV. and the Sailor King. One and all, they
illustrate the theory of Sir Walter Scott that "every comic writer of
fiction draws, and must draw, largely from his own circle. " Gilbert
Gurney' is autobiographic, and many of his own mad pranks as a
practical joker are recorded in it. Thomas Moore appears in 'A Man
of Sorrows' (afterwards recast as 'Merton'), as Mr. Minus, while other
notable persons wear other disguises.
## p. 7614 (#424) ###########################################
7614
THEODORE HOOK
(
Of Hook's thirty-eight volumes all except 'Maxwell,' The Par-
son's Daughter,' 'Love and Pride,' 'Jack Brag,' and 'Births, Marriages,
and Deaths,' now gather dust on the library shelves. The citation
here given shows not only his cleverness in farcical writing, but that
apprehension of the dangerous tendencies of popular education which
in his time disturbed the comfortable Tory satisfaction with things
as they were. Hook died at Fulham Bridge, near London, August
24th, 1841. The best account of his life was published in 1849 by
his friend Barham, "Thomas Ingoldsby," like himself one of the still
famous circle of London wits in the early decades of the century.
THE MARCH OF INTELLECT
A Prophetic View of Socialism, from John Bull'
IT
T HAPPENED on the 31st of March, 1926, that the then Duke
and Duchess of Bedford were sitting in their good but old
house, No. 17 Liberality Place (the corner of Riego Street),
near to where old Hammersmith stood before the great improve-
ments; and although it was past two o'clock, the breakfast equi-
page still remained upon the table.
It may be necessary to state that the illustrious family in
question, having embraced the Roman Catholic faith (which at
that period was the established religion of the country), had been
allowed to retain their titles and honorable distinctions; although
Woburn Abbey had been long before restored to the Church,
and was, at the time of which we treat, occupied by a worship-
ful community of holy friars. The duke's family estates in Old
London had been, of course, divided by the Equitable Conven-
tion amongst the numerous persons whose distressed situation
gave them the strongest claims, and his Grace and his family
had been for a long time receiving the compensation annuity
allotted to his ancestors.
"Where is Lady Elizabeth? " said his Grace to the duchess.
"She is making the beds, duke," replied her Grace.
"What, again to-day? " said his Grace. "Where are Stubbs,
Hogsflesh, and Figgins, the females whom, were it not contrary
to law, I should call the housemaids? "
"They are gone," said her Grace, "on a sketching tour with
the manciple, Mr. Nicholson, and his nephew. ”
"Why are not these things removed? " said his Grace, eying
the breakfast-table, upon which (the piece of furniture being of
## p. 7615 (#425) ###########################################
THEODORE HOOK
7615
oak, without covering) stood a huge jar of honey, several saucers
of beet-root, a large pot of half-cold decoction of sassafrage, and
an urn full of bean-juice; the use of cotton, sugar, tea, and cof-
fee having been utterly abolished by law in the year 1888.
"I have rung several times," said the duchess, "and sent
Lady Maria up-stairs into the assistants' drawing-room to get
some of them to remove the things; but they have kept her, I
believe, to sing to them-I know they are very fond of hearing
her, and often do so. "
His Grace, whose appetite seemed renewed by the sight of the
still lingering viands which graced the board, seemed determined
to make the best of a bad bargain, and sat down to commence
an attack upon some potted seal and pickled fish from Baffin's
Bay and Behring's Straits, which some of their friends who had
gone over there to pass the summer (as was the fashion of those
times) in the East India steamships (which always touched there)
had given them; and having consumed a pretty fair portion of
the remnants, his favorite daughter, Lady Maria, made her ap-
pearance.
“Well, Maria," said his Grace, "where have you been all this
time? »
"Mr. Curry," said her Ladyship, "the young person who is
good enough to look after our horses, had a dispute with the
lady who assists Mr. Biggs in dressing the dinner for us, whether
it was necessary at chess to say check to the queen when the
queen was in danger, or not. I was unable to decide the ques-
tion, and I assure you I got so terribly laughed at that I ran
away as fast as I could. "
"Was Duggins in the assistants' drawing-room, my love? »
said the duke.
"No," said Lady Maria.
"I wanted him to take a message for me," said his Grace, in
a sort of demi-soliloquy.
"I'm sure he cannot go, then," said Lady Maria, "because I
know he is gone to the House of Parliament" (there was but one
at that time); "for he told the other gentleman who cleans the
plate that he could not be back to attend at dinner, however
consonant with his wishes, because he had promised to wait for
the division. "
"Ah," sighed the duke, "this comes of his having been elected
for Westminster. "
## p. 7616 (#426) ###########################################
7616
THEODORE HOOK
At this moment Lord William Cobbett Russell made his ap-
pearance, extremely hot and evidently tired, having under his
arm a largish parcel.
"What have you there, Willy? " said her Grace.
"My new breeches," said his lordship. "I have called upon.
the worthy citizen who made them, over and over again, and
never could get them, for of course I could not expect him to
send them, and he is always either at the academy or the gym-
nasium; however, to-day I caught him just as he was in a hot
debate with a gentleman who was cleaning his windows, as to
whether the solidity of a prism is equal to the product of its base
by its altitude. I confess I was pleased to catch him at home;
but unluckily the question was referred to me, and not compre-
hending it I was deucedly glad to get off, which I did as fast as
I could, both parties calling after me, 'There is a lord for you
-look at my lord! ' and hooting me in a manner which, how-
ever constitutional, I cannot help thinking deucedly disagreeable. "
At this moment (what in former times was called) a footman,
named Dowbiggin, made his appearance, who entered the room;
as the duke hoped, to remove the breakfast things, but it was in
fact to ask Lady Maria to sketch in a tree in a landscape which
he was in the course of painting.
"Dowbiggin," said his Grace in despair, "I wish you would
take away these breakfast things. "
"Indeed! " said Dowbiggin, looking at the duke with the most
ineffable contempt-"you do! -that's capital-what right have
you to ask me to do any such thing? "
"Why, Mr. Dowbiggin," said the duchess, who was a bit of
a tartar in her way, "his Grace pays you, and feeds you, and
clothes you, to—”
"Well, duchess," said Dowbiggin, "and what then? Let his
Grace show me his superiority. I am ready to do anything for
him: but please to recollect I asked him yesterday, when I did
remove the coffee, to tell me what the Altaic chain is called,
when, after having united all the rivers which supply the Jeni-
sei, it stretches as far as the Baikal lake and what did he
answer? He made a French pun, and said, Je ne sais pas,
Dobiggin. Now, if it can be shown by any statute that I, who
am perfectly competent to answer any question I propose, am
first to be put off with a quibble by way of reply; and secondly,
to be required to work for a man who does not know as much
-
## p. 7617 (#427) ###########################################
THEODORE HOOK
7617
as I do myself, merely because he is a duke, why, I'll do it:
but if not, I will resist in a constitutional manner such illiberal
oppression and such ridiculous control, even though I am trans-
ported to Scotland for it. Now, Lady Maria, go on with the
tree. "
"Willy," said the duke to his son, "when you have put away
your small-clothes, go and ask Mr. Martingale if he will be kind.
enough to let the horses be put to our carriage, since the duchess
and I wish to go to mass. "
"You need not send to Martingale," said Dowbiggin: "he is
gone to the Society of Arts to hear a lecture on astronomy. "
"Then, Willy, go and endeavor to harness the horses your-
self," said the duke to his son, who instantly obeyed.
"You had better mind about those horses, sir," said Dowbig-
gin, still watching the progress of his tree: "the two German
philosophers and Father O'Flynn have been with them to-day,
and there appears little doubt that the great system will spread,
and that even these animals, which we have been taught to de-
spise, will express their sentiments before long. "
"The sentiments of a coach-horse! " sighed the duchess.
"Thanks, Lady Maria," said Dowbiggin: "now I'll go to work
merrily; and duke, whenever you can fudge up an answer to my
question about the Altaic chain, send one of the girls, and I'll
take away the things. "
Dowbiggin disappeared; and the duke, who was anxious to
get the parlor cleared (for the house, except two rooms, was all
appropriated to the assistants), resolved to inquire of his priest
what the proper answer would be to Dowbiggin's question which
he had tried to evade by the offensive quibble, when Lord Will-
iam Cobbett Russell reappeared, as white as a sheet.
"My dear father," cried his Lordship, "it's all over now. The
philosophers have carried the thing too far: the chestnut mare
swears she'll be d-d if she goes out to-day. "
"What," said the duke, "has their liberality gone to this?
Do horses talk? My dear William, you and I know that asses
have written before this; but for horses to speak! "
"Perhaps, Willy," said the duchess, "it is merely yea and
nay; or probably only the female horses who talk at all. "
"Yes, mother, yes," said her son, "both of them spoke; and
not only that, but Nap, the dog you were once so fond of, called
after me to say that we had no right to keep him tied up in
XIII-477
## p. 7618 (#428) ###########################################
7618
THEODORE HOOK
that dismal yard, and that he would appeal to Parliament if we
did not let him out. "
"My dear duchess," said the duke, who was even more alarmed
at the spread of intelligence than her Grace, "there is but one
thing for us to do: let us pack up all we can, and if we can get
a few well-disposed post-horses, before they become too much
enlightened, to take us towards the coast, let us be off. "
What happened further, this historical fragment does not ex-
plain; but it is believed that the family escaped with their clothes
and a few valuables, leaving their property in the possession of
their assistants, who by extending with a liberal anxiety (natural
in men who have become learned and great by similar means
themselves) the benefits of enlightenment, in turn gave way to
the superior claims of inferior animals, and were themselves com-
pelled eventually to relinquish happiness, power, and tranquillity
in favor of monkeys, horses, jackasses, dogs, and all manner of
beasts.
## p. 7619 (#429) ###########################################
7619
HORACE
(QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS)
(65 B. C. -8 B. C. )
BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON
AKE care of Horace as you would of me" ("Horatii Flacci ut
mei esto memor"). The words of the dying Mæcenas to the
Emperor Augustus throw a singularly attractive light over
the relations of the three famous men whose names they associate.
They show the yearning human affection of the great patron of
Roman letters for the man of genius whose best work he had made
possible, and who had returned his bounty so nobly. They also dis-
close that redeeming quality in the not too delicate or scrupulous
master of the world, which invited on the part of those whom he
personally esteemed a homely and trustful familiarity. There is no
reason to doubt that the last wish of Mæcenas would have been
abundantly heeded; but as the event proved, there was little further
occasion for the imperial patronage. Mæcenas passed away after a
lingering illness in the summer of 746 (8 B. C. ); Horace died suddenly
on the 27th of November in the same year: and the affectionate vow
not to linger long in life after his good genius had left it, which the
poet had recorded in some of his most exquisite verses nearly seven-
teen years before, thus received a curious and touching fulfillment.
The lines were these:
"Why wilt thou kill me with thy boding fears—
Why, O Mæcenas, why?
Before thee lies a train of happy years;
Yea, nor the gods, nor I
Could brook that thou shouldst first be laid in dust:
That art my stay, my glory, and my trust!
Ah, if untimely Fate should snatch thee hence,
Thee, of my soul a part,
Why should I linger on with deadened sense
And ever-aching heart,
A worthless fragment of a fallen shrine?
No, no-one day shall see thy death and mine!
## p. 7620 (#430) ###########################################
7620
HORACE
Think not that I have sworn a bootless oath:
Yes, we shall go, shall go
Hand linked in hand whene'er thou leadest both
The last sad road below! » *
The outlines of the poet's rather uneventful history may be given
briefly. Quintus Horatius Flaccus was born in the year of the city
of Rome 689 (65 B. C. ) at Venusia, now Venosa, a small hill town
lying about a hundred miles from Naples, eastward toward the Adri-
atic. His father was a freedman who had acquired a modest com-
petence; and the historic name of Horatius was merely that of the
great Latin tribe or gens to which the master of the former slave had
belonged. That the elder Horace was also a man of much force and
dignity of character, we gather from many passages in the writings
of the son: most of all from a peculiarly manly and loyal tribute in
the sixth satire of the first book. He would give his only child no
less than the best instruction possible in those days. He went with
him to Rome, and watched carefully over the boy's manners and
morals during his preliminary studies there; and afterward sent him,
where only the sons of noblemen and wealthy knights went usually
in those days, to finish his education at Athens. There, while nom-
inally attending lectures in philosophy, Horace must have indulged
his natural bent, and simply steeped himself in the lyric poetry of
Greece: especially in the iambic satires of Archilochus of Paros, and
the odes of Sappho, Alcæus, and Anacreon.
But this congenial and care-free life at Athens was doomed to
receive a rude interruption. Horace had left Rome at about twenty,
during the supremacy of Julius Cæsar. A year later, in 44 B. C. , the
dictator fell, and his assassins took refuge in Athens. The crowd of
impressionable young Roman students immediately rallied round
Brutus, espoused his cause with the utmost enthusiasm, enlisted in
the army he was raising, and worshiped him as a republican hero.
In return for their devotion, Brutus, when gathering his forces for
the last struggle with Antony, distributed commands among these
ardent neophytes, for which they were at best not fitted by previous
active service. It was thus that Horace was made military tribune
at twenty-two, commanded at the battle of Philippi what would cor-
respond to a regiment in a modern army,- and retreated from that
fatal field, leaving, as he afterward quaintly confessed, his buckler
behind him, when the day and the cause were finally lost. (Odes,
Book II. , vii. )
He returned to Italy to find his good father dead, the little Venu-
sian property confiscated as that of a rebel, and a prospect before
* Odes, Book II. , xvii. , Sir Theodore Martin's translation.
## p. 7621 (#431) ###########################################
HORACE
7621
him which would have been dismal enough to any but one of his
sunny and debonair disposition and happy facility in making friends.
He presently secured a small place, as we should say, in the civil
service; that of quæstor's clerk. Suetonius says that he purchased it,
after making his submission to the authorities (venia impetrata); but
I think we may take it for granted that there was no mean or un-
timely abjuration of his republican creed on the part of one whom in
after years even imperial blandishments failed to shake in his quiet
independence of thought and action.
It is plain, at all events, that the freedman's son never forfeited
the place he had won in the best of the young Roman society.
Within three years after his return from Greece, we find him upon
friendly terms both with Virgil, who was five years his senior, and
with the epic poet and tragedian Lucius Varius Rufus. By them he
was introduced, at the age of twenty-six, to Mæcenas, the first citi-
zen of Rome at that moment in social and political influence, and
the acknowledged arbiter of literary destinies. The poet himself, in
the same satire in which he commemorates the fine character and
unselfish devotion of his father (Satires, I. , vi. ), has left us a diverting
account of this first momentous interview with Mæcenas - which it
pleases him to represent as a conspicuous fiasco. He himself, he says,
behaved like an awkward child, while the great man — whom, by the
way, he was then addressing — was very distant and awful. But after
holding aloof, and considering for a number of months the works
and ways of the new candidate for his favor, Mæcenas succumbed
without reserve to the young man's personal fascination, opened wide
both his house and his heart, and ended by becoming almost dotingly
fond of him. We find Horace in the spring of the next year, 717
(37 B. C. ), attached, along with Virgil, to the highly distinguished suite
which accompanied Mæcenas on an embassy from Augustus to treat
with Antony at Brindisi. About 720-the exact date is nowhere
recorded, but it must have been before the close of the civil war in
723- Horace was made independent of the world, and even of any
sordid obligation to literature, by the gift of that beautiful little estate
among the Sabine Hills which is so closely associated with his name
and fame; and where the pilgrim may yet go and pay his vows to
that pleasant memory, as at a sweet undesecrated shrine.
It was
the fittest gift ever made by a liberal man of fortune to a needy
man of parts, and both offered and received in the finest spirit.
We flatter ourselves in these days that we have reduced charity as
well as most other things to a science; but much of the anxious, arbi-
trary, and over-organized benevolence of modern times, with its disin-
genuous and dreary subtleties about profusion and pauperization, and
its intrinsic selfishness, stands rebuked before the simple. and noble
## p. 7622 (#432) ###########################################
7622
HORACE
give-and-take of these two pagans, which inflicted no hurt upon the
dignity of either, while it laid the generations that were to come
under endless obligations.
During his brief period of storm and stress, Horace had already
turned his nimble wits to account, and become known to some extent
as a satirical poet. "When," he says (Epistles, II. , ii. ),—" when I
came back with clipped wings from Philippi, poor, insignificant, re-
lieved even of the paternal home and farm, reckless poverty impelled
me to verse-making. But now that I am in easy circumstances, you
might take it as a symptom of raging fever in me if I could not
sleep for the pressure of unwritten poetry! " It is easy to see how
this laughing self-depreciation, this resolute refusal to take himself
and his brilliant endowments over-seriously, of which across the centu-
ries we can still feel the charm, must have helped to endear Horace
to his friends in every grade of life. It was a part of the exquisite
savoir-faire which always marked his bearing in the great world; of
that innate good sense and invincible good breeding which were as
much a gift of heaven to the freedman's son as his youthful good
looks, and no more prejudiced by his rustic boyhood, and his early
familiarity with such brave sons of the Italian soil as his father and
their racy neighbor at Venusia, the yeoman Ofellus. (Satires, II. , ii. )
His unaffected love of nature and a country life was in fact a
main safeguard of the poet's mental health, and the best of all aids
to his talent. It breathes in many of the Horatian lines and phrases
which linger longest in the memory. Horace never expatiates on his
love of natural beauty; rather, it escapes from his verses at inter-
vals, like a hoarded but volatile perfume. Doubtless he was the
more reserved, not to say shamefaced, about this deep sentiment of
his own, because there was plainly a fashion in the Rome of his day
for affecting a rapturous enjoyment of country scenes and pursuits,
and affectation of every kind excited his cordial abhorrence. The
most detailed and delightful description of rural pleasures which
Horace anywhere gives us is to be found in the second Epode: but
he has a laugh in the concluding verses at the reader's expense and
his own; and we are bound to take the joke in as good part as
the audience probably did when the poem was first read to a distin-
guished private company. "So spake the money-lender Alphius, all
on fire to become a country gentleman; and having called in all the
money which fell due upon the Ides, he immediately let it out again.
upon the Kalends! »
From the time when he became a landed proprietor, Horace him-
self passed a considerable part of every year in his country home.
The land was more or less impoverished by neglect when he took
possession, and the buildings dilapidated. He had the healthful and
## p. 7623 (#433) ###########################################
HORACE
7623
Here,
inexhaustible amusement of repairing, planting, beautifying.
under his own vine and fig-tree, he could rest his nerves from city
bores, and recuperate his digestion after city banquets. Here he
could throw himself into the interests and tickle himself with the
humors of his tenants and rustic neighbors, and easily practice the
homely hospitality in which his own soul delighted. He by no means
renounced the hospitalities of Mæcenas and the gay society of the
capital, but he reveled in possessing a safe and convenient retreat
from it all. The Sabine property was but thirty miles from Rome.
Horace never affected the aristocratic litter, but went and came
freely upon his own ambling mule, over one of the most beautiful
roads in all the world: southward across the campagna, threading
the hoary olives of the first ascent, and passing "many-fountained"
Tivoli; then up beside the Anio into the higher hills, until he turned
aside upon the left into the sunny silence of a yet more secluded
valley, that of the tributary Digentia, now Licenza.
men.
The early satires of Horace are plainly an outcome of the studies
of Archilochus which he had made at Athens; but he adopts the
measure and professes himself rather the disciple of Lucilius, the
rude forefather of the Latin satire. Of those first off-hand squibs
and sketches,-which he intimates in a passage already quoted that
he wrote for immediate pay,—it is uncertain how many he cared
afterward to include in his collected writings. The seventh satire of
the first book bears marks of having been written very early,-per-
haps while he was still playing the soldier in Greece. The third,
fourth, and tenth of the first book are in the main apologetic. They
defend the satire as the readiest and most efficient weapon of the
moralist, and as a wholesome check upon the follies and excesses of
They also proclaim his own resolve never to abuse the cen-
sor's privilege; and to indulge in no personal criticisms inconsist-
ent with the code of social honor of his age, and with a generally
kindly and tolerant view of the infirmities of humankind. The first
satire of the second book is one of the most dramatic and amusing
of the whole series. It is in the form of a dialogue with one Tre-
batius,—a rich and famous old lawyer, on the best of terms with the
powers that then were, who good-humoredly advises the poet to give
up altogether the ticklish trade of a satirist, and when he finds him-
self growing dangerously hot over the follies of the day, to reduce
his temperature by a bath in the Tiber! Great interest attaches to
the name of Horace's supposed interlocutor in this witty piece, for he
is the selfsame Trebatius for whom Cicero twenty-five years before
had procured a place on the staff of Cæsar in Gaul; who had loathed
the hardships of that country, and adroitly avoided following the
conqueror to Britain; and in whose beautiful villa at Reggio, Cicero
## p. 7624 (#434) ###########################################
7624
HORACE
had found refuge ten years later, when he was himself a fugitive
from Rome after the death of Cæsar. Trebatius was never the man
to have lost his head through any romantic adhesion to a fallen
cause; and it is positively startling to see how he preserves his
identity across a complete gap of so many years in our knowledge
of him.
All the eighteen satires of the two books, as well as most of the
Epodes, were apparently given to the world under the patronage of
Mæcenas, during the ten years or so which intervened between the
poet's introduction to that dignitary and the close of the weary civil
war by the victory of Actium. In them we find faithfully reflected
the daily life of the Roman streets, as well as the fashion of the
moment in what claimed to be the most exclusive circles of the cap-
ital. The earlier the composition, as a rule, the coarser the language
and the more caustic the tone. We fancy that we can see the
writer's expression becoming ever more suave and genial as his tem-
per mellowed with his days of modest prosperity, and his easy and
indulgent though never unmanly or ignoble philosophy of life took
shape and became a consciously accepted creed. He was never,
either in theory or practice, a very rigid moralist. He lashed men's
follies lightly and forgave their lapses freely. Himself, as judged by
the standards of the time, a clean and quiet liver, he was content to
hold up to ridicule, rather than to stern reprobation, the vices of
other men
"Telling a tale not too importunate
To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day. "
We have plenty of proof that there were moments when the gay
and facile Horace felt, no less keenly than the pensive and clair-
voyant Virgil habitually felt, the essential "emptiness," for a Roman
of that day, which followed the extinction of his civic personality.
More and more, as the years of his outwardly successful and brilliant
middle life slipped away, the patriotism of Horace became a resolutely
smothered regret; while his loves, which can never have been very
absorbing or impassioned, resolved themselves into the half amused,
half wistful recollection of transient affairs with women who had had
many lovers.
It is only when he sings of friendship, of honor and
gratitude, of faith and charity between man and man, that this con-
vinced Epicurean strikes a deeper note. The brevity of life and the
vacuity of death were ever present in the background of his thought;
but all the more was he minded to enjoy, to the full, the sunshine of
the passing day. Moderation in all things, content with the present,
courage in view of an absolutely uncertain future. - these things, in
## p. 7625 (#435) ###########################################
HORACE
7625
so far as Horace aspires to be didactic, constitute the sum and sub-
stance of his teaching.
It was inevitable that such a man, already fast bound by the
warmest of private ties to the first minister of Cæsar Octavianus,
should have accepted frankly the changed order of things when the
latter returned to Rome in 725, after the battle of Actium and the
deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, to assume the sceptre of a pacified
world. Liberty was past, and it behooved men to be thankful for
peace, and poets to praise it; believing if they could that it implied
the beginning of another age of gold. A good many of the more
respectable and better disposed Romans of that period did probably
believe this, after a fashion. The tragic note of covert warning dis-
cernible in the ode addressed by Horace (Odes, II. , x. ) to his ill-fated
friend Licinius Murena, the brother-in-law of Mæcenas, who was con-
demned and executed a few years later for conspiring against the
new government, shows how utterly wild and wanton that enterprise
must have appeared at the time. Sixty or seventy years were to
pass before the mystery of iniquity was ripe and all the vices inher-
ent in the imperial system became fully apparent; before the next
great Roman satirist, Persius, gave vent in mordant and melancholy
verse to the smothered rage of the best of the patrician remnant,
against the degrading "regiment" of their parvenu sovereigns.
Virtually, therefore, though not officially, Horace became the poet
laureate of the court which formed itself about the ruler who pres-
ently assumed the name of Augustus. All the great odes of the four
books belong to the next fifteen years; and of these, all the statelier
and more impersonal were written under imperial inspiration, and
some few, like the 'Carmen Sæculare,' and the fourth ode of the
fourth book,- which celebrates the German victories of Drusus,- in
response to direct imperial request. Yet Horace always managed to
preserve his personal freedom, and to avoid even the suspicion of
servility. He sang the triumphs of Augustus in golden numbers, but
he declined with respectful thanks the post of his private secretary.
Nor would he write an ode, to order, on the achievements of Agrippa;
but politely, if a little ironically, excused himself on the ground that
his light muse was unequal to so serious a theme (Odes, I. , vi. ).
The first book of the Epistles appeared about 731; probably be-
tween the second and third books of the Odes. The second, com-
prising the unfinished essay on the 'Art of Poetry,' was Horace's last
work, produced after he was fifty years old. His health was no longer
what it had been, and even the air of the dear valley overlooked
by pleasant Lucretilis" was becoming a trifle too brisk and bracing
for his nerves. Tibur (Tivoli) he thought suited him better, and he
prepared for himself a little installation there; but confesses in one
<<
## p. 7626 (#436) ###########################################
7626
HORACE
of his letters (Epistles, I. , viii. ) that he was restless as the wind:-
"When I am in Rome I am in love with Tibur, and when at Tibur,
with Rome. " Sometimes he longed for yet softer skies; and the
nook of earth which smiled upon him above all others "Ille terra-
rum mihi præter omnes Angulus ridet». was sunny Tarentum, with
its long spring and its gentle winter, which produced better honey
than Hymettus, better olives than leafy Venafrum, and better grapes
than Falernum itself (Odes, II. , vi. ). The end came when the poet
lacked only a few days of having completed his fifty-seventh year:
and by order of the Emperor he was laid beside Mæcenas, some-
where in the great gardens which the latter had planted upon the
redeemed Esquiline hill.
It is in the Odes that the genius of Horace finds its most perfect
expression, and through them he lives in the memory of mankind.
In them he shows himself so consummate an artist in words that
he can impart distinction even to the commonplaces of thought and
sentiment through the mere perfection of their form. His diction is
distilled to such crystalline clearness, he says what he has to say
so unapproachably and incredibly well, that his thought would be
wronged and obscured by the attempt to express it in any other
words than his own. Hence, of all poets ancient or modern, Shake-
speare alone excepted, he is perhaps most frequently quoted. The
phrase "curious felicity," applied in the age succeeding the Augus-
tan by Petronius to the style of Horace, is very apt; yet it seems
to emphasize just a little too strongly the notion of research. For
Horace's manner is after all so simple and seemingly spontaneous,
and his matter of such universal interest, that he has the effect of
addressing each reader confidentially, and making a special appeal to
him. And this air of exquisite familiarity and naturalness is the
more remarkable, because it pleased the accomplished singer of the
Odes to discard for the most part the simple iambics and hexameters
of his previous compositions, and to employ the most elaborate of
Greek lyric measures; molding in a truly miraculous manner the stiff
Latin syllables into harmony with the graces of an alien rhythm, and
now and again simply paraphrasing from the Greek. The éclat of
this feat has helped no doubt to render the adventure of translating
Horace more enticing; but he has never been adequately translated,
and it is safe to prophesy that he never will be. His qualities are
combined in too rare and subtle proportions.
The first printed edition, with date, of the works of Quintus Ho-
ratius Flaccus appeared in Milan in 1474; and almost every year in
the four hundred odd that have elapsed since then has added one
more to the devoted critics and commentators of his text.
The end-
less procession of his poetical translators comprises, in English only,
## p. 7627 (#437) ###########################################
HORACE
7627
and within our own time, such names as those of Bulwer-Lytton,
Conington, Gladstone, Sir Theodore Martin, and Sir Stephen de Vere;
while the lively paraphrases of the brothers Field of Chicago, per-
haps for the very reason that they deal with Horace so nearly in the
spirit in which he dealt with his Grecian models, appear to come
nearer, sometimes, than all the laborious efforts of more exact schol-
ars to catching the tone of the inimitable original.
The subjoined English versions are nearly all selected from these
more modern renderings, for the reason that they are upon the whole
both the most scholarly and the most successful; and an effort has
been made to present a fair idea of their comparative merits.
Harmet Traces Preston
TO LEUCONOË
O
SEEK not thou-'tis not to know- what end to me, what end
to thee
The gods have given, nor Babylonish numbers test, Leuconoë.
How better far it is to bear whatever lot for us be cast!
Or whether Jove more winters still, or whether gives he this the last,
Which now on pumice-crags opposing ever breaks th' Etruscan sea;
Be wise; strain out thy wines, and trim thine all too long expectancy
To life's brief span. Now while we speak, invidious time hath slipt
away.
O thou, as little as may be the morrow trusting, snatch to-day!
Translation of Caskie Harrison.
TO THALIARCHUS
A
SPECTRAL form Soracte stands, snow-crowned,
His shrouded pines beneath their burden bending;
Not now, his rifts descending,
Leap the wild streams, in icy fetters bound.
Heap high the logs! Pour forth with lavish hand,
O Thaliarchus, draughts of long-stored wine,
Blood of the Sabine vine!
To-day be ours: the rest the gods command.
While storms lie quelled at their rebuke, no more
Shall the old ash her shattered foliage shed,
## p. 7628 (#438) ###########################################
7628
HORACE
The cypress bow her head,
The bursting billow whiten on the shore.
Scan not the future: count as gain each day
That Fortune gives thee; and despise not, boy,
Or love, or dance, or joy
Of martial games, ere yet thy locks be gray.
Thine be the twilight vow from faltering tongue;
The joyous laugh that self-betraying guides
To where the maiden hides;
The ring from finger half resisting wrung.
O
Translation of Sir Stephen de Vere.
TO THE SHIP OF STATE
From W. E. Gladstone's 'Odes of Horace. Copyright 1894, by Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons
SHIP! new billows sweep thee out
Seaward. What wilt thou? Hold the port, be stout!
Seest not thy mast
How rent by stiff southwestern blast?
Thy side, of rowers how forlorn!
Thine hull, with groaning yards, with rigging torn,
Can ill sustain
The fierce and ever fiercer main;
Thy gods, no more than sails entire,
From whom, yet once, thy need might aid require.
O Pontic pine,
The first of woodland stock is thine,
Yet race and name are but as dust.
Not painted sterns give storm-tost seamen trust
Unless thou dare
To be the sport of storms, beware!
Of old at best a weary weight,
A yearning care and constant strain of late,
O shun the seas
That gird those glittering Cyclades.
## p. 7629 (#439) ###########################################
HORACE
7629
C
TO CHLOE
Paraphrase out of Echoes from the Sabine Farm,' by E. and R. M. Field.
Copyright 1892, by A. C. McClurg & Co. ; 1895, by Charles Scribner's Sons
HLOE, you shun me like a hind
That, seeking vainly for her mother,
Hears danger in each breath of wind,
And wildly darts this way and t'other;
Whether the breezes sway the wood
Or lizards scuttle through the brambles,
She starts; and off as though pursued
The foolish frightened creature scrambles.
But, Chloe, you're no infant thing
That should esteem a man an ogre:
Let go your mother's apron-string
And pin your faith upon a toga!
TO VIRGIL
HY should we stem the tears that needs must flow?
WHY Why blush that they should freely flow and long
To think of that dear head in death laid low?
Do thou inspire my melancholy song.
Melpomene, in whom the Muses' sire
Joined with a liquid voice the mastery of the lyre!
And hath the sleep that knows no waking morn
Closed o'er Quinctilius,— our Quinctilius dear?
Where shall be found the man of woman born
That in desert might be esteemed his peer-
So simply meek, and yet so sternly just,
Of faith so pure, and all so absolute of trust?
He sank into his rest, bewept of many,
And but the good and noble wept for him;
But dearer cause thou, Virgil, hadst than any,
With friendship's tears thy friendless eyes to dim.
Alas, alas! not to such woeful end
Didst thou unto the gods thy prayers unceasing send!
What though thou modulate the tuneful shell
With defter skill than Orpheus of old Thrace,
## p. 7630 (#440) ###########################################
7630
HORACE
When deftliest he played, and with its spell
Moved all the listening forest from its place,
Yet never, never can thy art avail
To bring life's glowing tide back to the phantom pale
Whom, with his black, inexorable wand,
Hermes, austere and pitiless as fate,
Hath forced to join the dark and spectral band,
In their sad journey to the Stygian gate.
'Tis hard-great Heavens, how hard! But to endure
Alleviates the pang we cannot crush or cure.
Translated by Sir Theodore Martin.
TO QUINTUS DELLIUS
Paraphrase out of Echoes from the Sabine Farm,' by E. and R. M. Field.
Copyright 1892, by A. C.
THOMAS HOOD
7605
C
ODE TO MELANCHOLY
OME, let us set our careful breasts,
Like Philomel, against the inward thorn,
To aggravate the inward grief
That makes her accents so forlorn;
The world has many cruel points
Whereby our bosoms have been torn,
And there are dainty themes of grief,
In sadness to outlast the morn:
True honor's dearth, affection's death,
Neglectful pride, and cankering scorn,
With all the piteous tales that tears
Have watered since the world was born.
The world! -it is a wilderness,
Where tears are hung on every tree;
For thus my gloomy phantasy
Makes all things weep with me.
Come, let us sit and watch the sky,
And fancy clouds where no clouds be;
Grief is enough to blot the eye,
And make heaven black with misery.
Why should birds sing such merry notes,
Unless they were more blest than we?
No sorrow ever chokes their throats-
Except sweet nightingale; for she
Was born to pain our hearts the more,
With her sad melody.
Why shines the sun, except that he
Makes gloomy nooks for Grief to hide,
And pensive shades for Melancholy,
When all the earth is bright beside?
Let clay wear smiles, and green grass wave:
Mirth shall not win us back again,
Whilst man is made of his own grave,
And fairest clouds but gilded rain!
I saw my mother in her shroud;
Her cheek was cold and very pale:
And ever since I've looked on all
As creatures doomed to fail!
Why do buds ope, except to die?
Aye, let us watch the roses wither,
And think of our loves' cheeks;
## p. 7606 (#416) ###########################################
7606
THOMAS HOOD
And oh, how quickly time doth fly
To bring death's winter hither!
Minutes, hours, days, and weeks,
Months, years, and ages, shrink to naught—
An age is but a thought!
Aye, let us think of him awhile
That, with a coffin for a boat,
Rows daily o'er the Stygian moat;
And for our table choose a tomb.
There's dark enough in any skull
To charge with black a raven plume;
And for the saddest funeral thoughts
A winding-sheet hath ample room,
Where Death, with his keen-pointed style,
Hath writ the common doom.
How wide the yew-tree spreads its gloom,
And o'er the dead lets fall its dew,
As if in tears it wept for them-
The many human families
That sleep around its stem!
How cold the dead have made these stones,
With natural drops kept ever wet!
Lo! here the best, the worst, the world
Doth now remember or forget,
Are in one common ruin hurled;
And love and hate are calmly met,-
The loveliest eyes that ever shone,
The fairest hands, and locks of jet.
Is 't not enough to vex our souls
And fill our eyes, that we have set
Our love upon a rose's leaf,
Our hearts upon a violet?
Blue eyes, red cheeks, are frailer yet;
And sometimes, at their swift decay
Beforehand we must fret.
The roses bud and bloom again;
But love may haunt the grave of love,
And watch the mold, in vain.
Oh clasp me, sweet, whilst thou art mine,
And do not take my tears amiss;
For tears must flow to wash away
A thought that shows so stern as this.
## p. 7607 (#417) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7607
Forgive if somewhile I forget,
In woe to come, the present bliss.
As frighted Proserpine let fall
Her flowers at the sight of Dis,
Even so the dark and bright will kiss,
The sunniest things throw sternest shade;
And there is even a happiness
That makes the heart afraid.
Now let us with a spell invoke
The full-orbed moon to grieve our eyes;
Not bright, not bright-but, with a cloud
Lapped all about her, let her rise
All pale and dim, as if from rest
The ghost of the late buried sun
Had crept into the skies.
The moon! she is the source of sighs,
The very face to make us sad,
If but to think in other times
The same calm, quiet look she had,
As if the world held nothing base,
Of vile and mean, of fierce and bad-
The same fair light that shone in streams,
The fairy lamp that charmed the lad;
For so it is, with spent delights
She taunts men's brains, and makes them mad.
—
All things are touched with melancholy,
Born of the secret soul's mistrust
To feel her fair ethereal wings
Weighed down with vile, degraded dust.
Even the bright extremes of joy
Bring on conclusions of disgust –
Like the sweet blossoms of the May,
Whose fragrance ends in must.
Oh give her, then, her tribute just,
Her sighs and tears, and musings holy!
There is no music in the life
That sounds with idiot laughter solely;
There's not a string attuned to mirth,
But has its chord in melancholy.
## p. 7608 (#418) ###########################################
7608
THOMAS HOOD
THE DEATH-BED
E WATCHED her breathing through the night,
WⓇ Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
So silently we seemed to speak,
So slowly moved about,
As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.
Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied:
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.
For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed. - she had
Another morn than ours.
-
I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER
REMEMBER, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn:
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day;
But now I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!
I remember, I remember
The roses red and white;
The violets and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light;
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday —
That tree is living yet!
I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
## p. 7609 (#419) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7609
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing:
My spirit flew in feathers then,
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow!
I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.
STANZAS
F
AREWELL, Life! my senses swim,
And the world is growing dim;
Thronging shadows cloud the light,
Like the advent of the night.
Colder, colder, colder still,
Upward steals a vapor chill;
Strong the earthy odor grows -
I smell the mold above the rose!
Welcome, Life! the spirit strives!
Strength returns and hope revives;
Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
Fly like shadows at the morn.
O'er the earth there comes a bloom;
Sunny light for sullen gloom,
Warm perfume for vapor cold-
I smell the rose above the mold!
## p. 7610 (#420) ###########################################
7610
PIETER CORNELISZOON HOOFT
(1581-1647)
IETER CORNELISZOON HOOFT, who has been called "the father
of Dutch poetry," was born March 16th, 1581, at Amsterdam,
Holland, where his father was burgomaster. He received a
liberal education at home, and traveled extensively in France, Italy,
and Germany. Subsequently he studied literature and law at the
University of Leyden. In 1609 he was appointed to the influential
position of bailiff of Muiden, and from this time on for many years
he spent the summer months at the castle of Muiden, a short dis-
tance from Amsterdam.
Hooft's position in the literary history of
Holland is due not only to his own writings,
but also to the unmistakable influence that
he exerted upon the whole literary develop-
ment of the time. As bailiff at Muiden,
whither he brought his young wife the year
after his appointment, he kept open house,
and gathered about him the flower of Hol-
land in politics, in art, literature, and learn-
ing, known since in Dutch history as the
"Muiden circle," who were held together
by Hooft's own attractive personality and
social position as well as by his literary
talents. Some of the most notable names of
Holland are connected with Hooft at Muiden. Vondel and Coster
were there together, and in the long list of other names are to be
found Grotius, Brederoo, Vos, and Ansloo, Constantin Huygens, and
before all, Anna and Maria Tesselschade, the daughters of Roemer
Visscher. Hooft was twice married. For his life of Henry IV. of
France, written in 1626, he was ennobled by the French king. He
died on the 25th of May, 1647, at The Hague, whither he had gone
to attend a royal funeral.
Hooft's literary career began early. In his sixteenth year he had
joined, according to the custom of the day, one of the rhetorical
"chambers," and wrote at this time several minor poems and the
tragedy 'Achilles and Polyxena,' his first important literary work.
His numerous lyrics, a series of dramas, and his historical works
PIETER HOOFT
## p. 7611 (#421) ###########################################
PIETER CORNELISZOON HOOFT
7611
show that his official duties did not seriously interfere with his lit-
erary pursuits. His plays, besides the one already noticed, are the
tragedies 'Geraardt van Velzen,' Theseus and Ariadne,' and 'Baeto';
the pastoral Granida'; and the comedy 'Warenaer,' after the 'Aulu-
laria' of Plautus.
(
Hooft's first historical work was the life of Henry IV. , already
mentioned. This and a translation of Tacitus consciously served,
however, but as a preparation for his greatest work, the 'History
of the Netherlands' (Nederlandsche Historien), which was written
during the years 1628-38, and finally published in 1642. He expended
on this work his very best powers. A vast deal of time was spent
upon the careful collection and study of sources, and upon the purity
of the vocabulary and the literary form, which received extraordinary
praise from his contemporaries, and have made this work a classic
in the literature of Holland. He had planned a continuation of the
history, but died before it was completed.
Hooft's best poetical work was lyrical. His dramas are altogether
lacking in originality, and not one of them has kept the stage. It is
as a historian that his fame is most firmly founded.
ANACREONTIC
TH
HREE long years have o'erwhelmed me in sadness,
Since the sun veiled his vision of gladness:
Sorrow be banished, for sorrow is dreary;
Sorrow and gloom but outweary the weary.
In my heart I perceive the day breaking;
I cannot resist its awaking.
On my brow a new sun is arisen,
And bright is its glance o'er my prison;
Gayly and grandly it sparkles about me,
Flowingly shines it within and without me:
Why, why should dejection disarm me,
My fears or my fancies alarm me?
Laughing lightly, lovely life, in the heaven
Of thy forehead is virtue engraven;
Thy red coral lips, when they breathe an assenting,
To me are a dawn which Apollo is painting;
Thy eyes drive the gloom, with their sparkling,
Where sadness and folly sit darkling.
Lovely eyes, then the beauties have bound them,
And scattered their shadows around them;
## p. 7612 (#422) ###########################################
7612
PIETER CORNELISZOON HOOFT
Stars, in whose twinklings the virtues and graces,
Sweetness and meekness, all hold their high places:
But the brightest of stars is but twilight
Compared with that beautiful eye-light.
Fragrant mouth, all the flowers spring is wreathing
Are dull to the sweets thou art breathing;
The charms of thy song might summon the spirit
To sit on the ears all-enchanted to hear it:
What marvel, then, if in its kisses
My soul is o'erwhelmed with sweet blisses?
Oh how blest, how divine the employment!
How heavenly, how high the enjoyment!
Delicate lips and soft amorous glances,
Kindling and quenching and fanning sweet fancies,
Now, now to my heart's centre rushing,
And now through my veins they are gushing.
Dazzling eyes, that but laugh at our ruin,
Nor think of the wrongs ye are doing,
Fountains of gladness and beacons of glory,
How do ye scatter the dark mists before ye!
Can my weakness your tyranny bridle ?
Oh no! all resistance is idle.
Ah! my soul-ah! my soul is submitted;
Thy lips-thy sweet lips-they are fitted
With a kiss to dissolve into joy and affection
The dreamings of hope and of gay recollection:
And sure never triumph was purer;
And sure never triumph was surer.
I am bound to your beauty completely,
I am fettered and fastened so sweetly;
And blessed are the tones, and the looks, and the mind
too,
Which my senses control, and my heart is inclined to;
While virtue, the holiest and brightest,
Has fastened love's fetters the tightest.
Translated by Sir John Bowring.
## p. 7613 (#423) ###########################################
7613
THEODORE HOOK
(1788-1841)
T
T IS impossible to draw the figure of Theodore Hook without
his cap and bells. In London society he filled the place of
the court jester; and the extraordinary vogue of his books
in the London world of letters, art, and fashion was due doubtless to
his personal agreeableness. He had a remarkable gift for improvis-
ing verse and music, and for throwing off farces, burlesques, and jeux
d'esprit, which made him an invaluable guest, and gave him a famous
name. Much of the volatile aroma of his literary work, the distilla-
tion of the hour, has now evaporated.
Theodore Edward Hook was born in London September 22d, 1788,
the son of James Hook, a popular composer. The father, discovering
his son's peculiar talent for making verses, took him from school and
set him to turning rhymes for his own musical compositions. This de-
lighted the indolent boy, who greatly preferred the praise of the clev-
erest actors, authors, and wits in London to the dull routine of Harrow.
For this appreciative audience he played, sang, made puns, flashed
epigrams, or laughed at dignitaries, and caricatured greatness. These
private entertainments soon expanded into farces and comic operas,
successfully presented on the stage before Hook reached the age of
twenty. At thirty he founded and edited a Tory paper called John
Bull, publishing in this The Ramsbotham Papers,' in which Mrs.
Ramsbotham anticipated the ingenious Mrs. Partington in the fun
which arises from the grotesque misapplication of words.
In 1824 Hook published his first series of Sayings and Doings,'
tales that delighted his contemporaries. The jester lacked the con-
structive faculty, and therefore his novels may be called literary
improvisations, conceived in the same happy-go-lucky spirit as his
farces. In his own day they were much esteemed, and they still mir-
ror faithfully the bygone fashions and manners and reigning follies
of the London of George IV. and the Sailor King. One and all, they
illustrate the theory of Sir Walter Scott that "every comic writer of
fiction draws, and must draw, largely from his own circle. " Gilbert
Gurney' is autobiographic, and many of his own mad pranks as a
practical joker are recorded in it. Thomas Moore appears in 'A Man
of Sorrows' (afterwards recast as 'Merton'), as Mr. Minus, while other
notable persons wear other disguises.
## p. 7614 (#424) ###########################################
7614
THEODORE HOOK
(
Of Hook's thirty-eight volumes all except 'Maxwell,' The Par-
son's Daughter,' 'Love and Pride,' 'Jack Brag,' and 'Births, Marriages,
and Deaths,' now gather dust on the library shelves. The citation
here given shows not only his cleverness in farcical writing, but that
apprehension of the dangerous tendencies of popular education which
in his time disturbed the comfortable Tory satisfaction with things
as they were. Hook died at Fulham Bridge, near London, August
24th, 1841. The best account of his life was published in 1849 by
his friend Barham, "Thomas Ingoldsby," like himself one of the still
famous circle of London wits in the early decades of the century.
THE MARCH OF INTELLECT
A Prophetic View of Socialism, from John Bull'
IT
T HAPPENED on the 31st of March, 1926, that the then Duke
and Duchess of Bedford were sitting in their good but old
house, No. 17 Liberality Place (the corner of Riego Street),
near to where old Hammersmith stood before the great improve-
ments; and although it was past two o'clock, the breakfast equi-
page still remained upon the table.
It may be necessary to state that the illustrious family in
question, having embraced the Roman Catholic faith (which at
that period was the established religion of the country), had been
allowed to retain their titles and honorable distinctions; although
Woburn Abbey had been long before restored to the Church,
and was, at the time of which we treat, occupied by a worship-
ful community of holy friars. The duke's family estates in Old
London had been, of course, divided by the Equitable Conven-
tion amongst the numerous persons whose distressed situation
gave them the strongest claims, and his Grace and his family
had been for a long time receiving the compensation annuity
allotted to his ancestors.
"Where is Lady Elizabeth? " said his Grace to the duchess.
"She is making the beds, duke," replied her Grace.
"What, again to-day? " said his Grace. "Where are Stubbs,
Hogsflesh, and Figgins, the females whom, were it not contrary
to law, I should call the housemaids? "
"They are gone," said her Grace, "on a sketching tour with
the manciple, Mr. Nicholson, and his nephew. ”
"Why are not these things removed? " said his Grace, eying
the breakfast-table, upon which (the piece of furniture being of
## p. 7615 (#425) ###########################################
THEODORE HOOK
7615
oak, without covering) stood a huge jar of honey, several saucers
of beet-root, a large pot of half-cold decoction of sassafrage, and
an urn full of bean-juice; the use of cotton, sugar, tea, and cof-
fee having been utterly abolished by law in the year 1888.
"I have rung several times," said the duchess, "and sent
Lady Maria up-stairs into the assistants' drawing-room to get
some of them to remove the things; but they have kept her, I
believe, to sing to them-I know they are very fond of hearing
her, and often do so. "
His Grace, whose appetite seemed renewed by the sight of the
still lingering viands which graced the board, seemed determined
to make the best of a bad bargain, and sat down to commence
an attack upon some potted seal and pickled fish from Baffin's
Bay and Behring's Straits, which some of their friends who had
gone over there to pass the summer (as was the fashion of those
times) in the East India steamships (which always touched there)
had given them; and having consumed a pretty fair portion of
the remnants, his favorite daughter, Lady Maria, made her ap-
pearance.
“Well, Maria," said his Grace, "where have you been all this
time? »
"Mr. Curry," said her Ladyship, "the young person who is
good enough to look after our horses, had a dispute with the
lady who assists Mr. Biggs in dressing the dinner for us, whether
it was necessary at chess to say check to the queen when the
queen was in danger, or not. I was unable to decide the ques-
tion, and I assure you I got so terribly laughed at that I ran
away as fast as I could. "
"Was Duggins in the assistants' drawing-room, my love? »
said the duke.
"No," said Lady Maria.
"I wanted him to take a message for me," said his Grace, in
a sort of demi-soliloquy.
"I'm sure he cannot go, then," said Lady Maria, "because I
know he is gone to the House of Parliament" (there was but one
at that time); "for he told the other gentleman who cleans the
plate that he could not be back to attend at dinner, however
consonant with his wishes, because he had promised to wait for
the division. "
"Ah," sighed the duke, "this comes of his having been elected
for Westminster. "
## p. 7616 (#426) ###########################################
7616
THEODORE HOOK
At this moment Lord William Cobbett Russell made his ap-
pearance, extremely hot and evidently tired, having under his
arm a largish parcel.
"What have you there, Willy? " said her Grace.
"My new breeches," said his lordship. "I have called upon.
the worthy citizen who made them, over and over again, and
never could get them, for of course I could not expect him to
send them, and he is always either at the academy or the gym-
nasium; however, to-day I caught him just as he was in a hot
debate with a gentleman who was cleaning his windows, as to
whether the solidity of a prism is equal to the product of its base
by its altitude. I confess I was pleased to catch him at home;
but unluckily the question was referred to me, and not compre-
hending it I was deucedly glad to get off, which I did as fast as
I could, both parties calling after me, 'There is a lord for you
-look at my lord! ' and hooting me in a manner which, how-
ever constitutional, I cannot help thinking deucedly disagreeable. "
At this moment (what in former times was called) a footman,
named Dowbiggin, made his appearance, who entered the room;
as the duke hoped, to remove the breakfast things, but it was in
fact to ask Lady Maria to sketch in a tree in a landscape which
he was in the course of painting.
"Dowbiggin," said his Grace in despair, "I wish you would
take away these breakfast things. "
"Indeed! " said Dowbiggin, looking at the duke with the most
ineffable contempt-"you do! -that's capital-what right have
you to ask me to do any such thing? "
"Why, Mr. Dowbiggin," said the duchess, who was a bit of
a tartar in her way, "his Grace pays you, and feeds you, and
clothes you, to—”
"Well, duchess," said Dowbiggin, "and what then? Let his
Grace show me his superiority. I am ready to do anything for
him: but please to recollect I asked him yesterday, when I did
remove the coffee, to tell me what the Altaic chain is called,
when, after having united all the rivers which supply the Jeni-
sei, it stretches as far as the Baikal lake and what did he
answer? He made a French pun, and said, Je ne sais pas,
Dobiggin. Now, if it can be shown by any statute that I, who
am perfectly competent to answer any question I propose, am
first to be put off with a quibble by way of reply; and secondly,
to be required to work for a man who does not know as much
-
## p. 7617 (#427) ###########################################
THEODORE HOOK
7617
as I do myself, merely because he is a duke, why, I'll do it:
but if not, I will resist in a constitutional manner such illiberal
oppression and such ridiculous control, even though I am trans-
ported to Scotland for it. Now, Lady Maria, go on with the
tree. "
"Willy," said the duke to his son, "when you have put away
your small-clothes, go and ask Mr. Martingale if he will be kind.
enough to let the horses be put to our carriage, since the duchess
and I wish to go to mass. "
"You need not send to Martingale," said Dowbiggin: "he is
gone to the Society of Arts to hear a lecture on astronomy. "
"Then, Willy, go and endeavor to harness the horses your-
self," said the duke to his son, who instantly obeyed.
"You had better mind about those horses, sir," said Dowbig-
gin, still watching the progress of his tree: "the two German
philosophers and Father O'Flynn have been with them to-day,
and there appears little doubt that the great system will spread,
and that even these animals, which we have been taught to de-
spise, will express their sentiments before long. "
"The sentiments of a coach-horse! " sighed the duchess.
"Thanks, Lady Maria," said Dowbiggin: "now I'll go to work
merrily; and duke, whenever you can fudge up an answer to my
question about the Altaic chain, send one of the girls, and I'll
take away the things. "
Dowbiggin disappeared; and the duke, who was anxious to
get the parlor cleared (for the house, except two rooms, was all
appropriated to the assistants), resolved to inquire of his priest
what the proper answer would be to Dowbiggin's question which
he had tried to evade by the offensive quibble, when Lord Will-
iam Cobbett Russell reappeared, as white as a sheet.
"My dear father," cried his Lordship, "it's all over now. The
philosophers have carried the thing too far: the chestnut mare
swears she'll be d-d if she goes out to-day. "
"What," said the duke, "has their liberality gone to this?
Do horses talk? My dear William, you and I know that asses
have written before this; but for horses to speak! "
"Perhaps, Willy," said the duchess, "it is merely yea and
nay; or probably only the female horses who talk at all. "
"Yes, mother, yes," said her son, "both of them spoke; and
not only that, but Nap, the dog you were once so fond of, called
after me to say that we had no right to keep him tied up in
XIII-477
## p. 7618 (#428) ###########################################
7618
THEODORE HOOK
that dismal yard, and that he would appeal to Parliament if we
did not let him out. "
"My dear duchess," said the duke, who was even more alarmed
at the spread of intelligence than her Grace, "there is but one
thing for us to do: let us pack up all we can, and if we can get
a few well-disposed post-horses, before they become too much
enlightened, to take us towards the coast, let us be off. "
What happened further, this historical fragment does not ex-
plain; but it is believed that the family escaped with their clothes
and a few valuables, leaving their property in the possession of
their assistants, who by extending with a liberal anxiety (natural
in men who have become learned and great by similar means
themselves) the benefits of enlightenment, in turn gave way to
the superior claims of inferior animals, and were themselves com-
pelled eventually to relinquish happiness, power, and tranquillity
in favor of monkeys, horses, jackasses, dogs, and all manner of
beasts.
## p. 7619 (#429) ###########################################
7619
HORACE
(QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS)
(65 B. C. -8 B. C. )
BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON
AKE care of Horace as you would of me" ("Horatii Flacci ut
mei esto memor"). The words of the dying Mæcenas to the
Emperor Augustus throw a singularly attractive light over
the relations of the three famous men whose names they associate.
They show the yearning human affection of the great patron of
Roman letters for the man of genius whose best work he had made
possible, and who had returned his bounty so nobly. They also dis-
close that redeeming quality in the not too delicate or scrupulous
master of the world, which invited on the part of those whom he
personally esteemed a homely and trustful familiarity. There is no
reason to doubt that the last wish of Mæcenas would have been
abundantly heeded; but as the event proved, there was little further
occasion for the imperial patronage. Mæcenas passed away after a
lingering illness in the summer of 746 (8 B. C. ); Horace died suddenly
on the 27th of November in the same year: and the affectionate vow
not to linger long in life after his good genius had left it, which the
poet had recorded in some of his most exquisite verses nearly seven-
teen years before, thus received a curious and touching fulfillment.
The lines were these:
"Why wilt thou kill me with thy boding fears—
Why, O Mæcenas, why?
Before thee lies a train of happy years;
Yea, nor the gods, nor I
Could brook that thou shouldst first be laid in dust:
That art my stay, my glory, and my trust!
Ah, if untimely Fate should snatch thee hence,
Thee, of my soul a part,
Why should I linger on with deadened sense
And ever-aching heart,
A worthless fragment of a fallen shrine?
No, no-one day shall see thy death and mine!
## p. 7620 (#430) ###########################################
7620
HORACE
Think not that I have sworn a bootless oath:
Yes, we shall go, shall go
Hand linked in hand whene'er thou leadest both
The last sad road below! » *
The outlines of the poet's rather uneventful history may be given
briefly. Quintus Horatius Flaccus was born in the year of the city
of Rome 689 (65 B. C. ) at Venusia, now Venosa, a small hill town
lying about a hundred miles from Naples, eastward toward the Adri-
atic. His father was a freedman who had acquired a modest com-
petence; and the historic name of Horatius was merely that of the
great Latin tribe or gens to which the master of the former slave had
belonged. That the elder Horace was also a man of much force and
dignity of character, we gather from many passages in the writings
of the son: most of all from a peculiarly manly and loyal tribute in
the sixth satire of the first book. He would give his only child no
less than the best instruction possible in those days. He went with
him to Rome, and watched carefully over the boy's manners and
morals during his preliminary studies there; and afterward sent him,
where only the sons of noblemen and wealthy knights went usually
in those days, to finish his education at Athens. There, while nom-
inally attending lectures in philosophy, Horace must have indulged
his natural bent, and simply steeped himself in the lyric poetry of
Greece: especially in the iambic satires of Archilochus of Paros, and
the odes of Sappho, Alcæus, and Anacreon.
But this congenial and care-free life at Athens was doomed to
receive a rude interruption. Horace had left Rome at about twenty,
during the supremacy of Julius Cæsar. A year later, in 44 B. C. , the
dictator fell, and his assassins took refuge in Athens. The crowd of
impressionable young Roman students immediately rallied round
Brutus, espoused his cause with the utmost enthusiasm, enlisted in
the army he was raising, and worshiped him as a republican hero.
In return for their devotion, Brutus, when gathering his forces for
the last struggle with Antony, distributed commands among these
ardent neophytes, for which they were at best not fitted by previous
active service. It was thus that Horace was made military tribune
at twenty-two, commanded at the battle of Philippi what would cor-
respond to a regiment in a modern army,- and retreated from that
fatal field, leaving, as he afterward quaintly confessed, his buckler
behind him, when the day and the cause were finally lost. (Odes,
Book II. , vii. )
He returned to Italy to find his good father dead, the little Venu-
sian property confiscated as that of a rebel, and a prospect before
* Odes, Book II. , xvii. , Sir Theodore Martin's translation.
## p. 7621 (#431) ###########################################
HORACE
7621
him which would have been dismal enough to any but one of his
sunny and debonair disposition and happy facility in making friends.
He presently secured a small place, as we should say, in the civil
service; that of quæstor's clerk. Suetonius says that he purchased it,
after making his submission to the authorities (venia impetrata); but
I think we may take it for granted that there was no mean or un-
timely abjuration of his republican creed on the part of one whom in
after years even imperial blandishments failed to shake in his quiet
independence of thought and action.
It is plain, at all events, that the freedman's son never forfeited
the place he had won in the best of the young Roman society.
Within three years after his return from Greece, we find him upon
friendly terms both with Virgil, who was five years his senior, and
with the epic poet and tragedian Lucius Varius Rufus. By them he
was introduced, at the age of twenty-six, to Mæcenas, the first citi-
zen of Rome at that moment in social and political influence, and
the acknowledged arbiter of literary destinies. The poet himself, in
the same satire in which he commemorates the fine character and
unselfish devotion of his father (Satires, I. , vi. ), has left us a diverting
account of this first momentous interview with Mæcenas - which it
pleases him to represent as a conspicuous fiasco. He himself, he says,
behaved like an awkward child, while the great man — whom, by the
way, he was then addressing — was very distant and awful. But after
holding aloof, and considering for a number of months the works
and ways of the new candidate for his favor, Mæcenas succumbed
without reserve to the young man's personal fascination, opened wide
both his house and his heart, and ended by becoming almost dotingly
fond of him. We find Horace in the spring of the next year, 717
(37 B. C. ), attached, along with Virgil, to the highly distinguished suite
which accompanied Mæcenas on an embassy from Augustus to treat
with Antony at Brindisi. About 720-the exact date is nowhere
recorded, but it must have been before the close of the civil war in
723- Horace was made independent of the world, and even of any
sordid obligation to literature, by the gift of that beautiful little estate
among the Sabine Hills which is so closely associated with his name
and fame; and where the pilgrim may yet go and pay his vows to
that pleasant memory, as at a sweet undesecrated shrine.
It was
the fittest gift ever made by a liberal man of fortune to a needy
man of parts, and both offered and received in the finest spirit.
We flatter ourselves in these days that we have reduced charity as
well as most other things to a science; but much of the anxious, arbi-
trary, and over-organized benevolence of modern times, with its disin-
genuous and dreary subtleties about profusion and pauperization, and
its intrinsic selfishness, stands rebuked before the simple. and noble
## p. 7622 (#432) ###########################################
7622
HORACE
give-and-take of these two pagans, which inflicted no hurt upon the
dignity of either, while it laid the generations that were to come
under endless obligations.
During his brief period of storm and stress, Horace had already
turned his nimble wits to account, and become known to some extent
as a satirical poet. "When," he says (Epistles, II. , ii. ),—" when I
came back with clipped wings from Philippi, poor, insignificant, re-
lieved even of the paternal home and farm, reckless poverty impelled
me to verse-making. But now that I am in easy circumstances, you
might take it as a symptom of raging fever in me if I could not
sleep for the pressure of unwritten poetry! " It is easy to see how
this laughing self-depreciation, this resolute refusal to take himself
and his brilliant endowments over-seriously, of which across the centu-
ries we can still feel the charm, must have helped to endear Horace
to his friends in every grade of life. It was a part of the exquisite
savoir-faire which always marked his bearing in the great world; of
that innate good sense and invincible good breeding which were as
much a gift of heaven to the freedman's son as his youthful good
looks, and no more prejudiced by his rustic boyhood, and his early
familiarity with such brave sons of the Italian soil as his father and
their racy neighbor at Venusia, the yeoman Ofellus. (Satires, II. , ii. )
His unaffected love of nature and a country life was in fact a
main safeguard of the poet's mental health, and the best of all aids
to his talent. It breathes in many of the Horatian lines and phrases
which linger longest in the memory. Horace never expatiates on his
love of natural beauty; rather, it escapes from his verses at inter-
vals, like a hoarded but volatile perfume. Doubtless he was the
more reserved, not to say shamefaced, about this deep sentiment of
his own, because there was plainly a fashion in the Rome of his day
for affecting a rapturous enjoyment of country scenes and pursuits,
and affectation of every kind excited his cordial abhorrence. The
most detailed and delightful description of rural pleasures which
Horace anywhere gives us is to be found in the second Epode: but
he has a laugh in the concluding verses at the reader's expense and
his own; and we are bound to take the joke in as good part as
the audience probably did when the poem was first read to a distin-
guished private company. "So spake the money-lender Alphius, all
on fire to become a country gentleman; and having called in all the
money which fell due upon the Ides, he immediately let it out again.
upon the Kalends! »
From the time when he became a landed proprietor, Horace him-
self passed a considerable part of every year in his country home.
The land was more or less impoverished by neglect when he took
possession, and the buildings dilapidated. He had the healthful and
## p. 7623 (#433) ###########################################
HORACE
7623
Here,
inexhaustible amusement of repairing, planting, beautifying.
under his own vine and fig-tree, he could rest his nerves from city
bores, and recuperate his digestion after city banquets. Here he
could throw himself into the interests and tickle himself with the
humors of his tenants and rustic neighbors, and easily practice the
homely hospitality in which his own soul delighted. He by no means
renounced the hospitalities of Mæcenas and the gay society of the
capital, but he reveled in possessing a safe and convenient retreat
from it all. The Sabine property was but thirty miles from Rome.
Horace never affected the aristocratic litter, but went and came
freely upon his own ambling mule, over one of the most beautiful
roads in all the world: southward across the campagna, threading
the hoary olives of the first ascent, and passing "many-fountained"
Tivoli; then up beside the Anio into the higher hills, until he turned
aside upon the left into the sunny silence of a yet more secluded
valley, that of the tributary Digentia, now Licenza.
men.
The early satires of Horace are plainly an outcome of the studies
of Archilochus which he had made at Athens; but he adopts the
measure and professes himself rather the disciple of Lucilius, the
rude forefather of the Latin satire. Of those first off-hand squibs
and sketches,-which he intimates in a passage already quoted that
he wrote for immediate pay,—it is uncertain how many he cared
afterward to include in his collected writings. The seventh satire of
the first book bears marks of having been written very early,-per-
haps while he was still playing the soldier in Greece. The third,
fourth, and tenth of the first book are in the main apologetic. They
defend the satire as the readiest and most efficient weapon of the
moralist, and as a wholesome check upon the follies and excesses of
They also proclaim his own resolve never to abuse the cen-
sor's privilege; and to indulge in no personal criticisms inconsist-
ent with the code of social honor of his age, and with a generally
kindly and tolerant view of the infirmities of humankind. The first
satire of the second book is one of the most dramatic and amusing
of the whole series. It is in the form of a dialogue with one Tre-
batius,—a rich and famous old lawyer, on the best of terms with the
powers that then were, who good-humoredly advises the poet to give
up altogether the ticklish trade of a satirist, and when he finds him-
self growing dangerously hot over the follies of the day, to reduce
his temperature by a bath in the Tiber! Great interest attaches to
the name of Horace's supposed interlocutor in this witty piece, for he
is the selfsame Trebatius for whom Cicero twenty-five years before
had procured a place on the staff of Cæsar in Gaul; who had loathed
the hardships of that country, and adroitly avoided following the
conqueror to Britain; and in whose beautiful villa at Reggio, Cicero
## p. 7624 (#434) ###########################################
7624
HORACE
had found refuge ten years later, when he was himself a fugitive
from Rome after the death of Cæsar. Trebatius was never the man
to have lost his head through any romantic adhesion to a fallen
cause; and it is positively startling to see how he preserves his
identity across a complete gap of so many years in our knowledge
of him.
All the eighteen satires of the two books, as well as most of the
Epodes, were apparently given to the world under the patronage of
Mæcenas, during the ten years or so which intervened between the
poet's introduction to that dignitary and the close of the weary civil
war by the victory of Actium. In them we find faithfully reflected
the daily life of the Roman streets, as well as the fashion of the
moment in what claimed to be the most exclusive circles of the cap-
ital. The earlier the composition, as a rule, the coarser the language
and the more caustic the tone. We fancy that we can see the
writer's expression becoming ever more suave and genial as his tem-
per mellowed with his days of modest prosperity, and his easy and
indulgent though never unmanly or ignoble philosophy of life took
shape and became a consciously accepted creed. He was never,
either in theory or practice, a very rigid moralist. He lashed men's
follies lightly and forgave their lapses freely. Himself, as judged by
the standards of the time, a clean and quiet liver, he was content to
hold up to ridicule, rather than to stern reprobation, the vices of
other men
"Telling a tale not too importunate
To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day. "
We have plenty of proof that there were moments when the gay
and facile Horace felt, no less keenly than the pensive and clair-
voyant Virgil habitually felt, the essential "emptiness," for a Roman
of that day, which followed the extinction of his civic personality.
More and more, as the years of his outwardly successful and brilliant
middle life slipped away, the patriotism of Horace became a resolutely
smothered regret; while his loves, which can never have been very
absorbing or impassioned, resolved themselves into the half amused,
half wistful recollection of transient affairs with women who had had
many lovers.
It is only when he sings of friendship, of honor and
gratitude, of faith and charity between man and man, that this con-
vinced Epicurean strikes a deeper note. The brevity of life and the
vacuity of death were ever present in the background of his thought;
but all the more was he minded to enjoy, to the full, the sunshine of
the passing day. Moderation in all things, content with the present,
courage in view of an absolutely uncertain future. - these things, in
## p. 7625 (#435) ###########################################
HORACE
7625
so far as Horace aspires to be didactic, constitute the sum and sub-
stance of his teaching.
It was inevitable that such a man, already fast bound by the
warmest of private ties to the first minister of Cæsar Octavianus,
should have accepted frankly the changed order of things when the
latter returned to Rome in 725, after the battle of Actium and the
deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, to assume the sceptre of a pacified
world. Liberty was past, and it behooved men to be thankful for
peace, and poets to praise it; believing if they could that it implied
the beginning of another age of gold. A good many of the more
respectable and better disposed Romans of that period did probably
believe this, after a fashion. The tragic note of covert warning dis-
cernible in the ode addressed by Horace (Odes, II. , x. ) to his ill-fated
friend Licinius Murena, the brother-in-law of Mæcenas, who was con-
demned and executed a few years later for conspiring against the
new government, shows how utterly wild and wanton that enterprise
must have appeared at the time. Sixty or seventy years were to
pass before the mystery of iniquity was ripe and all the vices inher-
ent in the imperial system became fully apparent; before the next
great Roman satirist, Persius, gave vent in mordant and melancholy
verse to the smothered rage of the best of the patrician remnant,
against the degrading "regiment" of their parvenu sovereigns.
Virtually, therefore, though not officially, Horace became the poet
laureate of the court which formed itself about the ruler who pres-
ently assumed the name of Augustus. All the great odes of the four
books belong to the next fifteen years; and of these, all the statelier
and more impersonal were written under imperial inspiration, and
some few, like the 'Carmen Sæculare,' and the fourth ode of the
fourth book,- which celebrates the German victories of Drusus,- in
response to direct imperial request. Yet Horace always managed to
preserve his personal freedom, and to avoid even the suspicion of
servility. He sang the triumphs of Augustus in golden numbers, but
he declined with respectful thanks the post of his private secretary.
Nor would he write an ode, to order, on the achievements of Agrippa;
but politely, if a little ironically, excused himself on the ground that
his light muse was unequal to so serious a theme (Odes, I. , vi. ).
The first book of the Epistles appeared about 731; probably be-
tween the second and third books of the Odes. The second, com-
prising the unfinished essay on the 'Art of Poetry,' was Horace's last
work, produced after he was fifty years old. His health was no longer
what it had been, and even the air of the dear valley overlooked
by pleasant Lucretilis" was becoming a trifle too brisk and bracing
for his nerves. Tibur (Tivoli) he thought suited him better, and he
prepared for himself a little installation there; but confesses in one
<<
## p. 7626 (#436) ###########################################
7626
HORACE
of his letters (Epistles, I. , viii. ) that he was restless as the wind:-
"When I am in Rome I am in love with Tibur, and when at Tibur,
with Rome. " Sometimes he longed for yet softer skies; and the
nook of earth which smiled upon him above all others "Ille terra-
rum mihi præter omnes Angulus ridet». was sunny Tarentum, with
its long spring and its gentle winter, which produced better honey
than Hymettus, better olives than leafy Venafrum, and better grapes
than Falernum itself (Odes, II. , vi. ). The end came when the poet
lacked only a few days of having completed his fifty-seventh year:
and by order of the Emperor he was laid beside Mæcenas, some-
where in the great gardens which the latter had planted upon the
redeemed Esquiline hill.
It is in the Odes that the genius of Horace finds its most perfect
expression, and through them he lives in the memory of mankind.
In them he shows himself so consummate an artist in words that
he can impart distinction even to the commonplaces of thought and
sentiment through the mere perfection of their form. His diction is
distilled to such crystalline clearness, he says what he has to say
so unapproachably and incredibly well, that his thought would be
wronged and obscured by the attempt to express it in any other
words than his own. Hence, of all poets ancient or modern, Shake-
speare alone excepted, he is perhaps most frequently quoted. The
phrase "curious felicity," applied in the age succeeding the Augus-
tan by Petronius to the style of Horace, is very apt; yet it seems
to emphasize just a little too strongly the notion of research. For
Horace's manner is after all so simple and seemingly spontaneous,
and his matter of such universal interest, that he has the effect of
addressing each reader confidentially, and making a special appeal to
him. And this air of exquisite familiarity and naturalness is the
more remarkable, because it pleased the accomplished singer of the
Odes to discard for the most part the simple iambics and hexameters
of his previous compositions, and to employ the most elaborate of
Greek lyric measures; molding in a truly miraculous manner the stiff
Latin syllables into harmony with the graces of an alien rhythm, and
now and again simply paraphrasing from the Greek. The éclat of
this feat has helped no doubt to render the adventure of translating
Horace more enticing; but he has never been adequately translated,
and it is safe to prophesy that he never will be. His qualities are
combined in too rare and subtle proportions.
The first printed edition, with date, of the works of Quintus Ho-
ratius Flaccus appeared in Milan in 1474; and almost every year in
the four hundred odd that have elapsed since then has added one
more to the devoted critics and commentators of his text.
The end-
less procession of his poetical translators comprises, in English only,
## p. 7627 (#437) ###########################################
HORACE
7627
and within our own time, such names as those of Bulwer-Lytton,
Conington, Gladstone, Sir Theodore Martin, and Sir Stephen de Vere;
while the lively paraphrases of the brothers Field of Chicago, per-
haps for the very reason that they deal with Horace so nearly in the
spirit in which he dealt with his Grecian models, appear to come
nearer, sometimes, than all the laborious efforts of more exact schol-
ars to catching the tone of the inimitable original.
The subjoined English versions are nearly all selected from these
more modern renderings, for the reason that they are upon the whole
both the most scholarly and the most successful; and an effort has
been made to present a fair idea of their comparative merits.
Harmet Traces Preston
TO LEUCONOË
O
SEEK not thou-'tis not to know- what end to me, what end
to thee
The gods have given, nor Babylonish numbers test, Leuconoë.
How better far it is to bear whatever lot for us be cast!
Or whether Jove more winters still, or whether gives he this the last,
Which now on pumice-crags opposing ever breaks th' Etruscan sea;
Be wise; strain out thy wines, and trim thine all too long expectancy
To life's brief span. Now while we speak, invidious time hath slipt
away.
O thou, as little as may be the morrow trusting, snatch to-day!
Translation of Caskie Harrison.
TO THALIARCHUS
A
SPECTRAL form Soracte stands, snow-crowned,
His shrouded pines beneath their burden bending;
Not now, his rifts descending,
Leap the wild streams, in icy fetters bound.
Heap high the logs! Pour forth with lavish hand,
O Thaliarchus, draughts of long-stored wine,
Blood of the Sabine vine!
To-day be ours: the rest the gods command.
While storms lie quelled at their rebuke, no more
Shall the old ash her shattered foliage shed,
## p. 7628 (#438) ###########################################
7628
HORACE
The cypress bow her head,
The bursting billow whiten on the shore.
Scan not the future: count as gain each day
That Fortune gives thee; and despise not, boy,
Or love, or dance, or joy
Of martial games, ere yet thy locks be gray.
Thine be the twilight vow from faltering tongue;
The joyous laugh that self-betraying guides
To where the maiden hides;
The ring from finger half resisting wrung.
O
Translation of Sir Stephen de Vere.
TO THE SHIP OF STATE
From W. E. Gladstone's 'Odes of Horace. Copyright 1894, by Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons
SHIP! new billows sweep thee out
Seaward. What wilt thou? Hold the port, be stout!
Seest not thy mast
How rent by stiff southwestern blast?
Thy side, of rowers how forlorn!
Thine hull, with groaning yards, with rigging torn,
Can ill sustain
The fierce and ever fiercer main;
Thy gods, no more than sails entire,
From whom, yet once, thy need might aid require.
O Pontic pine,
The first of woodland stock is thine,
Yet race and name are but as dust.
Not painted sterns give storm-tost seamen trust
Unless thou dare
To be the sport of storms, beware!
Of old at best a weary weight,
A yearning care and constant strain of late,
O shun the seas
That gird those glittering Cyclades.
## p. 7629 (#439) ###########################################
HORACE
7629
C
TO CHLOE
Paraphrase out of Echoes from the Sabine Farm,' by E. and R. M. Field.
Copyright 1892, by A. C. McClurg & Co. ; 1895, by Charles Scribner's Sons
HLOE, you shun me like a hind
That, seeking vainly for her mother,
Hears danger in each breath of wind,
And wildly darts this way and t'other;
Whether the breezes sway the wood
Or lizards scuttle through the brambles,
She starts; and off as though pursued
The foolish frightened creature scrambles.
But, Chloe, you're no infant thing
That should esteem a man an ogre:
Let go your mother's apron-string
And pin your faith upon a toga!
TO VIRGIL
HY should we stem the tears that needs must flow?
WHY Why blush that they should freely flow and long
To think of that dear head in death laid low?
Do thou inspire my melancholy song.
Melpomene, in whom the Muses' sire
Joined with a liquid voice the mastery of the lyre!
And hath the sleep that knows no waking morn
Closed o'er Quinctilius,— our Quinctilius dear?
Where shall be found the man of woman born
That in desert might be esteemed his peer-
So simply meek, and yet so sternly just,
Of faith so pure, and all so absolute of trust?
He sank into his rest, bewept of many,
And but the good and noble wept for him;
But dearer cause thou, Virgil, hadst than any,
With friendship's tears thy friendless eyes to dim.
Alas, alas! not to such woeful end
Didst thou unto the gods thy prayers unceasing send!
What though thou modulate the tuneful shell
With defter skill than Orpheus of old Thrace,
## p. 7630 (#440) ###########################################
7630
HORACE
When deftliest he played, and with its spell
Moved all the listening forest from its place,
Yet never, never can thy art avail
To bring life's glowing tide back to the phantom pale
Whom, with his black, inexorable wand,
Hermes, austere and pitiless as fate,
Hath forced to join the dark and spectral band,
In their sad journey to the Stygian gate.
'Tis hard-great Heavens, how hard! But to endure
Alleviates the pang we cannot crush or cure.
Translated by Sir Theodore Martin.
TO QUINTUS DELLIUS
Paraphrase out of Echoes from the Sabine Farm,' by E. and R. M. Field.
Copyright 1892, by A. C.
