pursuits more congenial to his vocation and intellectual cultivation, as is seen in his apparently early thirst for knowledge, and discovery that such thirst does not admit of thorough satisfaction:—
Inadequate to satisfy the mind—
A craving eagerness remains behind;
Something is left for which we cannot rest,
And the last something always seems the best—
Something unknown, or something unpossest."—(F.)
One who could give vent to such a sentiment may be supposed to have laid up in youth a store of the best learning attainable; and the bent of his talents, which was towards vocal and instrumental music and composition of elegies, was so successfully followed that in time of need he was able to turn it to means of subsistence. Indeed, that he knew what was really the real secret of success in a concert or a feast is seen in a remark which he addressed to a certain Simonides (whom there is no reason to identify with the famous poet), recommending
Like a good concert, keeping time and measure;
Such entertainments give the truest pleasure."—(F.)
But the poet was able to preserve the health which he besought the gods to grant him, in spite of what we should call hard living, there are hints in his poetry that the "peace" which he coupled with it did not bless him uninterruptedly. In one of his earlier elegiac fragments there is a hint of a youthful passion,
