THE POET FOR MEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 132, 1 December 1936, Page 4

THE POET FOR MEN

THE MIND OF HORACE)

LORD HEWART'S TRIBUTE

In an address on "Horace,'' whichl Lord Hewart, Lord Chief Justice, delivered at a dinner of the Horatian Society he suggested the compilation from the poet's works of an indexed commonplace book for leader-writers and statesmen, and gave a definition of what made a man a bore to his companions, reports "The Times." Lord Hereford was in the chair.

Lord Hewart said that nearly 2000 years had passed since Horace calmly predicted his own immortality. If he could look today into ledgers of publishers and booksellers his confidence would not be diminished. As Francis Bacon said of his Essays, the poems of Horace "come home to men's business and bosoms." He seemed to be unique in all literature for his urbanitas. In good sense, perfect taste, and knowledge of the ordinary men he still had no rival. Men recognised with .mingled affection and awe the exquisite .finish and judgment of the Odes, their subtle rhythm, their delicate humour and proportion. And, being immortal, he was always contemporary. Contrasts between ancient and modern were as meaningless for him as they would be about the sunshine.

It would, for example, be easy and agreeable to compile from Horace an indexed, commonplace book for leaderwriters and statesmen. They were correctly named in that order, because both leader-writers and statesmen said much the same thing, only leaderwriters said it first and in a literary form. Also he observed with a clear eye the "masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world." Yet he was parcus deorum cultor et infrequens—he rarely troubled the pew-openers. If he had been up at Oxford half a century ago he would hardly have-obj-ected to the remark" of the most famous Master of Balliol that Voltaire had done more good than all the Fathers of the Church put together. Perhaps the greatest thing of all in Horace was that complete artistic independence, so ironically superior to the powerful ruler and the powerful patron, making them seem—and, indeed, making everybody seem—just "moments in the eternal silence."

FATHER'S SACRIFICE,

Mankind owed a great deal to the noble father of Horace—noble in the best sense of an abused word—who sacrificed much in order to obtain for his grateful son the best education that Rome and Athens had to offer. It was pleasant to think of the young man, when he had said good-bye to the groves of Academe and had done his bit of soldiering, relieving the monotony of a clerkship in the Treasury by occasional writing. Samuel Johnson said that no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money, and, of course, nobody was ever less like a blockhead than Horace.

The fact that he was definitely "agin' the Governrrient," and wrote lampoons on the fashionable world, did not prevent Varius and \Virgil from introducing him to Maecenas. At first that eminent patron took little notice of him, thinking perhaps that he Was Grub Street, thought not too bad Grub Street, and indeed Horace had said that he did not make the best of himself. Nine months later, however, Maecenas, impressed by something written by Horace, suddenly took him up and made him one of his intimates. It looked as if Maecenas, who was a Holland House kind ofrLiberal,: rather liked the youngster's tone, his independence and reserve, and thought he might be useful ■ politically. Both Maecenas and' Augustus were a little alarmed / at the excesses of the "fast set." and Horace's balance and gift of satire might have been thought servicable. When, a little later, Maecenas gave him his Sabine Farm, in the pleasant valley of Digentia, north of Tivoli, Horace's cup of happiness was sufficiently full. Before he died at the age of fifty-seven he had .become a kind of Poet Laureate.

WAS NO PURITAN.

If Horace was a moralist he was not exactly a Puritan. Respect for the neater sex was not his strong point. He obviously did not like women of fashion and believed, as the phrase was, of keeping them in their place. He disapproved of some of the fashionable habits of the time and was too fastidious for others. Happily he was not an Adonis nor an Apollo. He was not up to the standard of the film star nor of the pictorial diplomat. Indeed he was not only prematurely grey but also short and stout —"Epicuri de grege iporcum." Nor had he any great liking for "littery gents." He had no opinion of Lucilius, or the older Latin Writers, who were apparently in fashicin when he was writing his first book of Satires. He seemed to disparage even Catullus. His fastidiousness would not excuse rough workmahship, and of minor poets he spoke notswith indifference but in considered terms of scorn. He hated publicity and "pu'shfulness." He was always praising homely comfort and the middle station, had no patience with the gospel of. "success," hated rush and hurry, and would not take kindly •to motor-cars or foreign travel ("caelum mon animum mutant gui trans mare currunt").

Hdrace was not naturally a lyric poet: He wrote slowly and with infinite pains. But it was an achievement not less than amazing to subdue the Latin language to lyrics of exquisite finish. It was natural to contrast the indifferent Sapphics of Catullus or the inferior Alcaics of Statius. No one tried to imitate Horace. He was indeed-more original than Virgil, whom people had been imitating ever since, and who was himself an imitator.

THE BACHELOR'S LAUREATE,

Perhaps it might be said that, if Tennyson was the poet of the drawingroom, Horace with his gift of friendship was the poet of the bachelors' club—of" those inner circles of male friends where the talk was at once intimate yet reserved, dignified but not stilted, human though fastidiously human. All his characteristics might perhaps be deduced from this quality of his temperament. He was always lucid, always brief and compact, always simple, always easy, and always very much alive. What was it that made a man a bore, to his companions? Was it not when, instead of being lucid, he rambled or tried to get at an idea that was beyond his power of expression; when he was long-winded''instead of being brief; t when he was ] affected or complicated; and when, instead of being easy, he posed, held out top notes, and treated his friend as if he were a public meeting? It was because Horace the post | was so superlatively right in all these j essential respects that he was also the i first and probably the best of all literary critics. Horace remained the palmary example of consummate workmanship in that middle range of sentiments in which was wisdom, though not inspiral tion, nor the force of creation and growth. Perhaps it might be said that he was to poetry what a vintage port was to a dinner, and as port was usually drunk .when the ladies had gone so Horace was the poet of men and of men only. No woman did or could like him, for he was the poet of masculine friendship and the clu'o,