race responded by the longest and one amongst the most
admired of his Epistles (Ep. II, i). This was his final effort, unless
the fragmentary essay on criticism, known as the "Art of Poetry,"
belongs to these last years; if that be so, his closing written words
were a humorous disparagement of the "homely slighted shepherd's trade"
(A. P. 470-476).

His life was drawing to a close; his friends were falling round him like
leaves in wintry weather. Tibullus was dead, and so was Virgil, dearest
and whitest-souled of men (Sat. I, v, 41); Maecenas was in failing
health and out of favour. Old age had come to himself before its time;
love, and wine, and festal crown of flowers had lost their zest:

Soon palls the taste for noise and fray,
When hair is white and leaves are sere.

But he rallies his life-long philosophy to meet the change; patience
lightens the inevitable; while each single day is his he will spend and
enjoy it in such fashion that he may say at its conclusion, "I have
lived" (Od. III, xxix, 41). His health had never been good, undermined,
he believed, by the hardships of his campaign with Brutus; all the
care of Augustus' skilful physician, Antonius Musa, failed to prolong
his days. He passed away on the 17th of November, B.C. 8, in his
fifty-seventh year; was buried on the Esquiline Hill, in a grave near
to the sepulchre of Maecenas, who had died only a few days before;
fulfilling the promise of an early ode, shaped almost in the words of
Moabitish Ruth, that he would not survive his friend.

The self-same day
Shall crush us twain; no idle oath
Has Horace sworn; where'er you go,
We both will travel, travel both
The last dark journey down below.

Od. II, xvii.

THE SATIRES AND EPISTLES

Horace's poems are of two kinds; of one kind the Satires and Epistles,
of another the Odes and Epodes. Their order and dates of publication are
shown in the following table:

B.C.
35. First Book of Satires.
30. Second Book of Satires, and Epodes.
23. First three Books of Odes.
20. First Book of Epistles.
19. Epistle to Florus.
17. The Century Hymn.
about 13. Fourth Book of the Odes.
13. Epistle to Augustus.
(?) 10. The Art of Poetry.

Let us examine first the Satires and Epistles. The word "Satire" meant
originally a _farrago_, a medley of various topics in various styles and
metres. But all