Horace | Page 3

the vivid accuracy of his description. The passage in question records an interesting incident in the poet's childhood. Escaping from his nurse, he has rambled away from the little cottage on the slopes of Mount Vultur, whither he had probably been taken from the sultry Venusia to pass his villeggiatura during the heat of summer, and is found asleep, covered with fresh myrtle and laurel leaves, in which the wood-pigeons have swathed him.
"When from my nurse erewhile, on Vultur's steep, I stray'd beyond the bound Of our small homestead's ground, Was I, fatigued with play, beneath a heap Of fresh leaves sleeping found,--
"Strewn by the storied doves; and wonder fell On all, their nest who keep On Acherontia's steep, Or in Forentum's low rich pastures dwell, Or Bantine woodlands deep,
"That safe from bears and adders in such place I lay, and slumbering smiled, O'erstrewn with myrtle wild, And laurel, by the god's peculiar grace No craven-hearted child."
The incident thus recorded is not necessarily discredited by the circumstance of its being closely akin to what is told by Aelian of Pindar, that a swarm of bees settled upon his lips, and fed him with honey, when he was left exposed upon the highway. It probably had some foundation in fact, whatever may be thought of the implied augury of the special favour of the gods which is said to have been drawn from it at the time. In any case, the picture of the strayed child, sleeping unconscious of its danger, with its hands full of wild- flowers, is pleasant to contemplate.
In his father's house, and in those of the Apulian peasantry around him, Horace became familiar with the simple virtues of the poor, their industry and independence, their integrity, chastity, and self-denial, which he loved to contrast in after years with the luxury and vice of imperial Rome. His mother he would seem to have lost early. No mention of her occurs, directly or indirectly, throughout his poems; and remarkable as Horace is for the warmth of his affections, this could scarcely have happened had she not died when he was very young. He appears also to have been an only child. This doubtless drew him closer to his father, and the want of the early influences of mother or sister may serve to explain why one misses in his poetry something of that gracious tenderness towards womanhood, which, looking to the sweet and loving disposition of the man, one might otherwise have expected to find in it. That he was no common boy we may be very sure, even if this were not manifest from the fact that his father resolved to give him a higher education than was to be obtained under a provincial schoolmaster. With this view, although little able to afford the expense, he took his son, when about twelve years old, to Rome, and gave him the best education the capital could supply. No money was spared to enable him to keep his position among his fellow- scholars of the higher ranks. He was waited on by several slaves, as though he were the heir to a considerable fortune. At the same time, however, he was not allowed either to feel any shame for his own order, or to aspire to a position which his patrimony was unable to maintain. His father taught him to look forward to some situation akin to that in which his own modest competency had been acquired; and to feel that, in any sphere, culture, self-respect, and prudent self- control must command influence, and afford the best guarantee for happiness. In reading this part of Horace's story, as he tells it himself, one is reminded of Burns's early lines about his father and himself:--
"My father was a farmer upon the Carrick border, And carefully he bred me up in decency and order. He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne'er a farthing, For without an honest manly heart no man was worth regarding."
The parallel might be still further pursued. "My father," says Gilbert Burns, "was for some time almost the only companion we had. He conversed familiarly on all subjects with us as if we had been men, and was at great pains, while we accompanied him in the labours of the farm, to lead the conversation to such subjects as might tend to increase our knowledge, or confirm us in virtuous habits." How closely this resembles the method adopted with Horace by his father will be seen hereafter. [Footnote: Compare it, too, with what Horace reports of "Ofellus the hind, Though no scholar, a sage of exceptional kind," in the Second Satire of the Second Book, from line 114 to the end.]
Horace's literary master at Rome was Orbilius Pupillus, a grammarian, who had carried into his