No More Learning

For cheerful exercise and manly toil
Anoint my body with the pliant oil--
Yet not with such as Natta's, when he vamps
His filthy limbs and robs the public lamps.
But when the sun pours down his fiercer fire,
And bids me from the toilsome sport retire,
I haste to bathe, and in a temperate mood
Regale my craving appetite with food
(Enough to nourish nature for a day);
Then trifle my domestic hours away.
Such is the life from bad ambition free;
Such comfort has one humble born like me:
With which I feel myself more truly blest,
Than if my sires the quaestor's power possessed.


FOOTNOTES:

[H] Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus), who was born near Venusia,
in Apulia, in 65 B. C. , and died in 8 B. C. , was a southern Italian.
When twenty, Horace was a student of philosophy at Athens. A period
of poverty-stricken Bohemianism followed his return to Rome, till
acquaintance with Virgil opened a path into the circle of Maecenas and
of the emperor. His literary career falls into three divisions--that
of his "Epodes" and "Satires," down to 30 B. C. ; that of his lyrics,
down to 23 B. C.
, when the first three books of the "Odes" appeared;
and that of the reflective and literary "Epistles," which include
the famous "Art of Poetry," and, with sundry official odes, belong
to his later years. Horatian "satire," it should be observed, does
not imply ferocious personal onslaughts, but a miscellany containing
good-humoured ridicule of types, and lively sketches of character and
incident. So varied a performance as satirist, lyrist, moralist and
critic, coupled with his vivid interest in mankind, help to account for
the appeal which Horace has made to all epochs, countries, and ranks.
Of the translations of Horace here given, some are by Prof. Wight Duff,
and have been specially made for this selection, whilst a few are by
Milton, Dryden, Cowper, and Francis.




_Horace and the Bore_


SCENE. --_Rome, on the Sacred Way. The poet is walking down the street,
composing some trifle, in a brown study, when a person, known
to him only by name, rushes up and seises his hand_.

BORE (_effusively_): How d'ye do, my dear fellow?

HORACE (_politely_): Nicely at present. I'm at your service, sir.
(HORACE _walks on, and as the_ BORE _keeps following, tries to choke
him off_. ) You don't want anything, do you?

BORE: You must make my acquaintance, I'm a savant.

HORACE: Then I'll think the more of you. (HORACE, _anxious to get
away, walks fast one minute, halts the next, whispers something to his
attendant slave, and is bathed in perspiration all over.