No other writer has taken his measure so justly. Common sense was basis of his genius. With pride he insists it is his province to sing lightly. He was greater for the justice of his mind than for his poetry. Many have written poetry as good, but where is the person who has seen with vision nothing could dim! He understood he was neither an imaginative nor dramatic poet when he writes: _I am only a little bee gathering thyme by the dewy shores of Tiber_. This is memorable for unenvious grace. Nor did he permit himself to philosophize long enough to forget it is a poet’s province to amuse. There have been few of such balance. And he had been child of fortune, too. He had become friend of Ruler of the World. There was only one world, then, and its center was Rome. Yet upon his face we feel sure there was none of that pallor which Juvenal declares is engendered by wretched friendship with the great. He resisted the invitation of Augustus to live at court. He knew simple life was better. He realized that to create, it would be well to live humbly, dream richly. After he became star of the court of Augustus, he did not grow scornful nor inclined to underrate the homely middle-class. He was gracious. There is no better preacher than Horace against money-mad modernness, its absence of leisure, false standards. He is teacher of the simple life. As he grew older he preached it. He proclaimed it boldly to decadent Rome. To be sure, as Juvenal scornfully says: _Well plied with food and wine was Horace when he shouts his evoe_! Evidently meaning to insinuate that well he might be happy, whom the tragedy of life could not touch. Yet it was a small income, the Sabine farm, gift of Maecenas. But he had become rich in the developed resources of mind. He knew wealth is not without, but within. He valued taste above gold. So plain, so persistent was his consciousness of this, that wealth beyond satisfaction of daily needs was folly, useless wasting of life to acquire. It was base prostitution of energy. The life bounded by horizon of the dollar can see no vast horizon. The poet’s gift was superior to what gold gives. One of his illuminating sayings is: _One may be poor amid great wealth_.