Perhaps the ode to Leuconoe,which Mr.Austin Dobson has rendered so prettily in a villanelle,may come within the scope of this Muse,for it has a playfulness mingled with its melancholy,a sadness in its play.Perhaps,too,if Horace is to be done into verse,these old French forms seem as fit vehicles as any for Latin poetry that was written in the exotic measures of Greece.There is a foreign grace and a little technical difficulty overcome in the English ballade and villanelle,as in the Horatian sapphics and alcaics.Iwould not say so much,on my own responsibility,nor trespass so far on the domain of scholarship,but this opinion was communicated to me by a learned professor of Latin.I think,too,that some of the lyric measures of the old French Pleiad,of Ronsard and Du Bellay,would be well wedded with the verse of Horace.But perhaps no translator will ever please any one but himself,and of Horace every man must be his own translator.
It may be that Ovid now and then comes near to writing vers de societe,only he never troubles himself for a moment about the "decorum of the boudoir."Do you remember the lines on the ring which he gave his lady?They are the origin and pattern of all the verses written by lovers on that pretty metempsychosis which shall make them slippers,or fans,or girdles,like Waller's,and like that which bound "the dainty,dainty waist"of the Miller's Daughter.
"Ring that shalt bind the finger fair Of my sweet maid,thou art not rare;Thou hast not any price above The token of her poet's love;Her finger may'st thou mate as she Is mated every wise with me!"And the poet goes on,as poets will,to wish he were this favoured,this fortunate jewel:
"In vain I wish!So,ring,depart,And say 'with me thou hast his heart'!"Once more Ovid's verses on his catholic affection for all ladies,the brown and the blonde,the short and the tall,may have suggested Cowley's humorous confession,"The Chronicle":
"Margarita first possessed,If I remember well,my breast,Margarita,first of all;"and then follows a list as long as Leporello's.
What disqualifies Ovid as a writer of vers de societe is not so much his lack of "decorum"as the monotonous singsong of his eternal elegiacs.The lightest of light things,the poet of society,should possess more varied strains;like Horace,Martial,Thackeray,not like Ovid and (here is a heresy)Praed.Inimitably well as Praed does his trick of antithesis,I still feel that it is a trick,and that most rhymers could follow him in a mere mechanic art.But here the judgment of Mr.Locker would be opposed to this modest opinion,and there would be opposition again where Mr.Locker calls Dr.O.W.
Holmes "perhaps the best living writer of this species of verse."But here we are straying among the moderns before exhausting the ancients,of whom I fancy that Martial,at his best,approaches most near the ideal.
Of course it is true that many of Martial's lyrics would be thought disgusting in any well-regulated convict establishment.His gallantry is rarely "honourable."Scaliger used to burn a copy of Martial,once a year,on the altar of Catullus,who himself was far from prudish.But Martial,somehow,kept his heart undepraved,and his taste in books was excellent.How often he writes verses for the bibliophile,delighting in the details of purple and gold,the illustrations and ornaments for his new volume!These pieces are for the few--for amateurs,but we may all be touched by his grief for the little lass,Erotion.He commends her in Hades to his own father and mother gone before him,that the child may not be frightened in the dark,friendless among the shades "Parvula ne nigras horrescat Erotion umbras Oraque Tartarei prodigiosa canis."There is a kind of playfulness in the sorrow,and the pity of a man for a child;pity that shows itself in a smile.I try to render that other inion for the tomb of little Erotion:
Here lies the body of the little maid Erotion;From her sixth winter's snows her eager shade Hath fleeted on!
Whoe'er thou be that after me shalt sway My scanty farm,To her slight shade the yearly offering pay,So--safe from harm -Shall thou and thine revere the kindly Lar,And this alone Be,through thy brief dominion,near or far,A mournful stone!
Certainly he had a heart,this foul-mouthed Martial,who claimed for the study of his book no serious hours,but moments of mirth,when men are glad with wine,"in the reign of the Rose:"{9}
"Haec hora est tua,cum furit Lyaeus,Cum regnat rosa,cum madent capilli;Tunc mevel rigidi legant Catones."
But enough of the poets of old;another day we may turn to Carew and Suckling,Praed and Locker,poets of our own speech,lighter lyrists of our own time.{10}