Maecenas of "this most lovable little bit of a man," wished to make him his secretary, showed no offence at his refusal. His letters use the freedom of an intimate. "Septimius will tell you how highly I regard you. I happened to speak of you in his presence; if you disdain my friendship, I shall not disdain in return."--"I wish your little book were bigger; you seem to fear lest your books should be bigger than yourself."--"I am vexed with you, that you have never addressed one of your Epistles to myself; are you afraid that to have appeared as my friend will hurt you with posterity?" Such royal solicitations are a command, and Horace responded by the longest and one amongst the most admired of his Epistles (Ep. II, i). This was his final effort, unless the fragmentary essay on criticism, known as the "Art of Poetry," belongs to these last years; if that be so, his closing written words were a humorous disparagement of the "homely slighted shepherd's trade" (A. P. 470-476). His life was drawing to a close; his friends were falling round him like leaves in wintry weather. Tibullus was dead, and so was Virgil, dearest and whitest-souled of men (Sat. I, v, 41); Maecenas was in failing health and out of favour. Old age had come to himself before its time; love, and wine, and festal crown of flowers had lost their zest: Soon palls the taste for noise and fray, When hair is white and leaves are sere. But he rallies his life-long philosophy to meet the change; patience lightens the inevitable; while each single day is his he will spend and enjoy it in such fashion that he may say at its conclusion, "I have lived" (Od. III, xxix, 41). His health had never been good, undermined, he believed, by the hardships of his campaign with Brutus; all the care of Augustus' skilful physician, Antonius Musa, failed to prolong his days. He passed away on the 17th of November, B.C. 8, in his fifty-seventh year; was buried on the Esquiline Hill, in a grave near to the sepulchre of Maecenas, who had died only a few days before; fulfilling the promise of an early ode, shaped almost in the words of Moabitish Ruth, that he would not survive his friend. The self-same day Shall crush us twain; no idle oath Has Horace sworn; where'er you go, We both will travel, travel both The last dark journey down below. Od. II, xvii. THE SATIRES AND EPISTLES Horace's poems are of two kinds; of one kind the Satires and Epistles, of another the Odes and Epodes. Their order and dates of publication are shown in the following table: B.C. 35. First Book of Satires. 30. Second Book of Satires, and Epodes. 23. First three Books of Odes. 20. First Book of Epistles. 19. Epistle to Florus. 17. The Century Hymn. about 13. Fourth Book of the Odes. 13. Epistle to Augustus. (?) 10. The Art of Poetry.