The works of Horace : with English notes, critical and ... - Cristo Raul

XXVm LIFE OF HORACE
fame ; some of his shorter poems had excited great admiration and
greater hope ; a few of his Eclogues must have been already known
among his friends ; he had the expectation, at least, of recovering
his forfeited lands through the friendship of Asiniua Pollio; he was
ah-eady honored with the intimate acquaintance of MiBcenas.
The introduction of Horace to Mascenas was the turning-point of
his fortunes ; but some tune (at least two or three years) must have
intervened between his return to Rome, and even his first presentation
to his future patron, during which he must have obtained some
reputation for poetic talent, and so recommended himself to the friendship
of kindred spirits like Varius and Virgil. Poverty, in his own
vords, was the inspiration of his verse.
" Faupertas ,lmpnlit audax
Ut versus facprera."—Epist ii., 2, 51, seq.
The interpretation of this passage is the difficult problem in the
?arly history of Horace. What was his poetry ? Did the author
sxpeot to make money or friends by it ? Or did he write mere-
ly to disburden himself of his resentment and his indignation, at that
crisis of desperation and destitution when the world was not his
friend, nor the world's law, and so to revenge himself upon that
world by a stern and unsparing exposure of its vices ? Did the defeated
partisan of Brutus and of liberty boldly hold up to scorn many
of the followers and friends of the triumvir, whose follies and vices
might offer strong temptation to a youth ambitious of wielding tho
scourge of Lucilius ? Did he even venture to ridicule the all-powerful
Mieoenas himself? This theory, probable in itself, is supported
by many recent writers, and is, perhaps, not altogether without foundation.'
In the second satire, one unquestionably of his earliest compositions,
most of the persons held up to ridicule belonged to the
Caesarian party. The old scholiast asserts that, under the name of
Malchinns, the poet glanced at the efieminate habit of Maecenas, of
wearing his robes trailing on the ground, while more malicious
scandal added that this was a trick in order to conceal his bad legs
and straddling gait. To judge of the probability of this, we must
look forward to the minute account of his first interview With Majcenas.
If Horace was conscious of having libelled Msecenas, it must
have been more than modesty, something rather of shame and confusion,
which overpowered him, and made his words few and broken.'
The dry and abrupt manner of Msecenas, though habitual to him, i
might perhaps be alleged as rather in favor of the notion that he had
been induced to admit a visit from a man of talent, strongly recommended
to him by the most distinguished men of letters of the day,
thoug^h he was aware that the poet had been a partisan of Brutus,
and had held himself up to ridicule in a satire, which, if not publish-
ed, had been privately circulated, and must have been knovm at
least to Varius and Virgil. The gentlemanly magnanimity , of MiBcenas,
or even the policy, which would induce him to reconcile aL
1. ^aU;enaer, Histoire de la Vie d'Horace, i-, p. 8S. 2. Sat. i., 6, 51