Goethe praises Horace for lyric charm and for understanding of art and
life, and studies his meters while composing the _Elegies_. Nietzsche's
letters abound in quotation and phrase. Even the Church in Germany shows
the impress of Horace in some of her greatest hymns, which are in
Alcaics and Sapphics of Horatian origin. To speak of the German editors,
commentators, and critics of the nineteenth century would be almost to
review the history of Horace in modern school and university; such has
been the ardor of the German soul and the industry of the German mind.
_iv_. IN SPAIN
A glance at the use of Horace in Spain will afford not the least
edifying of modern examples. The inventories of Spanish libraries in the
Middle Age rarely contain the name of Horace, or the names of his lyric
brethren, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. Virgil, Lucan, Martial,
Seneca, and Pliny are much more frequent. It was not until the fifteenth
century that reminiscences of the style and ideas of Horace began to
appear in quantity. Imitation rather than translation was the vehicle of
Spanish enthusiasm. The fountain of Horatianism in Spain was the
imitation of _Epode II_, _Beatus Ille_, by the Marquis de Santillana,
one of Castile's two first sonneteers, in the first half of the
fifteenth century.
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