Editing Horace (section)

===Age of Enlightenment===
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or the [[Age of Enlightenment]], neoclassical culture was pervasive. English literature in the middle of that period has been dubbed [[Augustan literature|Augustan]]. It is not always easy to distinguish Horace's influence during those centuries (the mixing of influences is shown for example in one poet's pseudonym, ''Horace Juvenal'').<ref group="nb">'Horace Juvenal' was author of ''Modern manners: a poem'', 1793</ref> However a measure of his influence can be found in the diversity of the people interested in his works, both among readers and authors.<ref>D. Money, ''The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries'', 318, 331, 332</ref>

New editions of his works were published almost yearly. There were three new editions in 1612 (two in [[Leiden]], one in [[Frankfurt]]) and again in 1699 ([[Utrecht]], Barcelona, [[Cambridge]]). Cheap editions were plentiful and fine editions were also produced, including one whose entire text was engraved by [[John Pine]] in [[copperplate engraving|copperplate]]. The poet [[James Thomson (poet, born 1700)|James Thomson]] owned five editions of Horace's work and the physician [[James Douglas (physician)|James Douglas]] had five hundred books with Horace-related titles. Horace was often commended in periodicals such as [[The Spectator (1711)|The Spectator]], as a hallmark of good judgement, moderation and manliness, a focus for moralising.<ref group="nb">see for example ''Spectator'' '''312''', 27 February 1712; '''548''', 28 November 1712; '''618''', 10 November 1714</ref> His verses offered a fund of mottoes, such as ''[[simplex munditiis]]'' (elegance in simplicity), ''[[splendide mendax]]'' (nobly untruthful), ''[[sapere aude]]'' (dare to know), ''[[nunc est bibendum]]'' (now is the time to drink), ''[[carpe diem]]'' (seize the day, perhaps the only one still in common use today).<ref name="Tarrant"/> These were quoted even in works as prosaic as [[Edmund Quincy (1703-1788)|Edmund Quincy]]'s ''A treatise of hemp-husbandry'' (1765). The fictional hero [[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling|Tom Jones]] recited his verses with feeling.<ref>D. Money, ''The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries'', 322</ref> His works were also used to justify commonplace themes, such as patriotic obedience, as in James Parry's English lines from an Oxford University collection in 1736:<ref>D. Money, ''The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries'', 326–27</ref>

{{poemquote|
What friendly [[Muse]] will teach my Lays
To emulate the Roman fire?
Justly to sound a Caesar's praise
Demands a bold Horatian lyre.
}}

Horatian-style lyrics were increasingly typical of Oxford and Cambridge verse collections for this period, most of them in Latin but some like the previous ode in English. [[John Milton]]'s [[Lycidas]] first appeared in such a collection. It has few Horatian echoes<ref group="nb">One echo of Horace may be found in line 69: "''Were it not better done as others use,/ To sport with Amaryllis in the shade/Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?''", which points to the Neara in ''Odes'' 3.14.21 (Douglas Bush, ''Milton: Poetical Works'', 144, note 69)</ref> yet Milton's associations with Horace were lifelong. He composed a controversial version of ''Odes'' 1.5, and [[Paradise Lost]] includes references to Horace's 'Roman' ''Odes'' 3.1–6 (Book 7 for example begins with echoes of ''Odes'' 3.4).<ref>J. Talbot, ''A Horatian Pun in Paradise Lost'', 21–3</ref> Yet Horace's lyrics could offer inspiration to libertines as well as moralists, and neo-Latin sometimes served as a kind of discrete veil for the risqué. Thus for example [[Benjamin Loveling]] authored a catalogue of Drury Lane and Covent Garden prostitutes, in Sapphic stanzas, and an encomium for a dying lady "of salacious memory".<ref>B. Loveling, ''Latin and English Poems'', 49–52, 79–83</ref> Some Latin imitations of Horace were politically subversive, such as a marriage ode by [[Anthony Alsop]] that included a rallying cry for the [[Jacobitism|Jacobite]] cause. On the other hand, [[Andrew Marvell]] took inspiration from Horace's ''Odes'' 1.37 to compose his English masterpiece [[Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland]], in which subtly nuanced reflections on the execution of [[Charles I of England|Charles I]] echo Horace's ambiguous response to the death of [[Cleopatra]] (Marvell's ode was suppressed in spite of its subtlety and only began to be widely published in 1776). [[Samuel Johnson]] took particular pleasure in reading ''The Odes''.<ref group="nb">Cfr. [[James Boswell]], "The Life of [[Samuel Johnson]]" ''Aetat.'' 20, 1729 where Boswell remarked of Johnson that Horace's ''Odes'' "were the compositions in which he took most delight."</ref> [[Alexander Pope]] wrote direct ''Imitations'' of Horace (published with the original Latin alongside) and also echoed him in ''Essays'' and [[The Rape of the Lock]]. He even emerged as "a quite Horatian Homer" in his translation of the ''[[Iliad]]''.<ref>D. Money, ''The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries'', 329–31</ref> Horace appealed also to female poets, such as [[Anna Seward]] (''Original sonnets on various subjects, and odes paraphrased from Horace'', 1799) and [[Elizabeth Tollet]], who composed a Latin ode in Sapphic meter to celebrate her brother's return from overseas, with tea and coffee substituted for the wine of Horace's [[symposium|sympotic]] settings:
{{verse translation|lang=la
|
Quos procax nobis numeros, jocosque
Musa dictaret? mihi dum tibique
Temperent baccis Arabes, vel herbis
Pocula Seres<ref>E. Tollet, ''Poems on Several Occasions'', 84</ref>
|
What verses and jokes might the bold
Muse dictate? while for you and me
Arabs flavour our cups with beans
Or Chinese with leaves.<ref>Translation adapted from D. Money, ''The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries'', 329</ref>
}}
[[File:Horace 18th-19th century engraving (cropped).jpg|thumb|Horace in an anonymous late 18th to early 19th century engraving]]
Horace's ''Ars Poetica'' is second only to Aristotle's ''Poetics'' in its influence on literary theory and criticism. Milton recommended both works in his treatise ''of Education''.<ref>A. Gilbert, ''Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden'', 124, 669</ref> Horace's ''Satires'' and ''Epistles'' however also had a huge impact, influencing theorists and critics such as [[John Dryden]].<ref>W. Kupersmith, ''Roman Satirists in Seventeenth Century England'', 97–101</ref> There was considerable debate over the value of different lyrical forms for contemporary poets, as represented on one hand by the kind of four-line stanzas made familiar by Horace's Sapphic and Alcaic ''Odes'' and, on the other, the loosely structured [[Pindarics]] associated with the odes of [[Pindar]]. Translations occasionally involved scholars in the dilemmas of censorship. Thus [[Christopher Smart]] entirely omitted ''Odes'' [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber IV/Carmen X|4.10]] and re-numbered the remaining odes. He also removed the ending of ''Odes'' [[:wikisource:la:Carmina (Horatius)/Liber IV/Carmen I|4.1]]. [[Thomas Creech]] printed ''Epodes'' [[:wikisource:la:Epodi#VIII|8]] and [[:wikisource:la:Epodi#XII|12]] in the original Latin but left out their English translations. [[Philip Francis (translator)|Philip Francis]] left out both the English and Latin for those same two epodes, a gap in the numbering the only indication that something was amiss. French editions of Horace were influential in England and these too were regularly [[bowdlerize]]d.

Most European nations had their own 'Horaces': thus for example [[Friedrich von Hagedorn]] was called ''The German Horace'' and [[Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski]] ''The Polish Horace'' (the latter was much imitated by English poets such as [[Henry Vaughan]] and [[Abraham Cowley]]). Pope [[Urban VIII]] wrote voluminously in Horatian meters, including an ode on gout.<ref>D. Money, ''The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries'', 319–25</ref>