Among the personal indications of the author we note the great freedom and independence of his life and character. In his mode of expressing this freedom and independence he reminds us of Horace, who seems to have imitated him in his view of life as well as in his writings. Thus, Lucilius declares his indifference to public employment, and his unwillingness to change his own position for the business of the Publicani of Asia, just as Horace declares that he would not exchange his leisure for all the wealth of Arabia[298]. Like Horace, he speaks of the joy of escaping from the storms of life into a quiet haven of repose[299], or inculcates contentment with one's own lot[300] and immunity from envy[301], and the superiority of plain living to luxury[302]. Like Horace, while holding to his independence of life, he put a high value on friendship, and strove to fulfil its duties[303]. Like him, while condemning excess and weakness, he did not conform to any austerer standard of morals than that of the world around him. Like Horace, too, in his later years, he seems to have been something of a valetudinarian[304], and to have had much of the self-consciousness which accompanies that condition. On the whole the impression we get of him is that of an independent, self-reliant character,--of a man living in strong contact with reality, taking all the rubs of life cheerfully[305],--enjoying society, travelling[306], the exercise of his art[307],--a warm friend and partisan, and a bold and uncompromising enemy,--not professing any austerity of life, but knowing and following the course which gave his own nature most satisfaction[308], while, at the same time, upholding a high standard of public duty and personal honour[309]. This establishment of a personal relation with his readers was one of the most original elements in the Lucilian satire. He was the first of Roman, and one of the first among all, writers, who took the public into his confidence, and gained their ear, without exposing himself to contempt, by making a frank and unreserved display of his inmost and most personal thoughts and feelings. Had his works reached us entire, we should probably have found the same kind of attraction in them, from the sense of familiar intimacy with a man of interesting character and intelligence, which we find in the Epistles of Cicero and the Satires and Epistles of Horace.