23

DAVID MONEY

The Reception of Horace in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

At the start of our period, in 1601, Ben Jonson identified himself with Horace, in Poetaster;[1] exactly two hundred years later, in a soil barely scratched by Elizabethan adventurers, an anonymous author in Philadelphia’s Port Folio Magazine chose to translate a sonnet of Charlotte Smith, the English Romantic, into five stanzas of Horatian Sapphics.[2] Between those two moments – one celebrated, one obscure – lies a vast, disparate mixture of receptions. The central part of our period is often called the ‘Augustan Age’ – sometimes a contentious term:[3] to what extent is it a Horatian age? It is not always profitable to try to distinguish specifically Horatian attitudes from a more general and pervasive neo-classical culture. The concept of politeness was to become influential, alongside the ideal of retirement from urban chaos; for Alexander Pope, as for Jonson, Horace was a means of self-fashioning. Both moralists and libertines could seek instruction in his works. Neo-Latin, alongside many vernaculars, continued as a medium of creative imitation. There follows a series of snapshots, from Britain and beyond, to illustrate at least some aspects of our poet’s extraordinary cultural impact.

Translating, Reading, and Editing

John Ashmore, in 1621, was the first to publish a selection of Horace’s odes in English. He translated 17 of them (3.9 three times). Sir T[homas] H[awkins], in 1625, ‘had rather teach Vertue to the modest, th[a]n discover Vice to the dissolute ... [and not] take unhappy draughts, from the troubled and muddy waters of Sensuality.’ Hawkins admits the ‘lesse morall’ 3.9 with reluctance, and only ‘for Iul. Scaliger’s sake, who much admireth it’. Ashmore approached it with gusto: ‘ ... In Fortunes lap, who then, but I, / By Venus luld-asleep did lie?’ (from the third, looser version). Ashmore’s version of Odes 1.5 (too immoral for Hawkins) is full of passion; his ‘doublet wringing wet, and cod-piec’t breeches’ pack more punch than the ‘dropping weeds’ favoured by Milton and others.[4] Herrick tackled 3.9, as well as mixing 2.14 with other odes in a fascinating adaptation.[5]

Horace was popular among Restoration translators,[6] most notably Abraham Cowley, the earl of Roscommon, and Thomas Creech. Dryden’s version of Odes 3.29 was much admired, and his ‘Britannia Rediviva’ imitated Odes 1.2.[7] Probably the most successful eighteenth-century translator was Philip Francis, who particularly impressed Dr Johnson.[8] His edition borrowed occasional odes from earlier writers, such as Odes 4.3 from Francis Atterbury, Jacobite bishop and friend of Pope; his note praises both Atterbury and the original, which is ‘delicate and natural ... noble and elegant ... flowing and harmonious ... Such is the Judgement of all the Commentators, but Scaliger is so charmed with it, that he assures us he would rather be Author of it, than be King of Arragon.’[9]

A more controversial figure was Christopher Smart, who produced both prose and verse translations; one way in which he ‘consciously strove to emulate the urbane Roman was by using the current modes of speech of polite and impolite London society.’[10] He also sometimes experimented in classical quantities: thus Odes 1.38 ‘in the original metre exactly’ – ‘...Thee the prompt waiter to a jolly toper / Hous’d in an arbour.’[11] For 1.11 and 1.18 he adopted archaic English fourteeners, but ‘for convenience of printing, one line is severed into two.’[12] Since the resulting alternation between four and three-foot lines would look quite normal to a modern reader, the note serves to emphasise Smart’s curious mix of pedantry and accessibility. Earlier, Smart had updated Odes 2.4 as ‘The Pretty Chambermaid’: ‘... Atrides with his captive play’d, / Who always shar’d the bed she made’. Amusing though it is, this also reflects a casual attitude towards servants’ chastity that was being challenged in the 1740s: Smart’s chambermaid is more Shamela than Pamela.[13] Some Horatian obscenity, however, was too much for Smart: he omits Odes 4.10 entirely (as if it had never existed, confusingly renumbering later odes), and silently suppresses the end of 4.1. The boy Ligurinus could not be presented in what Smart hoped (unsuccessfully)[14] might become a textbook. Ligurinus, decorously handled, was acceptable to both Creech and Francis: but neither of them could stomach the ugly picture of female lust in Epodes 8 and 12. Creech’s publisher prints the Latin, with facing page blank; Francis’ omits both, only a gap in numbering revealing Horace’s shameful secret.[15] Pope, meanwhile, makes Ligurinus a woman, but is otherwise risqué.[16]

In comparing Horace to Pindar, Sir Edward Sherburne had to ‘declare the horrour I conceive of these two Poets most disorderly love of Boys’; he also highlighted the poet as playboy: ‘Horace before his Death, caus’d several Glasses, or Mirrors to be plac’d on every side of his Chamber, that he might at once see divers Lascivious Postures, and entertain himself to the last with voluptuous Thoughts.’[17] Despite these moral lapses, the comparison tends to favour Horace: in the words of Sherburne’s French model, he offers ‘plus de douceur ... et beaucoup moins de défauts.’[18]

In France, bowdlerisation was quite normal; Jérôme Tarteron, translating the hexameter works into prose, declared ‘je supprime ce qu’il y a de deshonneste.’[19] Pierre de Marcassus began to translate the odes at the age of 80, in 1664, and finished in two months.[20] While one expurgated manuscript turned Pyrrha (Odes 1.5) into ‘La Fortune’,[21] Etienne de Martignac dared to describe Horace’s method: ‘il la peint comme une coquette qu’il est dangereux d’aimer ... car enfin on voit que cette dame avoit l’art d’attirer des Amans malgré son humeur volage.’ And his prose version offers a woman ready for dangerous intrigues: ‘Pyrrha, qui est ce beau mignon si parfumé d’essences, qui vous embrasse étroittement dans vôtre agreable cabinet parsemé de roses?’[22]

Horace also appeared in popular fiction. Marie-Catherine Desjardins’ Les Exilez de la cour d’Auguste (1672) was often reprinted, with several English versions. Superficial, but of ‘immense popularity’, it vulgarised her Roman characters ‘reducing them to the size of the personalities of her readers.’[23] But she could still include genuinely Horatian sentiments, as in Cornelius Gallus’ speech, alluding to Odes 4.9: ‘The Fame of a Poet is oftentimes as necessary to signalize the glory of Heroes, as their own virtue; And those, who now admire the Valor of Achilles, had perhaps never heard of his Name, had not the Pen of Homer eterniz’d it.’[24] A more serious thinker, like Shaftesbury, could cite Horace frequently ‘because he is now so much in esteem, and by this will appear an Air of Gallantry and Humour’, while defending his reputation, despite the ‘corrupting Sweets’ of a ‘poisonous Government’.[25]

Horace was good business, generally attractive to the taste of the public (whether buying scholarly editions, cribs, or scurrilous imitations) and profitable for booksellers. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the period covered by Foxon’s catalogue (1975), there were well over a hundred imitations of individual Horatian poems, quite apart from complete editions: 61 based on Odes, eight on Epodes, two Carm. Saec., 20 Satires, 28 Epistles, and ten on Ars Poetica, including the Art of Cookery of the gazetteer William King (1708), who also produced an Ovidian Art of Love.[26]

Compared to this Horatian outpouring, we find seventeen items for Ovid (covering translations and imitations of all works, several of them ‘burlesque’). Virgil’s Eclogues inspired ten imitations; there are four burlesque or modernised Homers. Of the other satirists, Persius inspired six imitations, and Juvenal seven, including Samuel Johnson’s famous imitations of Juvenal 3 and 10, and a Latin imitation of Juvenal 3 by Jabez Earle (1724).[27] Nicholas Rowe, poet laureate, adapted Odes 3.9 for a humorous picture of the reconciliation of Congreve and the publisher, Jacob Tonson.[28] There were seven individual imitations of Odes 4.5, including [Jane Brereton], The fifth ode of the fourth book of Horace, imitated: and apply’d to the King. By a lady (London, 1716). Thomas Neale used Odes 1.37 to celebrate victory at Ramillies, 1706. In the following year Lewis Maidwell’s Comitia lyrica used all of Horace’s metres in praise of Godolphin, paraphrased in English by Nahum Tate. A similarly ambitious multi-metre effort, its title clearly signalling practical ambitions, was [Anon.] A Poem dedicated to the Queen, and presented to the Congress at Utrecht, upon declaration of the peace. Writ in Latin, that foreigners might more easily understand and celebrate the transcendent virtues of her Britannic Majesty (London, 1713).

At home, in the Sacheverell crisis of 1710, Horace turn’d Whigg: or, a low-church ode imitates Epode 7. Frank Stack, illustrating Pope’s context, has stressed the numbers of other imitators in the 1730s, especially George Ogle.[29] John Boyle, Earl of Cork and Orrery, attempted Odes 1.5: an attempt satirised in the same year, 1741, by the anonymous Pyrrha, a cantata ... Not by John Earl of Orrery. Horace was called up naturally for contemporary purposes: e.g. An allusion to the tenth ode of the second book of Horace; On a report of ... H[enry] F[ox] quitting all public employments, and, in a religious fit, retiring to H[olland] H[ouse] (London, 1757).

All of these – and many more examples could be given – reflect a degree of cultural ubiquity: Horace was never far away. The poet James Thomson had five editions, in a ‘modest’ classical library; the fictional Tom Jones could give ‘feeling recitations’; James Douglas, a notorious eighteenth-century collector, had nearly 500 Horace-related titles.[30] Throughout our period, new editions piled up, almost every year; in 1612, two in Leiden (Elzevier, Raphelengius), one in Frankfurt; in 1699, Utrecht, Barcelona, Cambridge.[31] Periodicals played a large part in moulding taste, and Horace was often found at the head of essays, especially in The Spectator.[32] He was a ‘Master of refined Raillery’, ‘a Man of the World throughout’, with a ‘strong Masculine Sense’ – unlike Ovid.[33] His praise of moderation displayed ‘a pretty sober Liveliness’, and he offered a useful starting-point for moralising: ‘Horace in my Motto says, that all men are vicious, and that they differ from one another, only as they are more or less so.’[34] In Boston, John Lovell’s The Seasons. An interlocutory exercise at the South Grammar School, June 26. 1765, Edmund Quincy’s A treatise of hemp-husbandry (also 1765), and Sir Richard Hill’s An address to persons of fashion (1767) were all dignified by Horatian mottoes. Other Americans in the same period alluded naturally to Horace; the Charleston library had Francis’ translation.[35] There were fine editions from the Foulis press (1760), and Baskerville (1762 and 1770); John Pine engraved the entire text in copperplate (1733-7).[36] Cheaper editions abounded. The young Wordsworth read Horace and Boileau; he owned a copy of Smart’s prose translation, and translated Odes 3.13; a consciously Horatian preference for classical simplicity as opposed to false ornament affects his maturer work, including the preface to Lyrical Ballads.[37]

French editions were influential in England: Francis’ notes regularly cite them. Most important was that of André Dacier, with his ‘vigorous defence of the classics as bastions of civilisation.’[38] But unquestionably the greatest textual critic to work on Horace in this period was Richard Bentley (who, a month before his death in 1742, elected Smart to a university scholarship). Bentley was an acerbic and controversial character, ridiculed in Pope’s Dunciad, lauded by foreign scholars (who had less experience than his compatriots of his rancorous side). His Horace (1711) is claimed as ‘the foundation document of the new “philology”.’[39] He introduced numerous bold conjectures, with a clear view of how to approach textual problems, even if some conclusions were unconvincing. There would always, though, be a majority of scholars and readers for whom textual matters remained, in Highet’s provocative phrase, ‘a glorified form of proofreading.’[40] In the various skirmishes of the ‘battle of the books’, Bentley’s opponents tended to hold their own.[41]

Approaches to lyric

Horace reached the peripheries of Western culture; Thomas Morris, in 1761, imitated Odes 2.16:

Ease is the wish too of the sly Canadian;

Ease the delight of bloody Caghnawagas;

Ease, Richard, ease, not to be bought with wampum,

Nor paper money. ...

O think on Morris, in a lonely chamber,

Dabbling in Sapphic.[42]

Also in 1761, Harvard welcomed George III in Latin verse.[43] John Beveridge (1703-67), a Scotsman who emigrated to America in 1752, corresponded with friends in Latin odes.[44] Benjamin Young Prime (1733-91) wrote 160 lines of Sapphics (far longer than any ode of Horace’s) in 1751 to his teacher Aaron Burr, father of the future vice-president. He recalls reading with Burr the attacks on bad morals in the satires, and the good morals celebrated in the odes.[45] An anonymous Philadephia poet of 1775 addresses an ode to George Washington:

Te vocat Boston (ubi dux iniquus / Obsidet cives miseros …)[46], ‘Boston calls you, where an unjust general besieges the unhappy citizens ...’. When Kentucky became the fifteenth state, in 1792, a newspaper elegist declared that a new pyramid of stars would defeat the ravages of time, in language resonating with echoes of Odes 3.30 (as well as the opening of Martial’s Liber Spectaculorum).[47]

John Parke published his version of the Odes and Epodes in 1786, dedicated to Washington. He led a regiment at the battle of Monmouth, in June 1778, but then, in true Horatian fashion, resigned from the army in October 1778, in the middle of the war, to enjoy rural life ‘far from arms and camps retir’d’. His style is vigorous and eccentric. Poor Ibycus’s wife, in Odes 3.15, is ‘Lewd as a goat’. In 1776, Parke imitated Odes 3.29 from the army camp, turning fumum et opes strepitumque Romae into ‘Th’ eternal buz of merchandise and care,/The smoaky town and its corrupted air’.[48] At the eastern periphery, in Russia, Horace could be judged alongside a French imitator: Horatium imitando superat Malherbius (Malherbe surpasses Horace in this imitation). No class can escape death (Odes 1.4.13-14): ‘... Et la garde qui veille aux barrières du Louvre / N’en défend pas nos rois.’[49] In Croatia, a vigorous Neo-Latin tradition produced Junius Restius, a Horatian satirist, and some odes of Titus Brezovatsky, in response to the turmoil of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Mathias Petrus Katancsich’s Fructus Auctumnales (Zagreb, 1791) are full of Horatian Sapphics and Alcaics.[50] An earlier Croatian, B. Bolic, lamenting a Ragusan citizen, felt like a flying swan propelled by Horace.[51]