Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/173

161 HORACE 101 living language of Rome was a more fitting vehicle for the new feelings and interests of men than the echoes of the old Ionian or yEolian melodies. His earliest Latin com positions were, as he tells us, written under the instigation of poverty ; and they alone betray any trace of the bitter ness of spirit which the defeat of his hopes and the hard ships which he had to encounter on his first return to Rome may have temporarily produced on him. Some of the Epodes, of the nature of personal and licentious lampoons, and the second Satire of book i., in which there is some trace of an angry republican feeling, belong to these early compositions. But by the time the first book of /Satires was completed and published (35 B.C.) his temper had re covered its natural serenity, and, though he had not yet attained to the height of his fortunes, his personal position was. one of comfort and security, and his intimate relation with the leading men in literature and social rank was firmly established. About a year after the publication of this first book of Satires Maecenas presented him with a farm among the Sabine hills, in the valley crowned by Mount Lucretilis and watered by the stream Digentia, which joins the main valley of the Anio near the modern Vico Varo (the &quot; Varia &quot; mentioned in the Epistles and about 8 miles above the modern Tivoli. No kind of gift could have added more to the poet s happiness or exercised a more salutary influence on his genius. It made him independent in point of fortune ; it satisfied the love of nature which had been im planted in him during the early years spent on the Venusian farm ; and it afforded him a welcome escape from the dis tractions of city life and the dangers of a Roman autumn. The lines (Epist. i. 1C, 15, &c.) &quot; Use latebrte dulces, etiam, si credis, amcense, Incolumem tibi me pnestant Septembribus horis&quot; express with simple and sincere feeling the charm of peace and outward beauty as well as the restorative influence which this retreat in the Sabine highlands afforded him. Many passages in the Satires, Odes, and Epistles, which recur to the memory of every reader of his poems, express the happiness and pride with which the thought of his own valley filled him, and the interest which he took in the simple and homely ways of his country neighbours. The inspiration of the Satires came from the heart of Rome; the feeling of many of the Odes comes direct from the Sabine hills ; and even the meditative spirit of the later Epistles tells of the leisure and peace of quiet days spent among books, or in the open air, at a distance from &quot; tho smoke, wealth, and tumult &quot; of the great metropolis. The second book of Satires was published in 29 B.C.; the Epodes apparently about a year earlier, though many of them are, as regards the date of their composition, to be ranked among the earliest extant writings of Horace. Horace speaks of them under the name of &quot; iambi.&quot; In one of his Epistles (i. 19, 25) he rests his first claim to origin ality on his having introduced into Latium the metres and spirit of Archilochus &quot; Parios ego primus iambos Oetendi Latio, numcros animosque secutns Archilochi.&quot; Yet, whatever technical claim he may have to have naturalized some special combination of metre employed by the poet of Paros, Catullus, Calvus, and Bibaculus had in the preceding generation employed the iambic metre in the spirit of Archilochus more effectively than Horace. His personal lampoons are the least successful of his works ; and those of the Epodes which treat of other subjects in a poetical spirit are inferior in metrical effect, and in truth and freshness of feeling, both to the lighter lyrics of Catullus and to his own later and more carefully meditated Odes. The Epodes are chiefly interesting as a record of the personal feelings of Horace during the years which im mediately followed his return to Rome, and as a prulude to the higher art and inspiration of the first three books of the Odes, which were published together about the end of 24 or the beginning of 23 B.C. 1 The composition of these Odes extended over several years, but all the most important among them belong to the years between the battle of Actium and 24 B.C., at which time the poet was between the age of thirty-five and forty. His lyrical poetry is thus, not, like that of Catullus, the ardent utterance of his youth, but the mature and finished workmanship of his manhood. The state of public affairs was more favourable than it had been since the outbreak of the civil war between Ciesar and Fompey for the appearance of lyrical poetry. Peace, order, and national unity had been secured by the triumph of Augustus, and the enthusiasm in favour of the new govern ment had not yet been chilled by experience of its repress ing influence. The poet s circumstances were, at the same time, most favourable for the exercise of his lyrical gift during thest years. He lived partly at Rome, partly at his Sabine farm, varying his residence occasionally by visits to Tibur, Prseneste, or Baite. His intimacy with Maecenas was strengthened. He was no longer one among a favoured band of poets, but he had become the familiar friend of the great minister. He was treated with distinction by Augustus, and by the foremost men in Roman society. He complains occasionally that the pleasures of his youth are passing from him, but he does so in the spirit of a temperate Epicurean, who found new enjoyments in life as the zest for the old enjoyments decayed, and who considered the wisdom and meditative spirit, &quot; the philosophic mind that years had brought,&quot; an ample compensation for the extinct fires of his youth. The sobering influence of time is acknowledged by him in such lines as &quot; Lenit albesccns animos capillus ;&quot; or in the still finer expression of the Epistles (ii. 2, 211), &quot;Lenior et melior fis accedente senecta?&quot; About four years after the publication of the three books of Odes, the first book of the Epistles appeared, introduced, as his Epodes, Satires, and Odes had been, by a special address to Maecenas. From these Epistles, as compared with the Satires, we gather that he had gradually adopted a more retired and meditative life, and had become fonder of the country and of study, and that, while owing allegiance to no school or sect of philosophy, he was framing for him self a scheme of life, was endeavouring to conform to it, and was bent on inculcating it on others. He maintained his old friendships, and continued to form new intimacies, especi ally with younger men engaged in public affairs or ani mated by literary ambition. After the death of Virgil he was recognized as pre-eminently the greatest living poet, and was accordingly called upon by Augustus to compose the sacred hymn for the celebration of the secular games in 17 B.C. About four years later he published the fourth book of Odes, having been called upon to do so by the emperor, in order that the victories of his stepsons Drusus and Tiberius over the Rhseti and Vindelici might be worthily celebrated. He lived about five years longer, and during these years published the second book of Epistles, and the Epistle to the Pisos, more generally known as the &quot; Ars Poetica.&quot; These later Epistles are mainly devoted to literary criticism, with the especial object of vindicating the poetic claims of his own age over those of the age of Ennius and the other early poets of Rome. He might have- been expected, as a great critic and lawgiver on literature, to have exercised a beneficial influence on the future poetry 1 The (late is determined by the poem on the death of Quintilius Varus (who died 24 B.C.), and by the reference in Ode i. 12 to the young Marcellus (died in autumn 23 B.C.) as still alive. Cf. Wickham s Introduction to the Odes. XTT -- 2i