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for searching only. HORACE 499
Dem. What's here? A scroll; and written round about? Let's see:
[Reads] `Integer vitae, scelerisque purus, Non eget Mauri jaculis, nee arcu.'7
Chi. 0,'tis a verse in Horace; I know it well: I read it in the grammar long ago.
Aar. Ay, just; a verse in Horace; right, you have it.8
The quotation is in Lily, as alleged, and so would not indicate familiarity with the original text of Horace, even if it could be proved that Shakspere is himself responsible for this passage in Titus A'ndronicus.
When Enobarbus says,
Half the heart of Caesar, worthy Mecaenas?'
Deighton comments,
the translation of a Latin poetical phrase used by Horace of Vergil, Odes,
I. iii. 8: animae dimidium meae.k0
Theobald says,
In Hamlet the King says (I. ii. 2g) (Quarto Edition as pointed out by Neil),-
"We hold it most unmete and unconvenient,
Being the joy and half-heart of your mother."
This is a simile purely Horatian, etc."
If first we knew that Shakspere had some familiarity with the Odes, then we should have a possibility, perhaps a probability, that he is here echoing Horace; but no certainty by any means.
As Hastings in Richard III finds himself suddenly and heartlessly being forced off to death, just when he thought himself most secure,
he laments,
O momentary grace of mortal men,
Which we more hunt for than the grace of God! Who builds his hopes in air of your good looks, Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,
Ready, with every nod, to tumble down Into the fatal bowels of the deep "
On the line, "Who builds his hopes," etc. Dr. Johnson notes,
So Horace,
Nescius aurae fallacis.'
Carne, Bk. I, Ode 22. s Titus Rndronicus, IV, 2, 184.
9 Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2, 175-176.
1l Case, R. H., Antony and Cleopatra (Arden ed.), p. 52.
Theobald, W., Classical Element, p. 213. n Richard III, III, 4, 98-103. 1 Johnson, Shakespeare (1765), Vol. V, p. 299n.
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