"True love, we know, is blind; defects, that blight The loved one's charms, escape the lover's sight, Nay, pass for beauties; as Balbinus shows A passion for the wen on Agna's nose. Oh, with our friendships that we did the same, And screened our blindness under virtue's name! For we are bound to treat a friend's defect With touch most tender, and a fond respect; Even as a father treats a child's, who hints, The urchin's eyes are roguish, if he squints: Or if he be as stunted, short, and thick, As Sisyphus the dwarf, will call him 'chick!' If crooked all ways, in back, in legs, and thighs, With softening phrases will the flaw disguise. So, if one friend too close a fist betrays, Let us ascribe it to his frugal ways; Or is another--such we often find-- To flippant jest and braggart talk inclined, 'Tis only from a kindly wish to try To make the time 'mongst friends go lightly by; Another's tongue is rough and over-free, Let's call it bluntness and sincerity; Another's choleric; him we must screen, As cursed with feelings for his peace too keen. This is the course, methinks, that makes a friend, And, having made, secures him to the end." What wonder, such being his practice--for Horace in this as in other things acted up to his professions--that he was so dear, as we see he was, to so many of the best men of his time? The very contrast which his life presented to that of most of his associates must have helped to attract them to him. Most of them were absorbed in either political or military pursuits. Wealth, power, dignity, the splendid prizes of ambition, were the dream of their lives. And even those whose tastes inclined mainly towards literature and art were not exempt from the prevailing passion for riches and display. Rich, they were eager to be more rich; well placed in society, they were covetous of higher social distinction. Now at Rome, gay, luxurious, dissipated; anon in Spain, Parthia, Syria, Africa, or wherever duty, interest, or pleasure called them, encountering perils by land and sea with reckless indifference to fatigue and danger, always with a hunger at their hearts for something, which, when found, did not appease it; they must have felt a peculiar interest in a man who, without apparent effort, seemed to get so much more out of life than they were able to do, with all their struggles, and all their much larger apparent means of enjoyment. They must have seen that wealth and honour were both within his grasp, and they must have known, too, that it was from no lack of appreciation of either that he deliberately declined to seek them. Wealth would have purchased for him many a refined pleasure which he could heartily appreciate, and honours might have saved him from some of the social slights which must have tested his philosophy. But he told them, in every variety of phrase and illustration--in ode, in satire, and epistle--that without