ENGLISH LITERATURE AND THE LATIN CLASSICS

(Continued from page 171)

The Influence of Horace on the Chief English Poets of the Nineteenth Century. By Mary Rebecca Thayer. Cornell University Dissertation. Yale University Press (1916). Pp. 1171.

Horace and Thackeray. By Elizabeth Nitchie. The Classical Journal 13.393-410, March, 1918.

In her Preface (7-8) Miss Thayer writes:

My choice of Horace as the centre of my work was in part determined by my own predilection, but more by the feeling that, when all is said, he has been the most popular Latin poet with English writers. The claims of Virgil and Ovid, of course, are very strong; yet I think that Horace can more than hold his own with either of these. I selected the nineteenth century on the ground that there would be an especial interest in learning, through one set of particulars, what sort of influence the ancient classics had on an age which, as is generally supposed, is marked by a tendency to break away from them.

In the Introduction (11-51) Miss Thayer begins by trying to obtain a true idea of Horace as he shows himself to us in his works2. Testing the matter, then, in this way, she finds that geniality is the keynote of Horace's work; he is always good-humored, even in his satire (13). Yet it is not always happy: there is a "sombre strain in him that frequently shows itself when we least expect", a vein of melancholy that usually shows itself in references to the inevitableness of death. Out of this thought springs another-the desire to get from the brief span of life all it has to offer in a word, his Epicureanism (13-14). But in his pursuit of

Compare Miss Thayer's paper, On Translating Horace, THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 11.90-94. Miss Thayer says (11): "Concerning Horace there has come down to us none of the contemporary appreciation which helps us to realize even so inscrutable a figure as gentle Shakespeare'". On pages 23-24 she recurs to this thought, and can cite only Augustus's requisitions of Horace's muse, and Ovid, Tristi1 4.10 49-50 as evidence of the feeling of Horace's contemporaries concerning him. She might well have gathered some evidences, from a slightly later age, of the esteem in which Horace was held. Compare e. g. Petronius 118 Horatii curiosa felicitas; Juvenal 7. 225-227, where Horace and Vergil are mentioned together as studied in the Schools. We learn much, too, from the discovery at Pompeii, in 1891, of two medallion portraits, one of Vergil, one of Horace. Before Vergil lies a copy of Homer, before Horace a volume bearing the name of Sappho, eloquent witness of the association in Roman minds of Vergil and Horace as the great epic and the great lyric poet of Rome.

In connection with her discussions of Horace's good humor (13, 20), mention might have been made of the delightful differentiation by Persius 1.114-118 of Lucilius and Horace.

Here it may be pointed out that, in the supervision of such a dissertation as Miss Goad's (THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 12.170-171), or Miss Thayer's, professors of the Classics and professors of English ought to cooperate.

No. 23

pleasure, as in all else, he is ever a sincere apostle of the Golden Mean (14-15).

Horace was also a man of simple tastes (15), content with his lot (15-16), responsive to the charm of external nature (16). Miss Thayer holds that Horace was sincere in his "many protestations of his preference for the country over the town” (16). This point she might have proved at greater length; at least references to Sellar, Horace and the Elegiac Poets, 10-11, Duff, A Literary History of Rome, 539-542, might have been added. Horace was a lover of trees and groves and streams (17), but more ardent lover still of human nature (17), interested in the people of Rome, and in Rome itself (17). This last statement leads Miss Thayer to discuss Horace's patriotism. This, she says, manifests itself first in the pride with which he dwells on the triumphs, past and present, of domina Roma (17-18). She might well have emphasized far more this side of Horace's poetry. Horace's constant pose the avoidance of any appearance of deep feeling -has led many a good scholar to underestimate the strength of Horace's feelings, and particularly to deny to his patriotic Odes the high place they deserve. Had Horace published his patriotic Odes by themselves, unaccompanied by the poems of 'Wein und Weib', they would more often be set by scholars beside the Aeneid as proofs of the hold the new régime had gained on thinking men. Here again Mr. Duff writes well (523-527).

Miss Thayer next points out that Horace shows his patriotism by appearing as "the censor, who sees and deplores the <moral> evils that threaten his beloved city" (18-19).

Turning now to Horace the artist, Miss Thayer notes that all critics agree in calling him a master-craftsman (21-23). Next, Miss Thayer considers Horace in the Middle Ages (24-25), in Chaucer (25), among the Elizabethans (25-26), in Milton (26), in the Eighteenth Century (26).

In the Middle Ages "the didactic works of Horace were in the foreground, the lyrics almost forgotten" (27). But in the latter part of the sixteenth century and the earlier half of the seventeenth the Odes exerted the greater influence (27); the 'classic' period, with its insistence on finish and polish, and its preference for the heroic couplet, again preferred the Satires and Epistles of Horace (27-28).

Miss Thayer passes now to consider what sort of influence Horace exerted on each of the foremost English poets of the nineteenth century: Wordsworth (29-32), Coleridge (32-35), Byron (35-39), Shelley (39-42), Keats (42-43), Tennyson (43-49), Browning (49-51). Her conclusions may be briefly stated as follows.

Wordsworth, who himself declared that he had an intimate acquaintance with Vergil, Horace, and Catullus, preferred Horace to the other two; he loves especially Horace's 'graceful modesty', Horace as "the conversational recorder of daily happenings", and Horace's appreciation of "the value of companionable friendship". Coleridge, the poet, was not drawn to Horace, the poet; but Coleridge, the literary critic, was impressed by the value of Horace's literary criticism. Byron, who learned, in his school days, at once Horace and to hate Horace, "never greatly cared for Horace, and this despite the fact that he quotes him copiously". Yet he "seems to speak of Horace in a rather patronizing manner". He cared more for Horace's didactic poems than for his lyrics. In his own Satires, however, Byron is more like Juvenal or Persius than like Horace.

In his Hints from Horace, Byron often does little more than translate Horace's Ars Poetica (38-39); his interpolations emphasize most strongly his lack of sympathy with Horace.

Shelley knew Horace well; in his later years he continued to read Horace with pleasure. He never ranks Horace with the great Greek writers, but he none the less gives him a high place in literature. He always thinks of Horace as a lyric poet; most of his citations are from the Odes.

"The traces of Horace in the works of Keats are so slight as to be virtually negligible" (42).

The influence exerted by Horace on Tennyson was second only to that exerted by Horace on Wordsworth. Tennyson, says Miss Thayer, "responded well" to the "customary classical education of the sons of English gentlemen" (43). He was, furthermore, as much the conscious artist as was Horace himself (43-44). He loved external nature in much the same way as Horace and Wordsworth loved it (44). His fondness for Horace, however, came rather late in his life (44-45). He quoted Horace frequently in conversation (45-46). Browning "on occasion quotes <Horace> with a fluency and readiness equalled by few". Yet, most of his citations from Horace come in The Ring and the Book, Books 9-10. "The poet, able to quote to an unlimited extent when he so desires, is equally able to suppress any trace of Horace for hundreds of pages" (50). This latter fact is due to Browning's aversion to self-revelation. In his Letters, Browning seldom quotes.

On pages 53-110 Miss Thayer groups, under the names Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc., the passages which show "I. Unquestionable Traces of Horace", and "II. Probable Traces of Horace". On pages 115-117 there is a useful Index of Passages from Horace discussed in the book as reproduced certainly or probably by one or the other of the poets considered.

A plan I have long cherished involves the writing of a

paper showing Thackeray's knowledge of Horace and the extent to which he used Horace (see my remarks in THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 9.138, March 4, 1916). Miss Elizabeth Nitchie, a graduate of Barnard College, who heard me talk on this subject, has published a paper entitled Horace and Thackeray. In her opening paragraph Miss Nitchie writes much as I did in the passage referred to above. She then tells us (394)

Of about two hundred Latin quotations gathered from Thackeray's novels, essays, and other writings, one hundred and forty are Horatian. The figures speak for themselves.

Miss Nitchie does not pretend to give an exhaustive list of these passages; she purposes rather, she says, to set forth some "facts about the distribution of them"

(394). Most of them come from the Odes; Thackeray's mastery of the very language of the Odes was noted e. g. by Mackail, Latin Literature, 112. Miss Nitchie writes further (394)

<Thackeray> uses and adapts phrases <from the Odes > with an ease and facility which nothing but close intimacy could produce. The same mastery of the Satires and Epistles was also his, but it was the thought of these poems, rather than the phraseology, which he adopted.

The quotations are scattered widely through practically everything Thackeray wrote. The novels, especially The Virginians, The Newcomes, The Adventures of Philip, and Pendennis, contain the most; Henry Esmond "has surprisingly few". In Vanity Fair there are few quotations; in that novel "there is almost no one with a University education except the second Sir Pitt.

".

Thackeray was not writing with his Horace open beside him, nor did he need to turn to his bookshelves and take down his copy of the Odes or the Epistles every time he wished to use a quotation. The Latin words, exactly as Horace used or adapted them, in translation or in paraphrase, form an integral part of the thought and expression of a sentence. Often they are misquoted, often the sense is intentionally altered; but this only makes the use of them more interesting, and shows more clearly that Horatian ideas and phrases were not mere learned additions to Thackeray's writing, but were a part of the structure of his thinking (395).

Miss Nitchie thinks (395-396) that Carmina 3.1. 37-40, sed Timor et Minae atra Cura, made the strongest impression on Thackeray. Other favorite passages are Horace's picture of Fortuna, Carm. 3.29. 49-56 (396-397); Carm. 1.38 (397).

On pages 398-410 Miss Nitchie compares Horace and Thackeray as satirists. At the outset she notes, as every attentive reader of Thackeray must note, the latter's fondness for Horace's words to the avarus, in Serm. 1.1.69-70 Quid rides? mutato nomine de te fabula narratur; to this she recurs on page 402. In many passages the ideas of the two authors are strikingly parallel. They were both "genial satirists, not cynics" (399); both teach by examples (Becky Sharpe, Major Pendennis, etc., are, indeed, highly individualistic, but they are used after all as types closely akin to Horace's types: 400-401); both write of snobs (401

402); both condemn legacy-hunting (403-404); both were earnest advocates of a life of simplicity (404-406), though both knew well the power of wealth in this world (406-407); both emphasize the vanity of human wishes (407-408).

From this brief analysis of Miss Nitchie's paper it will be apparent, I think, that the beginning and the end of it do not hang together. Her first pages lead us to expect a catalogue of Thackeray's employments of Horace's actual words. Only one third of the paper is concerned with this subject, and but a few of the 140 quotations from Horace are referred to at all. The rest of the paper is devoted to a very different subject, the intellectual and moral kinship of Thackeray and Horace. That sort of kinship is conceivably possible without direct knowledge on the part of Thackeray of Horace's works. It appears, then, that, though Miss Nitchie has written an interesting and helpful paper, she has not done much to record the extent of Thackeray's actual knowledge of Horace, or his use of Horace's exact words. Even when that shall have been done, much more will remain-to collect, as Miss Thayer and Miss Goad have done in their dissertations, the places in which, whether Horace is or is not mentioned, Thackeray had a specific passage in mind. In my own study of this subject I found, I confess, most interesting the passages in which, though there is no reference to Horace by name, it seemed clear that Thackeray had his favorite Roman author clearly and definitely in mind.

In The Classical Journal 14.147-166 Miss Nitchie has a paper entitled The Classicism of Walter Savage Landor. But into this there is not space to enter.

(To be concluded)

C. K.

REMARKS ON ROMAN POETIC DICTION1

It is difficult to conceive of a period in the history of any intelligent people so remote that all classes alike employ the same words without discrimination. Social distinctions among men are inevitably connected with social distinctions among words; indeed even in very primitive society the individual, provided that he have any glimmerings of propriety, exercises some choice in the use of language. Certain words and expressions very soon achieve distinction-enter good society! Others become commonplace, colloquial, vulgar, etc. Such differences must have existed in preliterary Latin, but of course we cannot trace them.

It is only when writing has become established that an ancient language is capable of being studied from the stylistic point of view. As soon as man begins to write down his words, the tendency to pick and choose is immensely accelerated, varying of course greatly with

This paper was read at the Twelfth Annual Meeting of The Classical Association of the Atlantic States, at the Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, May 3, 1918.

different individuals. It is the same process which you see to-day when Uncle Josh 'takes his pen in hand' to write his annual letter; or when, after the ice goes out of the Northern lakes, some faithful guide makes good his last year's promise to let you know what is the outlook for the season's fishing. We do not realize sometimes what that letter costs him. He feels at once that his ordinary vocabulary will not do, or, if he cannot think of any words dignified enough in his judgment for a letter to an educated man of the city, he has serious misgivings at any rate about those which as a last resort he is forced to use. He feels keenly that there is a better style, for he has talked with educated men and he has read their letters.

In the latter half of the third century before Christ the great mass of the Romans were not even so far advanced as the guide of whom I have been speaking, for those who could read and write were comparatively few; fewer still were those who could be called educated. It was the period of literary awakening for those Italians whose life centered in Rome. There was a growing demand for something better in the way of literature than that which they had known before. Writers appeared who satisfied this demand, and a literature based chiefly on Greek models began to develop in several lines-comedy, tragedy, epic, etc. The earliest efforts, so far as we can judge, were crude enough, but the Romans were learning and serving their apprenticeship. In most departments of literary effort one hundred and fifty or two hundred years were to elapse before they were entirely free from leadingstrings.

In this period of literary awakening poetic diction was in its beginnings. The Roman writers were picking their words from the common stock and were inventing new ones in their effort to form an elevated style for epic and tragedy. Their inventions often proved the closeness of the sublime to the ridiculous, as may be inferred from the occasional remarks of their contemporary, Plautus, and later from the ridicule which Lucilius directs against the sesquipėdalian words of Accius. On the other hand, they were rejecting many words. There was in the common stock a large number of words colorless words, or words to which no stigma was attached-which they could use without hesitation, but there were many which were not hightoned enough for the purposes of epic and tragedy. The writers of comedy had an easier task, so far as the mere choice of words was concerned, for the colloquial style, which they were reflecting, had much wider limits than the elevated style; it was much more indulgent to words of shady reputation, and yet we must bear in mind that not even Plautus included anything and everything in the way of language. To say nothing of the exigences of meter, we must not forget that in the

Compare Cicero's remark that Andronicus's work was hardly worth a second reading. 3Cf. the mock-heroic passages, e. g. Most. 688 dum mihi senatum consili in cor convoco; or the opering lines of the prologue to the Poenulus.