SOURCE: “Roman Criticism—I. From Cicero to Horace” in Roman Poetry, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1923, pp. 27-65.

I

It is the veriest commonplace to call the Romans a “practical” race; and no one who knows their achievements in arms and law, in politics and architecture, would disagree. But this unimpeachable truth is often taken to imply that a genius for the practical must be opposed to poetry—an implication which Shakespeare's countrymen might well mistrust. There is, however, this much excuse for the antithesis (as far as Latin poetry is concerned), that Virgil's countrymen themselves felt the difficulty, and they have too often been taken at their own valuation. “Others might win fame in bronze or breathing marble; it was Rome's mission to impose peace, to spare the conquered, to crush the proud”—Virgil's disclaimer of art has contributed to obscure the real merits of Roman sculpture, which, though of course derived from Greece, was a complete expression of the Latin character; and, in the same way, the modesty of Latin poets, in the face of their Greek “originals”, has done them a real disservice. Few races, after all (except perhaps the Greeks and the English), have actually produced three poets who can rank before Catullus, Lucretius, and Virgil. No race, certainly, has shewn a greater will for poetry, whatever its achievement; and though we may not be Stoic enough to value the Will above the Issue, we must allow that the will was at least sometimes successful, as the three (or, if we add Horace, the four) great Roman poets surely prove. My present aim, however, is not to estimate the number of poets, but to point out that, whether there were few or many, the need of poetry was so widely recognized that it may be called the universal feeling of cultured Romans. The enormous reputation of the Poet, during the great period of Roman civilization, shows that, however exceptional the genius of a Lucretius or a Virgil, the appreciation of genius was not confined to a few. Virgil was not a voice crying in the wilderness: he was Romanus, the spokesman of his race.

The need of poetry, it may be objected, is not merely Roman, but human—an instinct common to all mankind. This may be true (within degrees), but it fails to explain why the Romans did not regard poetry as an inessential luxury or harmless amusement, but as something more important than any art, except the art of the orator. And here, perhaps, the true explanation lies. Oratory—at least in Republican times—was a necessity for public and private life, and the poet, like the orator, justified his calling by his usefulness. He was utilis urbi; and so the antithesis between the practical and the poetic disappeared.¹ The modern conception of the poet as a star which dwells apart—an individualist, and often in revolt—was quite alien to Augustan thought. Horace might take refuge in the woods and valleys from the smoke and riches and din of Rome; but his flight was from the Dog-star, not from society. Even if his subject was not Rome—or, what was the same thing, Augustus—the chief business and glory of a poet was to be a good citizen. He had an organic place in the community; and, to prove it, he was a member of a guild—the collegium poetarum—so ranging himself with the other trades and professions of the city-state.² He was as much a civil servant as the priest, or the undertaker. To this rule of public service there was one seeming exception: Lucretius—possibly in his life, certainly in his poem—stood apart from the State. But the Rome of Lucretius had ceased, for a time, to be an ordered community; and, even so, there is nothing of the recluse in a poet who has a message for every individual, if not for the State—orbi, if not urbi. With this partial exception, all Roman poets—since the time when Ennius had imagined Rome as Greece, and Carthage as Troy—were faithful to the conception of a communal office. Even the erotic poets, who appear to be self-centred, if not selfish—more concerned with their Delias and Corinnas than with Rome—are yet Roman citizens to the core. If it would be true to say that, to Propertius, Rome was nothing without Cynthia, the converse would be as true. He claims to be honoured no less, perhaps, than an Epic poet, for his service to the State, being the first to introduce the Greek mysteries of Love, and so to win that fame for Italy which Callimachus and Philetas had won for Greece.

It was precisely because the Poet was a servant of the State that he won more recognition than has commonly fallen to the lot of his class. Roman poetry, of course, was aristocratic, in the sense that it was written either by, or for, the rich; and it was at least secure from material want. But absence of poverty does not in itself confer dignity, and will not account for the fact that, when Virgil was recognized in the theatre, the whole audience rose in his honour, giving him the welcome that was usually reserved for the Emperor.³ Virgil was only of the middle classes; Horace, not even that. Yet Horace, the son of a freedman, rose to the friendship of Augustus, and could afford to refuse the Emperor's offer of an appointment as his own secretary—the post would have given him no higher rank than his poetry had already gained. At a later date, Martial complained of poverty; but this must have been very relative—in contrast, no doubt, with the wealth of the consuls and plutocrats who admitted him to their palaces. Even in his early days his house in the Subura was far removed from Grub Street. Of course the poetic ease of a Horace or a Martial was due to patronage; but this fact is in itself a mark of honour: Maecenas and Augustus would not have given estates to a despised profession. As we shall see in more detail, this profession was twofold; Horace is both Teacher and Priest: in his own words:

The poet moulds the tender, lisping tongue,
Wrests childhood's ear from obscene talk; anon
He forms young hearts with friendly counselling
And purges the stain of cruelty and spite
And passionate wrath. Singing of famous deeds,
He sets the pattern of nobility
Before the growing youth. The poor, the sad,
Listening, take courage. And how should innocent maids
Or modest boys learn to entreat the gods,
If the Muse gave no poet? Taught by him,
The choir implores high Heaven, and the gods hear
Presently, sending seasonable rain,
Or staying the plague and ruinous disaster,
Or bringing peace and plenteousness. By song
Are won the Powers above us, and below.(4)

The social function of poetry must be borne in mind, if we are to understand Roman criticism, which so often seems to appraise literature by the sole canon of utility. To some extent, this outlook was a direct legacy from Greek criticism, which had so largely fallen into Stoic hands; but the Romans were even more anxious than Greek Stoics to emphasize the social duty of literature, and of poetry in particular.

The Romans, then, started with the axiom that poetry is not mere self-expression, more or less independent of an audience, but that it bears on the life and well-being of the community. But this definition does not go very far, since all other branches of literature—oratory, for example, and history—made an equal demand. What quality, therefore, differentiated the poet from the orator or the historian? How was the Roman critic to decide whether a “poem” was good or bad?

Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, the Greeks had been debating on the origin and function of poetry, its relation to metre, its impulses from art or inspiration—in a word, on the preliminaries of criticism. They had already settled some principles, though others remained (and still remain) a subject of dispute; and it was left for the Romans to accept what was undisputed, and to thrash out, according to their own lights, the uncertainties. It would be wrong to suppose that they had merely to follow their Greek masters. Aristotle or Dionysius could not help them in settling a problem with which they were at once confronted—the relation of Latin to Greek poetry—and contemporary Greek critics were very chary of discussing Latin literature, which, they said, was best left to the Romans themselves.⁵ But the solution of this all-important problem depended on more fundamental conceptions of poetry, and here Greek criticism at least pointed the way.

II. THE PRELIMINARIES

Roman literary criticism may be said to start with the period of Varro and Cicero, when Latin poetry had reached a respectable age and had made a considerable output. Ennius was already a classic; Lucretius and the neoteric school of Catullus were producing works which were a direct challenge to the older poetry. At a time of great creative activity, there were both the material and the stimulus for criticism. Latin literature was now effectively in being, as something distinct from its Greek originals, and was regarded with mixed feelings. It had become a “rival” of the Greek, and this was a matter of legitimate pride; but there was often a certain uneasiness—a suspicion that the rival could not justify its existence. Varro—the first Roman who can be called a critic—seems to have started the fatal habit of pairing Greek and Roman authors, which so seriously obstructed a clear view of sound criticism.⁶ But we know scarcely anything of Varro's lost works de poetis and de poematis, so that the real history of Latin criticism begins, for us, with his contemporary, Cicero.

At first sight no critic of poetry could well be more suspect. It is no great matter, perhaps, that Cicero's own poetic talent was slender—great critics have often been poor poets; and if we agree with John Dennis that “there never was an admirable Poet, but he was a great Critick,” we must also allow that “there have been Criticks, who have been approved of by all the World, who never meddled with Poetry”⁷ We may set off Aristotle and Sainte-Beuve against Coleridge and Arnold, though indeed both the Greek and the French critic meddled with poetry, and not without success. As a matter of fact, Cicero's verse has been unduly belittled, since the time when the wits of the Empire fastened on his least felicitous line. For a short time—between Accius and Lucretius—he was even acknowledged as the chief poet of Rome; and, in any case, his high position as an orator and prose-writer entitled his views on poetry to be heard with deference. Unfortunately, it was just his oratorical fame that warped his poetic judgment. Engrossed in his own profession, Cicero could hardly fail to regard poetry as a species of rhetoric. It is true that no real injustice was done to the bulk of Latin poetry by this definition; for—as we have seen—no Roman poet is entirely free from rhetoric, and some—in particular, Lucan—are little more than rhetoricians in verse. We cannot therefore complain that (speaking for the poetry which he knew) Cicero noted the fact that “the poet is akin to the orator”.⁸ Still, it is regrettable that he was more anxious to shew the likeness between the two arts than to point out their essential difference. Roman criticism was thus started on unsound lines, and never entirely recovered from its initial mistake. No Roman, even after Longinus, could fully grasp the truth of that great critic's distinction between the art of Persuasion and the art of moving to ecstasy.

No doubt Cicero was dealing rather with the letter than with the spirit of poetry—he was anxious to shew that the language and rhythm of the two arts are similar, though not identical. But what is Poetry? Cicero himself nowhere attempts to define what so many have thought idefinable—but his reticence is not due to any doubt; on the contrary, the ancients were here unanimous, and Aristotle held the field.

The theory of Imitation has often been misunderstood, and not least by the Romans. Whatever Aristotle meant, he certainly did not mean a slavish or mechanical copy of Nature. He would not have said that his favourite play—the Oedipus—was a copy of life, any more than that the Aphrodite of Praxiteles was the duplicate of a human model. Indeed, he makes his meaning perfectly clear by his comparison between poetry and other representative arts: tragic poets must follow the example of portrait-painters who make men handsomer without losing the likeness. He allows for realism—the poet or painter may represent things as they were or are; but he also allows for the ideal, “as things ought to be”. And it is clear that the true mission of art was to represent the ideal— … the model must be improved.⁹ Thus, for Aristotle, [mimesis] is a creative revelation of the ideal, and not a mere transcription of Nature. It is important to observe that the essence of mimesis lies precisely in this creative faculty. As Professor Murray has remarked, mimesis is a form of poiesis, “making”. The poet is said to imitate, because, in making a Sack of Troy, he does not make a real Sack, but an imitation Sack. Poetry, according to Aristotle, makes an imitation world, which is ideal, because it is concerned with “what might happen”, but also real, because it must at least be based on the world which we know.¹⁰

None the less, the doctrine of mimesis was peculiarly open to misconstruction, as is evident enough in the long history of criticism. There was always the risk that the creation should be merged in the imitation. It was this danger, perhaps, that led Philostratus to throw over mimesis—which “will only fashion what she sees”—and to substitute Imagination, which can fashion “what she has not seen, supposing it is on the analogy of the rest”.¹¹ The gain was enormous, for henceforward all theories of creative art were based on the imagination instead of a mechanical formula. Yet, except for convenience of terminology, it may be doubted whether Philostratus saw deeper into the root of the matter than Aristotle, or even Plato. For the Platonic view (which Aristotle only developed) was wide enough to include even music as “imitative”, since it represents human feelings and mental qualities.¹²

But Philostratus, a Greek of the second century a.d., came too late to remind the Romans that Imagination—however we name it—is the fountain of Poetry. As it was, Imitation could only too easily be degraded into mere transcription, and we shall find that its chief use in Latin criticism was to justify the Roman “rivalry” with Greek models.

THE FUNCTION OF POETRY

Accepting the theory of Imitation as a fixed principle, sufficient to explain the nature of poetry, the Romans were now concerned with its Function. This problem, though logically second, would perhaps be first to occur, in an age almost totally ignorant of elementary aesthetics; for, even now, few people trouble themselves about the essence of poetry, whereas anyone would probably feel competent to say what poetry is “for.” Stated in a popular way, the question obviously admits one of two answers: the function of the poet is to give either pleasure alone, or pleasure with instruction. In the latter alternative, it may still be doubted whether the pleasure is secondary to the instruction, or conversely, or whether the two are equal co-partners.

The early Greeks had no hesitation in coming to a conclusion. Their Sacred Books were poems, and poetry must therefore be instructive. It is true that Homer and Hesiod are not “the Bible of the Greeks”, in the traditional sense of that word; for the Greek Epic was always regarded as a purely human work, which could be criticized, and—as we see from Xenophanes and Heraclitus and Plato—condemned.¹³ But on one point all early criticism was agreed, that Homer and Hesiod were teachers. Homer's teaching was not, as we now realize it, indirect—the influence of a great mind communicating noble thoughts in noble language—but was that of a conscious moralist, and indeed of an encyclopædist, since he was regarded as the final authority in every branch of learning. Hence the whole of Greek literary criticism was long subordinate to ethics. This was inevitable, since, apart from the natural reverence paid to the founders of Greek poetry, the epic was actually used as the basis of all education, and Hesiod, at least, was professedly didactic. The prophetic mantle of the epic was inherited by the tragedy; and, although there is some sort of literary criticism in the Frogs, where the styles of Aeschylus and Euripides are contrasted, it is clear that Aristophanes is mainly concerned with their moral teaching. “Boys have a schoolmaster, men have the poet,” and Euripides is indicted for the misuse of his proper vocation.

This narrow view of the poetic aim persisted to the last, partly owing to a revival of didactic verse in the Alexandrine age, but chiefly through the influence of the Stoics, who were determined to annex art to the province of morality. The poet could not be altogether identified with the philosopher, but, if their methods were different, their ends might be the same; and so the Stoic Strabo regards poetry as a philosophic primer—a pleasant form of education suited to the young—and Plutarch, though not himself a Stoic, loses all sense of literature in his eagerness to point a moral.¹⁴ But, from Aristotle onwards, the ethical view was seriously challenged. The stubbornness of facts was not to be denied, and, after all, the chief fact about Greek poetry lies in the pleasure which it gave and continues to give. Aristotle was probably not the first to distinguish the æsthetic and moral spheres of poetry, but we owe to him the first clear statement that the poet's function is to give pleasure … or refined enjoyment. … He assumed, rather than explicitly stated, that each kind of poetry has its special pleasure for the cultivated man, who is the standard of taste. Pleasure, for Aristotle, is no Cyrenaic self-gratification: it perfects the activity of a natural state, “like the bloom of youth,” and therefore, as it perfects human life, it is at least an object of reasonable desire, even if it is not the supreme good. This view of Pleasure as a biological function does not of course imply that, in the sphere of Art, it is the only or the ultimate end. Aristotle would have warmly resented any suggestion of “Art of Art's sake”, although this modern Parnassian theory may often be warranted by the actual practice of classical poets. Clearly, he never tries to divorce art from ethics. Tragedy—with which species of poetry the Poetic, as we have it, is mainly concerned—has a moral power, purging the emotions of pity and terror by means of pleasure. Man is a social animal, and his pleasure must be social or “political”; and, since the state is held together by morality, it follows that poetry must not be unmoral, far less immoral. But Aristotle never allows the moral purpose of his art to take the place of the aristic end.¹⁵ Ultimately, art is a means to a good life; but this means has its own artistic end. His position is accurately stated by Timocles, one of the comic poets who so often reflect the current philosophical views of the time: the spectator forgets his own troubles in seeing tragic examples, and so “goes home with pleasure and instruction”— … “transported”.

So far, Pleasure is still only the efficient cause, the final end being (in some sense) Instruction. But as soon as Pleasure was allowed to be at least one proper end of poetry, the way was paved for claiming it as the sole end. This decisive step was apparently taken by Eratosthenes, the famous Alexandrine scholar, who boldly asserts that the poet's function is not to teach but only to move.¹⁶

It was just here that poetry differed from oratory. From the time of Plato the power of stirring the emotions … had been demanded of the orator, who must move as well as convince;¹⁷ but, whereas the orator's end was to persuade (whether by sheer argument or an appeal to the emotions), the poet's sole business was now clearly stated as emotional.¹⁸

We may here trace an Epicurean influence. If Pleasure is the end of all human endeavour, must not Poetry be included as one of these activities? Epicurus, himself, it is true, was little interested in literary speculations, but writers in the New Comedy could hardly fail to apply them to their own profession. At a much later time Longinus was to insist on “ecstasy” or “transport” as the sole poetic end; but though the Greek critic deserves all Mr. Saintsbury's praise, the credit of priority must here be given to the Alexandrines.¹⁹

Thus Greek criticism had fairly covered the ground, giving two broad alternative answers to the question of the poetic end—the Stoic answer of Instruction (with Pleasure more or less tolerated), and the answer of Eratosthenes, exactly reversing these two constituents, if indeed he allowed Instruction a place at all; while Aristotle—here, as always, the champion of the Mean—stands between the two extremes. It remained for Cicero and the Augustans to draw a Roman application; and the result is very characteristic. Roman gravity, from the first, was unwilling to acquiesce whole-heartedly in the doctrine of Eratosthenes, which must have seemed to degrade the poet into a mere minister of Voluptas—to the Roman moralist an inauspicious word. Cicero was certainly drawn to Eratosthenes—his own excursions into poetry gave him (if not perhaps his readers), a real delight—but he was not prepared to renounce the doctrine of Instruction. So he compromised; poetry, if impeached at the bar of public opinion, might be defended by more than one argument. If it could be proved “useful”, so much the better; if not, it might be justified “alternatively”, as a means of innocent delight. This defence was not merely metaphorical—it was actually Cicero's pleading before a jury in defence of the poet Archias. The orator argues that the study of letters is useful as an education, and poetry, in particular, has the function of commemorating great nations and illustrious men. Here Cicero was not speaking beyond his literary brief. Greek poetry had always claimed a close alliance with History, since the time when the Homeric muse had inspired the bard to sing of … the glorious deeds of men. The tales of Troy and Thebes were history even to Thucydides, for all his suspicion of the mythical. As for Rome, Cicero himself deplores the loss of the old Saturnian songs, whose subject was the noble deeds of early Rome—songs which suggested Niebuhr's theory of an Italian epic, and Macaulay's Lays.²⁰ These songs—for they certainly existed, though not as an epic—were swept away by the Hellenism of Ennius; but that poet at least preserved the subject of history in his Annals. Cicero's favourite Muse was Clio, though he showed a strong desire to identify history with his own consulship. To the very end of the classical period—in Claudian no less than in Virgil—history remained the keenest stimulus for the poet, the justification of his high calling. Quintilian speaks of historical composition as an art akin to the poets, a kind of carmen solutum, free poetry.²¹ Historical subjects might be treated in prose or verse, and the treatment naturally differed;²² but in either case the function was the same—to present the deeds of great men (exempla maiorum) for imitation, and thereby to perpetuate their fame.²³

By this very Roman argument of “utility”, Cicero vindicates the place of poetry as a national service and not merely an ornament of life. But such pleading is perhaps ad captandam benevolentiam, to prove that his Greek client was not a parasite of Roman society. Cicero was no Stoic, but a cultivated scholar who read Greek and Latin literature for “delight”, without stopping to estimate its instructive value. His own verse was not only historical, and didactic (his translation of Aratus might be reckoned as instructive), but included various renderings of passages from Greek tragedy, which, if “purgative”, were not directly educational. Even to the jurors, he enters the caveat that poetry must not be judged as purely utilitarian—pleasure, he adds, would be a sufficient excuse for studies which pass the night in our company, go with us on our travels, and share our holidays—pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur.²⁴

A few years after this speech, the de Rerum Natura was published; and it is interesting to examine how far a great poet allowed his philosophy to colour his views on literature. At first sight it would appear that Lucretius accepts the theory of Delight with its fullest implications. His poem is inspired “by the sweet love of the Muses”; it is a labour he delights in—dulcis labor—just as the actual discovery of Nature's secret is a “divine pleasure”. He does not discuss the point directly; but, if he wished to be consistent, he would have argued that poetry is a natural activity prompted by pleasure alone,²⁵ and, as an orthodox Epicurean, he would have added that a poet aims at his own pleasure, even though he may produce it for others, by “sweetening his verse” to make the philosophy more palatable.²⁶ But it is here that our suspicions are aroused. Is Lucretius really consistent? Is it not the philosophy, rather than the pleasure that counts? Lucretius seems to give his case away by clearly implying that he pleases only in order to convert. No doubt, by converting his friend Memmius, he looks for an increase of pleasure in his more intimate and sympathetic society, so that we may allow Lucretius the satisfaction of a successful missionary—a rarefied form of hedonism, which the most rigid Stoic might allow.

From Lucretius we naturally turn to Horace, who, as a professed Epicurean in youth, and a practical hedonist to the end of his life, might have been expected to support the theory of poetic Pleasure in its most undiluted form. Yet even he could not accept it without reserve, and—strange as it may seem—the hindrance lay in Epicureanism itself. That school—as I have argued elsewhere²⁷—made a special study of anthropology; and Horace, following the lead of Lucretius (who had traced the rise of civilization from a savage state) applied the anthropological method to a particular case—the development of poetry. Lucretius, in his general sketch, had not dealt with this problem at any length. He had been content to show that poetry, like other arts, was evolved by nature, being (he thought) a species of singing which man imitated from the birds. His main point was to exclude the religious hypothesis—the rustic Muse was purely secular.²⁸ Horace, writing at a time when he had become a free-lance in philosophy, adopted the method of Lucretius, but disagreed with this conclusion. He saw, quite rightly, that religion could not be excluded from the early evolution of poetry, whose origin he attributed to Orpheus, the first teacher of civilization. Greek comedy—he noted—was bound up with ritual; and the future author of the carmen saeculare knew that the most primitive Roman songs, such as the carmina Saliaria, were religious, and that hymns of intercession or thanks-giving were the very essence of the ancient Italian cults.

It is clear that Horace, in spite of his modest disclaimer, aspired to be the Roman Pindar—a priestly poet.²⁹ Many of his Odes are oracular, enigmatical, and moralizing; and, whereas Lucretius had sharply cut the link between religion and ethics, Horace is determined to bind them anew. Primarily, he is only Musarum sacerdos, but the Muses are daughters of Jupiter, who represents the moral government of man. Homer and Tyrtaeus had “showed the path of life,” and Horace applies the theory of instruction, not merely to the Ars Poetica, which is professedly didactic, but to the Odes where Virtue is often no less conspicuous than Pleasure. He is quite ready, in fact, to accept the Stoic view of poetry as the education of the young;³⁰ but he is not prepared to relegate Pleasure to the background, as the Stoics demanded. Like Cicero, therefore, he hedges: the poetic end may be either Delight or Instruction; or—since the two were not incompatible—the palm is his who has mingled the useful with the pleasant.³¹

This is very far from a recognition of Pleasure as the only poetic end; but it is probably as much as Roman criticism could admit. Quintilian, it is true, seems to go much further—indeed, the whole way—in his uncompromising definition of poetry as “seeking Pleasure alone”—solam petit voluptatem.³² Clearly he regarded Pleasure as the only efficient cause, but it need not therefore be the final cause; and no one who has read Quintilian will credit him with any pandering to l’art pour l’art. A serious teacher—and Quintilian is the most serious of Romans and professors—would not have paid so much attention to poetry, had he held it to be a mere amusement. To Quintilian, poetry is not only the groundwork of early education—as he shows in the First book—but invaluable as a later training for the orator. The famous opening chapter of the Tenth book is a better explanation of his real attitude towards poetry than his loosely-worded and superficial definition. Quintilian, in fact, was a thorough Aristotelian—not, like the Stoic Manilius, despising dulcia carmina, nor claiming that a “poetic theme refuses to be adorned, content to be taught”³³ but very ready to recognize that poetry, however instructive, must also please.

It seems, therefore, that Horace's line

omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile
dulci

is the last word in the criticism of a nation that demanded at least some respect for morality or utility in all spheres of public life. But, though Horace gave the palm to the combination of Delight and Instruction, he had left at least a loop-hole for the theory of Delight as the final cause; and so the problem remained for the critics of the Renascence to handle afresh. Nevertheless, the Horatian stress on utility seems to have stifled the claims of Pleasure—for Horace was the critical dictator to Vida and other early Renascence scholars—until his undisputed authority was shaken by the new interest in Aristotle. Castelvetro, who published a commentary on the Poetic in 1570, boldly declared that the sole function of poetry was delight, and that utility was, at most, accidental.³⁴ This was a counterblast to the orthodox view of the time—championed by Scaliger and Minturno—that the mission of the poet was to “teach delightfully”;³⁵ and, for the next two centuries, the question was still argued—or, more often, the answer was assumed without argument.

This is not the place to follow a controversy which has often been described, and nowhere more fully than in Saintsbury's History of Criticism.³⁶ Readers of that notable book will find that the problem of the poetic function—if not finally settled—has been viewed in a clearer light, since the time when Sidney looked to the poet to win the mind from wickedness “with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner”. The debate lasted for more than two centuries, and most of the literary leaders had their say. We need only glance at Dryden, whose ringing battle-cry—“Delight is the chief if not the only end of Poesie”—was afterwards qualified by the concession that “to instruct delightfully is the general end of all Poetry”.³⁷ His contemporary, Rymer, felt no less insecure; for, though he admitted that “some sorts of poetry please without profiting”, he hankered, like any Timocles, for the profit of tragedy.³⁸ In the eighteenth century, the prevailing opinion may be summed up in Dr. Johnson's view that the poet (Milton) should “teach the most important truths by the most pleasing precepts”—a venerable doctrine which is almost pure Stoicism, with a slight lip-service to Epicurus.³⁹

The real gain of modern criticism has been to insist on the cardinal point that the immediate aim of poetry is not instruction but enjoyment. Here Wordsworth must have due credit; for, although in practice he may sometimes deserve Keats' censure—“we have poetry that has a palpable design upon us”—his theory and his better practice are sound. He wished, it is true, to be regarded as “a teacher or nothing”; but he laid stress on “the necessity of giving immediate pleasure—the moral effect is not to be confused with a moral purpose”.⁴⁰ Coleridge, too, was firm: “A poem is a species of composition opposed to science as having intellectual pleasure for its object or end”.

Since Wordsworth and Coleridge, there have been some (and no doubt will be others) to demand more from poetry than this—notably Shairp, in his Oxford Lectures, where the Stoic position is restated in Christian terms.⁴¹ The view has at least a noble lineage, but those who hold it must eliminate poetry from the list of the arts—a conclusion which modern aesthetics (and common sense) will not tolerate. Poetry is—in this respect—akin to music, and, though we rightly expect music to refine and elevate, we demand, in the first place, that it shall delight—pleasure is not a secondary object, but the law of its being. Modern critics, no doubt, are inclined to beware of the word “pleasure” in this context, preferring the vaguer term “aesthetic satisfaction.” But this satisfaction is allowed to be a pleasurable emotion, so that—if we are not professional psychologists—we may perhaps be content with the intelligible, if somewhat old-fashioned, term of Pleasure, or, better, of Delight.

The whole question has been worn a little threadbare, and phrases like the “moral indifference of art,” recalling heated memories of the later nineteenth century, have now only an historical interest. The whole trouble arose, not from the formula itself, if reasonably interpreted, but from the exaggerations alike of its Parnassian defenders and Philistine opponents. It is an abomination, if it means that art is to offend the wholesome instincts of humanity; it is true—or even a truism—if it means that art should not be bound by any laws except those peculiar to itself. The end of art is to create or reveal beauty. We need not here enter into the question whether beauty is absolute or relative, nor discuss whether it is adequate to hold that beauty is simply successful expression, or significant form. The thing that matters is to recognize that the aesthetic fact gives aesthetic pleasure. It is true, as Croce allows, that pure aesthetic pleasure is not the only satisfaction to be derived from a work of art—there may be concomitant pleasures, as when an artist reflects that his finished work may have ethical value or even bring him money or repute; or, again, when the spectator of a play obtains rest and relaxation after fatiguing work. But these pleasures have strictly nothing to do with the aesthetic satisfaction which results in the artist's own mind, and is communicated to the minds of others, by the work of art.⁴²

The Romans themselves (true to their doctrine of utility) were perhaps more anxious to insist on the pleasure given to others than on that which the artist himself experiences, though, as we have seen, Lucretius held the true Epicurean view of the dulcis labor. Even Wordsworth, who must have felt to the full an artist's satisfaction, seems to have thought it morally proper to emphasize the giving of immediate pleasure. There was by no means a self-evident truism in Matthew Arnold's “caution”:

What poets feel not, when they make,
                    A pleasure in creating,
The world, in its turn, will not
take
                    Pleasure in contemplating.(43)

At the present day the caution would seem needless, or rather meaningless. A work of art must give aesthetic pleasure to its creator, by the mere fact of expression; and surely no expression can be perfect unless it is communicable to others.⁴⁴

Such a claim is not to demand that Art should either pander to vitiated tastes, or should run counter to the deepest sentiments of humanity. The poet, like any other artist, claims freedom, but not licence to offend. He may choose any subject; only—as one of the least puritanical of poets has said—the subject must be handled aright.⁴⁵ We may go further, and hold with Pater that, while good art may result from any subject, the greatest art requires a great subject, and that literature, at its highest and best, depends ultimately not so much on its form as on its matter.⁴⁶ If this is so, we may agree with a living poet that, as pure Ethics is man's highest beauty, it has even the first right to artistic recognition.⁴⁷ The argument—as Mr. Bridges goes on to say—can only be evaded by the theory that Art is nothing but competent expression, in which case the ugly can be expressed as competently as the beautiful. But even expressionists, while contending that art is distinct from morality, allow that art should not needlessly offend. In the words of their leader, the artist is under the dominion of morals, and must regard his art as a mission.⁴⁸

The Romans, in defining utility as the function of poetry, were no doubt misled by psychological ignorance; none the less, the definition has a pragmatic value—it is itself “useful”. From time to time the world needs the warning that poetry cannot be divorced from social life, and that it is not the preserve of a few writers or readers. At no time, perhaps, has the warning been so necessary as in modern days, when the poet is apt to be detached from the full life of the community, wrapping himself, not indeed in his own virtue, but in the contemplation of his own mental processes. This introspective self-communing may be a transitory phase; but it is not without reason that a brilliant writer and teacher of English reminds us that “we cannot separate art, and specially the literary art, from life—from daily life—even from this passing hour—and get the best out of either”.⁴⁹ Poetry is something much more than a criticism of life; but Arnold's definition is so far true that if poetry ceases to “criticize”—that is, to reflect the poet's judgment on human affairs, it must itself cease to be vital. The great Roman poets never lost this power of criticizing life, even when their subject was most remote from the ordinary course of a workaday world. Lucretius, in spite of his nominal individualism, and his concentration on the vastness and sublimity of the Universe, never long forgets to interpret it in terms of human society. Indeed, the danger to the Roman poets was not that they should fail in this humanism, but that they should become mere critics of life, and so miss its poetry. The poet sinks to the satirist. From its beginnings in the second century b.c. to its end in the second century a.d., satire was the most characteristic genre in which Roman Society was reviewed, and the famous remark—satira quidem tota nostra est—has even more truth than Quintilian conceived. That critic thought only of formal satire from Lucilius to Persius, and rightly saw that—in spite of analogies, more or less close, in Archilochus or the Old Comedy—Roman satire was essentially of native origin. But Quintilian, if he had been less a formalist, might have gone further, and have pointed out how deeply other forms of Latin verse are infused with the satiric spirit. Lucretius paints his wonderful pictures of the bored aristocrat rushing from town to country, from country to town, in the equivalent of a motor car, or of the mistress concealing “the life behind the scenes” from her lover, in colours which Juvenal could hardly match.⁵⁰ Even Virgil, whose gentler soul is more rarely touched by the vanity of Roman life, is moved to indignation by the luxury and avarice and ambition of his day, turning with relief from the Forum to the country fields.⁵¹ Ovid's Art of Love is not less a satire because it is unintentional, since the real object of his criticism is—or should be—the poet himself. Later, when the springs of poetry were almost dry, Claudian found inspiration from Juvenal, rather than from Virgil, and lashed his enemy Eutropius with a vigour which he seldom showed in praise of his patrons.

The satirist, like the “legitimate” poet, was a teacher. His teaching might be largely negative—how not to live—but Horace had learnt from his excellent father that exempla vitiorum are at least as instructive as exempla virtutis. And so the satire fell into line with other and higher forms; for, though Horace, as a satirist, modestly disclaims poetic rank, he would perhaps have been a little hurt to be taken at his word. There may have been some Romans who denied Lucilius the title of poet, just as there are some English who refuse it to Pope; but neither the critics, such as Quintilian or Macrobius, nor the plain men who knew that satire was the characteristic note of Roman expression would have agreed with the heresy.⁵² Satire was always spoken of as carmen or poema;⁵³ and perhaps its highest claim to the rank was not the metrical form (which, we shall see, was discounted by Horace) but the didactic function, by which the satirist became the censor of morals and the poetic voice of public opinion.

METRE

There remains the question of metre. Is it essential to poetry, or merely an additional ornament? The answer depends, of course, on whether, in defining poetry, we lay more stress on the spirit or the form. Aristole took account of both, though his ultimate criterion of poetry is concerned with the spirit—the poet must imitate Universal life. The definition excludes Empedocles, whom Aristotle must have regarded as purely didactic; “he is more of a physicist than a poet.” It also excludes historical poetry; for “the work of Herodotus, if versified, would still remain a species of (prose) history”.⁵⁴

The first and most famous of all attempts to define poetry must be treated with respect: Aristotle proved, once for all, that the poet is not the historian of Fact but its interpreter in terms of the Ideal. He has been criticized for insisting on the Universal—poetry, it is often said, is really concerned with the Particular; it is the expression of the poet's unique intuition. Yes; but the poet's intuition is of no value unless and until he can express the general application of his own individual feeling. We should not respond to his own emotions on love or life or death if they failed to strike a universal chord of sympathy. Where Aristotle falls short is rather in underrating the force of emotion itself. The “Master of those who know” paid too little attention to those who feel, despite his recognition of Pity and Terror. He neglected the basic truth that any subject—history included—can be touched with the poetic imagination. His own followers here refused to follow him. Dionysius, commenting on Herodotus and Thucydides, is explicit: “I would not hesitate to call their works poetry”.⁵⁵ …

It is plain therefore, that, in theory, at all events, the Greeks were free from what Shelley called the “vulgar error” of opposing poetry and prose. Many, before and after Shelley, have protested against the error, and we need only recall Sidney's warning that verse is only “an ornament and no cause to Poetry; sith there have been many and most excellent poets, that never versified, and now swarme many versifiers that neede never answere to the name of Poets.”⁵⁶ But, for our present purpose, the interesting point is that neither Aristotle nor his Greek successors define poetry in terms of form—the antithesis between poetry and prose is recognized as unsound. Dionysius, after shewing that prose can resemble verse, by the presence of a marked rhythm, proceeds to the complementary statement that certain types of verse may be read as prose, if the natural division of the sense is followed rather than the metrical break. His illustration is the Danae of Simonides—certainly one of the most “poetic” odes in Greek or any other language.⁵⁷ All the critics, in fact, were searching for “elevation” …, which is, at least mainly, the vehicle of emotion, and they found it equally in Homer and Demosthenes; and so, although Dionysius would not have classed Demosthenes as a technical poet, he boldly affirms that the orator's speeches are “like” poetry.

But “likeness” is not identity; and the line which the Greeks drew was real, though not always distinct. A man might be a poet, whether he wrote in verse or rhythmical prose; but he could not be a singer …, unless he was metrical. Aristotle was convinced that the instinct for melody and rhythm was a “cause” of poetry; and as he saw that metre is an organized species of rhythm, he must have held metrical composition to be the effect of natural poetic impulse.⁵⁸ To the Greeks, as to some modern critics, poetry is melic⁵⁹—a definition the more easy for the Greeks to formulate, since their own poetry was so largely sung, or at least recited to a musical accompaniment. As a vehicle for song, poetry admitted a certain distinction of language, and it differed from rhythmical prose in being accurately metrical, even if the metre, unless analyzed, could not readily be distinguished from prose. The two arts were cognate, but not to be confused; it is certain that Aristotle would have held a “prose poem” to be a contradiction in terms.⁶⁰ His successors, as we have just seen, were less sure of the distinction, mainly, perhaps, on the formal ground that no clear line could be drawn between rhythm and metre. That poetry must be expressed in language rhythmical, if not metrical, the Greeks of course never doubted. They knew by instinct (what modern physics has confirmed) that the order of the Universe is a harmony, that the music of the spheres is no empty metaphor, that the sun is kept on his course by an appointed rhythm; they knew, too, that Life is not less rhythmical than the forces of Nature; that birds sing “because they must,” and that man when stirred by emotion, is impelled to express it in the measured dance or the measured language of song. A race accustomed to associate dance and song, whether in the village chorus or the city Dionysia, would have welcomed a modern view, that poetry is something more than akin to dancing—it may be even derived from that vital emotion, which is first expressed in the simple dance, and is then heightened by language in harmony with the rhythm.⁶¹ And, if emotion may often be adequately expressed by rhythm, it finds its fullest satisfaction in metre, which is at once the outlet and the curb for the utterance of human passions.

The Greek poets, with their strict attention to form, would have resented any attempt to regard metre as a mere ornament, to be retained or discarded at will. Aristotle would not have agreed with Wordsworth that “metre is but adventitious to composition”⁶² (though “early superadded”); and if he might have accepted Coleridge's definition that poetry is the best words in the best order, he would have been careful to explain that the best, and only, poetical order is not merely logical but metrical. It was perhaps unfortunate for Greek critics that they were entirely ignorant (at all events before Longinus) of Hebrew poetry. The Psalms or the Book of Job would have shown them a form of ancient poetry based on accentual rhythm instead of syllabic metre; and neither Aristotle nor Dionysius would have regarded the rhythmical English version as other than “poetic”. But they would hardly have allowed this version, or the original, to be technically a poem. To them, spirit and form were inseparable; and “free verse” would lack the form which is necessary for full poetic expression. Perhaps this opinion would have been modified, if they could have compared the English metrical version of the Psalms with their rhythmic original.

The danger of viewing metre as an essential is that it may easily come to be regarded as the essential. No sane man, of course, would hold metrical composition to be per se poetical; but, as soon as attention is fastened on the technique, the spiritual content may fall into the background. Poetry, after all, is an emotional state; it is certainly not completely realized without adequate expression, and some form of rhythm is no doubt proper, or even necessary, to communicate it. But poetry is not rhythm in itself. We must not confuse the emotional activity with the means of expression. The besetting sin of the Classical theory lay in this confusion. From the earliest times there was a tendency to identify verse with poetry. No doubt this is often due to mere looseness of language. When Plato speaks of writing “in metre as a poet, or without metre, as a layman,” or when Aristotle says that, if a sentence has metre, it will be poetry,⁶³ we can pardon a momentary lapse, remembering that both Plato and Aristotle were of all men the most careful to hold by the spirit. But, for the Romans, the danger was very real. With far less than Greek imagination, they possessed at least an equal sense of verbal music, and they favoured, very naturally, the aspect of poetry that best suited their genius. A single instance may illustrate. Cicero (followed by Quintilian) makes the interesting observation that (oratorical) prose is more difficult than verse, as metre is fixed and ready-made, whereas prose must show variety in its structure.⁶⁴ From one point of view, the remark is perfectly just, for other languages than Latin,⁶⁵ and it might well give pause to the opponents of Verse Composition as a training in schools. If verse is a pattern, we must agree with R. L. Stevenson that “it is much easier for men of equal facility to write fairly pleasing verse than reasonably interesting prose; for in prose the pattern itself has to be invented and the difficulties first created before they can be solved.”⁶⁶ Cicero himself no doubt spoke from experience—he must certainly have found it easier to write his own respectable verse than to perfect his elaborate prose. Quintilian, however, has less excuse for following Cicero, since Virgil had come between the two writers, to change the whole character of the hexameter, by substituting subtle elisions and skilful variations of pauses for the simple and monotonous regularity of the Ciceronian verse. In Virgil's hands, the old verse-unit (with the sense largely coinciding with the line) had been superseded by the verse-period, the structure of which required at least as much skill as the prose-period of Cicero.

But the point is, that whether we agree with Cicero and Quintilian, or not, their outlook on poetry is wrong. The handling of metre by any poet is a very interesting and important branch of the study of that poet; but to approach poetry in general by way of metre—as if the two were synonyms—is ridiculous. The Romans, it need scarcely be said, were better critics than might be expected from this starting point; but the fact remains that much of their criticism was vitiated by their reverence for the Form. After this practical—if not theoretical—insistence on metre, in all Greek authorities, it is not surprising that the Roman line of cleavage was strictly drawn. To Horace—puzzled by Pindar's difficult metres—that poet seemed clearly to be lege solutus, rhythmical rather than metrical; and Quintilian, as we have noticed, allowed in theory for free verse; but the Romans, with their strict adherence to Form, could have had little sympathy with critics who over-stepped the proper boundaries of verse and prose. Horace knew, of course, that verse need not be poetry—

                                                            neque enim concludere
versum
dixeris esse satis;

but the converse—that poetry might be independent of metre—was unthinkable. For him, much more than for Aristotle, a prose-poem would have been a confusion of genres, a monster which—like the human face on a horse's neck, or the fair woman ending in a fish—would have moved him to cry with scorn:

risum teneatis, amici?

GENIUS AND ART

If later Greek and Roman critics had no doubt as to the nature of poetry, there was room for discussion on a cognate problem: Is poetry the product of genius or art? The question may now seem unprofitable, when we are all agreed that a poet is both born and made—as Tennyson once remarked, poeta nascitur et fit—but the history of the debate has an interest in throwing light on classical thought. In the traditional Greek view, from Hesiod to Plato, the poet was regarded as the mouthpiece of the Muses, a prophet inspired or “mad.” Pindar, with his strong aristocratic bent, decided that Nature was superior to art or training, though his own poetry might well have demanded an equality of partnership. A serious discussion of the problem began at the end of the fifth century, when sophists maintained that anything—including Virtue—could be taught, and if Virtue, why not Poetry? Not the least of Plato's services to mankind was his protest against this position. He had his own reasons for banishing the poets, but he had not read Homer and Aeschylus to no purpose. Genius could call to Genius even if their ways lay apart.⁶⁷

Democritus, his bitter opponent, agreed with Plato at least in this respect; and even Aristotle, the champion of Reason, admitted that poetry was a thing inspired, “a happy gift of nature or of madness.”⁶⁸

But a nation of artists was not likely to undervalue the counter-claim of art. If a poet were mad, there must be a method in his madness. Aristotle, in spite of his passing tribute to tradition, is only concerned with the sane. His aim in the Poetic is to show that poetry is an art as much as rhetoric or sculpture—a conclusion not only founded on experience and common sense, but the natural outcome of even Platonic speculation; for Plato had laid equal stress on breeding and training, which act and re-act on one another; and Aristotle only applied Plato's general conclusions to the special province of poetry.⁶⁹ In the same generation, the last word was said by the poet Simylus: “Neither nature without art, nor art without nature suffices for anyone for any accomplishment.”⁷⁰

Henceforward, it was no longer possible to exclude either partner from a share in Helicon; but it does not follow that the two should be admitted on equal terms. On the one hand, there have always been those who, like Boileau and Pope, incline the scales in favour of Art; and, on the other hand, there will always be a reaction towards “native wood-notes wild,” and the “unpremeditated song.” It is to the credit of the later Greek critics, that they held the scales so evenly. Dionysius thought Homer to be not only the most inspired, but the most aristic of poets—a criticism infinitely more sound than the one-sided view of a past generation who forgot the real art of the Epic in their enthusiasm for its genius.⁷¹

But, as not every poet is a Homer, the terms Genius and Art tended to become mutually exclusive instead of complementary. Roman criticism is full of the antithesis,⁷² and we may here find a clue to Cicero's puzzling estimate of the de Rerum Natura: Lucretii poemata ut scribis ita sunt, multis luminibus ingenii, multae tamen artis.⁷³ It was once the fashion to insert non, either before multis or multae, thus making Cicero deny Lucretius either genius or art. But it is now recognized that the text is sound, and the only difficulty lies in the force of the tamen. Cicero can hardly refer to the poet's insanity—it is at least doubtful whether Lucretius was ever insane—by allowing that Lucretius showed art, as well as genius, in spite of his affliction, as has been curiously suggested.⁷⁴ The alternative is to explain the tamen as marking the orator's surprise at the presence of two qualities which—at least in Roman poetry—seemed almost incompatible. Nor is the view confined to the Roman: as a modern critic remarks, “Nature has always been loath, except in cases of her very choicest favourites, to combine true artistic instincts with great poetic energy.”⁷⁵

Cicero's own taste in poetry led him to prefer the old school of Ennius

ingenio maximus, arte rudis

to the neoterics—the graecissantes, whose chief aim was to replace the uncouthness of early Latin verse by the artifices of Alexandria. In that school, Catullus alone shews (to our judgment) equal genius and art: for while no one can dispute his ingenium, his mastery of Greek metres—sometimes, as in the Attis, rare and difficult—has placed him foremost among pre-Augustan poets. In Roman judgment Catullus, above all others, was doctus—an epithet which (whatever its precise connotation) was certainly the hall-mark of an artist rather than of a native genius.⁷⁶ Here, indeed, the Romans were perhaps better judges than those modern admirers of the poet, who are too apt to extol the fire and passion of Catullus at the expense of the very strict technique that kept this emotion under control.

But, artist though he was, Catullus had by no means explored all the secrets of art, as defined by Augustan canons. His hexameters are monotonous, and it was left to Virgil to invent a more flexible and musical rhythm; his elegiac metre, rough, and often a little uncouth, was completely remodelled by his successors; and his rare experiments in Horatian metres are equally deficient in the polish of the Augustan lyrist. No side of his art, indeed, could have fully satisfied the taste of the next generation, and it is this fact, I think, that may throw light on the question of his repute in the age of Virgil and Horace. Were the Augustans, as a whole, unfriendly to the aims and art of the neoterics? Only a few years ago, it was assumed that Catullus was out of favour with his immediate successors. This view—championed by Lucian Müller, Robinson Ellis, and others—was an undisputed article of belief until it was attacked by Riese, as a phantom unworthy to appear in any future discussion of Latin poetry. But the phantom was not laid at rest, and more recently, Riese's position has been reaffirmed, with fresh argument, by E. K. Rand, in an able and scholarly article.⁷⁷

Mr. Rand argues, with much force, that, though the poetic tendencies of the Augustans differed widely from those of their precursors, yet the younger poets looked for inspiration from both Lucretius and Catullus: Virgil aimed at generous rivalry, not depreciation, and himself passed through a Catullan and a Lucretian period, the former in his youthful works,⁷⁸ the latter in the Georgics. In fact it seems clear from many parallels in the Aeneid, that he remained a constant student of Catullus, as well as of Lucretius, to the very end. Of the elegiac writers, Propertius and Ovid mention Catullus in terms of admiration.⁷⁹ Tibullus alone is silent; but an argument ex silentio cannot be pressed. There remains Horace, in a single allusion to his predecessor:

nil praeter Calvum et doctus cantare
Catullum.(80)

The line is obviously a sneer; but, as Mr. Rand points out, it is not necessarily a sneer at Catullus. It is possible to condemn the ape of a great master without condemning the master himself. Horace may have disliked neoteric poetry; but this line is no proof. To this we may add that the reasons commonly given for his alleged contempt of Catullus are not conclusive. Was he jealous of a rival in his own sphere? If he could have anticipated modern judgment, he might have had cause for jealousy—or humility; but, in his own day, Horace had no rival, for the simple reason that Catullus was not regarded as a lyric poet at all.⁸¹ Horace could fairly claim that he was primus in Latin lyric, for Catullus had anticipated him only by a couple of Sapphic odes. Again, it has sometimes been suggested that Horace may have been ill-disposed to Catullus on political grounds as an anti-Caesarian. But why should a poet, who had himself fought against Caesarians at Philippi, blame one whom Ovid and Propertius praised? After all, Catullus had only lampooned Caesar; and Horace finds admiration for Cato, who fought against the dictator's heir.

If these arguments have weight, there would be a good case for expelling the phantom. It would appear that the so-called unpopularity of Catullus rests on a single passage of disputed application; and further, that even if Horace sneered, his censure is more than balanced by the approval of his contemporaries. Nevertheless I cannot think that this is the last word. If Catullus was really popular with the Augustans, how came it that they gave up all Catullan characteristics in their own work? Maecenas, perhaps, may be said to have lingered as a belated neoteric; but one does not judge Augustan poetry by Maecenas. No fact is more obvious than that the poets of the Empire formed a school entirely opposed to their immediate predecessors. It is true that there was no violent break—as we have just seen, Virgil wrote like Catullus, until he found himself, while Propertius always remained an Alexandrine, and—to that extent—a neoteric. But more and more, as Octavian became Augustus, the circle of his poets passed from Alexandria, not so much to earlier Greece as to Rome. For the preference of earlier and purer models, which is often said to mark the age of Augustus, may easily be exaggerated—Virgil “borrowed” from Apollonius at least as much as he borrowed from Homer. His real poetic discovery was Rome. There was thus a complete change affecting both the style and the subject of poetry; and such changes are not found to occur without some corresponding readjustment of old values. When Victorian poetry passed into Georgian, the older gods, if not dethroned, at least became mortal. These fashions, no doubt, are fleeting; and just as there are signs that Tennyson—after a few years of unpopularity—is now being more fairly appraised, so Lucretius and Catullus were restored to favour, after the great Augustan impetus was spent. But under the first Emperor, at all events, the new imperial movement must have carried all before it, brushing aside the neoterics, who themselves had swept away, for a time, the old veneration for Ennius and Lucilius: Ovid might have said for the poet, as for the priest,

et perit exemplo postmodo quisque suo.

Of course taste had to reckon with tradition—the chief factor in Roman poetry as in Roman life. Virgil “imitated” Catullus and Lucretius, just as they (or at least Lucretius) had imitated Ennius. So far we may agree with those who deny that Catullus was ever out of fashion. But Horace and probably the rest of his fellows had good cause, according to their lights, for criticism. It was precisely those features of Catullus which the moderns most admire—his self-revelation, his burning passion, his complete absorption in love or hatred—that are most foreign to the severe Classicism of which Horace is the prophet. Good taste, orderly arrangement, conformity to the type, an unsparing use of the file—all these are the virtues of Augustan poetic theory, and Catullus had, or seemed to have, a slender part in them. Above all, the ideal poet must be sane, for he is a teacher of Reason, and Catullus had only the unreason of an over-powering love. The spirited horse of the Ion and Phaedrus and Symposium must be restrained by sharing the harness with a more disciplined and sober yoke-fellow.

Such is the creed of the Ars Poetica and its companion, the Letter to Augustus; and it marks the final triumph of the new school. Henceforward no poetry could pass muster if it neglected the Rules, which are summed up in the word Form or Art.

The Rules, in themselves, were no new thing. Aristotle had already sanctioned the doctrine of the literary Form, which is itself derived from the Platonic Idea. All that Aristotle did was to substitute the Species for the Platonic Form, as a constant and immutable subdivision of his reality, the Universal. As each species in the vegetable and animal world is fixed, eternal, and sharply differentiated, so each literary Form is rigid and ultimate: epic and lyric, tragedy and elegiac, cannot be blended or contaminated; and—since Aristotle knew no specific evolution—a new literary form cannot strictly be invented, though the Romans, in claiming Satire as their own, may have here forgotten to be logical.⁸²

In Horace—both as critic and writer—we find the full flower of this Classicism. Genius—a “diviner mind”—is essential, and is a sworn ally of Art.⁸³ After Simylus, he could say no less; but he certainly seems to regard Art as the predominant partner. And, although he sometimes assumes a dithyrambic vein in his Odes, and claims to be “full of Bacchus,” his definition of genius would probably have been satisfied by an infinite capacity for taking pains. A toiling bee rather than a Pindaric swan, he knew and confessed that his songs were laborious;⁸⁴ and his “careful felicity” sums up his reputation in ancient Rome. At the present time there are many who admit the carefulness but deny the felicity. His appeal to the moderns has waned since the days when to quote him was the sign of a gentleman. His sentiments are reckoned as commonplace, his attitude towards life, as mere hedonism; and, above all, the critics who look for personal expression find Horace—in spite of some frank revelations—too “objective” for a lyric poet. Yet here again, we must remind ourselves that a change of taste is rarely final; the poet who pleased Ronsard and Herrick, Milton and Pope, Prior and R. L. Stevenson—to mention no other names—is not lightly to be despised. If these poets had all belonged to the eighteenth century, their testimony might perhaps be suspected; but they represent the judgment of four centuries, and the six were themselves so diverse, that their most binding link might perhaps be called a love of Horace. And the latest of the six, at least, cannot be accused of showing any great favour to classical poetry simply because it is classical. Horace has therefore certainly appealed to his fellows, but this is not his strongest claim. As Mr. Mackail observes, he is not (exclusively) a poet's poet;⁸⁵ his popularity, in the past, has rather been with the average man of education.

Horace's present reputation is a matter of some concern, precisely because he is not only the chief critic, but the chief writer of his native poetry in its most characteristic form. Catullus, Lucretius, and Virgil are more than typical classicists—they are too great. But Horace stands or falls by virtue of classicism, pure and unadulterated. If it is allowed that his thought rarely rises beyond the level of commonplace, it is fair to add that much of his thought has become commonplace merely by reason of its perfect expression in Horace himself. The cry pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint is human, as every scholar knows; but the complaint that Shakespeare wrote little except hackneyed quotations is not helpful to criticism. There are, of course, other charges against Horace, and it may be partly to the credit of the present age that he is a little out of fashion. Life is taken so seriously to-day that, if there is a modern Epicureanism, it is the Lucretian rather than the Horatian sort that is rightly admired, if not always followed. Poetry too, is taken very seriously, and—though the Parnassian theory of Beauty for Beauty's sake is happily not dead—a generation, that is intensely introspective, is not satisfied with the mere singer of love and wine, unless both these stimulants are more fiery than Horace, with his studied mediocritas, was wont to countenance.⁸⁶ Even when the poet passes from the love and wine to the higher theme of patriotism he may fail to move the modern reader, who is apt to regard Songs of Empire as thinly disguised propaganda. At a time when Imperialism is being tempered, if not wholly changed, by new political ideals, the Horatian model of government may seem less commendable to us than it possibly seemed to the first readers of Barrack Room Ballads. Although the Roman Empire (like the British) is one of the greatest facts in human history, the fact—it may be argued—is a matter for the historian or the politician alone.

There is perhaps a still more deeply rooted objection, not so much based on any special characteristic of Horace as on his whole attitude to life and art. He has been called the most perfect example of that spirit of “acceptance” which may be contrasted with the spirit of wonder or even of revolt. To define acceptance as a mark common to all classical poetry would be absurd—it is certainly no mark of Lucretius or Catullus, but it is true for Horace, who, if not satisfied with the best of all possible worlds, seems at least to have believed that Rome was the best of all possible States.

To many minds—and not least in the twentieth century—there is more satisfaction to be drawn from the poetry of revolt, from the divine discontent of a Shelley, the indignant protest of a Burns. Horace was no doubt justified in hailing Rome as saved through Augustus; but the modern world has certainly no faith in Kaisers, and does not feel so sure of its own salvation—although, after a violent upheaval, it cannot but recognize that this salvation must depend on that order and discipline which Horace found in the political life of imperial Rome, and which he reflected in his own poetry.

Whatever drawbacks may explain Horace's temporary eclipse, they cannot for long affect the reputation of a poet whose “place” is really beyond the danger of fluctuating fashion. Horace is a perfect artist, and artistic perfection is not so common that it can be permanently neglected. His art, it is true, is that of a gem rather than of a statue; but art is not measured by bulk.⁸⁷ His poetry, if not “passionate,” is at least “simple and sensuous”—poetry which must be written once in the history of man, and which cannot be written again, because Horace has written it once for all.

Notes

1. In Tac. Dial. 9 the poet's utility is minimized, in contrast with that of the orator; but this is in a debating speech.

2. On this collegium see E. G. Sihler in A.J.P. 26 (1905), p. 1 f. It may be doubted whether Virgil or the other great poets belonged to the College, and Horace speaks disrespectfully of its president Tarpa; but its activities survived at least to the time of Martial (3, 30, 8; 4, 61, 3).

3. Tac. Dial. 13. Virgil's father must have been a landowner of some position (see Frank, Vergil, p. 8 f.), but he was “provincial.”

4. Ep. 2. 1, 126 f.

5. Cf. Plut. vit. Dem. 3; Longinus 2, 5; see Roberts on Dion. Letters, p. 36.

6. See Nettleship, Journal of Philology, xviii. p. 251 f.

7. Reflections upon a Late Rhapsody, 1711.

8. de orat. 1, 70; 3, 27; Orator 67.

9. Poet. 1454b, 10; 1460b, 8 f.

10. G. Murray, Essays and Addresses, p. 107 f.

11. Philostr., vit. Apoll. 6, 19. See Saintsbury, Hist. of Crit., 1, p. 118 f.

12. Laws, 668b. Cf. Politicus, 306c. See W. C. Greene, Plato's View of Poetry (Harvard Studies in Class. Phil. xix. (1918), p. 72.

13. See p. 158.

14. Strabo 1, 2, 3; Plut. de audiendis poetis.

15. Butcher, Arist. Poet. p. 198. See Bywater on Poet. 1460b, 14.

16. Eratosth. in Strab. 1, 15, 3. …

17. Cic. Orator 69, where see other reff. in Sandys' Ed.

18. Plat. Phædr. 271d. See G. L. Hendrickson in A.J.P. xxvi. (1905), p. 249 f.

19. Saintsbury, Hist. of Crit. 2, p. 9 f. …

20. Cic. Tusc. 4, 2, 3; de orat. 3, 51, 197; Brutus 75; see also Varro ap. Non. 77; Val. Max. 2, 1; 10.

21. Quint. 10, 1, 31; cf. Lucian de hist. conscr. 45.

22. See p. 203, on Lucan's conception of a historical poem.

23. This aspect is prominent in Horace; cf. Od. 4, 8; Ep. 2, 1, 248.

24. Cic. Arch. 7.

25. See 5, 1377-1402.

26. 1, 924 f.; 2, 730; 3, 28, 419.

27. Anthropology of the Greeks.

28. Hor. Ep. 2, 1, 16; Livy, 27, 27, and 31, 12.

29. See Jebb, Growth and Influence of Class. Greek Poetry, p. 144 f.

30. A.P. 391 f.; Ep. 2, 1, 126.

31. A.P. 333 f.

32. 10, 1, 29.

33. Manil. 3, 38 f.

34. See J. E. Spingarn, Hist. of Lit. Crit. (1899), p. 55; Saintsbury, op. cit. ii. p. 89, and H. B. Charlton, Castelvetro's Theory of Poetry (1913), p. 60 f.

35. Scaliger's Poetices libri septem was published in 1561, Minturno's L’Arte Poetica in 1564.

36. See also R. P. Cowl, Theory of Poetry in England, p. 303.

37. Defence of an Essay of Dramatick Poesy (1668), and Pref. to Troilus and Cressida (1679).

38. T. Rymer, Tragedies of the Last Age (1678).

39. So, e.g. Dennis, Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704), ch. 3. “Poetry, unless it is transporting, is abominable,” but its end is “to reform the manners”.

40. Of Peter Bell (Grosart, 2, p. 183), Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns, and Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

41. Aspects of Poetry, ch. 1.

42. Croce, Aesthetic (E.T.), by D. Ainslie, p. 131 f.

43. Compare Eur. Suppl. 182 f., who anticipated Arnold.

44. Expressionists deny the need of communicating their expression—an artist can “liberate his soul” without an audience. On the other side it is argued that “an artist fails in so far as he keeps his matter to himself”—there can be no art without external expression, i.e. publication. See L. Abercrombie, An Essay Towards a Theory of Art (1922), p. 49.

45. A. C. Swinburne, Studies in Prose and Poetry, p. 138.

46. W. Pater, Appreciations, p. 38.

47. R. Bridges, The Necessity of Poetry (1918).

48. See Croce, Breviario, 23-26.

49. Sir A. Quiller-Couch, Studies in Literature (2nd Series), p. 142.

50. Lucr. 3, 1060 f.; 4, 1186.

51. Georg. 2, 458-512.

52. Cf. Quint. 16, 1, 93; Macrob. Sat. 3, 16, 17.

53. E.g. by Horace himself, Serm. 1, 10, 64; 2, 1, 62.

54. Poet. 1447b, 18.

55. Dion. Ep. ad Pomp. 3; cf. Demetrius, On Style (of Ctesias), Marcell. vit. Thuc. 41. See Quintilian's remark on history, p. 39. In general cf. Norden, Kunstprosa, p. 91.

56. An Apologie for Poetry (Arber, p. 28).

57. Dionys. de verb. comp. 26.

58. Poet. 1448b, 21.

59. Dionys. de verb. comp. II; Longinus I, p. 305.

60. So Bywater on Arist. Poet. 1447a, 28. For passages dealing with the distinction cf. Isocrat. περ[b.iota ] αντιδ. 46 f., Arist. Rhet. 3, 3; and see Norden, Kunstprosa, p. 52 f.

61. See Newbolt, New Study of English Poetry, p. 26 f.

62. Lectures (1818). See generally Wordsworth, Of Poetic Diction and Pref. to Lyrical Ballads; Coleridge, Biogr. Lit.

63. Plat. Phœdr. 258d; Gorg. 502c; Laws 810b; Arist. Rhet. 3, 8.

64. Orator 58; Quint. 9, 4, 60 f.

65. Leopardi held this view for Italian.

66. Essays in the Art of Writing, p. 9 f.

67. Plato's attitude towards poetry is discussed on p. 155.

68. Democr. ap. Dio. Chrys. 53; cf. Cic. de div. 1, 38, 80; Arist. Rhet. 3, 7; Poet. 17, 2.

69. Rep. 424a; Laws 766a.

70. Stobaeus (Meineke i, p. 352), cf, Long. 36, 4.

71. See Roberts on Dionys. de verb. comp. p. ix.

72. Cic. de orat. 1, 25, 72, and 113; Ovid, Amor. 1, 15, 14; Trist. 2, 424; Quint. 1 proem. 26; 1, 7, 8.

73. ad Q.F. 2, 9, 3.

74. H. W. Litchfield in Harvard Studies in Class. Phil. xxiv. (1913), p. 147 f. The explanation which I follow is now generally accepted; see Norden, Kunstprosa, p. 182 n. 1; Plessis Poés. lat. p. 123; Merrill, Lucr. p. 18.

75. T. Watts-Dunton, Poetry and the Renascence of Wonder, p. 4. We may remember that Shakespeare was denied l’art by the French in general from Voltaire to Chateaubriand.

76. On doctus see p. 86.

77. Harvard Studies in Class. Phil. xvii. (1906), p. 15 f.

78. The Ciris, which is almost certainly Virgilian, betrays the influence of Catullus, in tone, in verse-structure, and in the use of diminutives.

79. Prop. 3, 34, 87; Ovid Am. 3, 15, 7; 3, 9, 62.

80. Sat. 1, 10, 9.

81. See p. 9.

82. See generally R. K. Hack, The Doctrine of Literary Forms in Harvard Studies in Class. Lit. xxvii. (1916).

83. Sat. 1, 4, 43; A.P. 408 f.

84. Od. 4, 2, 31.

85. Latin Lit. p. 113.

86. Od. 3, 14, 21-28 is instructive.

87. It was a sound instinct that led C. W. King to illustrate Horace by reproductions of gems.