Meantime some of his poems attracted the notice of Varius and Virgil, who introduced him to Maecenas (B.C. 39). Horace soon became the friend of Maecenas, and this friendship quickly ripened into intimacy. In a year or two after the commencement of their friendship (B.C. 37) Horace accompanied his patron on the journey to Brundusium already alluded to. About the year B.C. 34 Maecenas bestowed upon the poet a Sabine farm, sufficient to maintain him in ease, comfort, and even in content, during the rest of his life. The situation of this farm was in the valley of Ustica, within view of the mountain Lucretilis, and near the Digentia, about 15 miles from Tibur (_Tivoli_). A site exactly answering to the villa of Horace, and on which were found ruins of buildings, has been discovered in modern times. Besides this estate, his admiration of the beautiful scenery in the neighborhood of Tibur inclined him either to hire or to purchase a small cottage in that romantic town; and all the later years of his life were passed between the metropolis and these two country residences. He died, B.C. 8, in his 57th year. He was buried on the slope of the Esquiline Hill, close to his friend and patron Maecenas, who had died before him in the same year. Horace has described his own person. He was of short stature, with dark eyes and dark hair, but early tinged with gray. In his youth he was tolerably robust, but suffered from a complaint in his eyes. In more advanced life he grew fat, and Augustus jested about his protuberant belly. His health was not always good, and he seems to have inclined to be a valetudinarian. In dress he was rather careless. His habits, even after he became richer, were generally frugal and abstemious; though on occasions, both in youth and maturer age, he seems to have indulged in conviviality. He liked choice wine, and in the society of friends scrupled not to enjoy the luxuries of his time. He was never married. The _Odes_ of Horace want the higher inspirations of lyric verse. His amatory verses are exquisitely graceful, but they have no strong ardor, no deep tenderness, nor even much light and joyous gayety; but as works of refined art, of the most skillful felicities of language and of measure, of translucent expression, and of agreeable images embodied in words which imprint themselves indelibly on the memory, they are unrivaled. In the _Satires_ of Horace there is none of the lofty moral indignation, the fierce vehemence of invective, which characterized the later satirists. It is the folly rather than the wickedness of vice which he touches with such playful skill. In the _Epodes_ there is bitterness provoked, it should seem, by some personal hatred or sense of injury; but the _Epistles_ are the most perfect of the Horatian poetry, the poetry of manners and society, the beauty of which consists in its common sense and practical wisdom. The Epistles of Horace are, with the Poem of Lucretius, the