Chapter XI: Part 11

Opposed to this, another, low in style,
Makes shepherds speak a language low and vile;
His writings, flat and heavy, without sound,
Kissing the earth and creeping on the ground;
You'd swear that Randal, in his rustic strains,
Again was quavering to the country swains,
And changing, without care of sound or dress,
Strephon and Phyllis into Tom and Bess.

'Twixt these extremes 'tis hard to keep the right:
For guides take Virgil and read Theocrite;
Be their just writings, by the gods inspired,
Your constant pattern, practiced and admired.
By them alone you'll easy comprehend
How poets without shame may condescend
To sing of gardens, fields, of flowers and fruit,
To stir up shepherds and to tune the flute;

Of love's rewards to tell the happy hour,
Daphne a tree, Narcissus make a flower,
And by what means the eclogue yet has power
To make the woods worthy a conqueror;
This of their writings is the grace and flight;
Their risings lofty, yet not out of sight.

The Elegy, that loves a mournful style,
With unbound hair weeps at a funeral pile;
It paints the lover's torments and delights,
A mistress flatters, threatens, and invites;
But well these raptures if you'll make us see,
You must know love as well as poetry.

I hate those lukewarm authors, whose forced fire
In a cold style describes a hot desire;
That sigh by rule, and raging in cold blood,
Their sluggish muse whip to an amorous mood.
Their transports feigned appear but flat and vain;
They always sigh, and always hug their chain,
Adore their prisons and their sufferings bless,
Make sense and reason quarrel as they please.
'Twas not of old in this affected tone
That smooth Tibullus made his amorous moan;
Nor Ovid, when, instructed from above,
By nature's rule he taught the art of love.
The heart in elegies forms the discourse.

The Ode is bolder and has greater force;
Mounting to heaven in her ambitious flight,
Amongst the gods and heroes takes delight;
Of Pisa's wrestlers tells the sinewy force,
And sings the lusty conqueror's glorious course;
To Simois's streams does fierce Achilles bring,
And makes the Ganges bow to Britain's king.
Sometimes she flies like an industrious bee,
And robs the flowers by nature's chemistry;
Describes the shepherd's dances, feasts, and bliss,
And boasts from Phyllis to surprise a kiss,
When gently she resists with feigned remorse,
That what she grants may seem to be by force.
Her generous style at random oft will part,
And by a brave disorder shows her art.

Unlike those fearful poets whose cold rime
In all their raptures keeps exactest time;
That sing the illustrious hero's mighty praise--
Lean writers!--by the terms of weeks and days,
And dare not from least circumstances part,
But take all towns by strictest rules of art.
Apollo drives those fops from his abode;
And some have said that once the humorous god,
Resolving all such scribblers to confound,
For the short Sonnet ordered this strict bound,
Set rules for the just measure and the time,
The easy-running and alternate rime;
But above all, those licenses denied
Which in these writings the lame sense supplied,
Forbade a useless line should find a place,
Or a repeated word appear with grace.
A faultless sonnet, finished thus, would be
Worth tedious volumes of loose poetry.
A hundred scribbling authors, without ground,
Believe they have this only phoenix found,
When yet the exactest scarce have two or three,
Among whole tomes, from faults and censure free;
The rest, but little read, regarded less,
Are shoveled to the pastry from the press.
Closing the sense within the measured time,
'Tis hard to fit the reason to the rime.

The Epigram, with little art composed,
Is one good sentence in a distich closed.
These points, that by Italians first were prized,
Our ancient authors knew not, or despised;
The vulgar, dazzled with their glaring light,
To their false pleasures quickly they invite;
But public favor so increased their pride,
They overwhelmed Parnassus with their tide.

The Madrigal at first was overcome,
And the proud Sonnet fell by the same doom;
With these grave Tragedy adorned her flights,
And mournful Elegy her funeral rites,
A hero never failed them on the stage:
Without his point a lover durst not rage;
The amorous shepherds took more care to prove
True to his point, than faithful to their love.
Each word, like Janus, had a double face,
And prose, as well as verse, allowed it place;
The lawyer with conceits adorned his speech,
The parson without quibbling could not preach.
At last affronted reason looked about,
And from all serious matters shut them out;
Declared that none should use them without shame,
Except a scattering, in the epigram--
Provided that by art, and in due time,
They turned upon the thought, and not the rime.
Thus in all parts disorders did abate;
Yet quibblers in the court had leave to prate,
Insipid jesters and unpleasant fools,
A corporation of dull, punning drolls.
'Tis not but that sometimes a dextrous muse
May with advantage a turned sense abuse,
And on a word may trifle with address;
But above all, avoid the fond excess,
And think not, when your verse and sense are lame,
With a dull point to tag your epigram.

TO MOLIÈRE

From 'The Satires'

Unequaled genius, whose warm fancy knows
No rhyming labor, no poetic throes;
To whom Apollo has unlocked his store;
Whose coin is struck from pure Parnassian ore;
Thou, dextrous master, teach thy skill to me,
And tell me, Molière, how to1 rhyme like thee!

You never falter when the close comes round,
Or leave the substance to preserve the sound;
You never wander after words that fly,
For all the words you need before you lie.
But I, who--smarting for my sins of late--
With itch of rhyme am visited by fate,
Expend on air my unavailing force,
And, hunting sounds, am sweated like a horse.
In vain I often muse from dawn till night:
When I mean black, my stubborn verse says white;
If I should paint a coxcomb's flippant mien,
I scarcely can forbear to name the Dean;
If asked to tell the strains that purest flow,
My heart says Virgil, but my pen Quinault;
In short, whatever I attempt to say,
Mischance conducts me quite the other way.

At times, fatigued and fretted with the pain,
When every effort for relief is vain,
The fruitless chase I peevishly give o'er,
And swear a thousand times to write no more:
But, after thousand vows, perhaps by chance,
Before my careless eyes the couplets dance.
Then with new force my flame bursts out again,
Pleased I resume the paper and the pen;
And, all my anger and my oaths forgot,
I calmly muse and resolutely blot.

Yet, if my eager hand, in haste to rhyme,
Should tack an empty couplet at a time,
Great names who do the same I might adduce;
Nay, some who keep such hirelings for their use.
Need blooming Phyllis be described in prose
By any lover who has seen a _rose?_
Who can forget heaven's masterpiece, her eye,
Where, within call, the Loves and Graces lie?
Who can forget her smile, devoid of art,
Her heavenly sweetness and her frozen heart?
How easy thus forever to compound,
And ring new changes on recurring sound;
How easy, with a reasonable store
Of useful epithets repeated o'er,
Verb, substantive, and pronoun, to transpose,
And into tinkling metre hitch dull prose.
But I--who tremble o'er each word I use,
And all that do not aid the sense refuse,
Who cannot bear those phrases out of place
Which rhymers stuff into a vacant space--Ponder
my scrupulous verses o'er and o'er,
And when I write five words, oft blot out four.

Plague on the fool who taught us to confine
The swelling thought within a measured line;
Who first in narrow thraldom fancy pent,
And chained in rhyme each pinioned sentiment.
Without this toil, contentment's soothing balm
Might lull my languid soul in listless calm:
Like the smooth prebend how might I recline,
And loiter life in mirth and song and wine!
Roused by no labor, with no care opprest,
Pass all my nights in sleep, my days in rest.
My passions and desires obey the rein;
No mad ambition fires my temperate vein;
The schemes of busy greatness I decline,
Nor kneel in palaces at Fortune's shrine.
In short, my life had been supremely blest
If envious rhyme had not disturbed my rest:
But since this freakish fiend began to roll
His idle vapors o'er my troubled soul,
Since first I longed in polished verse to please,
And wrote with labor to be read with ease,
Nailed to my chair, day after day I pore
On what I write and what I wrote before;
Retouch each line, each epithet review,
Or burn the paper and begin anew.
While thus my labors lengthen into years,
I envy all the race of sonneteers.

Hail, happy Scudére! whose prolific brain
Brings forth a monthly volume without pain;
What though thy works, offending every rule,
Proclaim their author an insipid fool;
Still have they found, whate'er the critic says,
Traders to buy and emptier fools to praise.

And, truly, if in rhymes the couplets close,
What should it matter that the rest is prose?
Who stickles now for antiquated saws,
Or cramps his verses with pedantic laws?
The fool can welcome every word he meets,
With placid joy contemplating his feats;
And while each stanza swells his wondering breast
Admires them all, yet thinks the last the best.
But towering Genius, hopeless to attain
That unknown summit which he pants to gain,
Displeased himself, enchanting all beside,
Scorns each past effort that his strength supplied,
And filling every reader with delight,
Repents the hour when he began to write.

To you, who know how justly I complain,
To you I turn for medicine to my pain!
Grant me your talent, and impart your store,
Or teach me, Molière, how to rhyme no more.

GASTON BOISSIER

(1823-)

Marie Louis Gaston Boissier is known in Paris as one of the most prominent professors of the Collège de France, and to the outside world as the author of a number of scholarly books of essays, most of them on Roman subjects. Born at Nîmes in 1823, his life has been devoted entirely to literature. Soon after his graduation from the École Normale he was made professor of rhetoric at Angoulême, and later held the same position at Nîmes. He has received the degree of Doctor, and occupied a number of high positions, culminating in that of professor of Latin poetry in the Collège de France, which he still holds. His works have a high value in the world of scholars, and have won him the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, as well as a seat in the Académie Française, which he entered in 1876. His best known works, 'Cicero et ses Amis' (Cicero and His Friends), was crowned by the Académie; and 'Proménades Archéologiques, Rome et Naples,' written in 1880, has been translated into English, as has also his life of Madame de Sévigné, which contains many charming bits of comment on the seventeenth century. As a biographer, and also as a historian, he is quiet and accurate--never dry. He has great charm of style, and writes with elegance, correctness, clearness, and originality. He contributes largely, also, to the Revue des Deux Mondes and to scientific publications.

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ AS A LETTER-WRITER

From the 'Life of Madame de Sévigné'

The passages just cited appear so simple, and utter so naturally what we all experience, that they are read the first time without surprise. There seems nothing remarkable about them except this very simplicity and naturalness. Now, these are not the qualities which attract attention. It is difficult to appreciate them in works where they occur, and it is only by reading works where they are lacking that we realize all their importance. But here, as soon as we reflect, we are astonished to perceive that this great emotion is expressed in language strong, confident, and correct, with no hesitation and no bungling. The lively sequence of these complaints implies that they were poured forth all at once, in a single outburst; and yet the perfection of the style seems impossible of attainment without some study and some retouching. It is sometimes said that a strong passion at once creates the language to express it. I greatly doubt this. On the contrary, it seems to me that when the soul is violently agitated, the words by which we try to express our feelings always appear dull and cold; we are tempted to make use of exaggerated and far-fetched expressions in order to rise to the level of our sorrow or joy. Hence come sometimes excessive terms, discordant metaphors. We might be inclined to regard these as thought out at leisure and in cold blood, while on the contrary they are the product of the first impulse of the effort we instinctively make to find an expression corresponding to the intensity of our passion. There is nothing of this kind in Madame de Sévigné's letters; and however violent her grief may be, it always speaks in accurate and fitting language. This is a valuable quality, and one extremely rare. That we may not be surprised at finding it so highly developed in her, we need only remember what has just been said of the way in which she was unconsciously prepared to become a great writer.

Another characteristic of Madame de Sévigné's letters, not less remarkable, is that generally her most loving messages are cleverly expressed. I do not refer merely to certain isolated phrases that have sometimes appeared rather affected. "The north wind bound for Grignan makes me ache for your chest." "My dear, how the burden within you weighs me down!" "I dare not read your letters for fear of having read them." These are only occasional flashes; but almost always, when on the point of giving way to all her emotion, she gives her phrase an ingenious turn, she makes witty observations, is bright, pleasing, elegant. All this seems to some readers to proceed from a mind quite self-possessed, and not so far affected by passion as to be inattentive to elegant diction.

Just now I placed naturalness among Madame de Sévigné's leading qualities. There are those who are not of this opinion, and contend that naturalness is just the merit she most lacks; but we must define our meaning. Naturalness for each one is what is conformable to his nature; and as each one of us has a nature of his own very different from that of his neighbors, naturalness cannot be exactly the same in every instance. Moreover, education and habit give us each a second nature which often has more control over us than the original one. In the society in which Madame de Sévigné lived, people made a point of speaking wittily. The first few times one appeared in this society, it required a little study and effort to assume the same tone as the rest. One had to be on the watch for those pleasant repartees that, among the frequenters of the Rambouillet and Richelieu houses, gave the new-comer a good reputation; but after a while these happy sayings came unsought. To persons trained in such a school, what might at first sight appear subtle and refined is ordinary and natural. Whether they speak or write, their ideas take a certain form which is not the usual one; and bright, witty, and dainty phrases, which would require labor from others, occur to them spontaneously.

To be sure, I do not mean that Madame de Sévigné wrote well without knowing it. This is a thing of which a witty woman always has an inkling; and besides, her friends did not permit her to be ignorant of it. "Your letters are delightful," they told her, "and you are like your letters." It was all the easier to believe this, because she paid to herself in a whisper such compliments as others addressed to her aloud. One day, when she had recently written to her friend Dr. Bourdelot, she said to her daughter, "Brava! what a good answer I sent him! That is a foolish thing to say, but I had a good, wide-awake pen that day." It is very delightful to feel that one has wit, and we can understand how Madame de Sévigné might sometimes have yielded to this feeling with some satisfaction. In her most private correspondence, that in which she least thought of the public, we might note certain passages in which she takes pleasure in elaborating and decorating her thought, and in adding to it new details more and more dainty and ingenious. This she does without effort, to satisfy her own taste and to give herself the pleasure of expressing her thought agreeably. It has been remarked that good talkers are not sensitive to the praises of others only: they also wish to please themselves, independently of the public around them; and like to hear themselves talk. It might be said in the same sense that Madame de Sévigné sometimes likes to see herself write. This is one of those pretty artifices which in women do not exclude sincerity, and which may be united with naturalness. Copyrighted by A.C. McClurg and Company, Chicago.

FRENCH SOCIETY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

From the (Life of Madame de Sévigné)

Studying the seventeenth century in the histories is one thing, and seeking to become acquainted with it by reading contemporary letters is another and a far different thing. The two procedures give rise to conflicting impressions. Historians, taking a bird's-eye view of their subject, portray its most general characteristics; they bring out only the prominent features, and sacrificing all the rest, draw pictures whose precision and simplicity captivate our minds. We finally get into the habit of seeing an epoch as they have painted it, and cannot imagine there was anything in it besides the qualities they specify. But when we read letters relating, without alteration or selection, events as they took place, the opinions of men and things we have drawn from the historians are greatly modified. We then perceive that good and evil are at all times mingled, and even that the proportions of the mixture vary less than one would think. Cousin says somewhere, "In a great age all is great." It is just the contrary that is true: there is no age so great that there is not much littleness about it; and if we undertake to study history we should expect this, so as not to reckon without our host. No epoch has been more celebrated, more admired, than the reign of Louis XIV.; there is danger lest the correspondence of Madame de Sévigné may much abate the warmth of our admiration. She is constantly telling strange stories that compel us to pause and reflect. When, in a society represented as so noble, so delicate, so regular, we meet with so many shameful disorders, so many ill-assorted households, so many persons whose fortunes are sustained only by dishonest expedients, with great lords buying and not paying, promising and not keeping their word, borrowing and never returning, kneeling before ministers and ministers' mistresses, cheating at play like M. de Cessac, living like Caderousse at the expense of a great lady, surrendering like Soubise a wife to the king, or like Villarceaux a niece, or insisting with Bussy that "the chariest of their honor should be delighted when such a good fortune befalls their family,"--it seems to me we have a right to conclude that people then were hardly our superiors; that perhaps in some points we are better than they were; and that in any case it is not worth while to set them up as models to the disparagement of our own times.

In one respect, however, they were unlike us. In those days there were certain subjects on which people were generally agreed, and these were precisely the subjects that now give rise to the greatest divisions,--religion and politics. Not that all were pious then,--far from it,--but almost all were believers, and almost none contested the principle of royal authority. To-day, religious belief and belief in monarchy are well-nigh extinct; and there are hardly any left of those commonly received opinions, escaped by none, impregnating all, breathed in like the air, and always found at the bottom of the heart on occasions of grave need, despite all the inward changes that experience has wrought. Is this a good or an evil? Should we rejoice at it or regret it? Each one will answer according to his character and inclinations. Daring minds that feel strong enough to form their own convictions are glad to be delivered from prejudices interfering with independence of opinion, glad to have free scope. But the rest, who form the vast majority, who are without such high aims, and whose life is moreover taken up with other cares, are troubled, uncertain, ill at ease, when they have to settle these great problems independently. They regret that they can no longer find the solutions all worked out, and sadly repeat with Jocelyn:--

"Ah, why was I born in days stormy and dread,
When the pilgrim of life hath no rest for his head;
When the way disappears; when the spent human mind,
Groping, doubting, still strives some new pathway to find,
Unable to trust in the hopes of the Old
Or to strike out a New from its perishing mold!"

This sort of anguish of spirit was unknown in the seventeenth century, as Madame de Sévigné's letters clearly show.

HOW HORACE LIVED AT HIS COUNTRY HOUSE

From 'The Country of Horace and Virgil'

It is very annoying that Horace, who has described with so many details the employment of his days while he remained in Rome, should not have thought it necessary to tell us as clearly how he spent his life in the country. The only thing we know with certainty is that he was very happy there: he for the first time tasted the pleasure of being a proprietor. "I take my meals," said he, "before household gods that are mine own" ("ante larem proprium vescor"). To have a hearth and domestic gods, to fix his life in a dwelling of which he was the master, was the greatest happiness that could befall a Roman. To enjoy it, Horace had waited until he was more than thirty years of age. We have seen that his domain, when he took possession of it, was very much neglected, and that the house was falling into ruins. He first had to build and plant. Do not let us pity him; these cares have their charms. One loves one's house when one has built or repaired it, and the very trouble our land costs us attaches us to it. He came to it as often as he could, and always with pleasure. Everything served him as a pretext to leave Rome. It was too hot there, or too cold; the Saturnalia were approaching--an unbearable time of the year, when all the town was out of doors; it was the moment to finish a work which Mæcenas had pressingly required. Well, how could anything good be done at Rome, where the noises of the street, the bustle of intercourse, the troublesome people one has to visit or receive, the bad verses one has to listen to, take up the best part of your time? So he put Plato with Menander into his portmanteau, took with him the work he had begun, promising to do wonders, and started for Tibur. But when he was at home, his good resolutions did not hold out. He had something to do quite different from shutting himself up in his study. He had to chat with his farmer, and superintend his laborers. He went to see them at work, and sometimes lent a hand himself. He dug the spade into the field, took out the stones, etc., to the great amusement of the neighbors, who marveled both at his ardor and his clumsiness:--

"Rident vicini glebas et saxa moventem."

In the evening he received at his table a few of the neighboring proprietors. They were honest folk, who did not speak ill of their neighbors, and who, unlike the fops of Rome, had not for sole topic of conversation the races or the theatre. They handled most serious questions, and their rustic wisdom found ready expression in proverbs and apologues. What pleased Horace above all at these country dinners was that etiquette was laughed at, that everything was simple and frugal, that one did not feel constrained to obey those silly laws which Varro had drawn up, and which had become the code of good company. Nobody thought of electing a king of the feast, to fix for the guests the number of cups that must be drained. Every one ate according to his hunger and drank according to his thirst. "They were," said Horace, "divine repasts" ("O noctes cenæque Deum").

Yet he did not always stay at home, however great the pleasure he felt in being there. This steady-going, regular man thought it right from time to time to put a little irregularity into one's life. Does not a Grecian sage--Aristotle, I think--recommend that one excess per month be indulged in, in the interest of health? It serves at least to break the round of habit. Such also was the opinion of Horace. Although the most moderate of men, he found it pleasant to commit an occasional wildness ("dulce est desipere in loco"). With age these outbursts had become less frequent, yet he still loved to break the sage uniformity of his existence by some pleasure jaunt. Then he returned to Præneste, to Baiæ, or to Tarentum, which he had loved so much in his youth. Once he was unfaithful to these old affections, and chose for the goal of his journey spots that were new to him. The occasion of the change was this: Antonius Musa, a Greek physician, had just cured Augustus of a dangerous illness, which it had been thought must prove fatal, by means of cold water. Hydrotherapeutics at once became fashionable. People deserted the thermal springs, formerly so much sought after, to go off to Clusium, to Gabii, into the mountains, where springs of icy water were found. Horace did like the rest. In the winter of the year 730, instead of going as usual towards Baiæ, he turned his little steed towards Salerno and Velia. This was the affair of a season. Next year Marullus, the Emperor's son-in-law and heir, falling very ill, Antonius Musa was hastily sent for, and applied his usual remedy. But the remedy no longer healed, and hydrotherapeutics, which had saved Augustus, did not prevent Marullus from dying. They were at once forsaken, and the sick again began following the road to Baiæ.

When Horace started on these extraordinary journeys, he took a change of diet. "At home," said he, "I can put up with anything; my Sabine table wine seems to me delicious; and I regale myself with vegetables from my garden seasoned with a slice of bacon. But when I have once left my house, I become more particular, and beans, beloved though they be of Pythagoras, no longer suffice me." So before starting in the direction of Salerno, where he did not often go, he takes the precaution to question one of his friends as to the resources of the country; whether one can get fish, hares, and venison there, that he may come back home again as fat as a Phæacian. Above all, he is anxious to know what is drunk in those parts. He wants a generous wine to make him eloquent, and "which will give him strength, and rejuvenate him in the eyes of his young Lucanian sweetheart." We see he pushes precaution a considerable length. He was not rich enough to possess a house of his own at Baiæ, Præneste, or Salerno, the spots frequented by all the Roman fashionable world, but he had his wonted lodgings ("deversoria nota"), where he used to put up. When Seneca was at Baiæ, he lived above a public bath, and he has furnished us a very amusing account of the sounds of all kinds that troubled his rest. Horace, who liked his ease and wished to be quiet, could not make a very long stay in those noisy places. His whim gratified, he returned as soon as possible to his peaceful house amid the fields, and I can well imagine that those few fatiguing weeks made it seem more pleasant and more sweet to him.

One cannot read his works carefully without noticing that his affection for his country estate goes on constantly increasing. At first, when he had passed a few weeks there, the memory of Rome used to re-awaken in his thoughts. Those large towns, which we hate when we are forced to live in them, have only to be left in order to be regretted! When Horace's slave, taking an unfair advantage of the liberty of the Saturnalia, tells his master so many unpleasant things, he reproaches him with never being pleased where he is:--

"Romæ rus optas, absentem villicus urbem
Tollis ad astra levis?"

He was himself very much vexed at his inconstancy, and accused himself of "only loving Rome when he was at Tibur, and only thinking of Tibur from the moment he found himself in Rome." However, he cured himself at last of this levity, which annoyed him so much. To this he bears witness in his own favor in the letter addressed to his farmer, where he strives to convince him that one may be happy without having a public-house next door. "As for me," he tells him, "thou knowest that I am self-consistent, and that each time hated business recalls me to Rome I leave this spot with sadness." He doubtless arranged matters so as to live more and more at his country house. He looked forward to a time when it would be possible for him scarcely ever to leave it, and counted upon it to enable him to bear more lightly the weight of his closing years.

They are heavy, whatever one may do, and age never comes without bringing many griefs. Firstly, the long-lived must needs leave many friends upon the way. Horace lost some to whom he was very tenderly attached. He had the misfortune to survive Virgil and Tibullus ten years. What regrets he must have felt on the death of the great poet, of whom he said he "knew no soul more bright, and had no better friend"! The great success of Virgil's posthumous work could only have half consoled him for his loss, for he regretted in him the man as well as the poet. He had also great cause to grieve for Mæcenas, whom he so dearly loved. This favorite of the Emperor, this king of fashion, whose fortune all men envied, finished by being very unhappy. It is all very well to take every kind of precaution in order to insure one's happiness--to fly from business, to seek pleasure, to amass wealth, to gather clever men about one, to surround one's self with all the charms of existence; however one may try to shut the door on them, troubles and sorrows find a way in. The saddest of it all is that Mæcenas was first unhappy through his own fault. Somewhat late in life this prudent, wise man had been foolish enough to marry a coquette, and to fall deeply in love with her. He had rivals, and among them the Emperor himself, of whom he dared not be jealous. He who had laughed so much at others afforded the Romans a comedy at his own expense. His time was passed in leaving Terentia and taking her back again. "He has been married more than a hundred times," said Seneca, "although he has had but one wife." To these domestic troubles illness was added. His health had never been good, and age and sorrows made it worse. Pliny tells us that he passed three whole years without being able to sleep. Enduring pain badly, he grieved his friends beyond measure by his groans. Horace, with whom he continually conversed about his approaching end, answered him in beautiful verses:--

"Thou, Mæcenas, die first! Thou, stay of my fortune,
adornment of my life! The gods will not allow it, and I will
not consent. Ah! if Fate, hastening its blows, should tear
from me part of myself in thee, what would betide the other?
What should I henceforth do, hateful unto myself, and but
half of myself surviving?"

In the midst of these sorrows, Horace himself felt that he was growing old. The hour when one finds one's self face to face with age is a serious one. Cicero, when approaching it, tried to give himself courage in advance, and being accustomed to console himself for everything by writing, he composed his 'De Senectute,' a charming book in which he tries to deck the closing years of life with certain beauties. He had not to make use of the consolations which he prepared for himself, so we do not know whether he would have found them sufficient when the moment came. That spirit, so young, so full of life, would I fear have resigned itself with difficulty to the inevitable decadences of age. Nor did Horace love old age, and in his 'Ars Poetica' he has drawn a somewhat gloomy picture of it. He had all the more reason to detest it because it came to him rather early. In one of those passages where he so willingly gives us the description of his person, he tells us that his hair whitened quickly. As a climax of misfortune he had grown very fat, and being short, his corpulence was very unbecoming to him. Augustus, in a letter, compares him to one of those measures of liquids which are broader than they are high. If, in spite of these too evident signs which warned him of his age, he had tried to deceive himself, there was no lack of persons to disabuse him. There was the porter of Neæra, who no longer allowed his slave to enter; an affront which Horace was obliged to put up with without complaining. "My hair whitening," said he, "warns me not to quarrel. I should not have been so patient in the time of my boiling youth, when Plancus was consul." Then it was Neæra herself who declined to come when he summoned her, and again resigning himself with a good enough grace, the poor poet found that after all she was right, and that it was natural love should prefer youth to ripened age.

"Ahi,
Quo blandæ juvenum te revocant preces."

Fortunately he was not of a melancholy disposition, like his friends Tibullus and Virgil. He even had opinions on the subject of melancholy which differ widely from ours. Whereas, since Lamartine, we have assumed the habit of regarding sadness as one of the essential elements of poetry, he thought on the contrary that poetry has the privilege of preventing us from being sad. "A man protected by the Muses," said he, "flings cares and sorrows to the winds to bear away." His philosophy had taught him not to revolt against inevitable ills. However painful they be, one makes them lighter by bearing them. So he accepted old age because it cannot be eluded, and because no means have yet been found of living long without growing old. Death itself did not frighten him. He was not of those who reconcile themselves to it as well as they can by never thinking about it. On the contrary, he counsels us to have it always in mind. "Think that the day which lights you is the last you have to live. The morrow will have more charm for you if you have not hoped to see it:"--

"Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum;
Grata superveniet quæ non sperabitur hora."

This is not, as might be supposed, one of those bravadoes of the timid, who shout before Death in order to deaden the sound of his footsteps. Horace was never more calm, more energetic, more master of his mind and of his soul, than in the works of his ripe age. The last lines of his that remain to us are the firmest and most serene he ever wrote.

Then, more than ever, must he have loved the little Sabine valley. When we visit these beautiful tranquil spots, we tell ourselves that they appear made to shelter the declining years of a sage. It seems as if with old servants, a few faithful friends, and a stock of well-chosen books, the time must pass there without sadness. But I must stop. Since Horace has not taken us into his confidence respecting his last years, and nobody after him has told us of them, we are reduced to form conjectures, and we should put as few of them as possible into the life of a man who loved truth so well.

Copyrighted by G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

GEORGE H. BOKER

(1823-1890)

Mr. Boker was a man of leisure by inheritance, and a scholar and author by training and choice. His work is usually deliberate, careful, and polished: the work of a man of solid culture, of much experience and knowledge of the world; of a man of dignity and social position, not a Bohemian. It is thoughtfully planned and carefully executed, but not written through inspiration or prompted by passion. Yet it does not lack vigor, nor are his puppets merely automata. His plays have life and force; and they are moreover good acting dramas. 'Francesca da Rimini' especially, with Lawrence Barrett in the role of Lanciotto, was decidedly successful on the stage. In keeping with the character of his work, the scenes of his plays are all laid in foreign countries and in other times: Portugal, England, Spain, and Italy are the fields in which his characters play their parts. His personages have an individuality of their own and are consistently drawn; the action is lively, the humor is natural and a needful foil to the tragedy.

Mr. Boker was fond of the sonnet, as poets are apt to be who have once yielded to its attraction, and he used it with much effect. But chiefly his poems of the Civil War will make his name remembered. His lyre responded sympathetically to the heroic deeds which characterized that conflict--not always with the smoothness and polish of his more studied work, but worthily, and in the spirit of the time.

He was born in Philadelphia, October 6th, 1823, and died there January 2d, 1890. He was graduated from Princeton in 1842, and after studying law and traveling for a number of years in Europe, settled down in his native city, where most of his life was spent. He was Minister to Turkey from 1871 to 1875, and Minister to Russia from 1875 to 1879. His first volume, 'The Lesson of Life and other Poems,' was published in 1847, and was followed by various plays.--'Calaynos,' 'Anne Boleyn,' 'The Betrothal,' 'Leonor de Guzman,' 'Francesca da Rimini,' etc., which, with some shorter pieces, were collected in 'Plays and Poems,' published in 1856. His 'Poems of the War' appeared in 1864, and still later a number of other volumes: 'Street Lyrics,' 'Our Heroic Themes' (1865), 'Königsmark' (1869), 'The Book of the Dead' (1882), a very close imitation of 'In Memoriam' in both matter and form, and 'Sonnets' (1886).

THE BLACK REGIMENT

From 'Plays and Poems'

Port Hudson, May 27th, 1863.

Dark as the clouds of even,
Ranked in the western heaven,
Waiting the breath that lifts
All the dread mass, and drifts
Tempest and falling brand
Over a ruined land;--
So still and orderly,
Arm to arm, knee to knee,
Waiting the great event,
Stands the black regiment.

Down the long dusky line
Teeth gleam and eyeballs shine;
And the bright bayonet,
Bristling and firmly set,
Flashed with a purpose grand,
Long ere the sharp command
Of the fierce rolling drum
Told them their time had come,
Told them what work was sent
For the black regiment.

"Now," the flag-sergeant cried,
"Though death and hell betide,
Let the whole nation see
If we are fit to be
Free in this land; or bound
Down, like the whining hound,--
Bound with red stripes of pain
In our old chains again!"
Oh, what a shout there went
From the black regiment!

"Charge!" Trump and drum awoke,
Onward the bondmen broke;
Bayonet and sabre-stroke
Vainly opposed their rush.
Through the wild battle's crush,
With but one thought aflush,
Driving their lords like chaff,
In the guns' mouths they laugh;
Or at the slippery brands
Leaping with open hands,
Down they tear man and horse,
Down in their awful course;
Trampling with bloody heel
Over the crashing steel,
All their eyes forward bent,
Rushed the black regiment.

"Freedom!" their battle-cry,--
Freedom! or leave to die!"
Ah! and they meant the word,--
Not as with us 'tis heard,
Not a mere party shout:
They gave their spirits out;
Trusted the end to God,
And on the gory sod
Rolled in triumphant blood.
Glad to strike one free blow,
Whether for weal or woe;
Glad to breathe one free breath,
Though on the lips of death.

Praying--alas! in vain!--
That they might fall again,
So they could once more see
That bust to liberty!
This was what "freedom" lent
To the black regiment.

Hundreds on hundreds fell;
But they are resting well;
Scourges and shackles strong
Never shall do them wrong.
Oh, to the living few,
Soldiers, be just and true!

Hail them as comrades tried;
Fight with them side by side;
Never, in field or tent,
Scorn the black regiment!

Copyright: permission of George Boker, Esq.

THE SWORD-BEARER

From 'Poems of the War'

March 8th, 1862

Brave Morris saw the day was lost;
For nothing now remained,
On the wrecked and sinking Cumberland,
But to save the flag unstained.

So he swore an oath in the sight of Heaven,--
If he kept it the world can tell:--
"Before I strike to a rebel flag,
I'll sink to the gates of hell!

"Here, take my sword; 'tis in my way;
I shall trip o'er the useless steel;
For I'll meet the lot that falls to all
With my shoulder at the wheel."

So the little negro took the sword;
And oh, with what reverent care,
Following his master step by step,
He bore it here and there!

A thought had crept through his sluggish brain,
And shone in his dusky face,
That somehow--he could not tell just how--
'Twas the sword of his trampled race.

And as Morris, great with his lion heart,
Rushed onward from gun to gun,
The little negro slid after him,
Like a shadow in the sun.

But something of pomp and of curious pride
The sable creature wore,
Which at any time but a time like that
Would have made the ship's crew roar.

Over the wounded, dying, and dead,
Like an usher of the rod,
The black page, full of his mighty trust,
With dainty caution trod.

No heed he gave to the flying ball,
No heed to the bursting shell;
His duty was something more than life,
And he strove to do it well.

Down, with our starry flag apeak,
In the whirling sea we sank,
And captain and crew and the sword-bearer
Were washed from the bloody plank.

They picked us up from the hungry waves;--
Alas! not all!--"And where,
Where is the faithful negro lad?"--
"Back oars! avast! look there!"

We looked; and, as Heaven may save my soul,
I pledge you a sailor's word,
There, fathoms deep in the sea, he lay,
Still grasping the master's sword!

We drew him out; and many an hour
We wrought with his rigid form,
Ere the almost smothered spark of life
By slow degrees grew warm.

The first dull glance that his eyeballs rolled
Was down towards his shrunken hand;
And he smiled, and closed his eyes again
As they fell on the rescued brand.

And no one touched the sacred sword,
Till at length, when Morris came,
The little negro stretched it out,
With his eager eyes aflame.

And if Morris wrung the poor boy's hand,
And his words seemed hard to speak,
And tears ran down his manly cheeks,
What tongue shall call him weak?

This and the sonnets on next page are copyrighted, and used by permission of George Boker, Esq.

SONNETS

Either the sum of this sweet mutiny
Amongst thy features argues me some harm,
Or else they practice wicked treachery
Against themselves, thy heart, and hapless me.
For as I start aside with blank alarm,
Dreading the glitter which begins to arm
Thy clouded brows, lo! from thy lips I see
A smile come stealing, like a loaded bee,
Heavy with sweets and perfumes, all ablaze
With soft reflections from the flowery wall
Whereon it pauses. Yet I will not raise
One question more, let smile or frown befall,
Taxing thy love where I should only praise,
And asking changes that might change thee all.

Oh for some spirit, some magnetic spark,
That used nor word, nor rhyme, nor balanced pause
Of doubtful phrase, which so supinely draws
My barren verse, and blurs love's shining mark
With misty fancies!--Oh! to burst the dark
Of smothered feeling with some new-found laws,
Hidden in nature, that might bridge the flaws
Between two beings, end this endless cark,
And make hearts know what lips have never said!
Oh! for some spell, by which one soul might move
With echoes from another, and dispread
Contagious music through its chords, above
The touch of mimic art: that thou might'st tread
Beneath thy feet this wordy show of love!

Here let the motions of the world be still!--
Here let Time's fleet and tireless pinions stay
Their endless flight!--or to the present day
Bind my Love's life and mine. I have my fill
Of earthly bliss: to move is to meet ill.
Though lavish fortune in my path might lay
Fame, power, and wealth,--the toys that make the play
Of earth's grown children,--I would rather till
The stubborn furrows of an arid land,
Toil with the brute, bear famine and disease,
Drink bitter bondage to the very lees,
Than break our union by love's tender band,
Or drop its glittering shackles from my hand,
To grasp at empty glories such as these.

SAINT BONAVENTURA

(1221-1274)

BY THOMAS DAVIDSON

Saint Bonaventura, whose original name was Giovanni di Fidenza, was born at Bagnaréa in Tuscany in 1221. At the age of four he was attacked by a severe illness, during which his mother appealed to St. Francis for his prayers, promising that if the child recovered, he should be devoted to God and become one of Francis's followers. When the child did recover, the saint, seeing him, exclaimed "O bona ventura!" a name which clung to the boy ever afterwards, and under which he entered religion and the order of St. Francis in 1243.

Soon after, he went to the then world-renowned university of Paris, where he had for his teacher an Englishman, Alexander of Hales, the first of the schoolmen who studied the whole of Aristotle's works, and attempted to construct a Christian theology on the basis of them. Even at this time the young Italian's life was so saintly that his master (so it is reported) said of him that he seemed to have been born without the taint of original sin. He graduated in the same year as Thomas Aquinas, and immediately afterward began his career as a public teacher under the auspices of the Franciscan order, while Thomas did the same under those of the Dominican. These two men, the greatest of the schoolmen, and the sweetest and sanest of the mystics, were bosom friends; and one can hardly imagine a loftier friendship.

In 1256, at the early age of thirty-five, he became general of his order, a post which he held till his death. He did much to ennoble and purify the order, and to bring it back to orthodoxy, from which then, as nearly always, it was strongly inclined to swerve. In 1265 Clement V. nominated him to the see of York; but Bonaventura, unwilling probably to face so rude a climate and people, persuaded the Pope to withdraw the nomination. A few years later, under Gregory X., he was raised to the cardinalate and appointed bishop of Albano. In 1274 he attended the Council of Lyons, and must have been deeply affected when he learned that Thomas Aquinas had died on his way thither. The success of the efforts of the council to come to terms with the Greeks was mainly due to him.

This was Bonaventura's last work on earth. He died before the council was over, and was honored with a funeral whose solemnity and magnificence have seldom been equaled. It was attended by the Pope, the Eastern Emperor, the King of Aragon, the patriarchs of Antioch and Constantinople, and a large number of bishops and priests. His relics were preserved with much reverence by the Lyonnese until the sixteenth century, when the Huguenots threw them into the Saône. In 1482 he was canonized by Sixtus IV., and in 1588 declared a doctor of the Church by Sixtus V. Dante places him in the Heaven of the Sun.

Bonaventura is the sweetest and tenderest of all the mediæval saints. His mode of teaching was so inspiring that even in his lifetime he was known as the "Seraphic Doctor." He was a voluminous writer, his works in the Lyons edition of 1688 filling seven folio volumes. They consist largely of sermons, and commentaries on the Scriptures and the 'Sentences' of Peter the Lombard. Besides these, there is a number of 'Opuscula,' mostly of a mystic or disciplinary tendency. Most famous among these are the 'Breviloquium,' perhaps the best compend of mediæval Christian theology in existence; and the 'Itinerarium Mentis in Deum,' a complete manual of mysticism, such as was aspired to by the noblest of the mystics; a work worthy to be placed beside the 'Imitation of Christ,' though of a different sort.

Bonaventura was above all things a mystic; that is, he belonged to that class of men, numerous in many ages, who, setting small store by the world of appearance open to science, and even by science itself, seek by asceticism, meditation, and contemplation to attain a vision of the world of reality, and finally of the supreme reality, God himself. Such mysticism is almost certainly derived from the far East; but so far as Europe is concerned it owes its origin mainly to Plato, and his notion of a world of ideas distinct from the real world, lying outside of all mind, and attainable only by strict mental discipline. This notion, simplified by Aristotle into the notion of a transcendent God, eternally thinking himself, was developed into a hierarchic system of being by the Neo-Platonists, Plotinus, Porphyry, etc., and from them passed into the Christian Church, partly through Augustine and the Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita _(q.v.),_ and partly through the Muslim and Jewish thinkers of later times. Though at first regarded with suspicion by the Western Church, it was too closely interwoven with Latin Christianity, and too germane to the spirit of monasticism, not to become popular. Its influence was greatly strengthened by the mighty personality of that prince of mystics, St. Bernard (1091-1153), from whom it passed on to the monastery school of St. Victor in Paris, where it was worthily represented by the two great names of Hugo (1096-1141) and Richard (1100?-1173). From the writings of these, and from such works as the 'Liber de Causis,' recently introduced into Europe through the Muslim, Bonaventura derived that mystical system which he elaborated in his 'Itinerarium' and other works.

A magnificent edition of his works is now being edited by the fathers of the College of St. Bonaventura, at Quaracchi, near Florence (1882-). There is a small, very handy edition of the 'Breviloquium' and 'Itinerarium' together, by Hefele (Tübingen, 1861).

ON THE BEHOLDING OF GOD IN HIS FOOTSTEPS IN THIS SENSIBLE WORLD

But since, as regards the mirror of sensible things, we may contemplate God not only through them as through footprints, but also in them in so far as he is in them by essence, power, and presence,--and this consideration is loftier than the preceding; therefore this kind of consideration occupies the second place, as the second grade of contemplation, whereby we must be guided to the contemplation of God in all created things which enter our minds through the bodily senses.