Horace's Life and Character Author:Horace Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. HOME-SPUN PHILOSOPHY. How great the virtue of frugality, (A favourite thesis by Ofella held Wise without method, self-taught, rustical) Learn, not at t... more »ables heap'd with burnish'd plate, When eye and brain are dazzled, and the mind, 5 Caught by vain show, refuses better things, But fasting here discuss: I'll tell you why. A judge suborn'd plays fast and loose with truth: When you have hunted, or rough-rid a horse Unbroke; nay, if such Roman sports suit not 10 Your Grecian taste, when you have play'd at ball, Or put the stone that cleaves the yielding air, Forgetting in your game the force you spend, Till thirst and hunger cure your daintiness, Scorn common food; without Hymettian honey 15 Touc!l not Falernian wine : your steward's out, Rough seas protect the fishes: bread and salt Will tame the wolf. Whence comes this miracle, And how? The charm lies not in costly meats, But in yourself. No whet to appetite 20 Like out-door work. Scar, oyster, lagoi's, Fail to delight men bloated with excess. Can I persuade you when a peacock's served Not to prefer it to the guinea-fowl? No: for the rare bird bears a higher price, 25 And shows a gaudy tail. What use in that? You cannot eat the feathers you admire, And all his splendours vanish when he's cook'd; Yet this flesh to the other you prefer, And let your fancy fool your palate thus. 30 What faculty enables you to tell A jack-pike taken at the Tiber's mouth From one between the bridges caught ? You praise A three-pound mullet served on many plates; All vanity: or why abuse the pike 3; Grown to full size ? Simply that Nature made The one fish long, the other light of weight; A fasting man can relish common food. 'Give me a mullet that will fill a d...« less