The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [860]
Il pover' huomo che non s'en era accorto,
Andava combattendo, e era morto.
——
The author of 'La Maniere de bien Penser' speaks of a French divine who, to prove that young persons sometimes die before old ones, cited the text,' Prcecucurrit citius Petro Johannes et venit primus ad monumentunm.
——
There is no passage among all the writings of antiquity more sublime than these lines of Silius Italicus. The words are addressed to a young man of Capua, who proposed to assassinate Hannibal at a banquet.
Fallis te mensas inter quod credis inermem,
Tot bellis quimsita viro, tot ccedibus arrnat
Majestas eterna ducem: si admoveris ora
Cannas et Trebiom ante oculos, Trasymeriaque busta,
Et Pauli stare ingentum miraberis umbram.
——
Giace l'alta Cartag: t pena i segni
De l'alte sui rmine il lido serba:
Muoino le citth, muoino i regnit
Copre i fasti e le pompe aiena et herba:
E l'huom d'esser mortal per che si sdegni.
These lines of Tasso are a curious specimen of literary robbery-being made up entirely of passages from Lucan and Sulspicius. Lucan says of Troy
Jam tota tcguntur
Pergama duoietis: etiam perire ruinm:
and Sulspicius in a letter to Cicero says of Megara, Egina, Corinth, &c. — "Hem! nos homunculi inidigniatour si quis nostrum interilit, quorulm vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidorum cadavera projecta jaceant."
——
An epigram upon the subject of Francois (de Bassompiere being released from the Bastille upon the death of Richlieu, is a strange mixture of lofty thought and puerile conceit.
Enfin dans l'arriere saison
La fortune d'Armand s'accorde avec la mienne:
France, Je sors de mla prison
Quand son ame sort de la sienne.
The line, "France, Je sors de ma prison," is the anagram of Francois de Bassompiere.
——
The epigrams of the Greek Anthology are characterized more by naivete than point. They are for the most part insipid.
——
Longinus calls pompous and inflated thoughts, "reveries of Jupiter" — insomnia Jovis.
[[——]]
A French writer of celebrity dedicated a book to Richelieu in terms of the most blasphemous flattery. But being disappointed in his expectations, he suppressed all his praises in a second edition, and re-dedicated his volume "a Jesus Christ."
——
The following inscription intended for the Louvre, possesses both simplicity and dignity:
Pande fores poptlis, sublimis Lupara: non est
Terrarum imperio dignior ulla domus.
——
Under a fine painting of St. Bruno in solitude, some Italian wrote these words, "Egli e vivo, e parlerebbe se non osservasse la rigola del silentio." Malherbe has taken the hint in his epigram upon a picture of Saint Catherine.
——
A fine sample of galimatias is to be found in an epigram of Miguel de Cervantes:
Van muerte tan escondida,
Que no te sienta venir;
Porque el plazer del morir
No me tomne A dar la vida.
——
Quintillian mentions a pedant who taught obscurity, and who was wont to say to his scholars, "This is excellent — I do not understand it myself."
——
An Italian metaphysician to disprove that greatness of mind is proportioned to the size of the skull, argues thus: "Noan sano, che la mnente e6 il centro del capo; e il centro nion cresce per la grandezza del circolo."
——
A horse is often seen on ancient sepulchral monuments. Caylus quotes a passage fi'om Passeri, " de animie transvectione," implying that the horse designates the passage of the soul to Elysium.
——
The Satyre Menippee of the French is, in prose, the exact counterpart of Hudibras in rhyme.
——
A remarkable instance of concord of sound and sense is to be seen in the following stanza by M. Anton Flaminius:
Ast amans chare thalamum puellmes
Deserit flens, et tibi verba dicit
Aspera amplexu tenerso cupito a —
— vulsus amicre.
——
Voltaire's ignorance of antiquity is laughable. In his Essay on