Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 420, October 1850

The first grace of the whole composition seems to me its two-fold personality – the free intimacy between the great Protector and the small Protected. It is like Horace's part of a familiar colloquy, where you may fancy, at discretion, interlocutory remark, or answer, or question of Augustus.

NORTH

True, Talboys. Verse has attracted to the Bard the rays of imperial favour. The Emperor himself is a Verse-maker. How natural and suitable that Horace in verses which vary, to the time of the moment, with inimitable facility, from a conversation-like negligence, or negligent seeming – to sweetness and beauty, to strength and dignity – should win the august ear, tired with the din of arms or of debating tongues, to an hour's chat on the interests of the Muses.

SEWARD

The praise of the Poet how loving and ingenious! how insinuatingly subdued!

NORTH

Yet the ground is chosen with a dexterous boldness. The majestic opening Address of the Poem showed Augustus, like a Jupiter, wielding with beneficent power the destinies of the Roman world. And now, confronting the dispenser of welfare to nations, he sets up another benefactor of the State, the Poet, face to face with golden-throned, and purple-vested Octavius Cæsar – poor Horatius Flaccus!

BULLER

Most awkward of Courtiers! Most crazed of versifiers!

SEWARD

Beware of rash judgments and half-informations. You familiar with Hory —

BULLER

You muttered the passage so that you murdered it.

TALBOYS

You, familiar with Hory, see at least how, by the choice of the ground, he has obliged himself to stepping cautiously and tenderly over it. He leads to it – he does not begin with it. Arrived at the comparison, he proposes it rather implicitly than explicitly – admire the Rhetorician. He will avert jealousy – he will propitiate kindness.

BULLER

Artful Dodger.

TALBOYS

He has acknowledged – you might have given us the line – a fault. Nothing seriously wrong though. As if Apollo had shot a plague with golden arrows upon the City, all are turned Versifiers – young and old – and grave and gay – wise and foolish – the skilled and the unskilled – the called and the uncalled.

BULLER

You write verses well yourself, Talboys.

TALBOYS

I am as willing as most people to bandy compliments, but here you must excuse me. Out of the small fault, rises the Eulogy. This diffusive delusion – this epidemic, yet lively, and airy, and sprightly, and harmless insanity, gives out from its bosom some good uses, and first on the madman himself. As one disease expels another, the musolept is, through the very force of his disorder, free from the taint of cupidity – of the burning desire for worldly wealth. The simple man has room in his heart but for one love. Verse is his passion – his bliss, his all-absorbing vocation. Has his banker failed with his little cash-balance in his hands? He laughs. Has one of his two slaves run away? He laughs. Has a fire at the bookseller's consumed the copies of his last work? 'Tis unlucky – but he laughs. It is not he that speculates upon, or waylays, the unguarded trust of his friend or acquaintances – not he that handles with adhesive fingers the gold of his young orphan-ward. And for his fare, it is an anchorite's – pulse and brown bread.

BULLER

Very prettily paraphrased indeed!

SEWARD

And very feelingly. Imagine these ideas sliding into one's heart in the natural verse of – Goldsmith! For it is as if Goldy here described himself – and see if the argument from the Innocence is not artfully placed, for the induction to the argument from the Benefits, that is to follow.

NORTH

My dear Boys Three, Hory is here painting himself – and not himself. It is the idea of the Poet. He brings the traits and the colours together, as they best suit each other, and his purposes. The meritorious Eremite's fare is not personal to the writer. He has reached a point which imperiously requires another fault. Frankly and humorously he takes this from Flaccus himself. The Poet is no soldier – slow to find the way to the field, and too quick to find the way from it. Nevertheless – now for the setting up. He, too, is a profitable servant of the State. And forthwith an imperatively demanded apology – for the purple-robed has smiled a little incredulously at the utilis urbi. If, says the Complete Letter-Writer, you will only admit that majestic interests may be served by adminicles of "small regard to see to."

TALBOYS

And how curiously he hides a pre-eminent power in the very smallest sphere!

NORTH

How finely! Rome was a republic of Orators. Cedant arma togæ – the Toga the war-weed of the Orator!

"Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatam."

The gowned Lords of the Nations – and, Lords of the Lords, the Orators!

BULLER

Are you sure that is the right reading?

NORTH

Let it be so. Observe now – the occultation.

BULLER

The what?

TALBOYS

The occultation.

BULLER

Mille gratias.

NORTH

The nascent and adolescent Orator is moulded to the power of the word by the greatest masters of the word, the Poets! Tell this, O Poet, in imperial ears! Then speak modestly, withdrawingly, insinuatingly. Hide the boast. It is hidden – and shown. The Poet fashions the tender and stammering mouth of the boy. The rudiments of pronunciation – The Orator nascent. No more. It is pretty and gentle that the Muse herself condescends to the care of moulding the young soft lip to the pure musical utterance of Latium's magnificent Mother-tongue.

BULLER

Now I see it all. The occultation!

NORTH