Horace as a critic

Introduction
Horace lived in the glorious Augustan Age, named
after Octavian Augustus, the first emperor of Rome.
The emperor patronized the artists and to this age
belong the greatest of the Roman writers—Virgil,
Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid and Livy. While in poetry,
he ranks next only to Virgil, in criticism he alone
is the ruling god. At the Renaissance he was classed
equal to Aristotle.
Works of Horace
Two books of Satires, Four books of Odes, Ars Poetica
Ars Poetica  was originally known as Epistle to the
Pisos. It was Quintilian who gave it the title, Ars
Poetica.  This is Horace’s chief critical work. It is
a letter in verse offering advice on literary matters
to a father and two sons of the name of Piso. The
book follows no method or plan. It is very brief in
keeping with its epistolary form, covering no more
than sixteen pages and less than five hundred lines
of verse in the original Latin. Its main topics of
discussion are poetry, poetic style, and drama.

Classicism
There were two schools in his day—the Old Latin and
the modern Alexandrian. The Old Latin was the school
native to Rome, popularized by the achievements of
poets like Ennius and Naevius. The Alexandrian
originated with the Greek Scholars of Alexandria (in
upper Egypt). It followed traditions that were
different from and inferior to those followed by the
ancient Greek classics. 
Horace felt that these two models were unsatisfactory
to provide models for the mighty themes that surged
in his mind. Only the ancient Greek models were felt
equal to the mighty call the poet had to answer.
Horace began a new movement in Roman Literature—the
revival of the ancient Greek tradition in preference
to the prevalent Alexandrian and the Old Latin.
Horace was at one with Virgil in opting for this
revived tradition in Roman Literature. Virgil
demonstrated his enthusiasm in poetry whereas Horace
did it in poetry and criticism.
Horace greatly admired the Greeks. He considered a
devoted attention to them an essential equipment of
the would-be writer:’ You, my friends, study the
great originals of Greece; dream of then by night and
ponder them by day”.
HORACE’S OBSERVATIONS ON POETRY
Nature of Poetry
Horace believed that poetry is not mere imitation
alone. He said that a poet ‘often mingles facts with
fancy, putting on something of his own’. He did not
like too much fancy on the part of the poet and added
that ‘fiction composed to please should be very near
to the truth’.
Function of Poetry
Poetry should inculcate a love of all that is noble
in life so that the young men may be perpetually
influenced for good. He synthesized the views of
Aristotle and Plato in his views on poetry. Poets
improve and please, unite the agreeable and the
profitable and at once delight and instruct the
reader. He believed that great poetry must be both
pleasure-giving and morally improving.
Subject matter
Horace makes just two observations about the subject
matter of poetry. Let your theme be what it may,
provided it is simple and uniform. Choose a theme
suited to your powers and ponder long what weight
your shoulders refuse to bear and what they can
support. He who chooses his theme wisely will find
that neither words nor lucid arrangement fail him for
sound judgment is the basis and source of good
writing.
Kinds of Poetry
Horace believes that poetry has settled kinds with a
metre appropriate to each.
The Epic celebrates the exploits of princes and
leaders and the sad story of war. The right metre is
the one employed by Homer—the dactylic hexameter.
For the mournful elegy and songs of thanksgiving, the
elegiac measure—or a couplet of which the first line
is a dactylic hexameter and the second a dactylic
pentameter.
For tragedy, comedy and satirical verse which dealt
with familiar themes, the iambic  metre which has a
conversational ease, so necessary to all these three
forms, and
For the lyric that sang hymns to the gods and godly
men, or songs of victory or love or wine the various
lyrical measures
It does not occur to Horace that the literary forms
are not eternally fixed and must change with life and
customs. In his own century was born a new kind
called the sonnet which though a lyric is a different
form. Horace never thought about new forms like
novel, dramatic monologue, epic-dramas or tragi-
comedies.
Language of poetry
Horace insists on the right choice of words and their
effective arrangement in composition. A poet is free
to use both familiar words and new ones if they
satisfy the two requirements of expression—clearness
and effectiveness. If no familiar word is found, the
poet has the licence to invent a new one. New words
will be appreciated if they originate from Greek
sources. The poet’s skill lies in making the familiar
words appear strange and the strange one familiar.
Nature and Art
Horace also examines the question of the place of
genius and art in the success of a poem. Genius meant
natural talent and art meant training. Horace
believed that each one of these gifts needed the
other. But like Aristotle he gives more importance to
art than to genius.
HORACE’S OBSERVATIONS ON DRAMA
Horace studies drama under three heads—plot,
characterisation and style.
Plot
Should be borrowed from familiar material, preferably
the known Greek legends in which the story being
already known the author could distinguish himself by
originality of treatment.
If an untried theme has to be chosen it has to be
consistent from the beginning till the end.It has
also to be an indivisible whole in structure, the
middle harmonizing with the beginning, and the end
with the middle. Only the relevant events of the
story should be joined into an unbreakable union.
Events repugnant to sight, or difficulty to believe—a
mother murdering her children or a human being
changing into an animal should be reported epic-wise
rather than shown on the stage. What is heard is less
shocking or incredible than what is seen.
Supernatural should not be introduced to solve a
human problem unless there is no other way.
He lays down two conditions for the chorus. It should
form an integral part of the plot so as not to
disturb the unity of action by hanging like a loose
thread and that its comments should be directed to a
noble end.
Finally, the length of the play should be neither
shorter nor longer than five acts, or it will ever
win favour and be asked for again. How he arrived at
this is difficult to say but he was followed in this
by writer and critics alike when the dramatic art was
revived after the Renaissance.
Characterization
In characterization, the dramatist could either draw
on the ancient Greek legends or invent new
characters. Characters were to be true to their
traditional prototypes to pass muster with the
audience, and in the latter to be true to themselves.
A character who is one at one time and another at
another is not a consistent character unless he
persists in his changefulness. Horace demands truth
to life or verisimilitude—‘ A child in a play should
behave like a child, a young man like a young man, a
middle-aged man like a middle-aged man, and an old
man like an old man’.
Style
For drama, both comedy and tragedy, Horace considered
the iambic metre as the most suitable. He recommended
it for two reasons—
1. It is close to dialogue, being nearer the spoken
speech than any other metre, and
2. With every second syllable pronounced louder than
the first, it could be heard above the din of the
audience.
Dramatic speech should also observe propriety—a god
will speak differently from a mortal, a man from a
woman, an aged man from a heated youth, a prosperous
merchant from a poor farmer, a man in grief from a
 man in joy, an angry fellow from a playful one. ‘If
you utter words ill suited to your part, I shall
either doze or smile’.
HORACE’S OBSERVATIONS ON THE SATIRE
Surprisingly, there is no mention of the satire, the
form in which Horace specialized, in Ars Poetica. For
that we have to turn to his two books of Satires,
where he had earlier dealt with the subject.
Horace considers the satire a new verse-form unknown
to the Greeks. He admits that satire existed in a
different form in the Greek comedies. However it is
clearly Roman than any other form.
According to Horace, a satirist would have
    wit or the intellectual faculty to please in an
unexpected way,
    the faculty to see the fun of things,
    vigour or the power to hit hard, and
    sincerity of expression reflecting the man in the
author.
A satire is witty or playfully pleasure-giving and
not slanderous or abusive, its object being the
correction of foibles and not their punishment. The
sin and not the sinner should be the target of
attack. It should guard against bitterness on the one
hand and sheer buffoonery on the other. In style it
should observe three conditions—it should adopt
everyday speech, it should be brief and to the point
at every step and it should be polished. And lastly,
it should be varied in tone, now following one mood,
now another, so as not to satiate the reader with one
running note.

Estimate of Horace
Horace was the chief spokesman of the Ancients in the
battle between the Ancients and the Moderns raging in
his day. To him neither of the two traditions
appeared adequate enough to fulfil Rome’s great
requirements. He therefore sought the best standards
in literature, which he found only in ancient Greek
classics.
Horace cannot be credited with any logical theory of
poetry including dramatic poetry. All is borrowed
from the Greek masters, although in one great
particular he makes a near approach to originality—
his compromise of pleasure and profit as the objects
of poetry.
For two other pronouncements he made his mark on the
succeeding generations—the need for decorum or
proportion, and the need for ceaseless toil as the
price of poetic greatness.
The subject chosen must be proportionate to the
poet’s powers, the word to the meaning, the style to
the subject, the treatment to the literary kind, the
sentiments to character, and so on.
As for the need for toil, he would not hesitate to
‘reject that poem which has not been pruned by length
of time and many an erasure, and has not been amended
ten times over to a perfect polish’. His object was
to teach the would-be poet to achieve perfection in
his art not by any freak of chance but with a full
knowledge.