Cleo. Anglia quem genuit jacet hac, Homo, conditus Urna,
Antiqui, qualem non habuere Deum.
Hor.——I thank you. They may go on now. I have seen several things since first I heard this epitaph of you, that are manifestly borrowed from it. Was it never published?
Cleo. I believe not. The first time I saw it was the day the Duke was buried, and ever since it has been handed about in manuscript; but I never met with it in print yet.
Hor. It is worth all his Fable of the Bees, in my opinion.
Cleo. If you like it so well, I can show you a translation of it, lately done by a gentleman of Oxford, if I have not lost it. It only takes in the first and last distich, which indeed contain the main thought: The second does not carry it on, and is rather a digression.
Hor. But it demonstrates the truth of the first in a very convincing manner; and that Mars had no father, and Minerva no mother, is the most fortunate thing a man could wish for, who wanted to prove that the account we have of them is fabulous.
Cleo. Oh, here it is. I do not know whether you can read it; I copied it in haste.
Hor. Very well.
The grateful ages past a God declar’d,