Part 5

How Time doth in its flight debase Whate'er it finds? our fathers' race, More deeply versed in ill Than were their sires, hath born us yet More wicked, destined to beget A race more vicious still.

(III, vi, 45.)

3. PHILOSOPHICAL. "How charming is divine philosophy?" said the meek younger brother in "Comus" to his instructive senior. Speaking as one of the profane, I find not less charming the humanist philosophy of Horace. Be content! be moderate! seize the present! are his maxims.

Be content! A mind without anxiety is the highest good (II, xvi). Great desires imply great wants (III, xvi, 42). 'Tis well when prayer seeks and obtains no more than life requires.

Happy he, Self-centred, who each night can say, "My life is lived": the morn may see A clouded or a sunny day: That rests with Jove; but what is gone He will not, can not, turn to nought, Nor cancel as a thing undone What once the flying hour has brought.

(III, xxix, 41.)

Be moderate! He that denies himself shall gain the more (III, xvi, 21). He that ruleth his spirit is better than the lord of Carthage. Hold fast the golden mean (II, x, 5). The poor man's supper, spare but neat and free from care, with no state upon the board except his heirloom silver saltcellar, is better than a stalled ox and care therewith (II, xvi, 13). And he practised what he preached, refusing still fresh bounties which Maecenas pressed upon him. What more want I than I have? he says:

Truth is mine with genius mixed, The rich man comes and knocks at my poor gate. Favoured thus I ne'er repine, Nor weary Heaven for more, nor to the great For larger bounty pray, My Sabine farm my one sufficient boon.

(II, xviii, 9.)

Seize the Present! Now bind the brow with late roses and with myrtle crowns; now drown your cares in wine, counting as gain each day that Chance may give (I, vii, 31; I, ix, 14). Pale Death will be here anon; even while I speak time slips away: seize to-day, trust nothing to the morrow.

Ah, my Beloved, fill the cup that clears To-day of past regrets and future fears: To-morrow? why to-morrow I may be Myself with yesterday's seven thousand years.

What more commonplace than this saying that we all must die? but he brings it home to us ever and again with pathetic tearful fascinating force. Each time we read him, his sweet sad pagan music chants its ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and we hear the earth fall upon the coffin lid amongst the flowers.

Ah, Postumus, they fleet away Our years, nor piety one hour Can win from wrinkles, and decay, And death's indomitable power;

Not though three hundred steers you heap Each day, to glut the tearless eyes Of Him, who guards in moated keep Tityos, and Geryon's triple size:

All, all, alas! that watery bound Who eat the fruits that Nature yields, Must traverse, be we monarchs crowned, Or humblest tillers of the fields.

(II, xiv.)

The antipathy is not confined to heathenism; we distrust the Christian who professes to ignore it; many of us felt drawn by a brotherhood of humanity to the late scholarly Pope, when we learned that, as death looked him in the face, he clung to Pagan Horace as a truthful and sympathetic oracle. "And we all go to-day to this singer of the ancient world for guidance in the deceptions of life, and for steadfastness in the face of death."

VIRGIL.]

4. PERSONAL. Something, but not very much, we learn of Horace's intimates from this class of Odes. Closest to him in affection and oftenest addressed is Maecenas. The opening Ode pays homage to him in words closely imitated by Allan Ramsay in addressing the chief of his clan:

Dalhousie of an auld descent, My chief, my stoup, my ornament;

and at the end of the volume the poet repeats his dedication (III, xxix). Twice he invites his patron to a feast; to drink wine bottled on the day some years before when entering the theatre after an illness he was received with cheers by the assembled multitude (I, xx); again on March 1st, kept as the festal anniversary of his own escape from a falling tree (III, viii). To a querulous letter from his friend written when sick and dreading death, he sends the tender consolation and remonstrance of which we spoke before (p. 29). In a very different tone he sings the praises of Licymnia (II, xii), supposed to be Terentia, Maecenas' newly-wedded wife, sweet voiced, witty, loving, of whom her husband was at the time passionately enamoured. He recounts finally, with that delicate respectful gratitude which never lapses into servility, his lifelong obligation, lauding gratefully the still removed place which his friend's bounty has bestowed:

A clear fresh stream, a little field, o'ergrown With shady trees, a crop that ne'er deceives.

(III, xvi, 29.)

Not less tenderly affectionate is the exquisite Ode to Virgil on the death of Quinctilius.

By many a good man wept Quinctilius dies, By none than you, my Virgil, trulier wept;

(I, xxiv.)

or to his devoted young friend Septimius (p. 39) (II, vi), who would travel with him to the ends of the world, to Moorish or Cantabrian wilds. Not so far afield need they go; but when age steals on they will journey to Tarentum, sweetest spot on earth:

That spot, those happy heights, desire Our sojourn; there, when life shall end, Your tear shall dew my yet warm pyre, Your bard and friend.