[85] A. Philips, Past. v. 95.
He sinks into the cords with solemn pace,
To give the swelling tones a bolder grace.—Wakefield.
[86] "Distorted," which is always used in an unfavourable sense, is a disparaging epithet by which to characterise the vehement eagerness of the champions. It is not clear who or what they "threaten," whether the horses or each other, and in either case there is nothing "great" in the image of a person uttering threats in a "distorted posture."
[87] This expresses the mixed character of the odes of Horace: the second of these verses alludes to that line of his,
Spiritum Graiæ tenuem camœnæ,
as another which follows, to
Exegi monumentum ære perennius.
The action of the doves hints at a passage in the fourth ode of his third book:
Me fabulosæ Vulture in Apulo
Altricis extra limen Apuliæ,
Ludo fatigatumque somno,
Fronde nova puerum palumbes
Texêre; mirum quod foret omnibus—
Ut tuto ab atris corpore viperis
Dormirem et ursis; ut premerer sacra
Lauroque, collataque myrto,
Non sine Dîs animosus infans.
Which may be thus Englished: