ON HORACE. Sapiens, vitatu quidque petitu Sit melius, causas reddet tibi: mî satis est, si HORACE, as an article in biography, lies within a very narrow compass. Suetonius despatches him in three pages. His story may be told almost in three lines. He was a man of humble birth, pa. tronised for his talents, which were of the most marketable kind: brilliant, and convivial. He became a court poet, and consequently a rake. Had he not been a time-server and a turn-coat, he could not so have risen: but he was not a malignant turn-coat, and he did not vilify his brother poets of more strict principle, either alive or dead. In fact, he lived on terms of friendship and good-will with all of them who were respectable. He was a poet of that class in society, which in modern language is termed the man of fashion; and however his life or his writings might fall short, or even offend against what the strict moralist or the divine might require, we shall find him to have retained more right principle, more genuine feeling, more heart, than a licentious court usually leaves to the ministers or the masters of its revels. In this point of view it is interesting to examine Horace's character, as exhibited by himself in his Satires and Epistles. His filial piety was most creditable to good feeling. He was far from the affectation of wishing to sink his parentage: on the contrary, he delights in talking of his father; and represents him, both in the passage at the head of this essay, and in others, in a most interesting light. Yet Horace, with his usual good taste, is not led by partiality to make too much of his father. The old man was libertinus consequently must have been plain in his habits, and appears to have been of more than average soundness in understanding: but the propriety of the character is strictly preserved, and has been warmly eulogised by the critics. The father disclaims any power of argumentation, and tells his son that Sapiens, the philosopher, will not only teach him what is better to be avoided, and what to be pursued, but will assign the reasons why one action is right and another wrong, and will give him that insight into the nature of things, which none but a professor or a habitual student can communicate. The knowledge necessary for this purpose he disclaims, and is too modest to consider himself as qualified to engage in a discussion on morals as an abstract question. But he can tell his son what custom will exact from him ; he can preserve vitam famamque; the object of his care is to guard him against rashness, and to hinder him from incurring those dangers, which dissolute habits of life never fail to produce. The passage, of which I have quoted a portion, may be considered as a summary of parental duty, conveyed by the striking example of a person, who performed that duty in both its branches, with no other advantage than that of good sense, conscientiously and anxiously exerting itself. Horace tells us in the preceding lines, that his father had laid up something to provide for the subsistence of his children in comfort, though with frugality; and that he exhorts them therewith to be content. In the lines quoted, he represents him as anxious for their reputation. The prudent conduct of the father was amply rewarded by the gratitude of the son, who by these sketches of biographical piety, has raised a monument of fame to that father, not so splendid indeed, but as durable as his own. Nor is the skill with which the lessons of the father are represented to be enforced, less remarkable than their intrinsic wisdom. Moral lectures, when too long or too severe, disgust young minds: this father renders his palatable, by describing in a beautiful metaphor the approaching period when his child's advancement in the acquisition of learning, in bodily and mental strength, will render those artificial and extraneous assistances no longer necessary: nabis sine cortice. Horace's tender sentiments of gratitude to his father appear again in sat. 6. : Nunc ad me redeo libertino patre natum, The repetition in these two lines is evidently designed to tell us, that he is invulnerable by such attacks, and ready to re-echo the libertinus to those who would bawl it in his ears. A few lines further, he makes his birth almost an occasion of boast Ut veni coram, singultim pauca locutus, (Infans namque pudor prohibebat plura profari) Non ego me Me Satureiano vectari rura caballo, Sed, quod eram, narro: respondes (ut tuus est mos) The line in parenthesis leads to an incidental remark, that Horace, with all his wit, was not only no great talker, but naturally bashful and timid, both which properties, often the concomitants of superior genius, are fully though concisely described by the expression, Infans namque pudor. Some apology may seem necessary for so long a descant on common and easy passages. It may, perhaps, be sufficient to allege the pleasing strain of those passages; the sense and intelligence displayed in every clause of them; the expression of the poet's mind in his graver moods. Horace's amatory and bacchanalian songs are elegant and spirited; his talent for humour, as a good-natured satirist, is in the highest degree mirth-provoking; but there is something better than all this: there is a just though not austere philosophy, interspersed through all his writings, whether lyric, satirical, or critical, which checks levity in its downward career towards vice, and surprises mere literary disquisition and critical taste into the service of morality. Horace was probably indebted in no inconsiderable degree, to the prudential counsels of his father, for that discriminating observation of human nature, which gave a peculiar tone of amenity, a widely varied style and manner to his satirical and didactic writings, so as to prevent his instructions from being offensive to the proudest or the most fastidious of his readers: Ergo non satis est risu diducere rictum Auditoris (et est quædam tamen hic quoque virtus): Et sermone opus est, modo tristi, sæpe jocoso, Lib. i. sat. 10. From the description before given of his father's method, it seems to have first taught him that prejudices are most sure to be removed, and converts most sure to be gained, to any system or set of opinions we adopt, by not seeming to advocate them too pertinaciously. The great, especially, are wrapt up in themselves and their own importance. While others look up to literature, science, and philosophy, they look down on those accomplishments with an eye of mere patronage. The apologist for virtue must be candid in his views, and plausible in his address: his praise must not sting those who neglect it too poignantly, his pretensions must not be so high as to discourage those who wish to follow it. Horace's father, though no philosopher, possessed a thorough knowledge of the world: the son imbibed the art of dealing with various characters, of applying himself innocently to their prejudices, and of enforcing what he knew better than themselves, by arguments adapted to their previous habits and cherished hopes. This Aristippus-like assumption of attractive shapes, this versatility of agreeable talent, this fitness for the commerce of the world, is totally distinct from a genius for intrigue, from the machinations of cunning, or depravity of moral purpose. In this |