Of the three letters to Maecenas, one, like the Ode we have before quoted on p. 28, is a vigorous assertion of independence. The great man, sorely sick and longing for his friend, had written peevishly (Ep. I, vii), "You said you should be absent five days only, and you stay away the whole of August." "Well--I went away because I was ill, and I remain away because in this 'undertakers' month,' as you call it in Rome, I am afraid of being worse if I go back. When cold weather comes I shall go down to the sea; then, with the first swallow, dear friend, your poet will revisit you. I love you fondly; am grateful to you every hour of my life; but if you want to keep me always by your side, you must restore to me the tender grace of vanished youth; strong lungs, thick black hair, musical voice and ringing laughter; with our common love for pretty Cinara now dead and gone." A positive sturdy refusal, not without hints that if the patron repents his benefactions or demands sacrifice of freedom in exchange for them, he had better take them back: yet a remonstrance so disarming, infused with such a blend of respect and playfulness, such wealth of witty anecdote and classical allusion, that we imagine the fretfulness of the appeased protector evaporating in admiration as he reads, the answer of affectionate apology and acceptance dictated in his pacified response. In another inimitable letter (Ep. I, 9), as brief as this is long, he recommends his friend Septimius to Tiberius Claudius Nero, stepson of Augustus, a young man of reserved unpleasant manners, and difficult to approach. The suasive grace with which it disclaims presumption, yet pleads his own merits as a petitioner and his friend's as a candidate for favour, with its dignified deference, implied not fulsome, to the young prince's rank, have caused it to be compared with that masterpiece of delicate solicitation, St. Paul's Epistle to Philemon. It is cited by Steele in the "Spectator" as a model of epistolary tact ("Spectator," No. 493); we cannot improve upon his translation: