  If it be merely the poet, and not the lover, who speaks in most of Horace's love verses, there can never be any doubt that the poems to his friends come direct from his heart. They glow with feeling. To whatever chord they are attuned, sad, or solemn, or joyous, they are always delightful; consummate in their grace of expression, while they have all the warmth and easy flow of spontaneous emotion. Take, for example, the following (Odes, II. 7). Pompeius Varus, a fellow-student with Horace at Athens, and a brother in arms under Brutus, who, after the defeat of Philippi, had joined the party of the younger Pompey, has returned to Rome, profiting probably by the general amnesty granted by Octavius to his adversaries after the battle of Actium. How his heart must have leapt at such a welcome from his poet-friend as this!— "Dear comrade in the days when thou and I With Brutus took the field, his perils bore, Who hath restored thee, freely as of yore, To thy home gods, and loved Italian sky, "Pompey, who wert the first my heart to share, With whom full oft I've sped the lingering day, Quaffing bright wine, as in our tents we lay, With Syrian spikenard on our glistening hair? "With thee I shared Philippi's headlong flight, My shield behind me left, which was not well, When all that brave array was broke, and fell In the vile dust full many a towering wight. "But me, poor trembler, swift Mercurius bore, Wrapped in a cloud, through all the hostile din, Whilst war's tumultuous eddies, closing in, Swept thee away into the strife once more. "Then pay to Jove the feasts that are his fee, And stretch at ease these war-worn limbs of thine Beneath my laurel's shade; nor spare the wine Which I have treasured through long years for thee. "Pour till it touch the shining goblet's rim, Care-drowning Massic; let rich ointments flow From amplest conchs! No measure we shall know! What! shall we wreaths of oozy parsley trim, "Or simple myrtle? Whom will Venus{1} send To rule our revel? Wild my draughts shall be As Thracian Bacchanals', for 'tis sweet to me To lose my wits, when I regain my friend." {1} Venus was the highest cast of the dice. The meaning here is, Who shall be the master of our feast?—that office falling to the member of the wine-party who threw sixes. When Horace penned the playful allusion here made to having left his shield on the field of battle (parmula non bene relicta), he could never have thought that his commentators—professed admirers, too—would extract from it an admission of personal cowardice. As if any man, much more a Roman to Romans, would make such a confession! Horace could obviously afford to put in this way the fact of his having given up a desperate cause, for this very reason, that he had done his duty on the field of Philippi, and that it was known he had done it. Commentators will be so cruelly prosaic! The poet was quite as serious in saying that Mercury carried him out of the melÉe in a cloud, like one of Homer's heroes, as that he had left his shield discreditably (non bene) on the battle-field. But it requires a poetic sympathy, which in classical editors is rare, to understand that, as Lessing and others have urged, the very way he speaks of his own retreat was by implication a compliment, not ungraceful, to his friend, who had continued the struggle against the triumvirate, and come home at last, war-worn and weary, to find the more politic comrade of his youth one of the celebrities of Rome, and on the best of terms with the very men against whom they had once fought side by side. Not less beautiful is the following Ode to Septimius, another of the poet's old companions in arms (Odes, II. 6). His speaking of himself in it as "with war and travel worn" has puzzled the commentators, as it is plain from the rest of the poem that it must have been written long after his campaigning days were past. But the fatigues of those days may have left their traces for many years; and the difficulty is at once got over if we suppose the poem to have been written under some little depression from languid health due to this cause. Tarentum, where his friend lived, and whose praises are so warmly sung, was a favourite resort of the poet's. He used to ride there on his mule, very possibly to visit Septimius, before he had his own Sabine villa; and all his love for that villa never chilled his admiration for Tibur, with its "silvan shades, and orchards moist with wimpling rills,"—the "Tiburni lucus, et uda mobilibus pomaria rivis,"-and its milder climate, so genial to his sun-loving temperament:— "Septimius, thou who wouldst, I know, With me to distant Gades go, And visit the Cantabrian fell, Whom all our triumphs cannot quell, And even the sands barbarian brave, Where ceaseless seethes the Moorish wave; "May Tibur, that delightful haunt, Reared by an Argive emigrant, The tranquil haven be, I pray, For my old age to wear away; Oh, may it be the final bourne To one with war and travel worn! "But should the cruel fates decree That this, my friend, shall never be, Then to Galaesus, river sweet To skin-clad flocks, will I retreat, And those rich meads, where sway of yore Laconian Phalanthus bore. "In all the world no spot there is, That wears for me a smile like this, The honey of whose thymy fields May vie with what Hymettus yields, Where berries clustering every slope May with Venafrum's greenest cope. "There Jove accords a lengthened spring, And winters wanting winter's sting, And sunny Aulon's{1} broad incline Such mettle puts into the vine, Its clusters need not envy those Which fiery Falernum grows. "Thyself and me that spot invites, Those pleasant fields, those sunny heights; And there, to life's last moments true, Wilt thou with some fond tears bedew— The last sad tribute love can lend— The ashes of thy poet-friend." {1} Galaesus (Galaso), a river; Aulon, a hill near Tarentum. Septimius was himself a poet, or thought himself one, who, "Holding vulgar ponds and runnels cheap, At Pindar's fount drank valiantly and deep," as Horace says of him in an Epistle (I. 3) to Julius Florus; adding, with a sly touch of humour, which throws more than a doubt on the poetic powers of their common friend,— "Thinks he of me? And does he still aspire To marry Theban strains to Latium's lyre, Thanks to the favouring muse? Or haply rage And mouth in bombast for the tragic stage?" When this was written Septimius was in Armenia along with Florus, on the staff of Tiberius Claudius Nero, the future emperor. For this appointment he was probably indebted to Horace, who applied for it, at his request, in the following Epistle to Tiberius (I. 9), which Addison ('Spectator,' 493) cites as a fine specimen of what a letter of introduction should be. Horace was, on principle, wisely chary of giving such introductions. "Look round and round the man you recommend, For yours will be the shame if he offend," (C.) is his maxim on this subject (Epistles, I. 18, 76); and he was sure to be especially scrupulous in writing to Tiberius, who, even in his youth—and he was at this time about twenty-two—was so morose and unpleasant in his manners, to say nothing of his ample share of the hereditary pride of the Claudian family, that even Augustus felt under constraint in his company:— "Septimius only understands, 'twould seem, How high I stand in, Claudius, your esteem: For when he begs and prays me, day by day, Before you his good qualities to lay, As not unfit the heart and home to share Of Nero, who selects his friends with care; When he supposes you to me extend The rights and place of a familiar friend, Far better than myself he sees and knows, How far with you my commendation goes. Pleas without number I protest I've used, In hope he'd hold me from the task excused, Yet feared the while it might be thought I feigned Too low the influence I perchance have gained, Dissembling it as nothing with my friends, To keep it for my own peculiar ends. So, to escape such dread reproach, I put My blushes by, and boldly urge my suit. If then you hold it as a grace, though small, To doff one's bashfulness at friendship's call, Enrol him in your suite, assured you'll find A man of heart in him, as well as mind." We may be very sure that, among the many pleas urged by Horace for not giving Septimius the introduction he desired, was the folly of leaving his delightful retreat at Tarentum to go once more abroad in search of wealth or promotion. Let others "cross, to plunder provinces, the main," surely this was no ambition for an embryo Pindar or half-developed Aeschylus. Horace had tried similar remonstrances before, and with just as little success, upon Iccius, another of his scholarly friends, who sold off his fine library and joined an expedition into Arabia Felix, expecting to find it an El Dorado. He playfully asks this studious friend (Odes, I. 29), from whom he expected better things—"pollicitus meliora"—if it be true that he grudges the Arabs their wealth, and is actually forging fetters for the hitherto invincible Sabaean monarchs, and those terrible Medians? To which of the royal damsels does he intend to throw the handkerchief, having first cut down her princely betrothed in single combat? Or what young "oiled and curled" Oriental prince is for the future to pour out his wine for him? Iccius, like many another Raleigh, went out to gather wool, and came back shorn. The expedition proved disastrous, and he was lucky in being one of the few who survived it. Some years afterwards we meet with him again as the steward of Agrippa's great estates in Sicily. He has resumed his studies,— "On themes sublime alone intent,— What causes the wild ocean sway, The seasons what from June to May, If free the constellations roll, Or moved by some supreme control; What makes the moon obscure her light, What pours her splendour on the night." Absorbed in these and similar inquiries, and living happily on "herbs and frugal fare," Iccius realises the noble promise of his youth; and Horace, in writing to him (Epist., I. 12), encourages him in his disregard of wealth by some of those hints for contentment which the poet never tires of reproducing:— "Let no care trouble you; for poor That man is not, who can insure Whate'er for life is needful found. Let your digestion be but sound, Your side unwrung by spasm or stitch, Your foot unconscious of a twitch; And could you be more truly blest, Though of the wealth of kings possessed?" It must have been pleasant to Horace to find even one among his friends illustrating in his life this modest Socratic creed; for he is so constantly enforcing it, in every variety of phrase and metaphor, that while we must conclude that he regarded it as the one doctrine most needful for his time, we must equally conclude that he found it utterly disregarded. All round him wealth, wealth, wealth, was the universal aim: wealth, to build fine houses in town, and villas at Praeneste or Baiae; wealth, to stock them with statues, old bronzes (mostly fabrications from the Wardour Streets of Athens or Rome), ivories, pictures, gold plate, pottery, tapestry, stuffs from the looms of Tyre, and other articles de luxe; wealth, to give gorgeous dinners, and wash them down with the costliest wines; wealth, to provide splendid equipages, to forestall the front seats in the theatre, as we do opera-boxes on the grand tier, and so get a few yards nearer to the Emperor's chair, or gain a closer view of the favourite actor or dancer of the day; wealth, to secure a wife with a fortune and a pedigree; wealth, to attract gadfly friends, who will consume your time, eat your dinners, drink your wines, and then abuse them, and who will with amiable candour regale their circle by quizzing your foibles, or slandering your taste, if they are even so kind as to spare your character. "A dowried wife," he says (Epistles, I. 6), "Friends, beauty, birth, fair fame, These are the gifts of money, heavenly dame; Be but a moneyed man, persuasion tips Your tongue, and Venus settles on your lips." (C.) And to achieve this wealth, no sacrifice was to be spared—time, happiness, health, honour itself. "Rem facias, rem! Si possis recte, si non, quocunque modo rem:"— "Get money, money still, And then let Virtue follow, if she will." Wealth sought in this spirit, and for such ends, of course brought no more enjoyment to the contemporaries of Horace than we see it doing to our own. And not the least evil of the prevailing mania, then as now, was, that it robbed life of its simplicity, and of the homely friendliness on which so much of its pleasure depends. People lived for show—to propitiate others, not to satisfy their own better instincts or their genuine convictions; and straining after the shadow of enjoyment, they let the reality slip from their grasp. They never "were, but always to be, blest." It was the old story, which the world is continually re-enacting, while the sage stands by, and marvels at its folly, and preaches what we call commonplaces, in a vain endeavour to modify or to prevent it. But the wisdom of life consists of commonplaces, which we should all be much the better for working into our practice, instead of complacently sneering at them as platitudes. Horace abounds in commonplaces, and on no theme more than this. He has no divine law of duty to appeal to, as we have—no assured hereafter to which he may point the minds of men; but he presses strongly home their folly, in so far as this world is concerned. To what good, he asks, all this turmoil and disquiet? No man truly possesses more than he is able thoroughly to enjoy. Grant that you roll in gold, or, by accumulating land, become, in Hamlet's phrase, "spacious in the possession of dirt." What pleasure will you extract from these, which a moderate estate will not yield in equal, if not greater, measure? You fret yourself to acquire your wealth—you fret yourself lest you should lose it. It robs you of your health, your ease of mind, your freedom of thought and action. Riches will not bribe inexorable death to spare you. At any hour that great leveller may sweep you away into darkness and dust, and what will it then avail you, that you have wasted all your hours, and foregone all wholesome pleasure, in adding ingot to ingot, or acre to acre, for your heirs to squander? Set a bound, then, to your desires: think not of how much others have, but of how much which they have you can do perfectly well without. Be not the slave of show or circumstance, "but in yourself possess your own desire." Do not lose the present in vain perplexities about the future. If fortune lours to-day, she may smile to-morrow; and when she lavishes her gifts upon you, cherish an humble heart, and so fortify yourself against her caprice. Keep a rein upon all your passions—upon covetousness, above all; for once that has you within its clutch, farewell for ever to the light heart and the sleep that comes unbidden, to the open eye that drinks in delight from the beauty and freshness and infinite variety of nature, to the unclouded mind that judges justly and serenely of men and things. Enjoy wisely, for then only you enjoy thoroughly. Live each day as though it were your last. Mar not your life by a hopeless quarrel with destiny. It will be only too brief at the best, and the day is at hand when its inequalities will be redressed, and king and peasant, pauper and millionaire, be huddled, poor shivering phantoms, in one undistinguishable crowd, across the melancholy Styx, to the judgment-hall of Minos. To this theme many of Horace's finest Odes are strung. Of these, not the least graceful is that addressed to Dellius (II. 3):— "Let not the frowns of fate Disquiet thee, my friend, Nor, when she smiles on thee, do thou, elate With vaunting thoughts, ascend Beyond the limits of becoming mirth; For, Dellius, thou must die, become a clod of earth! "Whether thy days go down In gloom, and dull regrets, Or, shunning life's vain struggle for renown, Its fever and its frets, Stretch'd on the grass, with old Falernian wine, Thou giv'st the thoughtless hours a rapture all divine. "Where the tall spreading pine And white-leaved poplar grow, And, mingling their broad boughs in leafy twine, A grateful shadow throw, Where down its broken bed the wimpling stream Writhes on its sinuous way with many a quivering gleam, "There wine, there perfumes bring, Bring garlands of the rose, Fair and too shortlived daughter of the spring, While youth's bright current flows Within thy veins,—ere yet hath come the hour When the dread Sisters Three shall clutch thee in their power. "Thy woods, thy treasured pride, Thy mansion's pleasant seat, Thy lawns washed by the Tiber's yellow tide, Each favourite retreat, Thou must leave all—all, and thine heir shall run In riot through the wealth thy years of toil have won. "It recks not whether thou Be opulent, and trace Thy birth from kings, or bear upon thy brow Stamp of a beggar's race; In rags or splendour, death at thee alike, That no compassion hath for aught of earth, will strike. "One road, and to one bourne We all are goaded. Late Or soon will issue from the urn Of unrelenting Fate The lot, that in yon bark exiles us all To undiscovered shores, from which is no recall." In a still higher strain he sings (Odes, III. 1) the ultimate equality of all human souls, and the vanity of encumbering life with the anxieties of ambition or wealth:— "Whate'er our rank may be, We all partake one common destiny! In fair expanse of soil, Teeming with rich returns of wine and oil, His neighbour one outvies; Another claims to rise To civic dignities, Because of ancestry and noble birth, Or fame, or proved pre-eminence of worth, Or troops of clients, clamorous in his cause; Still Fate doth grimly stand, And with impartial hand The lots of lofty and of lowly draws From that capacious urn Whence every name that lives is shaken in its turn. "To him, above whose guilty head, Suspended by a thread, The naked sword is hung for evermore, Not feasts Sicilian shall With all their cates recall That zest the simplest fare could once inspire; Nor song of birds, nor music of the lyre Shall his lost sleep restore: But gentle sleep shuns not The rustic's lowly cot, Nor mossy bank o'ercanopied with trees, Nor Tempe's leafy vale stirred by the western breeze. "The man who lives content with whatsoe'er Sufficeth for his needs, The storm-tossed ocean vexeth not with care, Nor the fierce tempest which Arcturus breeds, When in the sky he sets, Nor that which Hoedus, at his rise, begets: Nor will he grieve, although His vines be all laid low Beneath the driving hail, Nor though, by reason of the drenching rain, Or heat, that shrivels up his fields like fire, Or fierce extremities of winter's ire, Blight shall o'erwhelm his fruit-trees and his grain, And all his farm's delusive promise fail. "The fish are conscious that a narrower bound Is drawn the seas around By masses huge hurled down into the deep. There, at the bidding of a lord, for whom Not all the land he owns is ample room, Do the contractor and his labourers heap Vast piles of stone, the ocean back to sweep. But let him climb in pride, That lord of halls unblest, Up to their topmost crest, Yet ever by his side Climb Terror and Unrest; Within the brazen galley's sides Care, ever wakeful, flits, And at his back, when forth in state he rides. Her withering shadow sits. "If thus it fare with all, If neither marbles from the Phrygian mine, Nor star-bright robes of purple and of pall, Nor the Falernian vine, Nor costliest balsams, fetched from farthest Ind, Can soothe the restless mind, Why should I choose To rear on high, as modern spendthrifts use, A lofty hall, might be the home for kings, With portals vast, for Malice to abuse, Or Envy make her theme to point a tale; Or why for wealth, which new-born trouble brings, Exchange my Sabine vale?"
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