man, Gorgonius the
goat-scented, Rufillus the pastille-perfumed, were derisive sobriquets,
which, while ministering to the censoriousness of readers by names
genuine or well understood, must have bitterly offended the men thus
stigmatized or transparently indicated. This he admits regretfully in
his later Satires, throwing some blame on a practice of his father, who
when cautioning him against vice, always pointed the warning by some
example from among their acquaintance. So, leaving personal satire, he
turns to other topics; relates divertingly the annoyances of a journey;
the mosquitoes, the frogs which croaked all night (Sat. I, v), the bad
water and the ill-baked bread. Or he paints the slummy quarter of the
city in which the witches held their horrible rites, and describes their
cruel orgies as he peeped at them through the trees one night. Or he
girds, facetiously and without the bitterness of Persius or Juvenal,
at the Jews (Sat. I, v, 100), whose stern exclusiveness of faith was
beginning to excite in Rome the horror vigorously expressed by Gallio
in M. Anatole France's recent brilliant work. Or he delineates, on a
full canvas and with the modernity which is amongst his most endearing
characteristics, the "Bore" of the Augustan age. He starts on a summer
morning, light-hearted and thinking of nothing at all, for a pleasant
stroll along the Sacred Way (Sat. I, ix).[1] A man whom he hardly knew
accosts him, ignores a stiff response, clings to him, refuses to be
shaken off, sings his own praises as poet, musician, dancer, presses
impertinent questions as to the household and habits of Maecenas.
Horace's friend Fuscus meets them; the poet nods and winks, imploring
him to interpose a rescue. Cruel Fuscus sees it all, mischievously
apologizes, will not help, and the shy, amiable poet walks on with his
tormentor, "his ears dropped like those of an overladen ass." At last
one of the bore's creditors comes up, collars him with threats, hales
him to the law courts, while the relieved poet quotes in his joy from
the rescue of Hector in the Iliad, "Thus Apollo bore me from the fray."
In this Satire, which was admirably imitated by Swift, it always seems
to me that we get Horace at his very best, his dry quaintness and his
inoffensive fun. The _delicacy_ of Roman satire died with him; to
reappear in our own Augustan age with Addison and Steele, to find faint
echo in the gentle preachments of Cowper, to impress itself in every