A gentle dove glided down through the silent air and settled even in Aratulla's bosom as she was sitting. This might have seemed but the sport of chance had it not rested there, though undetained, and refused to part even when flight was free. If it is granted to the loving sister to hope for better things, and if prayers can move the lord of the world, this bird perchance has come to thee from Sardinia's shore of exile to announce the speedy return of thy brother.
Nothing could be more conventional, nothing more perfect in form, more full of music, more delicate in expression. The same felicity is shown in his epigrams on curiosities of art or nature, a fashionable and, it must be confessed, an easy theme.[680] Fish carved by Phidias' hand, a lizard cast by Mentor, a fly enclosed in amber, are all given immortality:
artis Phidiacae toreuma clarum pisces aspicis: adde aquam, natabunt (iii. 35).
These fishes Phidias wrought: with life by him
They are endowed: add water and they swim.
PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH.
inserta phialae Mentoris manu ducta
lacerta vivit et timetur argentum (iii. 41).
That lizard on the goblet makes thee start.
Fear not: it lives only by Mentor's art.
PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH.
et latet et lucet Phaethontide condita gutta,
ut videatur apis nectare clusa suo.
dignum tantorum pretium tulit illa laborum:
credibile est ipsam sic voluisse mori (iv. 32).
Here shines a bee closed in an amber tomb,
As if interred in her own honey-comb.
A fit reward fate to her labours gave;
No other death would she have wished to have.
MAY.
Always at home in describing the trifling amenities of life, he is at his best equally successful in dealing with its trifling follies. An acquaintance has given his cook the absurd name of Mistyllos in allusion to the Homeric phrase [Greek: mistyllon t' ora talla]. Martial's comment is inimitable:
si tibi Mistyllos cocus, Aemiliane, vocatur, dicatur quare non Taratalla mihi? (i. 50).