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whole theory and practice of composition in the Augustan age, and notably the compositions of Horace. Even the more temperamental Lucilius I have shown to be influenced by them far more than has hitherto been realized.

The doctrine of decorum absolutely interpenetrates Horace's theory of the poetic art at almost every phase, as Hack has convincingly shown in his article on the doctrine of the literary forms. It is significant that in passing from the discussion of the ars to the task of the artifex or literary artist, Horace asserts the fundamental importance of this guiding principle, Ars Poetica, 306 ff.:

Munus et officium nil scribens ipse docebo,

unde parentur opes, quid alat formetque poetam,
quid deceat, quid non, quo virtus, quo ferat error.

So also at the very beginning of the treatise the winged serpents of tragedy are used as a symbol of the importance of unity and congruity in a true work of art.

Later when discussing the choice of words in lines 45-72 Horace permits the coinage of new words only if the privilege is used with discretion (dabitur licentia sumpta pudenter), and compounds formed on the analogy of the Greek laws of composition must be sparingly employed (parce detorta). Even in the matter of nicely articulated verbal complexes, the very core of Horace's claim to a curiosa felicitas he advocates the same principle of restraint. His ideal poet will be in verbis etiam tenuis cautusque serendis, like the tenuis orator of Cicero. Again in the question of the order of words (ordo) the poet will accept only that which is instantly appropriate to be uttered, and will reject or postpone all other argumentative material. (See Ars Poetica, 40-45) Finally in the range of his vocabulary also Horace shows how the doctrine of decorum had been perfected in the period separating the age of Lucilius and the Scipios from his own as the result of the puristic studies of the Atticists of the Ciceronian and Augustan period. This point has been fully considered in connection with my analysis of satires 1, 4; 1, 10, and the Ars Poetica. On the other hand we have found that the more expansive Lucilius, while recognizing many of the limitations to a "wide open vocabulary" prescribed by the less developed doctrines of decorum prevalent in the

Scipionic circle, nevertheless travelled a considerable distance on the road of the great romanticist Victor Hugo, who boasted that he had put the liberty cap on the dictionary.

A decorous and restrained art is a reticent art. I do not need to labor the point of Horatian reticence, which is one of the commonplaces of literature. And indeed in the Ars Poetica, (line 145) he expressly couples pudor with the lex operis in discussing the difficult problem of imitation. Reticence, indeed, lies at the very root of the quality of curiosa felicitas. In all his critical writings Horace has repeatedly expressed his feeling for the desirability of brevity, and emphasized the lack of that quality in the improvising Lucilius. Perhaps this humorous reticence is best illustrated in satire 1, 4, 17 where in declining the contest in improvisation proposed by Crispinus he raises a prayer of thanksgiving that his temperament is that of one, raro et perpauca loquentis.

In the field of language and style, the evolution of the three styles, plain, middle and grand is perhaps the most notable product of the orderly and logical development of the principles of restraint, propriety, and good taste which we have been describing. While from one point of view propriety, rò ρÉTOν, is only one of the five stylistic virtues in the system of Diogenes of Babylon, it is difficult to exaggerate its power of interpenetrating all the aspects of the Stoic rhetoric. Under the influence of the more humane Panaetius and the Roman Atticists, and aided by the generally eclectic tendencies of philosophical and literary studies in the Ciceronian and Augustan period, and, I may add by the strong mediating tendency of the Greco-Roman civilization, this quality at last disputed the supremacy with the doctrine of good Latinity itself.

In the correlation of invective with the grand style, of irony with the plain style, and in the elaborate formulation of the distinction between the liberal and the illiberal jest in GrecoRoman rhetoric, in Cicero and in Horace, which I have discussed in my second and third chapters, and in connection with Horace's fourth satire of the first book we have another striking example of the working of the same principle of decorum.

It is perhaps worth emphasizing the fundamental distinction between romantic and Socratic irony. The former, as Babbitt

has shown, is an expression of bitter personal disillusion on the part of the romanticist at the gap between the Arcadian dreamland into which he would project himself and the real world of struggling humanity, from which he would fain escape but to which sooner or later he is irrevocably recalled. The Socratic and the Horatian irony, on the other hand, and I have tried to show the close relation existing between them, are completely socialized. They represent a restrained and humorous recognition of the gap which separates the half-educated mass of men from what is truly central in existence, a larger and deeper knowledge of life and its hidden meaning, a goal which ever eludes even the wisest of us but in the pursuit of which with the united force of our reason and imagination, the only true happiness is to be found. There is no note of acrid disdain or disillusion in the irony of a Socrates or a Horace, which only seeks to tell the truth under cover of a jest:

ridentem dicere verum

quid vetat? ut pueris olim dant crustula blandi doctores

elementa velint ut discere prima.

From such blandi doctores the children of men will ever take the sweetened cakes, and cling to their robes as they learn from them the prima elementa vitae.

But the literary genres are perhaps the noblest expression of the classical tradition clearly discriminated by the reason, wrought by an arduous imitative discipline, fused into harmony by the brooding imagination of the noblest minds of the Greeks and Romans, they enshrine in firm and radiant forms the visions of the human spirit. And so while we may well give all praise to Lucilius, the inventor of Roman satire, our deepest affection and devotion go out to Horace, to Horace the conscientious artist, to Horace our kindly and quizzical guide on a long but friendly journey, to Horace the humane discoverer of our daily life.

"Ainsi donc, dans les arts, l'inventeur est celui
Qui peint ce que chacun peut sentir comme lui."

FINIS

Arnim, H. von. lin.

1898.

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