Horace

And, while you need a guardian, keep your life pure and your name. When years have hardened, as they will, your judgment and your frame, You'll swim without a float!' And so, with talk like this, he won And moulded me, while yet a boy. Was something to be done, Hard it might be--'For this,' he'd say, 'good warrant you can quote'-- And then as model pointed to some public man of note. Or was there something to be shunned, then he would urge, 'Can you One moment doubt that acts like these are base and futile too, Which have to him and him such dire disgrace and trouble bred?' And as a neighbour's death appals the sick, and, by the dread Of dying, forces them to put upon their lusts restraint, So tender minds are oft deterred from vices by the taint They see them bring on others' names; 'tis thus that I from those Am all exempt, which bring with them a train of shames and woes."

Nor did Horace only inherit from his father, as he here says, the kindly humour and practical good sense