It was all your philosophy in that last sad resort to which we are pushed so often—
“With close-lipped Patience for our only friend, Sad Patience, too near neighbour of Despair.”
The Epicurean is at one with the Stoic at last, and Horace with Marcus Aurelius. “To go away from among men, if there are Gods, is not a thing to be afraid of; but if indeed they do not exist, or if they have no concern about human affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe devoid of gods or devoid of providence?”
An excellent philosophy, but easier to those for whom no Hope had dawned or seemed to set. Yes! it is harder than common, Horace, for us to think of _you_, still glad somewhere, among rivers like Liris and plains and vine-clad hills, that
It is hard, for you looked for no such thing.
_Omnes una manet nox_ _Et calcanda semel via leti_.
You could not tell Mæcenas that you would meet him again; you could only promise to tread the dark path with him.
_Ibimus_, _ibimus_, _Utcunque præcedes_, _supremum_ _Carpere iter comites parati_.
Enough, Horace, of these mortuary musings. You loved the lesson of the roses, and now and again would speak somewhat like a death’s head over your temperate cups of Sabine _ordinaire_. Your melancholy moral was but meant to heighten the joy of your pleasant life, when wearied Italy, after all her wars and civic bloodshed, had won a peaceful haven. The harbour might be treacherous; the prince might turn to the tyrant; far away on the wide Roman marches might be heard, as it were, the endless, ceaseless monotone of beating horses’ hoofs and marching feet of men. They were coming, they were nearing, like footsteps heard on wool; there was a sound of multitudes and millions of barbarians, all the North, _officina gentium_, mustering and marshalling her peoples. But their coming was not to be to-day, nor to-morrow, nor to-day was the budding Empire to blossom into the blood-red flower of Nero. In the lull between the two tempests of Republic and Empire your odes sound “like linnets in the pauses of the wind.”
What joy there is in these songs! what delight of life, what an exquisite Hellenic grace of art, what a manly nature to endure, what tenderness and constancy of friendship, what a sense of all that is fair in the glittering stream, the music of the waterfall, the hum of bees, the silvery grey of the olive woods on the hillside! How human are all your verses, Horace! what a pleasure is yours in the straining poplars, swaying in the wind! what gladness you gain from the white crest of Soracte, beheld through the fluttering snowflakes while the logs are being piled higher on the hearth. You sing of women and wine—not all wholehearted in your praise of them, perhaps, for passion frightens you, and ’tis pleasure more than love that you commend to the young. Lydia and Glycera, and the others, are but passing guests of a heart at ease in itself, and happy enough when their facile reign is ended. You seem to me like a man who welcomes middle age, and is more glad than Sophocles was to “flee from these hard masters” the passions. In the fallow leisure of life you glance round contented, and find all very good save the need to leave all behind. Even that you take with an Italian good-humour, as the folk of your sunny country bear poverty and hunger.