Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/747

Rh ROMAN LITERATURE 723 lie has used the details of tradition, of local scenes, of reli- gious usage, to embody it, he has built up in the form of an epic poem the most enduring and the most artistically constructed monument of national grandeur. [oce. The second great poet of the time Horace (65-8) holds a lower place in the reverence of the world, but is perhaps as much loved and is even more largely and familiarly known. He is both the realist and the idealist of his age. If we want to know the actual lives, manners, and ways of thinking of the Romans of the generation succeeding the overthrow of the republic it is in the Satires and par- tially in the Epistles of Horace that we shall find them. If we ask what there was in the life of that time of more exquisite or more piquant charm, of more elevated enthu- siasm, of graver experience, to stir the fancy and move the mood of imaginative reflexion, it is in the lyrical poems of Horace that we shall find the most varied and trustworthy answer. He was prepared for his double task by the experience of life and his strong hold on the actual world, and by drinking long and deeply of the purer and more remote sources of Greek inspiration. His literary activity extends over about thirty years and naturally divides itself into three periods, each marked by a distinct character. The first extending from about 40 to 29 is that of the composition of the Epodes and Satires. In the former he imitates the Greek poet Archilochus, but takes his subjects from the men, women, and incidents of the day. They are the expression of the least happy part of his career and the least estimable side of his nature. His humorous observation of life and the more serious grain in his character found more congenial occupation in perfecting the national work of Lucilius than in introduc- ing " the Parian iambics to Latium." Personality is the essence of his Epodes ; in the Satires it is used merely as illustrative of general tendencies. In the Satires we find realistic pictures of social life, and the conduct and opin- ions of the world submitted to the standard of good feeling and common sense. The style of the Epodes is pointed and epigrammatic, that of the Satires natural and familiar. The hexameter no longer, as in Lucilius, moves awkwardly as if in fetters, but, like the language of Terence, of Catullus in his lighter pieces, of Cicero in his letters to Atticus, adapts itself to the everyday intercourse of life. The next period is the meridian of his genius, the time of his greatest lyrical inspiration, which he himself asso- ciates with the peace and leisure secured to him by his Sabine farm. The spirit of the child who had lost himself on Monte Voltore seemed to come back to him in his lonely wanderings among the Sabine hills. The life of pleasure which he had lived in his youth comes back to him, not as it was in its actual distractions and disappointments, but in the idealizing light of meditative retrospect. He had not only become reconciled to the new order of things, but was moved by his intimate friendship with Maecenas to aid in raising the world to sympathy with the imperial rule through the medium of his lyrical inspiration, as Virgil had through the glory of his epic art. With the comple- tion of the three books of Odes he cast aside for a time the office of the " vates," and resumed that of the critical spectator of human life, but in the spirit of a moralist rather than a satirist. He feels the increasing languor of the time as well as the languor of advancing years, and seeks to encourage younger men to take up the role of lyrical poetry, while he devotes himself to the contempla- tion of the true art of living. Self-culture rather than the fulfilment of public or social duty, as in the moral teaching of Cicero, is the aim of his teaching ; and in this we recognize the influence of the empire in throwing the individual back on himself. As Cicero tones down his oratory in his moral treatises, so Horace tones down the fervour of his lyrical utterances in his Epistles, and thus produces a style combining the ease of the best epistolary style with the grace and concentration of poetry, the style, as it has been called, of " idealized common sense," that of the " urbanus " and cultivated man of the world who is also in his hours of inspiration a genuine poet. In the last decennium of his life he resumed for a time, under pressure of the imperial command, his lyrical function, and produced some of the most exquisite and mature products of his art. But his chief activity is devoted to criticism. He first vindicates the claims of his own age to literary pre-eminence, and then seeks to stimulate the younger writers of the day to what he regarded as the manlier forms of poetry, and especially to the tragic drama, which seemed for a short time to give promise of an artistic revival. It seems strange that, although he must have known the writings of Propertius and the earlier writings of Ovid, he has no word of recognition for them. And, though he writes to Tibullus with friendly regard, he seems to value him as a student of philosophy more than as a poet, and says nothing to indicate that he believed his work would be more enduring than that of Titius or Julius Florus or lulus Antonius. But the poetry of the latter half of the Augustan age destined to survive did not follow the lines either of lyrical or of dramatic art marked out for them by Horace. The latest form of poetry adopted from Greece and destined to gain and permanently to hold the ear of the world was the elegy. From the time of Mimnermus this form seems to have presented itself as the most natural vehicle for the poetry of pleasure in an age of luxury, refinement, and incipient decay. Its facile flow and rhythm seem to adapt it to the expression and illustration of personal feeling. It goes to the mind of the reader through a medium of sentiment rather than of continuous thought or imaginative illustration. The greatest masters of this kind of poetry are the elegiac poets of the Augustan age, Tibullus, Pro- pertius, and Ovid. Of these Tibullus (d. 19) is the most Tibullus. refined and tender. As the poet of love he gives utterance to the pensive melancholy rather than to the pleasures associated with it. In his sympathy with the life and beliefs of the country people he shows an affinity both to the idyllic spirit and to the piety of Virgil. There is something, too, in his fastidious refinement and in his shrinking from the rough contact of life that reminds us of the English poet Gray. A poet of more strength and more powerful imagination, Proper- but of less refinement in his life and less exquisite taste tius - in his art, is Propertius (c. 50 -c. 15), "the Roman Calli- machus." His youth was a more stormy one than that of Tibullus, and was passed, not like his, among the "healthy woods " of his country estate, but amid all the licence of the capital. His passion for Cynthia, the theme of his most finished poetry, is second only in interest to that of Catullus for Lesbia ; and Cynthia in her fascination and caprices seems a more real and intelligible personage than the idealized object first of the idolatry and afterwards of the malediction of Catullus. Propertius is a less accom- plished artist and a less equably pleasing writer than either Tibullus or Ovid, but he shows more power of dealing gravely with a great or tragic situation than either of them, and his diction and rhythm give frequent proof of a concentrated force of conception and a corresponding move- ment of imaginative feeling which remind us of Lucretius. The most facile and brilliant of the elegiac poets and the Ovid. least serious in tone and spirit is Ovid (43 B.C.-17 A.D.), the latest in order of time. As an amatory poet he is the poet of pleasure and intrigue rather than of tender senti- ment or absorbing passion. Though he treats his subject in relation to himself with more levity and irony than real