Horace and His Influence | Page 2

in clarity
from an understanding of his meaning to other days. We shall discover
that the eternal verity of his message, whether in ethics or in art, comes
to us with a very particular challenge, warning and cry.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
CONTRIBUTORS TO THE FUND ii SABINE HILLS vii EDITORS'
PREFACE ix INTRODUCTION: THE DYNAMISM OF THE FEW
xiii
I. HORACE INTERPRETED The Appeal of Horace 3 1. Horace the
Person 6 2. Horace the Poet 9 3. Horace the Interpreter of His Times
Horace the Duality 23 i. The Interpreter of Italian Landscape 25 ii. The
Interpreter of Italian Living 28 iii. The Interpreter of Roman Religion
31 iv. The Interpreter of the Popular Wisdom 35 Horace and Hellenism
38 4. Horace the Philosopher of Life Horace the Spectator and Essayist
39 i. The Vanity of Human Wishes 44 ii. The Pleasures of this World
49 iii. Life and Morality 54 iv. Life and Purpose 59 v. The Sources of
Happiness 62 II. HORACE THROUGH THE AGES Introductory 69 1.
Horace the Prophet 70 2. Horace and Ancient Rome 75 3. Horace and
the Middle Age 87 4. Horace and Modern Times The Rebirth of Horace
104 i. In Italy 106 ii. In France 114 iii. In Germany 115 iv. In Spain
118 v. In England 121 vi. In the Schools 126 III. HORACE THE
DYNAMIC The Cultivated Few 127 1. Horace and the Literary Ideal
131 2. Horace and Literary Creation i. The Translator's Ideal 136 ii.
Creation 143 3. Horace in the Living of Men 152 IV. CONCLUSION
168 NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 171

INTRODUCTION: THE DYNAMISM OF THE FEW
To those who stand in the midst of times and attempt to grasp their
meaning, civilization often seems hopelessly complicated. The myriad
and mysterious interthreading of motive and action, of cause and effect,
presents to the near vision no semblance of a pattern, and the whole
web is so confused and meaningless that the mind grows to doubt the
presence of design, and becomes skeptical of the necessity, or even the
importance, of any single strand.
Yet civilization is on the whole a simple and easily understood
phenomenon. This is true most apparently of that part of the human

family of which Europe and the Americas form the principal portion,
and whose influences have made themselves felt also in remote
continents. If to us it is less apparently true of the world outside our
western civilization, the reason lies in the fact that we are not in
possession of equal facilities for the exercise of judgment.
We are all members one of another, and the body which we form is a
consistent and more or less unchanging whole. There are certain
elemental facts which underlie human society wherever it has advanced
to a stage deserving the name of civilization. There is the intellectual
impulse, with the restraining influence of reason upon the relations of
men. There is the active desire to be in right relation with the unknown,
which we call religion. There is the attempt at the beautification of life,
which we call art. There is the institution of property. There is the
institution of marriage. There is the demand for the purity of woman.
There is the insistence upon certain decencies and certain conformities
which constitute what is known as morality. There is the exchange of
material conveniences called commerce, with its necessary adjunct, the
sanctity of obligation. In a word, there are the universal and eternal
verities.
Farther, if what we may call the constitution of civilization is thus
definite, its physical limits are even more clearly defined. Civilization
is a matter of centers. The world is not large, and its government rests
upon the shoulders of the few. The metropolis is the index of capacity
for good and ill in a national civilization. Its culture is representative of
the common life of town and country.
It follows that the history of civilization is a history of the famous
gathering-places of men. The story of human progress in the West is
the story of Memphis, Thebes, Babylon, Nineveh, Cnossus, Athens,
Alexandria, Rome, and of medieval, Renaissance, and modern capitals.
History is a stream, in the remoter antiquity of Egypt and Mesopotamia
confined within narrow and comparatively definite banks, gathering in
volume and swiftness as it flows through Hellenic lands, and at last
expanding into the broad and deep basin of Rome, whence its current,
dividing, leads away in various channels to other ample basins, perhaps

in the course of time to reunite at some great meeting of waters in the
New World. To one afloat in the swirl of contradictory eddies, it may
be difficult to judge of the whence and whither of the troubled current,
but the ascent of the stream and the exploration of