What makes a happy life, dear friend, If thou would'st briefly learn, attend-- An income left, not earned by toil; Some acres of a kindly soil; The pot unfailing on the fire; No lawsuits; seldom town attire; Health; strength with grace; a peaceful mind; Shrewdness with honesty combined; Plain living; equal friends and free; Evenings of temperate gaiety: A wife discreet, yet blythe and bright; Sound slumber, that lends wings to night. With all thy heart embrace thy lot, Wish not for death and fear it not. PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH. This exquisite echo of the Horatian 'beatus ille qui procul negotiis' sets forth no very lofty ideal. It is frankly, though restrainedly, hedonistic. But it depicts a life that is full of charm and free from evil. Martial, in his heart of hearts, hates the Rome that he depicts so vividly. Rome with its noise, its expense, its bustling snobbery, its triviality, and its vice, where he and his friend Julius waste their days: nunc vivit necuter sibi, bonosque soles effugere atque abire sentit, qui nobis pereunt et imputantur (v. 20. 11). Dead to our better selves we see The golden hours take flight, Still scored against us as they flee. Then haste to live aright. PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH He longs to escape from the world of the professional lounger and the parasite to an ampler air, where he can breathe freely and find rest. He is no philosopher, but it is at times a relief to get away from the rarified atmosphere and the sense of strain that permeates so much of the aspirations towards virtue in this strange age of contradictions. Martial at last found the ease and quiet that his soul desired in his Spanish home: hic pigri colimus labore dulci Boterdum Plateamque (Celtiberis haec sunt nomina crassiora terris): ingenti fruor inproboque somno quem nec tertia saepe rumpit hora, et totum mihi nunc repono quidquid ter denos vigilaveram per annos. ignota est toga, sed datur petenti rupta proxima vestis a cathedra. surgentem focus excipit superba vicini strue cultus iliceti, * * * * * sic me vivere, sic iuvat perire. (xii. 18. 10).