long servitude and anxiety; and being certainly awake, you shall hear [this article in his will]?  “Let Ulysses be heir to one fourth of my estate:”  “is then my companion Damas now no more? where shall I find one so brave and so faithful?” Throw out [something of this kind] every now and then:  and if you can a little, weep for him.  It is fit to disguise your countenance, which [otherwise] would betray your joy.  As for the monument, which is left to your own discretion, erect it without meanness.  The neighborhood will commend the funeral handsomely performed.  If haply any of your co-heirs, being advanced in years, should have a dangerous cough; whether he has a mind to be a purchaser of a farm or a house out of your share, tell him, you will [come to any terms he shall propose, and] make it over to him gladly for a trifling sum.  But the Imperious Proserpine drags me hence.  Live, and prosper.

* * * * *

SATIRE VI.

He sets the conveniences of a country retirement in opposition to the troubles of a life in town.

This was [ever] among the number of my wishes:  a portion of ground not over large, in which was a garden, and a fountain with a continual stream close to my house, and a little Woodland besides.  The gods have done more abundantly, and better, for me [than this].  It is well:  O son of Maia, I ask nothing more save that you would render these donations lasting to me.  If I have neither made my estate larger by bad means, nor am in a way to make it less by vice or misconduct; if I do not foolishly make any petition of this sort—­“Oh that that neighboring angle, which now spoils the; regularity of my field, could be added!  Oh that some accident would discover to me an urn [full] of money! as it did to him, who having found a treasure, bought that very ground he before tilled in the capacity of an hired servant, enriched by Hercules’ being his friend;” if what I have at present satisfies me grateful, I supplicate you with this prayer:  make my cattle fat for the use of their master, and every thing else, except my genius:  and, as you are wont, be present as my chief guardian.  Wherefore, when I have removed myself from the city to the mountains and my castle, (what can I polish, preferably to my satires and prosaic muse?) neither evil ambition destroys me, nor the heavy south wind, nor the sickly autumn, the gain of baleful Libitina.

Father of the morning, or Janus, if with more pleasure thou hearest thyself [called by that name], from whom men commence the toils of business, and of life (such is the will of the gods), be thou the beginning of my song.  At Rome you hurry me away to be bail; “Away, dispatch, [you cry,] lest any one should be beforehand with you in doing that friendly office:”  I must go, at all events, whether the north wind sweep the earth, or winter contracts the snowy day into a narrower circle.  After this, having uttered in