MR. WICKHAM'S " HORA.CE."
AFTER an interval of nearly seventeen years, Mr. Wickham completes his Horace. Meanwhile, some good work has been done with the poet by English scholars, the Satires having been dealt with by Professor Palmer, and the Epistles by Professor Wilkins. It would have been a matter of regret if the appearance of these editions had prevented the completion of Mr. Wickham's commentary. To say anything absolutely new about a writer on whom the labours of many generations of scholars have been spent, is not easy, perhaps scarcely desirable; but there is always room for the work of a student who brings to his task learning, scholarship, taste, and, above all, sympathy.
The "Prolegomena" occupy not more than a moderate amount of space. The text and the ancient commentators were discussed in the first volume, so that all that remained to give were special introductions. One of these serves for the two books of the Satires. Each book of the Epistles has one to itself, the second book being distinguished from the first by the title of " The Literary Epistles," a title which is made to include the Ars Poetica, though Mr. Wickham does not go so far as to number this as 2 Ep., iii, To the question of the dates of the various books, always interesting because so closely connected with their subject-matter, Mr. Wickham brings the same sound judgment which we found him to exercise on the chronology of the Odes. The determining passage as to the time of the Satires is, of course, to be found in 2, vi., 40 sea. " Septimus octavo propior ram fugerit annul." The perplexing reckoning of Roman time suggests, indeed, a doubt whether this means " seven or rather eight," or " six or rather seven;" but Mr. Wickham follows his predecessors in pre- ferring the former meaning. 2, vi., is pretty clearly marked as belonging to B.C. 31. This throws back the beginning of the friendship between patron and poet to B.C. 38, and the question is, how much time had elapsed since that beginning and the publication of the first book of the Satires. The matter is neatly put in the following:—" The friendship is fresh, and yet has lasted a little while. Horace looks back on its stages (6, 54.62) ; it has stood some tests (3, 63-65); people are still curious about it, and yet some are already seeking to profit by it." These conditions would hardly be satisfied by less than three years, and so we get to B.C. 35 for the date, not a new conclusion, indeed, but one for which the student of Horace will feel that he has now a conveniently arranged and fairly conclusive argu- ment. (The date of the second book is pretty well fixed for B.O. 30.) The date of the Ars Poetica is a much more doubtful matter, critics differing so much among themselves, that some attribute it to the forty-first year of the poet's life, and some to the fifty-seventh or last. Mr. Wickham argues the question with much skill, concluding in favour of the later date, so differing from Professor ,Wilkins, who decides for the earlier. Professor Wilkins's argument is ingenious, and even forcible, though we cannot concede all that he claims,—as, e.g., when be says that the " terms of the reference to Quintilius, in v. 438, suggest that he had been known to the young Pisos." The words are : " Quintino si quid recitares,' &c. Surely the use of the second person has nothing to do with those whom Horace was addressing, but is simply equivalent to the English one." If one read anything to Quintilius, he would say, " Pray correct this." " We think that the balance of probability lies on the side which Mr. Wickham has taken. One very forcible argument he draws from the resemblances between the Ars Poetica and the Epistle to A ugustus. " We may ask," he writes, "which is the more probable, that Horace should have gathered freely from earlier compositions materials for a letter primarily intended to guide a young literary friend, or that when he is bending his energies to write a particularly happy and acceptable Epistle to the Emperor, he should take so many of its points from one which he had written ten years before to some comparatively nameless young friends." The later date suits better with Porphyrion's statement that the father of the two young Pisos was the L. Piso who died in the office of Prefect of the City in A.D. 31. He was then eighty. In B.C. 24 he could have been only twenty-five, but in B.C. 8 he may have had sons growing tip to whom it would have been appropriate to address a literary letter. " Scholiasts," as Mr. Wickham
* Th. Works of Borneo. With ti Commentary by R. 0. Wickham, 74.8.. Vol. H. The Sating, Epistles, and De Arte Poetics. Oxford; The Clarendon Press. 1851,
remarks, "were frequently wrong ;" still, their statements, when not contradicted by known facts, must go for some- thing. If Porphyrion was right in this case, we may identify the elder of the two youths, whom we know to have been a Lucius, with the Lucius Piso who was killed in Spain thirty- four years afterwards (Tao., Ann., iv., 45).
Mr. Wickham has consulted the general convenience of readers rather than the exigencies of the class-room by putting his commentary in the shape of foot-notes. He also reaps from this arrangement the incidental advantage that he does not fall into the mistake which even careful editors, working on the other plan, do not always escape, of following one reading in the text and another in the notes. His work is marked throughout by acuteness, good taste, and, as has been said, a truly appreciative feeling for his author. Of course we do not always find ourselves in agreement with him. In 1 Ep., 7, " Occupet extremis in vicis balba seneetus," it is surely a little far-fetched to say : "The stammering accents of boys at a reading lesson are likened to old age sans teeth.' " Senectus must surely refer to the old age of the book, the time when it shall have passed its prime of popular favour ; balba may refer to the speech of childhood, but it is perhaps better to take it as an otiose epithet, made a little more pointed than such epithets commonly are by the general metaphor. In the last Epistle of the same book we cannot think that Horace asserts himself placuisse belligue domi, the leading men of Rome. Domi is all very well; but what about Belli, with Philippi in view ? Even if he could have ventured to describe Brutus and Cassius as prim i urbis, he could hardly say that he had satisfied them. Orelli, indeed, takes this view, but we prefer the interpretation of Professor Wilkins. In " tineas passes taciturnus inertes," in the same Epistle, it is a subtle remark that the disparaging epithet of the book- worms adds to the sense of the spiritless existence of their victim." This is perhaps preferable to the some- what unusual rendering of " barbarous," In 1, xv., 13, Mr. Wickham's literary instinct in preferring equi to equis is, we think, right. The statement, as he says, "loses point" by being made general, as it is by the dative, In 1 Sat , vi., 79, Mr. Wickham annotates on "in magno ut populo," " as befitted a great city.' At Venusia he might have gone as others carrying his own books," &c. Here, we think, Pro- fessor Palmer is right in paraphrasing the words : " If my dress and slaves had attracted the gaze of any one, as may or may not happen in the throng." This is certainly a less strained interpretation. But the general quality of Mr. Wickham's commentary is distinctly high. An interesting note on the situation of the Sabine Farm, in which Mr. Wickham has drawn on his personal recollections, must not be forgotten.
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