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been to show the tables turned, the lady (I beg her pardon for the imagination!) should have been presented in such circumstances as in I. 25 are anticipated for Lydia', a creature who would indeed suffer nothing by association with the old crow Lyce and "the dear departed Cinara". Lastly, if the scheme of the Three Books be rightly represented in Essay III-and there is more evidence for it than will be outweighed by the recurrence of a name- -dates are decisive, for there cannot be more than a dozen years between the two scenes.

To return the difference between the poet's presentation of himself in the two parts of his work is certainly not due to any change in his political judgment, or any desire to recant his praises of moral reform. On the contrary the later part is the more 'Augustan', and the sanctity of the family life is extolled as much as ever. The change is not in the sentiments but in the point of view. To rebuke a vicious nation and to praise a reformed nation are consistent parts, but require a different deportment. In paying a compliment to the general virtue of society, it is permissible, even graceful, to say frankly that your private standard has been rather below than above the average; but the censor, though he may confess his particular weakness, is in decency bound to deplore it. The Horace of the Fourth Book is, I should imagine, a very fair portrait, presenting, according to the ideas of the time, just a dignified and respectable bachelor of fifty, such as would remain here and there even among the 'most married' people. He speaks reverently of the nuptial tie, and does not conceal that he feels himself rather superannuated and melancholy, though a weak tear or a foolish dream still sometimes reminds him of what he was, and on the birth-day of an old friend he will still send for 'Phyllis' to sing away dark thoughts. He notes with bitter exultation how time has avenged him on the false charmer who 'stole him from himself', and can scarcely grieve

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that she whom he loved best did not live to become such a wreck. His best pleasure is in contemplating the martial and the peaceful glories of the renovated state, and in the consciousness that he has adorned and still is able to adorn it. The Horace of the Three Books is indeed a study from the same original, but for another picture and in a different manner. In a season of private sorrow and public disorder, the censor of human foibles, the author of causeries and pasquinades, takes up his parable in a fresh strain. Relying on the highest political and literary sanction, he puts forth what, with characteristic irony, is advertised as a successful experiment in the metres of the Greek erotics, but is in reality for much better reasons a 'monumentum aere perennius', a monument of sympathy with a sorely stricken benefactor, and a monument also of an evermemorable passage in the history of mankind. It is, in the metaphor of the epilogue, a series of sculptures in the 'bronze' of lyric verse, presenting the life of Rome during twenty years of labour towards a deliverance, not yet complete, from the burden of discord, anarchy, and profligacy. To the finishing of this design chance had contributed a terrible aid by bringing the poet into close connexion with a conspicuous and tragic figure, who was the very personification of his idea. His portrait of himself, as well as the miscellaneous pictures real and fictitious which reproduce the variety of life, is not falsified, but adapted to the work by a choice of light. His moderate desires, warm affections, wide sympathies are appropriate traits, and these are set in view. Of what might have been less suitable he has said little, and that little without bravado and without hypocrisy, but with a becoming suggestion of honest regret.

EUTERPE.

WHATEVER laxity in moral æsthetic we may justly or unjustly attribute to the poet of the Odes, there is no doubt as to the strictness of his literary conscience in the technical finish of language and metre. That the problem of adapting the rhythms of Sappho, Alcaeus, Archilochus to a language as different from theirs as well might be, of persuading Euterpe to open the pipe and Polyhymnia to string the lyre, taxed him to the utmost fidelity of ambitious effort, his work, even without his prologue, would assure us. His models being almost entirely lost, his processes, for the most part, cannot be followed. Something, however, of the principles we can see, and I propose to say a few words here on his treatment of the junctures between verse and verse-that ovvápela which in Greek art is of so much importance'. (For various reasons the 'Sapphic' is

1 On this subject see Christ, Metrik (1879), pp. 38 foll. 544 foll. His conclusion is, that while Catullus wrote Sapphics in continuous metre, Sappho, Horace and the rest permitted syllables of doubtful quantity at the end of the verse and hiatus between the verses. If this were all, it might be inferred, and apparently is generally inferred, that the matter is concluded by saying there is no synaphea. The reader will judge how far this is actually the case. I ought perhaps to warn him from the whole subject and from this essay, if he does not happen to be interested in the niceties of euphonious sound; although to the full appreciation of Augustan poetry some interest in it is

indispensable. It is important to remember that much Latin poetry, and the lyrics of Horace especially, were meant primarily not for silent reading, but for reciting and hearing, as were also those of his models the Greek lyrists. To feel all that there is in a passage of Horace it must be declaimed aloud-better, it is well to add, in the 'new' pronunciation. All sorts of consequences follow from this fundamental distinction between the ancient lyric and the modern, the chief for us at present being that to make a sharp division, regardless of sense, at brief intervals determined by the length of the line' is inexpedient. In verse meant to be perused or to be

a convenient base, and except when otherwise stated the remarks which follow refer to the 'Sapphic' poems.)

So 'learned', in their own favourite phrase, were the Augustan poets, and so patient of labour, that there is hardly any limit to the nicety of conscious or unconscious observance which is revealed by a close examination of their work. In the matter before us, the precision of Horace, when the occasion justifies the severest form, is something almost miraculous. The Carmen Saeculare consists of 76 lines. It is written with a single exception to be noticed presently-in metre continuous from beginning to end (technically speaking, in strict synaphea), a thing in itself proving some conscious or instinctive care, as the reader may satisfy himself by comparing the modern 'Sapphics' of all but the most exquisite scholars. But this is nothing. From the modification made by Horace in the single Sapphic line it is a corollary, that if the quatrain is continuous, the final syllable in each of the three Sapphic lines is not indifferent in quantity, but must as a rule be long; and where the stanzas are continuous with one another, the same applies to the last syllable of the fourth line too. Sappho's stanza, it will be remembered is

L

40 42 400 4 (Sapphic verse, 3 times),

(versus Adonius).

In the single verse the change of quantity (amounting to a

sung, this is permissible; in words meant to be spoken, and written on a system of quantity, some sort of continuity, some regard to the 'junctures,' becomes a necessity.

The following figures may be useful for comparison. They do not for obvious reasons represent the result of absolute chance, but are as near an approach to it as can be obtained in Latin metre. They are taken respectively from (1) a casual 100 lines in the Aeneid (supposed for argument's sake metrically continuous with one another), (11) 100 in Lucretius. The five

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total change of rhythm), which Horace made, was to lengthen the fourth syllable always, instead of only by way of variety. Whatever his motive for this, the effect of it is that whereas in Sappho the basis of the verse is the double trocheeu, in Horace this sequence is not allowed, but becomes. If then the whole stanza is to be treated on the same principle, the other syllable common' in the Sapphic verse, the last, must be lengthened likewise, otherwise we should have two, indeed three, trochees in succession. Now in the Carmen, out of 57 Sapphic verses 51 have the final syllable long, and to make sure that the general regularity shall be perceptible to the ear, there is a regularity in the exceptions themselves; for 5 of the 6 are in the first verse of the stanza (one in the first of the poem), and of these 4 consist of the same word (que)1. (It is not for the present the question whether so much accuracy is desirable; we shall see that Horace knows how to depart from it; the first thing is to ascertain the rule) But even this is not quite enough for him. There is still the distinction between the two kinds of long syllables, that which cannot be short, and the 'long by position'. Of these two there is no question which is the most effectually long. If we compare the sound of the two sentences

and

sive quos Elea domum reducit
palma caelestes

condito mitis placidusque telo
supplices audi

reciting them carefully, it is plain that, though both these syllables are 'long' in the sense of 'not short', the extra weight in telo is not lost. Of the 51 long finals above mentioned 47 are such as could never be short, and of the 4 others 2 are protected against abbreviation by triple, not double, consonants'. All this is of course not perceived in reading or reciting, but the result is felt in a certain unimpeachable correctness, which is for itself worth something in a ceremonial piece. But now as to the one breach of continuity. It occurs at the 60th verse,

1 Carm. S. 1, 17, 37, 50, 57, 69.

2 See Carm. S. 3, 42, 43, 67.

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