For why? I find her breath a bitter blighter,
And suffer from her blows as if they came
From Spring the fighter!”
So that literature may be said to have set close to the ropes in those days, from first to last.
[68] Lamb, in “A Letter to R. Southey, Esq.”
[69] The man of Martial’s epigram had other “views.” The capital translation is Dr. Goldwin Smith’s:
“Vacerra lauds no living poet’s lays,
But for departed genius keeps his praise.
I, alas, live; nor deem it worth my while
To die, that I may win Vacerra’s smile.”