TRANSLATORS.* difficult task? We shall not apply the prosaic test of utility in the matter, for we do not estimate roses by their value for medicinal purposes, and a Horace in English, like Horace in Latin, would be something beyond price. But even on the ground of utility there is a good deal to say. Who knows whether a vernacular Horace may not yet be required for a Reformed House of Commons? Who knows what would be the effect of the diffusion of perfectly graceful and accurate versions of the ancients upon a generation which threatens to respect nothing older than 1832? From this point of view, the inquiry becomes important as latest translator is a Peer not unknown in well as interesting; and the fact that our public life acquires a new significance. The truth is, that we can not help looking 21 upon Horace as a kind of honorary member (along with other ancients) of the British constitution. He and his friends have helped to form our statesmen, polish our oratory, and point our conversation for many ages, and that Lord Ravensworth should be his translator is a fact which we are still happy to be able to characterize as English. Sir Robert Peel loved the little Roman; Lord Plunket learned him by heart; Burke quoted him; Lord North punned upon him; Warren Hastings rendered one of his most famous odes. We shall see presently that there are noblemen, diplomatists, statesmen, and bishops, as well as poets and scholars, among those who have endeavored to naturalize him in our tongue; so that the task can hardly be called one of mere literature only; and before we begin to examine it specially in that light, we feel tempted to say a few words on the his torical importance of Horace himself. There is nothing more curious than the transition by which classical literature has passed from a revolutionizing into a conservative influence. It was once dangerous to be suspected of Greek, and the elderly gentlemen of the fifteenth century did not half like a young fellow who showed a marked turn for Latin prose. When Horace appeared from the presses of Italy-as if the Esquiline had given up its dead-he, the Epicurean and the admirer of Augustus, began his modern career in the capacity of a reformer. He taught Erasmus to laugh at monks, to ridicule old feudal funerals, to treat the grotesque figures of saints with little more reverence than he himself had shown to the images of Priapus; and a corresponding influence was exercised by the other comic writers of antiquity all over Europe. Rabelais in France, Buchanan in Scotland, Skelton in England, were all men suckled on the Wolf of Roman satire; and cardinals and friars, tyrants and hypocrites were pelted with weapons such as had once assailed Domitian-Tigellinus -- bloated libertini, and sham Stoics. Horace less direct and violent than other satirists-proved also to have an element capable of wider employment in the world. That philosophy of moderation which we find in his later works-the Epistles-was found to harmonize with certain epochs of the modern world, so much as to become traceable in our moralists and divines. His happy sayings obtained the currency of proverbs and the authority of oracles. The world has long forgotten that he and his band of ancient brothers were onee thought dangerous to churches and thrones. They are now the cherished darlings of spiritual and temporal potentates, loved (strange to say) least by those political parties whose existence in Europe they helped to make possible! But if we recognize the ingratitude of liberalism when it assails the study of Latin and Greek, let us be thankful that we now know what Latin and Greek really teach. The old abbots, who hated the new studies, may sleep in peace. No man now who knows who Brutus was is likely to imitate him. We study our own demagogues in Aristotle, and laugh at them in Aristophanes. Republics which remained great or independent only as long as they remained historic and aristocratic present little for the imitation of rebellious cobblers. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity stare when brought into contact with societies which based all politics on the eternal necessity of slavery, and made the hatred of foreigners a part of public virtue. What fluctuations of opinion and varieties of view has the popularity of Horace survived! And how hopeless seem the prospects of our modern reputations, when we contemplate the thousands of editions and versions which maintain and diffuse his fame! But let us now (for he is not before us every day) take a bird's-eye view of the more recent varieties of Horatian opinion. Every ancient has a modern literature of his own, and has also his rises and falls in popular favor like a living writer. Horace, for instance, was not so early translated in England as Virgil and others, nor-if we may venture on so decided a generalization-was he so much valued in the Elizabeth period. He rose in favor in the seventeenth century, and acquired a decided accession of popularity when Pope published the "Imitations." The great intellectual movement which followed the French Revolution was not favorable to him; he was assailed heavily in Germany, and Catullus came more into fashion, Niebuhr was a great admirer of Catullus, but he took care that depreciation of the later author should not go too far, and we find him writing thus on the subject in his celebrated "Letter to a Young Philologer :" "Horace's Odes may also benefit the young as a standard style formed upon the Greek model, and it is a pity that a contempt for them has spread which is only allowable and not arrogant in the case of a very small number of Masters in philology." to say that he was a Roman. The Roman satire stands by itself, and is a native production of the Italian soil. It is not like the Archilochian satires which Horace imitated in the Epodes. It is not like the Old Comedy represented by Aristophanes. Since that time the tide has turned It is a peculiar creation of the native again. Abroad, there have been several Roman mind-rich with its ancient moexcellent editions of him published; at rality, and its shrewd mother-wit. There home, besides the Horatius Restitutus of is no doing justice to or understanding Dr. Tate and the edition of Milman, there the Romans without remembering their have been more translations, of some humor; and we must say that when we literary pretension, than it would be easy think of Horace, we involuntarily picture to match in any other given number of the little man trotting on his mule and previous years. A reaction has set in. watching with the mixed sympathy and Just as the Queen Anne's men and their criticism of a humorist the country-folk, successors of the last century have re- or curiously scanning the flow of life in covered from the depression which they the Suburra or the Sacred Way. We experienced during the first ascendency rather, that is, find such images of him risof Wordsworth and Coleridge, there is a ing before us, than those presented by the disposition to think more kindly and high-lyrics-Anacreontic visions of poetic dissily of a writer whose cause is very much pation-Horatius under a vine, with his hair the same. A liberal compromise has been entered into among the men of letters who discuss Horatian questions. How far was he really a poet? How far was he noble as a man? These points are debated without any absurd affectation of " contempt;" and on them, as on other controversies regarding Horace's life and writings, definite grounds of argument begin to disclose themselves. We have remarked the gradual rise of somewhat new conclusions about him; but these are accompanied every where with a mixture of affection and admiration which show that he is likely to survive the tests of this generation as triumphantly as he has those of any preceding one. If, for example, we take the old question-Was Horace a poet? nobody would now venture to answer it in the merely contemptuous negative of a sixth-rate imitator of Keats. On the other hand, who would assert that his genius was as naturally poetic as that of Shakspeare or Sophocles? A good test in such cases is to ask whether the word "poet" would be a sufficient description for a man, without any other; whether the poetic element has the mastery in his mind and style? Now, it can hardly be said that this was the case with Horace-whose earliest works are satires-whose latest works are epistles, and who is more original, beyond all question, in these, than in the strictly poetic compositions which he wrote for the lyre. To say, indeed, that he was more original in these, is only anointed, listening to Tyndaris; while Puer, myrtle-crowned, is coming along with a wine-jar. Briefly, it is our theory that the historical Horace was a philosophical satirist and moralist; that his other gifts were subordinate, and that his lyrics must be studied with a constant eye to their artificial and (in some instances, at all events) utterly unreal character. But on the other hand, if he had been only satirist and moralist, how could he have written the Carmina supposing him to have imitated ever so closely Alcæus and Sappho, and Anacreon? And here it is useless to puzzle ourselves over the recondite meanings that may lie in the word Poet. He is a poet who can produce the effects of poetry. The Bandusian fountain gratifies the sense by its coolness, and lulls it with its plash. What can any body who describes a fountain do more? We are far from maintaining that Horace was no poet at all. We think that in mind and character he was essentially a philosopher; but that he had sufficient poetic genius-given a lyrical literature and foreign meters-to produce delightful odes, and odes which we should still enjoy, even if the songs of Lesbos had survived. But this is a different thing from calling a man a creative poet. The civilized world, in fact, had advanced in the time of Augustus beyond the stage where lyrics originate. They belong to the grand old singing time of peoples, when their hearts and voices are young-to the spring season of a race when its creeds |