And life unspotted, I’ve attained my aim:
When riper years have seasoned brain and limb,
You’ll drop your corks, and like a Triton swim.”[67]
The fifth Satire is an account of the journey to Brundusium in the train of Mæcenas with Virgil, Varius, and others; the sixth, again addressed to Mæcenas, tells us how the poet became acquainted with the great man, reverts to his father’s attentive care, and declares that Horace has no reason to be ashamed of his origin or discontented with his lot. The seventh tells of a joke in a lawsuit between Publius Rupilius Rex and a banker, Persius; the eighth, of some interrupted magic rites before a statue of the god Priapus; and the ninth, of the poet’s ineffectual efforts to get rid of a bore, who stuck to him until he was dragged off to the court by a plaintiff. In the tenth Satire, which serves as an epilogue to the collection, Horace returns to his criticism of Lucilius, maintaining that what he had said in the fourth Satire was really not too severe, and at the same time he expresses his opinion of some of the other Roman poets and of his own ability:
No hand can match Fundanus at a piece
Where slave and mistress clip an old man’s fleece;
Pollio in buskins chants the deeds of kings;
Varius outsoars us all on Homer’s wings;
The Muse that loves the woodland and the farm
To Virgil lends her gayest, tenderest charm.