and institutions are flourishing healthily about it like the leaves, and it pours out song for song's sake. Horace was as far removed in time from that epoch, as we are from the epoch which produced the feudal ballads. And indeed, it would not be absurd to compare his poetic position under Augustus with that of Sir Walter Scott under George the Fourth. They were both poets, but not poets only. They were both inspired by the minstrelsy of a day long gone by, and yet as men of the world and of general genius acquired a fame apart from their poetic fame. It is not as singer after all, so much as thinker, that Horace has left his mark on Europe; and when we talk of Sir Walter, we talk of him rather as the great describer of character, the wise kindly judge of mankind, than as the bard who sang the battles of Flodden or Harlaw. own successful position in society and studied it to the very core. Such a career is not to be compared in dignity and purity with that of Milton. It was the career of an artist and a philosopher-not pretending to a mission for reforming the world; but making the best of it as he found it, and on the whole using his fine gifts with wisdom and delicacy. We must remember how hard it was to rise to a nobler theory of life in his time and position, amidst the ruins of a constitution and the decay of a faith. He had seen Stoicism (of which he felt the dignity) vanish from politics with Brutus. Nothing was left him but the practice of Art and the philosophy of Moderation. And after all too, the cause of Augustus was his cause; though he did not perhaps know it, when he threw away his shield amidst the dust of Philippi. It can only have been by accident that he-the son According to this view, Horace is be- of a libertinus-was tribune of a legion in ginning definitely to take his place as the what really was the cause of Oligarchy. great man of the world among poets, and But the rise of freedmen and provincials, the great poet of men of the world. He and the encouragement of letters, were heads that large and influential body of fundamental parts of the Cæsarean policy, writers which includes in our literature a fact which takes from the poet's euloAddison and Pope; men who have writ-gies of the Emperor, all suspicion of that ten admirable poems, but who are yet unwilling and unreal flattery which the separated as a class from the Shakspeares world justly execrates as base. and Spensers. His character, too, rises definitely before us and harmonizes with his works, when we describe him as one of the best and kindliest men of the world, whose biography has ever become a matter of historical concern. Your Horace is not a solitary singer living in his own world, and listened to from without, like a nightingale. He is a cheerful creature, loving society and the light; a man among men as well as a writer for them. His soul was not a star that dwelt apart; but an exceedingly pleasant and brilliant lamp for the habitations of mankind. "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, emphatically, at the Mitre, when Bozzy wondered how he could live on easier terms with the learned and pious doctor than with his own father: "I am a man of the world, and I take the color of the world as it moves along." This was Horace's way. He wrote charming little songs for it, (after the Greek, many of them ;) made beautiful little paintings for it, graceful delineations of that ancient Mythology which could still gratify the eye though it had ceased to satisfy the soul of the Pagan world; and, while doing so, took up his Having touched on Horace's biography, we may add, that in that department also our modern scholars are arriving at something like a compromise. Dean Milman says that we can not get at the truth about the order of composition of the "Odes." Professor Newman agrees with him. The Germans will probably give up the fruitless task soon; and Dillenburger, we observe, while adopting Franke's arrangement, in the text of his Life, is content to put his own criticisms on it in the notes. When our great Bentley issued what he thought the true chronology, he pronounced, more suo, that whenever learned men went beyond the limits he had fixed, they went wrong. The world has not finally accepted the Bentleian plan, but at least it has accepted no other. The "Odes," which celebrate historical events, retain their dates and their reality. The "Odes," which are addressed to known individuals-Macenas, Pompeius Varus, Virgil, Valgius-speak for themselves. A batch of compositions, some very pretty, some very painful, remain to be ranked as fancy pictures. We are aware that readers of Horace | We know from Cicero and other authorto whom such views about his Odes are ities, how much of the ancient mythology new, will be apt to think that we under- was believed by Romans of the cultivated rate his genius, and rob him of a certain classes; and that if poets employed it, it romantic halo of glory and love. They was for the sake of the art, as it was emwill find, presently, that our admiration ployed by statesmen for its utility in poliof his gifts is little short of worship, and tics. The ancients were steeped in arthat we by no means endeavor to make tistic influences to a degree unknown in his genius more intelligible for the sake of modern life, and when the dove story was making it less admired. He was an imi- charmingly told, its fabulous character, tator in his lyrics; true; but besides its contrast to the associations of the actthat he shows wondrous skill in Art, ual Horatius, a satirical weak-eyed slovthere was a certain poetry in his select- enly little gentleman crossing one of the ing lyric poetry to labor on, at all! Ly- bridges to go to a dinner in the suburbs, ric poetry was his fairy-land; it was the would offend no body. Suffice it that the region he wandered into to refresh his Alcaics were musical, and the image itself mind after the life of Rome, as he went full of beauty. to Tibur, or the Sabine woods, or Baiæ, Horace so mastered with his genius, or Præneste, to refresh his bodily health and incorporated with himself the Eolian and spirits. He had created to himself song, that he rose to originality through this world out of the old Southern litera-imitation, the boast of Boileau in a positure; and it was to him what the Lea- tion somewhat similar. Nobody, we supsowes was to Shenstone, what the feudal pose, will deny, that when the news of life was to Scott, an ideal world which the victory at Actium and its results he tried to realize, that it might tint his reached Rome, and Horace (then atat. ordinary existence as the Roman citizen thirty-four, and only known as a satirist) of a not happy age, with the hues of an- began that fine Ode the Nunc est bibendum tique loveliness and romance. We are he began it under the inspiration of the much mistaken, if on this scheme, Horace Nov xpη μɛðvσ0ŋv, with which Alcaus does not appear more really poetic in cha- hailed the death of Myrsilus the tyrant of racter than he is commonly supposed to Lesbos. But, as in the latter part of that have been. He wrote satires which have ode, so in several odes of which Roman now and then traits of coarseness in them; events are the subjects, he shows that he he dined out at the cone of the great city had naturalized the art. He had learned somewhat too much, gorging himself with it first, and could practice it afterwards; the peacocks, the cignule, and the shell- and this gives a peculiar interest to his fish, of a luxurious age. He mixed per- historical Carmina. The Coelo tonantem, sonally sometimes with circles where the the Motum ex Metello, the Qualem minismoral tone was low. But see how he re-trum, are striking from their reality and lieves this prosaic course of existence with music imitated from an earlier lyre! What figure has he conjured out of the woods? It is Faunus the lover of the flying nymphs, and for him a kid smokes on his poetic altar. He thinks of his boyhood, when as the son of the humble coactor, he was sporting about in Venusia, and throws a tinge of the ancient piety and poetry over his infancy by singing how, as he lay asleep on one of his native mountains, doves came and covered him with fresh-pulled leaves from a certain Roman dignity, a flow like that of the folds of a toga about them. Pyrrha and her cave, again, Glycera and her chapel, and our exquisite little friend the Persicos odi, have something always of the air of exercises about them. They are clear and sweet as the finest honey, but the honey tastes of the flowers of Hymettus. The marble is that of Italy, but the figures were first found in the stone of Paros or Pentelicus. The elder Scaliger, speaking of Horace, in his Poetics, observes that doubtless his obligations to Greek models were great, "Non sine dis animosus infans." but that even if we could determine them, Did he believe in Faunus? Did he in- Horace would prove to be more polished tend that others should accept literally (cultiorem) than his Greek predecessors. the story of the doves? We might as Such decisions are allowed only to men well ask if Pope believed in the sylphs of the Scaliger rank. But it is easy to see and gnomes, or Scott in the white lady. I that the laborious nicety of the process by which he learned to write lyrics-first | race, Englished, etc., which appeared in translating, then imitating, then creating 1621. From this, the earliest attempt through imitation-was just the thing to produce and account for the exquisite finish which distinguishes these compositions. What is it about them that makes the task of the translators seem almost hopeless? Not the spirit, not the dignity, not even the grace. It is that finished character to which Scaliger alludes, and which, though the very triumph of literary art, can only be illustrated by comparisons taken from other walks than literature. It reminds one rather of statuary, of painting on ivory, or of cameocarving, than of any thing which writing can afford. The loss of a phrase would spoil a stanza, and a change in the order of the words ruins it; for phrases and words have each a place as definite as that of the pieces which compose a puzzle, or the stones in a tesselated pavement. The difficulty is great of finding an equiv alent for the sense, and it is a still more delicate business to imitate the form. known, to render any of the lyrics, we shall transcribe one specimen. This is the way in which, in James the First's time, they turned the Donec gratus: "II. L. When I enjoy'd thee without check, And none more welcome did embrace I Roman Ilia did excell. H. Chloe my mistris is of Thrace, L. Now Calais is my heart's delight, He answers me with love again, H. What if sweet Venus doe revive, L. And true-love's knot between us tie, If from my thoughts faire Chlo' I drive, If my doore ope when Lydia's nigh? We can not be surprised, therefore, if Though he than stars be fairer farre, Beatus ille qui procul negotiis, Ut prisca gens mortalium, Paterna rura bobus exercet suis Neque excitatur classico miles truci, Potentiorum limina. Ergo aut adulta vitium propagine There is not an unpleasant quaintness about this-the work it seems of John Ashmore, and the last stanza but one is even pretty. The characteristic of all early translation is its literal nature. The first effort of our ancestors was to reproduce the original-a most healthy instinct which we trust will never wear out, though it may be foolishly as well as wisely followed. We see it in Ben Jonson's Beatus ille, one of three odes which Ben did, and we think his most successful attempt. Take the first twenty-eight lines, Happy is he that from all business clear, As the old race of mankind were, Nor soldier-like started with rough alarms, But flies the bar and courts with the proud boards, And with his hook lops off the fruitless race, Aut pressa puris mella condit amphoris, Vel cum decorum mitibus pomis caput Ut gaudet insitiva decerpens pyra, Certantem et uvam purpuræ, Qua muneretur te, Priape, et te, pater Libet jacere modo sub antiqua ilice Labuntur altis interim ripis aquæ Or the pressed honey in pure pots doth keep With which, Priapus, he may thank thy hands, Whilst from the higher banks do slide the floods, There is a stiffness to which a modern ear does not lend itself very readily, about these lines, but their fidelity to the sense is remarkable, and something of the rural air of the subject breathes from them, too. Ben's Donec gratus is scarcely worthy of him, and so many eminent men have tried it that we pass his version by. We come next to "Odes of Horace, the best of Lyric Poets, containing much morality and sweetness. Selected and translated by Sir T. H. 1625." This was Sir Thomas Hawkins, described by Wood, as "of Nash Court in the parish of Boughton, Kent," and who died in 1640. selection contained forty of the Odes; but our readers would not thank us for inflicting even one upon them. that he begins the Integer vitæ: His Suffice it Fuscus, the man whose life entire and concludes it as follows: "Place me in coldest champaines where Sir Thomas was a grave knight, and scarcely approved the amatory odes, so he prefixes to his Donec gratus, (for he too must try it) this highly diverting sentence: "This Ode, though less morall than the rest, I have admitted for Jul. Scaliger's sake, who much admireth it." He alludes to the great critic's celebrated dictum, that he would rather have written that carmen and the Quem tu, Melpomene, than be king of all Arragon. After Sir Thomas Hawkins came the first writer who translated all the Lyrics, Henry Rider, M.A., of Cambridge, whose work was published in 1638. Mr. Rider is very unreadable, but in gratitude to him as a father of the Horatian church, we quote his Persicos odi: "Boy, I doe hate the Persian nicetie, Their garlands bound with ribands please not me, And doe not thou molest thyself to know In what place the late springing rose doth blow. "I chiefly doe take care you should provide, To the plain myrtle nothing else beside; Myrtle will not shame thee, my boy, nor mee, Drinking beneath the shadowing vine-tree." This is deplorably bad-but shows the struggles by which our language was trying to attain the familiar and easy grace necessary above every thing to Horatian interpretation. From Rider, we pass to old Barten Holyday, (Archdeacon of Oxford, as Walter Mapes had been, centuries before,) whose Juvenal is well well known for its oddity and accuracy, to lovers of that satirist, and is accompanied by a commentary full of learning. The booksellers of that age created some confusion by putting Holyday's name to other people's versions of Horace, but his translation of the Odes first appeared, anonymously, in 1653. "All Horace, his Lyrics, Englished "-was its title, and it contained an address to the reader beginning: "An unknown Muse presents to thy survey A Roman Lyre strung after th' English way.' The quaintness and oddity, the dry old humor, of Barten, employed on so refined a task as he had here undertaken, are irresistible. This was the manner in which he set about transfusing the concentrated essence of lyrical elegance, the Ode to Pyrrha, into the native language of tiores, and he seems to have thought that Shakspeare: O how he'll wail thy oft-changed gods, and oaths, And count it wondrous strange, When storms in thy countenance range!" Here, we may stop. The only excuse for the old translation is, that if Milton, as is possible, had already written, he had not yet published, that remarkable version of this Ode, the merit of which it will soon be our duty to defend against Lord Ravensworth. Milton's Pyrrha did not appear in the first edition of his Poems in 1645, nor for twenty years, indeed, after the date at which we have now arrived. It is not certain, from this fact, that it was not executed in his youth, for many accidents may have kept it out of his earliest poetic publication, but at least it appeared, as we have it, with the sanction of his mature judgment, a fact which should weigh when its merits are discussed. Meanwhile, we proceed with our historical review, and the next person we summon to the bar of the nineteenth century is a man of quality-Sir Richard Fanshawe. He issued his volume-" Selected Parts of Horace, Prince of Lyricks; and of all the Latin Poets the fullest fraught with excellent morality "-in 1652. This was a year before Holyday, but Fanshawe introduced a new school of Horatian translation, and is more conveniently mentioned in the order we have chosen. Sir Richard might have been expected to make a marked advance on his predecessors, for he had the advantage of being a man of the world as well as a scholar, and such a man will ever be the likeliest to do justice to the favorite of the court of Augustus, who has always been one of the pet writers of gentlemen. Like Horace, Fanshawe had traveled, and like Horace he had served, having been taken prisoner, fighting for his king, at Worces ter. He was envoy to the court of Portugal under Charles II., in which capacity he negotiated his marriage with the Infanta, and died ambassador at Madrid in 1666. During this various experience, he always cultivated the Musa mansue if Horace was to be well, he must be freely translated. Sir John Denham, his contemporary, who is declared by Johnson "to have been one of the first that understood the necessity of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines and interpreting single words," gives the same praise to Fanshawe, whom he addresses thus: "That servile path thou nobly dost decline, Of tracing word by word and line by line; A new and nobler way thou dost pursue, To make translations and translators, too: They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame, True to his sense, but truer to his fame." This is high praise, brilliantly expressed, but it is scarcely justified, we fear, by any part of Fanshawe's Horace when tested by to-day's standard. His Equam memento*-may be taken as a fair speci men: "Keep still an equal mind, not sunk With storms of adverse chance, not drunk With sweet prosperitie O Dellius that must die! Make all thy hours merry And a soft purling brook Whilst wealth and youth combine Thou must, and a glad heyre Liest in the street; all's one, |