ODE XX. ON HIS FUTURE FAME. Horace has no ode more remarkable than this for liveliness of fancy and fervour of animal spirits. It is composed half in sport, half in earnest, though I cannot agree with Macleane that it has in its style anything of the mock heroic,' properly so called, still less that it was written impromptu. Its rapid vivacity is no proof of want of artistic. care. Dillenburger (in his Qu. Hor.) conjectures the ode to have been written in youth, and on the occasion of Mæcenas's first invitation (recorded Sat. I. vi.), so interpreting 'quem vocas, dilecte Mæcenas.' But, as Macleane observes, the epithet "dilecte," implying a familiarity of I shall soar through the liquid air buoyed on a pinion some On this earth; but victorious o'er envy, two-formed, Born of parents obscure though I be, O Mæcenas, Now, now on my nether limbs rougher skin settles; 1 "Quem vocas dilecte.' I agree with Mr. Conington in accepting Ritter's interpretation that 'dilecte' is Mæcenas's address to Horace. Upon this disputed point a very illustrious scholar, to whom, indeed, I am indebted for line 6 in the translation, writes to me thus:I rather doubt the naked use of "vocas" in the sense of "invite to your some standing, is opposed to this view;' to which I may add the remark, that it is scarcely probable that Horace would have spoken with such confidence of his future fame till his claims as a lyrical poet were acknowledged by competent judges, to whom most of the odes in the first two, or perhaps the first three, books, if not yet collected into one publication, were familiarly known. It was probably enough written in some moment of joyous excitement occasioned by a success more signal than any private invitation from Maecenas could confer; but we know too little of the various stepping-stones in Horace's poetical career to form any reasonable conjecture as to its date and occasion. It is enough that the poem itself so wonderfully vindicates the pretension of the poet to be also the prophet. CARM. XX. Non usitata nec tenui ferar Penna biformis per liquidum æthera Urbes relinquam. Non ego, pauperum Nec Stygia cohibebor unda. Jam jam residunt cruribus asperæ Per digitos humerosque plumæ. society" ("revocas " is used Sat. I. vi. 61, but then of a particular repeated invitation, not of a general one); I therefore incline to prefer the interpretation "Quem, Mæcenas, vocas 'dilecte,'" though I admit the boldness of this construction.' Munro prints 'dilecte.' * Album mutor in alitem superne.' The white bird is, of course, the swan-Multa Dircæum levat aura cycnum.'-Lib. IV. Od. ii. 25. Than the swift son of Dædalus swifter I travel. I shall visit shores loud with the boom of the Euxine, And wherever I wander shall sing as a bird. Me the Colchians shall know, me the Dacian 2 dissembling His dismay at the might of his victor the Roman; Me Scythia's far son ;-learned students in me Shall be Spain's rugged child and the drinker of Not for me raise the death-dirge, mine urn shall be empty;" Hush the vain ceremonial of groans that degrade me, And waste not the honours ye pay to the dead On a tomb in whose silence I shall not repose. 'Horace did not write "Dædaleo ocior." The old Bernese and other high authorities have "notior," which, if a gloss, suits the sense and context admirably, far better than "tutior," "audacior," or any other conjecture.'-MUNRO, Introd. xxvi. Bentley has 'tutior.' 2 Et qui dissimulat metum Marsæ cohortis Dacus.' The Marsian infantry was the flower of the Roman armies, and the Marsian here represents the might of Rome. Either the interruption to the rapidity of the verse by the allusion to the Dacian's haughty dissimulation of the terror with which he regards the Roman arms must be considered, as it has been considered by critics, one of those 'impertinences,' for the sake of a popular hit, which is noticed in the preliminary essay as a defect in Horace; or it may possibly escape that reproach, and, pertinently to the purpose of the poem, mean that whatever the disguised terror in which the Dacian holds the Roman soldier, he will welcome the Roman poet. a. Me peritus Discet Hiber, Rhodanique potor.' 'Peritus Hiber' does not mean the learned Spaniard,' as it is commonly translated. The adjective applies, as in similar cases is habitual with Horace, both to Hiber' and 'Rhodani potor;' and as Dillenburger, Orelli, and Macleane agree, the meaning is, "that these barbaric nations will become versed in me.' Macleane thinks that by Hiber' Jam Dædaleo ocior1 Icaro Ales, Hyperboreosque campos. Me Colchus, et qui dissimulat metum Discet Hiber, Rhodanique potor.3 Absint inani funere neniæ, Luctusque turpes et querimoniæ; is probably meant the Caucasian people of that name; I follow, however, the interpretation popularly accepted-and sanctioned by Orelli -that Hiber' means 'the Spaniard.' The Drinker of Rhone' is the Gaul. 'Absint inani funere neniæ.' 'Inani funere,' because the body is not there.-ORELLI. BOOK III.—ODE I. ON THE WISDOM OF CONTENT. This ode opens with a stanza which modern critics generally consider to be an introduction not only to the ode itself, but also to the five following-all six constituting, as it were, serial parts of one varied poem, written about the same time and for the same object-viz. to aid in the reformation of inanners which Augustus undertook at the close of the civil wars. The date of these and other odes conceived in the same spirit (as Lib. II. Od. xv. and xviii.) would therefore be referable to the period from A.U.C. 725 to A.U.C. 728. The first line of the introductory stanza to this ode imitates the formal exhortation of the priest at the Mysteries, warning away the profane. The conclusion of the stanza, 'Virginibus puerisque canto,' if, as recent inter preters I hate the uninitiate crowd-I drive it hence away; Silence, while I, the Muses' priest, chant hymns unheard before; I chant to virgins and to youths, I chant to listeners pure. Dread kings control their subject flocks; o'er kings themselves reigns Jove, Glorious for triumph won in war when giants stormed his heaven, And moving, with almighty brow,1 The universe of things. 'Cuncta supercilio moventis.' With his usual felicity of wording, Horace avoids the commonplace expression of the Olympian nod,' though the line implies that and something more; it implies the Deity's intellectual government of all things, and explains the connection with the stanzas that immediately follow, -the nod of Jove confirms the law of Fate to which all men are subjected. |