never quite lost their charm for him; but during this period they must often have tempted him into the elaborate dinners, the late hours, and the high-strung excitement, which made a retreat to the keen air and plain diet of his Sabine home scarcely less necessary for his body's than it was for his spirit's health. For, much as he prized moderation in all things, and extolled "the mirth that after no repenting draws," good wine, good company, and fair and witty women would be sure to work their spell on a temperament so bright and sympathetic, and to quicken his spirits into a brilliancy and force, dazzling for the hour, but to be paid for next day in headache and depression. He was all the more likely to suffer in this way from the very fact that, as a rule, he was simple and frugal in his tastes and habits. We have seen him (p. 66), in the early days of his stay in Rome, at his "plain meal of pancakes, pulse, and pease," served on homely earthenware. At his farm, again, beans and bacon (p. 80) form his staple dish. True to the old Roman taste, he was a great vegetarian, and in his charming ode, written for the opening of the temple of Apollo erected by Augustus on Mount Palatine (B.C. 28), he thinks it not out of place to mingle with his prayer for poetic power an entreaty that he may never be without wholesome vegetables and fruit. "Let olives, endive, mallows light, Be all my fare; and health Give thou, Apollo, so I might Enjoy my present wealth! Give me but these, I ask no more, These, and a mind entire-- An old age, not unhonoured, nor Unsolaced by the lyre!" Maecenas himself is promised (Odes, III. 28), if he will visit the poet at the Sabine farm, "simple dinners neatly dressed;" and when Horace invites down his friend Torquatus (Epistles, II. 5), he does it on the footing that this wealthy lawyer shall be content to put up with plain vegetables and homely crockery (_modica olus omne patella_). The wine, he promises, shall be good, though not of any of the crack growths. If Torquatus wants better, he must send it down himself. The appointments of the table, too, though of the simplest kind, shall be admirably kept-- "The coverlets of faultless sheen, The napkins scrupulously clean, Your cup and salver such that they Unto yourself yourself display." Table-service neat to a nicety was obviously a great point with Horace. "What plate he had was made to look its best." "_Ridet argento domus_"--"My plate, newly-burnished, enlivens my rooms"--is one of the attractions held out in his invitation to the fair Phyllis to grace his table on Maecenas's birthday (Odes, IV. 11). And we may be very sure that his little dinners were served and waited on with the studied care and quiet finish of a refined simplicity. His rule on these matters is indicated by himself (Satires, II. 2):--