Matutine pater, seu Jane libentius audis, Lib. ii. sat. 6. I shall now lay before the reader some passages. illustrative of Horace's wit, and humorous delineation of character. One of his earliest compositions was written in revenge against Publius Rupilius Rex, a native of Præneste, who had affronted him by spitting out his pus atque venenum, his malice and abuse. The story begins thus: Proscripti Regis Rupili pus atque venenum Lib. i. sat. 7. Purblind people and barbers seem at first sight a strange combination; but it shows the extent of Horace's experience and the acuteness of his remark. Persons who have a defective sight are curious about every thing that passes, and wearisome with the number and irrelevancy of their enquiries. Nature, when curtailed of one sense, always endeavours to work double tides with another. The ears make good the deficiency of sight, and contrariwise. But why are barbers peculiarly inquisitive? Because their shops are the resort of a promiscuous assemblage at leisure hours, a principal mart of vulgar news and vague gossip; by retailing of which the tonsor himself at once gratifies his own appetite and earns popularity with his customers. With respect to the narrative, Rupilius Rex had been proscribed by Augustus in the time of his triumvirate, and had withdrawn to the army of Brutus. He was jealous of Horace's superior fortune, as holding the office of tribune in the army, and indulged in mean scurrilities on the score of his servile extraction. Horace retaliates by describing the contest of Rupilius before Brutus with a merchant who had business in Asia, by name Persius. The poet calls him Hybrida, the mongrel, because his father was a Greek and his mother an Italian. Rupilius considered himself as a person of great importance; and the ridicule is heightened by the elevated tone and mock epic of the description. Nothing can be more keen than the satire conveyed in the equal match of the disputants. The two gladiators, Bithus and Bacchius, were not better paired. The historically allusive pun at the conclusion may be thrown out as a bone to the snarlers at that universally condemned, but much practised species of wit. The ninth satire, in which he draws the picture of an impertinent fop and poetaster, is so excellent that it lives in every man's memory. The combination of literary and personal impertinence is the greatest of all nuisances in society: Horace laid hold of a precious specimen, and displayed it in the most ludicrous point of view. Fops may be divided into two classes; the unconscious and the conscious. Horace's is of the latter description, and the prince of coxcombs. The circumstance of seizing the hand of a person with whom he had little or no acquaintance, is highly characteristic of indelicate boldness; and the stiff civility, the "Your humble servant" of Horace, represents in the most lively manner the well-bred rebuff which fine gentlemen so well know how to administer : Accurrit quidam notus mihi nomine tantum, Not that the intrusion could be so shaken off. Sometimes Horace stops short; then he walks fast, but in vain. His inward prayer for Bolanus to relieve him is full of pleasantry, as we must suppose him to have been a person capable of being pleased with so self-conceited a talker. Paucorum homi num, applied to Mæcenas, as a person of judg ment in the selection of his intimates, is borrowed from Terence, where it is applied by Thraso to the King of Persia, and derives its humour from the proverbial notoriety of the phrase. It was wittily addressed to Scipio by Pontius. Scipio one evening invited two or three friends to sup on fish. He was going to detain another party who accidentally called in afterwards. Pontius took him aside, and cautioned him against promiscuous familiarity. "Your fish is paucorum hominum." The pleasantry of the passage is much heightened by the fop considering himself as a fit member of Mæcenas's select society. Horace's answer furnishes an elegant compliment to Mæcenas, in that collateral and unobtrusive mode of eulogy, which practised and judicious courtiers are skilful in employing. A story apposite to the subject of this satire is told of Aristotle. An impertinent fellow related some fact, and asked him if it was not wonderful. "No! but it is wonderful that any man with two sound legs will stop to hear you." In the third satire of the second book, Horace gives a fictitious dialogue between himself and Damasippus, a Stoic philosopher, who was paying him a visit in the country. In another scene between Damasippus and Stertinius, the latter excepts none but the philosophic sage from the general imputation of human folly. This character he, as a Stoic, maintains to be no where found but on his own system. Horace's object is to ridicule the severity of modern philosophers, and their exaggeration of the principles established by the founders of their respective sects. His peculiar skill is displayed in giving a ludicrous turn to what is ostensibly grave and rational, not with the design of undermining the foundations of truth, but of pulling away the grotesque additions which deface its superstructure. For this purpose he listens with an air of composure to their philosophical lessons. They deal out folly and madness in large portions, and give him his full share. Stertinius, among others, details the maxims of Staberius, and his hope that posterity would know what vast riches he had left behind him, from the information of the inscription on his monument: Quid simile isti Græcus Aristippus? qui servos projicere aurum Horace shows an inclination to be thoroughly acquainted with his own folly, which is the only truth the schools are not calculated to teach, and to see his own picture drawn to the life. Both Damasippus and Stertinius utter excellent precepts, and express them in lively and natural terms. The mind would at once assent to every thing they propose, but for occasional bursts of extravagance, which turn them and their theories into jest, and are made to serve the moral purpose of humbling philosophical pride in general, and the arrogance of Damasippus in particular. In the next satire he adopts an opposite topic of ridicule against the imputed doctrine of the Epicureans, who made pleasure, as it was said, to consist in sensuality. He represents those cooking philosophers, who have since been denominated epicures, as slight, insignificant and contemptible. Catius says: Quin id erat curæ, quo pacto cuncta tenerem ; In the next he describes in the most ingenious manner the sordid practices of persons, whose aim was to succeed by flattery to the inheritance of childless old men. But the speculation was carried a degree further: Si cui præterea validus male filius in re The word sublatus refers to that savage custom among the ancients, which left the exposure of children to the option of the fathers. They were laid on the ground immediately on their birth: if the fathers took them up, they acquired civil rights by this adoption, and were educated under the parental roof. |