cepts. His first appearance before the old friend who is hailed with genial hospublic seems to have been as a satirist pitality, when Soracte is white with snow, an easy way to secure the popular ear in and the stormy winds tear the chestnut such a community as Rome, and one glades; his Bandusian fount by which he which youth generally feels very con- finds a cool refuge when summer blazes genial to its own deep-seated sense of upon the plain, even the reader who superiority. It was only, however, when knows little of Horace has already heard he attracted the notice of Mecenas that of those familiar parts of him. He is Horace came into the way of becoming the shrewdest, most clearheaded of easy great. Mæcenas, it is said, took nearly men, keen and humorous in his native a year to decide whether he should ad-lightness of soul, aware of his own little mit the young poet into his poetical self-deceptions, and laughing in his and political coterie or not. For all this sleeve at his own babble of green fields time, Horace, after their first interview, yet, notwithstanding the laugh, knowheard nothing of the all-powerful patron ing that the babble is true when the fields who could make any man's fortune; but, are his own. Altogether, though he is at the end of the long interval, he was far from a lofty personage, he is never sent for and bidden to consider himself unlikable, even lovable when he pleases. enrolled for the future among the friends He is perfectly friendly, though he would of Mæcenas. After this, his career was not make the slightest sacrifice for your smooth enough, and in the course of a sake; but neither would he ask any from few years, his noble patron bestowed you. He takes everything in an easy upon him the Sabine farm which figures tone, confident that nothing can last, not so largely in all he says and sings. It love itself, as he expounds to his beauwas worth while being a poet in days ties. Mr. Martin gives many examples when such gifts were natural. The Sa- of his poetic style, and for these we refer bine farm seems to have done more than the reader to the charming volume itself. secure for Horace the competence which No one has succeeded better in catching is so dear to all ease-loving people; it the airy grace, the lightness of the treatgave him an unfailing refuge from all the ment, the music of the verse. Here is a troubles of the world. He flew to it when charming description of his own mode of be was weary or out of temper, when a life, simple, yet embodying that luxury of passing fit of spleen or indignation brought simplicity, the enjoyment of everything that disgust which comes and goes so the writer loves best. The ordinary oceasily with real lovers of the world. It an-cupations and pleasures of his day are swered all the purpose of family and chil- thus set forth in contrast with the splendren to him he could always fall back did troubles of public life: upon it whatever happened. The character I walk alone, by mine own fancy led, which Mr. Martin presents to the reader Inquire the price of potherbs and of bread, is very charming, friendly, and attractive, The circus cross, to see its tricks and fun, if not perhaps very elevated. Horace is The forum, too, at times, near set of sun; of the world, worldly; he does not even With other fools there do I stand and gape strike the highest note of Epicurean phil-Round fortune-tellers' stalls, then home escape osophy. His" vanity of vanities," though To a plain meal of pancakes, pulse, and pease; he twitters it lightly enough in many a Three young boy-slaves attend on me with refrain, has nothing of the tragic disappointment of the Hebrew. Even in enjoyment he is no optimist, demanding the impossible; but asks only, in his cheerful way, to get along comfortably, and amuse himself and please himself, without harming others. His moralities are of a comfortable worldly sort; his immoralities are perfectly easy and good-humoured. His loves (save the mark !) and his hatreds are alike moderate, and bring no particular harm to any one. And his poetry is full of himself, and of these easy and pleasant characteristics. His farm, his fields, his vines, the log that is laid upon that hearth which we all know so well, the old wine that is brought out, the these. Upon a slab of snow-white marble stand I keep my couch till ten, then walk awhile, bear, The bath takes all my weariness away. By stern ambition's miserable weight. This is perhaps the most gentle and irreproachable form of self-indulgence, and sounds charmingly on paper. The deeper note involved in this delightful comfort and unassuming luxury, the future which it wisely, in accordance with its code, inquires into but little, accepting the inevitable, however, with sense and courage, is expressed in the following well-known verses: Ask not such lore's forbidden For us, Leuconöe. Both thou and I Must quickly die! Content thee, then, nor madly hope To wrest a false assurance from Chaldean Far nobler, better were it, Or this shall be The last, that now with sullen roar Why wilt thou kill me with thy boding fears? Before thee lies a train of happy years: Could brook that thou shouldst first be laid in Who art my stay, my glory, and my trust! Ah, if untimely Fate should snatch thee hence, Why should I linger on, with deadened sense, Think not that I have sworn a bootless oath ; Hand link'd in hand, whene'er thou leadest, The last sad road below! Me neither the Chimera's fiery breath, Nor Gyges, even could Gyges rise from death, With all his hundred hands from thee shall sever; For in such sort it hath Pleased the dread Fates, and Justice potent ever, To interweave our path, Beneath whatever aspect thou wert born, The promise to go "hand in hand" with his friend, when the summons Scatters the Tuscan surge in foam upon the came, on the sad road that led be rock-bound shore. Be wise, your spirit firing And hopes afar aspiring In compass brief confine, Use all life's powers; The envious hours Fly as we talk; then live to-day. low, might have been a rash one; but it was singularly and touchingly verified. Mæcenas died in summer, and Horace in the November of the same year, at the age of fifty-seven -so it might well have been that something of the languor of soul that creeps over the lonely man when his friends disappear from his side had undermined the life of the poet. Nor fondly to to-morrow trust more than you His death is, as so often happens, the must or may. most touching event in his life. Oddly enough, these verses are quoted The other poets a little earlier or a in the eccentric and somewhat foolish little later than Virgil or Horace, who novel of a clever writer lately published, still may be classed as their contempoas an example of the means by which raries, find no place in Mr. Collins's series. his heroine was trained into the most per- Ovid, Tibullus, Propertius, Catullus, are fect of women! We doubt whether the passed over without a word-for what little poem would generally commend it- reason we can scarcely divine, unless self as adapted for this purpose; but the from the difficulty, to which we have resentiment is fine of its kind, and affords peatedly referred, of giving any fit idea, a fit crown and conclusion to the easy, by any means but those of direct translagenial, highly-cultured, and all-enjoying tion, of non-dramatic poetry. The reason life of the old Roman. He reaches a is quite valid, and worthy of full considhigh note, and shows a spirit touched eration; yet we think that some briefer to a finer issue, in one of the odes notice might have been given with adto Mæcenas. His patron lacked what vantage of these tuneful brethren Horace so fully possessed a tranquil enough at least to distinguish and idenand contented spirit-and it was evi-tify them to unlearned readers. They dently to soothe some despondent mood that the poet gave vent to this expression of devoted friendship: are better known, more important, and more poetical, we cannot but think, than Plautus and Terence, who make up a volume with their comedies adapta- and writers. The blaze of splendour tions from Greek originals and whose about him dazzles our eyes. We are more sole title to preference is, that their at home at the Sabine farm, listening to stories are more easy to tell. There is the trickling of the summer fountain, or little upon which we can dwell in these warm indoors in wintry weather over the two writers; fine speeches and striking chestnuts and the wine. lines, like the famous "Homo sum: hu- Cicero, however, less fortunate, less mani nihil a me alienum puto," are no splendid, and less great, succeeds better doubt to be found in them; but our lei- than Cæsar does in combining the glow sure does not permit us to dig for them and shine of public eminence with that through a mass of indifferent plots con- milder glory which is more dear to our fessedly not original. Passing over these heart. His public career was splendid, minor dramatists, we come to two great but unlike that of Cæsar, it was checkmen of action sufficiently linked with ered by great downfall and misfortune, literature to entitle them to a place as well as by the greatest honours and among classic authors, and giving in their promotions. He gained the highest disprincely persons a more splendid demon-tinctions Rome could give, earning the stration of Roman life than any merely titles of Pater Patria and of Saviour of literary productions could do. These men are Cæsar and Cicero. Mr. Anthony Trollope has told the story of the great Julius with much ease and spirit; almost too clearly, brightly, and well for a subject which we associate with mighty tomes and heavy periods. The reader feels as if he owed to the great Cæsar something more solemn than the pleas-failed in any results except murder, found ure with which he reads a narrative in which there is no tedium. It is seldom that an artist so distinguished in one branch of literature, takes the trouble car Rome, and then was driven out ignomini- in Antony, against whom in the mean time he had launched his tremendous Philippics, an enemy still more dangerous and powerful than the two former, of entering upon another: and the Catiline and Clodius, who had brought skill of the practised narrator conveys an about his previous misfortunes. It is a unusual charm to the history. Mr. kind of happiness in its way to have had Trollope carries out the principle of the for enemies men whose very names are series with conscientiousness. He tells hateful in history, and whom no good the story of the Commentaries in his own man would care to call friend. Cicero words, which are of themselves most died sadly enough while in the act of characteristic and pleasant. A more escaping. He was being carried in his splendid life has never been in the world, litter by his slaves through the woods and there are abundant means of study- which adjoined his villa, to the coast, that ing it. The man who as nearly con- he might get off by sea. He had been quered the world as any one man could urged unwillingly to this flight by his do; who conquered the might of old faithful servants, and lay in his litter, Rome, its factions and traditions; - who, moving slowly through the dewy trees, struggling through a hundred vicissi- reading his favourite Euripides when the tudes made himself the foremost figure pursuers overtook him. The leader of of his day, a kind of king of the universe the band was one whom Cicero's eloso to speak- he who was first in Rome quence had saved for that moment; and being first in the world-and who, not there the Roman warriors killed the old content with all these achievements, man, the Pater Patriæ, the saviour of wrote the story of them better than any their city. If we had space to enter into one elso could have written it, requires his life, there are specks in it evident little additional labour on the part of his enough; but he was both noble and unbiographer to prove his greatness. He fortunate; and the vanity of which he is is the most heroic, as he is the most pow-accused, and inability to bear misfortune erful, of Romans, in himself an admira- like a man, are, no doubt, fully attributable type of Rome, all-conquering, invin-ble to the keen, nervous sensibility of his cible, proudest and greatest of empires; organization, and partly to the habit of but his place is more in the imperial line his time, which was not fashioned (a of kings and statesmen than with the thing we find it so hard to understand) humbler, if not less proud, order of poetsupon our English nineteenth-century VOL. IX. 424 LIVING AGE. In In these few noble lines are compressed much that Shakespeare has repeated on various occasions. That quality of mercy which blesseth him that gives and him that takes, has never been more beautifully claimed. Not Isabella when she catches the cold Angelo's ear with, "Hark, I will bribe you! - not Portia's fine appeal, -are more direct than this which was addressed by the rules of what is dignified or not. His miration and their love like mercy. first great claim upon the recollec-nothing do men reach so near the gods, as tion of posterity as a classic writer is (if when they can give life and safety to mankind. we may be permitted a bull) not through Fortune has given you nothing more glorious than the power his writings at all, but his speeches - your own nature can supply splendid pieces of oratory in which great and pardon whenever you can. nothing more noble than the will to spare The case, public speakers of all subsequent ages perhaps, demands a longer advocacy-your have found their models. It is scarcely gracious disposition feels it too long already. less easy to render them into quiet Eng-So I make an end, preferring for my cause lish than to transfer into our mother that you should argue with your own heart, tongue the poetic strains of fervent Italy. than that I or any other should argue with We feel that not only are the words you. I will urge nothing more than thiswanting, but the speaker, to enable us to the grace which you shall extend to my client feel the full force of the oration. Mr. in his absence, will be felt as a boon by all here present. Collins quotes a great many of these speeches, and from them the reader will learn as much as it is possible to learn of Cicero's power in this way. We will give only one example, one which shows the superior skill of the pleader, and his power of comprehending all the possibilities of a situation. He had been called upon to defend Ligarius, who was impeached of treason against the State, in the person of Caesar, as having borne arms against him in his African cam-greatest orator in Rome to the greatest paign. Cicero himself had been on the side of those against whom Cæsar fought -and Cæsar was the judge. It would be difficult to imagine a position more difficult or more embarrassing. The advocate began by "making out what case he could for his client." Clearly there The other works of Cicero are all on was little enough to be said. Then with ethical and philosophical subjects. His that unerring instinctive perception of famous essay on old age, and that on what is best, which is sometimes the friendship, are of a less profound charresult of consummate skill and dexterity, acter than the philosophical discussions and sometimes the merest dictate of na- on the true ends of life (“De Finibus Boture, he suddenly threw down his argu-norum et Malorum"), the disputations ment and spoke direct to the judge on the bench, who was at the same time the offended person: conqueror; and though these old Romans were little affected by sentiment, and quite unused to decide any practical questions by such a plea, yet the appeal was successful, and Ligarius was pardoned. upon the nature of God, upon death, upon immortality, and upon the connection between virtue and happiness, of which the reader will here find an excellent I have pleaded many causes, Cæsar, Some of these thoughts are summary. but I never yet used language of this sort very remarkable in their elevation and "Pardon him, sirs, he has offended; he has purity. They are full of that profound made a false step; he did not think to do it; uncertainty which belonged to their age, he never will again." This is language we and which indeed hangs over all ages, use to a father. To the court it must be"He did not do it; he never contemplated it; tion deeply that silence which gives so ever ready to reappear when men questhe evidence is false; the charge is fabricated.' If you tell me you sit but as the judge of the little reply. So noble and spiritual, howfact in this case, Caesar-if you ask me when ever, are many of the sentiments uttered and where he served against you-I am silent. by the old Roman, to whom the ancient I will not now dwell upon the extenuating gods of Greece were fables, and who was circumstances which even before a judicial too early for Christianity, even had it been tribunal might have their weight. We take likely that his pride would have stooped this course before a judge, but I am here to a faith so humbly introduced, that we pleading to a father. I have erred, I have done wrong, I am sorry; I take refuge in your tion of soul and wistful intuition which can only wonder and admire the elevaclemency; I ask forgiveness for fault. I pray you, pardon me. There is nothing formed a religious atmosphere about so popular, believe me, sir, as kindness, of those great spirits groping towards the all your many virtues, none wins men's ad. God they divined, with a devotion more my disinterested, more genuine than our own. I and rabble of life! For I shall go my way, to the philosopher's searching demand, we What is death? when we remember that We are transported into another cen- We will give but one other passage It likes me not to mourn over departing |