"You'll have no scandal while you dine, But honest talk and wholesome wine, And only hear the magpie gossip Garrulous, under a roof of pine." It is characteristic of Horace that in the very next satire he makes his own servant Davus tell him that his rhapsodies about the country and its charms are mere humbug, and that, for all his ridicule of the shortcomings of his neighbours, he is just as inconstant as they are in his likings and dislikings. The poet in this way lets us see into his own little vanities, and secures the right by doing so to rally his friends for theirs. To his valet, at all events, by his own showing, he is no hero. "You're praising up incessantly The habits, manners, likings, ways, Of people hi the good old days; Yet should some god this moment give To you the power, like them to live, You're just the man to say,' I won't!' Because in them you either don't Believe, or else the courage lack, The truth through thick and thin to back, And, rather than its heights aspire, Will go on sticking in the mire. At Rome you for the country sigh; When in the country to the sky You, flighty as the thistle's down, Are always crying up the town. If no one asks you out to dine, Oh, then the _pot-au-feu's_ divine! 'You go out on compulsion only-- 'Tis so delightful to be lonely; And drinking bumpers is a bore You shrink from daily more and more.' But only let Maecenas send Command for you to meet a friend; Although the message comes so late, The lamps are being lighted, straight, 'Where's my pommade? Look sharp!' you shout, 'Heavens! is there nobody about? Are you all deaf?' and, storming high At all the household, off you fly. When Milvius, and that set, anon Arrive to dine, and find you gone, With vigorous curses they retreat, Which I had rather not repeat." Who could take amiss the rebuke of the kindly satirist, who was so ready to show up his own weaknesses? In this respect our own great satirist Thackeray is very like him. Nor is this strange. They had many points in common--the same keen eye for human folly, the same tolerance for the human weaknesses of which they were so conscious in themselves, the same genuine kindness of heart. Thackeray's terse and vivid style, too, is probably in some measure due to this, that to him, as to Malherbe, Horace was a kind of breviary. CHAPTER V. LIFE IN ROME.--HORACE'S BORE.--EXTRAVAGANCE OF THE ROMAN DINNERS.