“I beg you, Muse, to convey my compliments to Celsus Albinovanus, the companion and secretary of Nero. If he asks what I am doing, tell him that though I threaten all kinds of fine things, I am neither living properly nor pleasantly; not because my vines have been smashed by the hail, or my olives parched with the heat, or my cattle sick on the outlying lands, but because, more ill at ease in mind than body, I refuse to hear or learn anything that is good for an invalid, am annoyed with my faithful physicians, furious with my friends, because they try to deliver me from my deadly laziness; I am bent on what is bad for me, I avoid what I know to be good for me; I am fickle enough to be in love with Tibur at Rome, with Rome at Tibur. After this ask him how he is, how he manages his business and himself, how he gets on with his young chief and the company. If he says ‘well,’ first congratulate him, and then don’t forget to whisper just this little bit of advice into his ear, ‘Our treatment of you, Celsus, will depend upon the way you treat your own good fortune.’” Other letters to Bullatius, to Albius, to Municius, to Secius, to Lollius are much in the same strain. Though these young men were not demonstrably included in the inner circle of the friends of Tiberius, they belonged to the same social rank; in all there is the same playfulness, in all good advice is conveyed in tactful form. In Lollius Horace seems to have felt a special interest; he too was a companion to some notable person, probably Drusus. Horace gives Lollius many practical directions, somewhat in the style of Polonius, as to his behaviour to his patron, Lollius being of an independent spirit, and irascible. Horace is particularly fond of impressing upon his young friends the duty of “living for themselves,” of considering wealth, fame, and even public usefulness, as of less importance than a good conscience. The moral earnestness of Horace is often underrated, as the moral earnestness of R. L. Stevenson is underrated, and of many other writers whose teaching has not run in the grooves prescribed by the professional preachers of their day. Horace had no love for the worthy gentlemen who improved the occasion after dining with Augustus; the red eyes of Crispinus affected him as the red nose of Stiggins affected Dickens; he had equally little patience with those men who labelled themselves Stoic or Epicurean or Cyrenaic, and professed to live according to the authorized manuals of the sects; the pretentiousness of the professors of virtue and the proselytising Jews disgusted him, as similar manifestations are wont to disgust humorous men at all ages and in all places, but these men have had their revenge in the solemnity with which for nearly two thousand years they have deplored his levity. Few men, however, have lived more consistently with their professions than Horace, and the world would be none the worse if his example were less unfrequently followed.